[NEW] Improved the responsiveness of the graph display, added more configurable colors for customization, fixed the display of connection lines that where too thick when zooming out, added a more visible highlight of connections (middle part and ends), made item selection more precise, added highlight on all node lines as we can act on them, added a shift of parameter labels to better show the tab/group/parameter tree structure, added a small motion threshold before moving a node.
[NEW] More visible selection and highlight when graph is zoomed out.
[NEW] Snap to handles when creating a connection.
[NEW] Added a right click contextual menu on graph connections (move to source node / move to destination node / delete connection). Move to source/destination selects and centers that node in the graph view.
[NEW] When creating or moving graph connections, or moving nodes, or selecting by area, the graph will scroll automatically if you move the mouse near the graph border while dragging the connection. The speed increases with mouse position, and scroll direction is relative the center of graph view.
[NEW] Disabled connections are now drawn as dashed lines instead of being invisible. They exist when a connection was created to something that is optional in a node and is currently disabled.
[NEW] Added a specific action in the graph menu to align all nodes, distinct from the alignment option. Option affects future manipulations; action is performed once when clicked.
[NEW] Added overlap indications in the graph: overlapping nodes will have a red "!" icon on top.
[NEW] Added "Vector 2 to Vector 3" and "Vector 3 to Vector 2" conversion nodes to facilitate UV usage in a graph.
[NEW] Added "Arc tangent of (X, Y)" math node (a.k.a. "atan2"), as well as Hyperbolic trigonometric functions and their inverse.
[NEW] Many Math nodes now accept any input type (number, vector 2, vector3, color): the operation is applied on each component separately. For nodes that take two inputs, the second input can either be a number used as parameter for each input component (e.g. pow(input1.x, input2), pow(input1.y, input2) etc.), or a vector of same size as the input, where each component is used as parameter for operating on the corresponding component of the input node (e.g. pow(input1.x, input2.x), pow(input1.y, input2.y), etc.). Vector nodes "Length", "Normalize" and "Dot product" now also accept Vector 2 as input, not only Vector 3.
[NEW] Added edition of parameter layout directly in the material editor published parameter tab.
[NEW] Added edition of parameter layout directly in the MetaNode parameter list.
[NEW] Added position mode option in UV node.
[NEW] Added a node pulling a MetaBall's or HyperBlob's (or a single primitive's) distance field into the graph, in order to delimit a volume in space, typically to define a standalone cloud shape inside a cloud layer. The node's output is a sort of distance to the object but inverted so that positive values define the "inside" space, and negative values the "outside" space.
[NEW] Implement a Smoothing parameter on the "Closest Neighbor" and "1st - 2nd neighbor" variants of the Voronoi noises.
[NEW] Made the "Division" math node vector-compatible as well (other Math nodes had been made vector-compatible earlier on).
[NEW] Added a second output to the "Division" node to get the remainder of the division and add a standalone "Remainder" node.
[NEW] The "Threshold" node (Filter category) now has an option to choose between the Low and the High value when the input is strictly equal to the Threshold (formerly, the High value was silently assigned).
[NEW] Function preview is taking into account scene time.
Fixed graph tooltip that was not always displayed for connections.
Better event handling, the thing you pick on button press is the thing that is used to perform the action (and not the one that is under the mouse after moving a bit).
Click and drag now keeps the mouse capture until release, so that you can move the mouse outside the graph without interrupting the current action).
Edit on node of label or data now happens only on second click on the node, not right away when you select it.
Added a small tolerance before moving a selected node.
Remember the previous position in the graph view when changing of edited graph (when editing a MetaNode for instance).
Better text drawing when graph is de-zoomed. Text is now rasterized at current display size instead of being scaled down.
Added a new option in main graph menu to display a grid in background of the graphs.
Fixed lost mouse capture when dragging the graph view, when the mouse was moved outside of the graph area.
Graph nodes can be freely resized. Minimization happens when node width is set below 1/2 the minimal width. When minimized, the node size is controlled by the vertical component of the resize.
Updated the placement of nodes that are generated by the application.
Fixed broken display of colormaps in graph nodes.
When node height is large, we can better use the space by placing the preview above the label, instead of left. That allows a better preview of material graphs, by resizing the nodes to your convenience. The maximum preview size for textures is currently limited thought.
Added an option to enable/disable the minimap in the graph view.
Added in node preview of 2D filters.
Parent parameter node has been renamed to "Ancestor parameter".
Better placement of input/output nodes inside newly created MetaNodes: the right place is next to the node that uses the input/output.
Removed the useless "Display nodes minimized" option, which prevented a lot of interactions in the graph. Nodes can still be minimized by selecting them, and using the right click menu, or by resizing them.
Better "show preview" options: each node has a Hide/Show/Auto setting. Hide/show overrides the global setting (for nodes that can have previews).
Fixed display of Help of Graph Nodes.
Vector composers, decomposers, 2D/3D converters, and axis permutations are now grouped in the "Vector Composition" subcategory inside the "Math" category of nodes.
Fixed a bug in the "XYZ Product (Separate Parameters)" node that led fractals downstream in the graph to evaluate too few or too many "octaves" (= fractal detail).
Fixed "Turbulence damping" parameter of the "Three Noises" fractal being ignored by mistake (since 2011!).
Fixed inconsistency when switching noise of fractal node. Internal noise scale was changed.
Fixed potential incorrect graph evaluation when containing MetaNode.
Avoided useless invalidation when opening/closing MetaNode function editor.
Select the appropriate output in the graph, when opening it from the different tabs of the Material Editor. .
Disabled contract/ungroup MetaNode icons if the corresponding action is not possible due to current selection.
Fixed copy-pasting a function, material, etc. containing a "Spline Proximity" node, where the copy lost track of which scene Spline to use (when not configured with an internal spline).
Fixed "Spline Proximity" node "Distance" and "2D Distance" outputs when used on the material of an Infinite object (Sea plane, Ground plane, or Infinite Procedural Terrain): the output values were excessively small as to be almost unusable.
RENDERING
[NEW] Render thumbnails are now computed for current screen dpi instead of default resolution.
[NEW] Speed-up rendering (up to 10%, especially with atmosphere rendering).
[NEW] Optimization of up to 20% when rendering clouds.
[NEW] New altitude inputs for clouds.
[NEW] Cloud specific input now supports local, object, world, or legacy coordinates.
[NEW] New position option node for clouds (support local, object, world, or legacy coordinates).
[NEW] Improve soft shadows projected on clouds.
[NEW] When auto-exposure is estimated from a progressive preview render (either Scene Preview, or regular render in "Preview" quality), a first estimation is now computed and applied as soon as the coarsest pass of the render ends, so that both the render and the 3D viewports become readable sooner, in case the exposure gap is large (e.g., when switching atmosphere model). The final auto-exposure estimation is done at the end of render as usual (the difference with the initial estimation is usually quite small).
Reduced the frequency of PathTracer render display during rendering (mainly useful because denoising can be long, reducing the number of denoising process saves time).
Fixed a bug when denoiser were not applied on render with very low sample per pixel.
Fixed artefacts when rendering glow on some materials (animated, non-volumetric).
Fixed the use of the Delete key to delete renders in the Render Stack which led to losing the focus (then subsequent Delete strokes would actually delete objects in the World Browser, for example).
Fixed rendering when some layers of a material layers stack have their "Visibility" icon set to "invisible" or "solid color": many effects were still applied when invisible (bump, displacement or normal mapping, luminous setting, color transmitted/reflected) or when set to "solid color" (Ambient occlusion, Highlights, PBR Metalness, Normal mapping, etc.).
Avoid re-enabling the render stack thumbnails too soon, which could introduce inconsistencies when a message box was displayed at the end of a render.
Fixed the saving of Multi-Pass as multi-layer PSD, when a 16-bit precision is requested.
Fixed the frame number indicated in the information strip, when rendering a single frame of an animation.
Fixed a regression with the linear exposure filter which was only applied to a third of the image.
Fixed a bug with quick renders in OpenGL views: they were deleted when the render preview ended (above the camera controls), or when the spline editor is opened.
Reduced the render time of objects using many materials (a test in a simple scene showed a time divided by 1.6 with 125 materials, 3.2 with 500 materials, 12.8 with 2000 materials. The gain is probably smaller in scenes using costly render effects.).
Fixed bad Altitude influence calculation when using Mixed Material and Layered Materials with "Absolute" and "Relative to Sea" modes for Altitude influence, when the Material layer itself uses non-World coordinate mapping.
Fixed arbitrary "Smooth blending strip" width for Mixed Materials using Absolute or Relative-to-sea modes: formerly the strip width depended on the Transition altitude, which could be zero, leading to a brutal change of material at the boundary even with maximum Smoothness. Now uses the same blending method as the "per-material" mode as a work-around. A better fix would be to offer an additional transition width parameter in these modes, to be able to set a truly Absolute value.
Fixed HyperBlob's underlying material scale ignored when rendering.
Auto-exposure is not reset anymore when rendering is aborted (previous estimation is kept).
Objects hidden from render should not collide with particles (including rain/snow collision).
Slightly increase lens glare resolution in preview mode and for final renders.
Fixed shadows of vegetation primitives with two-sided material.
MISC.
[NEW] Fixed a crash when loading color settings.
[NEW] VUE, PlantFactory and PlantCatalog Exporter will now be able to report the usage of their features. This will help e-on software to focus on the most relevant ones. This option can be enabled/disabled in File -> Options... -> General Preferences -> Send feature usage data.
Drop support for MacOS 10.10 "Yosemite".
Fixed progress bar never updated when saving a material on Mac OS.
Fixed a potential memory leak in file decompression and improved the reading speed of large scenes.
Fixed a case where the application offered to locate missing images several times despite the user saying "No to all".
Improved the compatibility with scenes containing copy-protected content which is not owned by the user: instead of refusing to load the scene, just ignore the missing functions/material layers and display the list of issues at the end of the loading.
Fixed a crash when computing fast OpenGL preview on HiDPI screen.
Removed obsolete OpenGL auto-configuration feature (all GFX support the Shader engine).
Fixed bad amount of VRAM detected for M1 macs (ARM-based).
Fixed Apple M1 "fixed pipeline" hardware renderer being detected as a software OpenGL implementation.
Skipped useless hardware requirements check on Apple M1 which could lead to invalid messages.
Optimize a border case where a group used as single operand of a Boolean (therefore a no-op) would still be baked as a Union (required when used as operand of an actual Boolean operation).
[Documentation] Reorganized Spline Editor section, especially the general description at the beginning (now split between general presentation and subsections "Creation and Edition" and "Additional Spline Tools"). The Spline creation and edition workflow is now presented in a more structured and detailed manner (with hints and shortcuts). The "Terrain Effect" subsection was also improved, with a detailed explanation of the "Amplitude" setting and descriptive examples.
[Documentation] Substantial rephrasing and clarification in the "Material Editor/Mixed Materials" section, especially in "Influence of Altitude".
Try to detect the installed version of V-Ray to pre-fill the version we install (only available on Windows).
Modified installers and updaters to be compatible with Mac OS 12 Monterey.
UI/UX
[NEW] Added long due --help option to the command line interface.
[NEW] Added drag n drop of scene file in Startup panel.
[NEW] Improved error message when export failed.
[NEW] Hooking Point editor is now resizable.
[NEW] In material editor, switch back to previous mode if no picture selected while switching to mapped picture.
[NEW] Rework of ambient light in OpenGL preview that was nearly always black (shader engine only). Now it is a fraction of the overall lights in scene.
[NEW] Fixed French overflowing text in volumetric material editor.
[NEW] Support mouse wheeling to zoom in/out over the Animation Timeline and Animation Properties bars.
[NEW] Allowed ungrouping MetaClouds, useful to reuse a list of spheres generated using the "Convert to MetaCloud" feature, for example. It is now also possible to convert a MetaCloud directly into a MetaBall or a HyperBlob.
[NEW] Added an icon to directly edit the Multi-pass format options from the MultiPass dialog.
[NEW] Added the possibility to override the specimen colors in the viewport, to easily highlight a given population.
Faster scan of files for faster opening of the internal file selection dialogs.
Allow using a complete drive in browser as tab.
Really disconnect constants when using the "Disconnect parameter" in material editor.
Do not remove "unused" graph nodes when using the "Disconnect parameter" in material editor, that still can be useful later on.
Made the image path display in image properties non editable, because sometimes it is not a path but some description (of a generated image), that was confusing to be able to change it and have the application try to load it. .
In "3D filter" editor and "Section profile" editor, do not replace current filter with original filter when we cancel a "Load", that's not a cancel of the current edit.
Fixed a dead lock in the browser (which occurred at least when multi selecting elements).
Asynchronous previews in browser, no need to wait a long time to change folder while previews are computed, they finish in background.
Fixed invisible icons of user defined categories in browsers, can only fix new categories, previously added one need a manual correction (set the icon using the right clic menu on the tabs that have no visible icon).
Correct ill-defined tangent effect in 3D filters: For a given set of points and tangents, we did not obtain the same curve depending on where the points were inserted before being moved. That was also producing asymmetric curves around points, even though the displayed tangent looked symmetric. .
Corrected filter 3D editor to use actual Bezier control points instead of tangents with a varying intensity that depended on the insertion point.
Better cut in the 2D and 3D filter editors, inserting points keep the exact same curve.
Fixed incorrect point highlight in 3D filter editor.
Reset point coordinates on open in the 1D filter editor.
Introduced a --interface_scaling followed by a factor in command line argument to run application in different HiDPi mode. Example: --interface_scaling 2.0 will double the size of every piece of interface.
Change the way edit controls with length react to arrows and page up. Arrow up will now add one of the displayed unit.
Fixed native browser not having quick access on windows.
Minor panel redraw performance improvement (skip obsolete code handling now absent dialog background gradation).
Fixed conflicts between configured shortcuts and edit fields: for example, if you had configured '=' for some action, you could no longer use it in an edit field without also triggering the configured action (except for alphanumerical characters). As a side-effect, on macOS this fixes the fact that Up/Down/PageUp/PageDown keys were inoperant in numerical edit fields (whereas they now properly increment/decrement the value by some fixed amount depending on each edit field).
On macOS, Cmd+Arrow key now has the expected behavior in edit fields, i.e. move/select to the beginning/end of line. The former custom trigger of Alt+Arrow key has been kept for compatibility (edit fields do not support moving/selecting word by word, like Alt+Arrow key should in theory do).
Speed-up loading of the material summary (with hundreds of materials) and display a progression after a few seconds.
Ignored LOD computation in Object preview renderer.
Fixed material name and scale when loading a material to replace a layer.
Fixed Clamping mode not available in Filter editor.
Fixed message boxes not taking into account the modal dialog potentially running (Windows only).
Fixed the behavior of checkboxes in the render information strip options (were displayed as partially selected, and 2 clicks were needed to select an entry).
When adding a new material layer to an existing material, reuse the parent material's mapping mode.
Fixed the position of message boxes generated from the render stack, in multi-screen context.
Fixed wrong cropping of some panels depending on the screen size (options panel on a laptop, typically).
Fixed missing refresh of published parameters tab in EcoSystem, Mixed and Volumetric Material Editors.
Fixed inconsistencies in the Recent Files menu when some of the recent files are no longer accessible.
Avoided the automatic closing of the File Format Options dialog when one clicks outside of it (except when it is opened from the native file browser - in this case, it is mandatory to do so).
Fixed the OpenGL preview being too dark when "Light from scene" viewport option is disabled.
Fixed imprecisions when zooming/dezooming in the render display (now better centered on the cursor position). If using the + and - buttons, the focus is the kept on the current center of the image, instead of the top-left corner.
Closing the render display now closes the NPR Options.
Fixed a regression in the render display: the icons to show the alpha/depth and npr layers could be enabled whereas the layers were not available.
Fixed the black strips that could appear in the render display when zooming/scrolling during the render process.
In the transparency tab of the material editor, the dispersion checkbox is now disabled with the dispersion slider when necessary (to enable it, caustics have to be enabled both in the global render options and in the material render options). This behavior is more consistent with other parts of the editor.
Fixed the scale value displayed in the hypertexture tab of the volumetric material editor.
Reduced latencies when transforming objects with gizmos in scenes with many materials.
Undo/redo operations can now be totally disabled in the Preferences by setting the "maximum number of operations [...]" to 0. This enables making the UI more responsive in heavy scenes.
Fixed the saving of titles for the thumbnails of renders in the stack.
Fixed the application of the Post Render Options to quick renders done in views that are not associated to an actual camera of the scene (top/front/side and perspective views).
Fixed the state of the "Edit Alpha" button in the EcoSystem material editor, so that it always appears as "toggled" when an alpha function is connected.
Avoided the useless horizontal scroll bar that appeared in the population list of EcoSystems.
Fixed "quick render" feature in views using a camera of the scene different from the currently active one (which was always used).
Made the display of meshes with multiple materials more efficient when they have a user-defined preview color (in the "Object - Aspect" dialog in the top right corner of the main VUE window).
Added an icon button (+) on the thumbnail of plants in the EcoSystem material editor, to make the "add preset" feature more visible (it replaces the pop-up menu that appeared when clicking on the thumbnail).
The lines of items in the EcoSystem material editor and in the lens flare editor can now be selected by clicking on their thumbnails.
Fixed the application of the preview colors (defined in the Object Aspect tab) when grouping objects, creating Boolean objects, and splitting meshes (by material). It now takes the "Use auto color whenever possible" preference and the preview colors of objects into account. This is particularly useful in heavy scenes where preview colors are enabled to make the display faster.
Reduced the opening time of the browser for plants presets in the EcoSystem material editor or in the EcoSystem painter (for a plant with 50 presets, it now opens in 0.5s instead of 2.5s).
Improved the "Paint" tab of the Terrain Editor to use all the available space.
Improved the Material list UI at bottom of "Paint" tab.
Removed useless "Equalize" button in Terrain Editor.
Fixed potential crash on add cloud primitive on old MetaClouds.
Fixed MetaNode collection in function editor node list appearing outside of "User MetaNode" category.
Fixed flickering object graph when moving object.
Fixed refresh issue on cancel in function editor.
Fixed sometimes losing focus of the application at the end of a render (causing another application to flash on the top of VUE).
Fixed a crash on mac when rendering with OpenGL preset in main view. .
Fixed some empty browser when selecting specimens for an EcoSystem.
Fixed issue with plant browser sometimes having a wrong layout.
Removed some specific nodes (cloud/particles) on terrain graph menu.
Fixed water surface options synchronization with function editor.
Fixed ghost editor popping when clicking on color control.
Fixed Function Graph node types reappearing when switching between procedural and heightfield terrains.
Fixed previous version menu sometimes not working.
Fixed some case where editors do not respond to click anymore. .
Prevent some rare crash when closing material editor.
Removed some unnecessary scrollbars it published parameters tab in material editor. .
Add button in the Terrain Editor to edit the altitude graph more easily.
Major display optimization when merely moving any window except the main window (i.e., floating windows).
Minor display optimization for large windows on macOS (mostly 4K/5K, Scaled Display).
Fixed edit fields losing focus while typing when it triggers the refresh of a kind of (hierarchical) listbox (e.g. in the Particle Motion editor).
Fixed buggy navigation focus point (used as orbiting center and for navigation speeds) when only ground and/or water planes are selected.
In the Object Properties ("Numerics") panel, input in the X/Y/Z edit fields could end up in the wrong property when switching rapidly between Position and Rotation, for example.
Fixed many cases where the rendered scene preview restarted from scratch when manipulating objects that do not affect the render (non-active camera or its target, objects hidden from render or in hidden layers, objects added to a hidden layer).
Reorganize the Display menu to better group related items.
Prevent cameras from being created with a -4 exposure (especially Top camera, or cameras created from a Perspective camera), and fix wrong exposure in non-active cameras when loading an atmosphere with a different photometric status, same when saving and reloading a camera from a VOB in a scene with a different atmosphere.
Adjust 3DConnexion Space Mouse motion speed depending on the selection or scene dimensions.
Fixed issues with spline geometry effect meshes and terrain's 3D sculpting meshes which can be created in the wrong scene layer or stay visible when their "originating" object is hidden, and similar issues.
More helpful error message when OpenCL initialization failed.
More helpful error message when reading a PS/EPS/AI vector graphics file fails: recommend SVG format.
Fixed EcoSystem visibility issue in conjunction with the option "Show only objects from active layer" (viewports menu): EcoSystems from all layers were visible, whereas only EcoSystems from the focused layer should be.
When loading a scene from the Welcome panel, fixed the default viewport configuration being used instead of the custom one saved in a previous session (for a template scene), and the lack of a warning message when loading some non-template scenes.
Fixed motion speed when a single light or spline control point is selected.
Fixed edition of object under the mouse when double-clicking on a viewport's (transparent) caption bar to maximize the viewport.
More readable Layer name color when using the default Dark grey theme.
Fixed non-respect of the Camera Lock option when using the 3DConnexion SpaceMouse device.
Fixed navigation issues in the Timeline: not possible to zoom when using 3DSMAX navigation preset, pop-up menu showing after a pan on the Animation Property Bar, fix dysfunctional and possibly crashing mouse wheeling support on the Animation Splines Bar.
Fixed exposure in several (mostly top-view) displays: Spline Proximity node's internal spline editor, Terrain Editor's Zone Display, and two steps of the Animation Wizard.
Removed problematic feature in the EcoPainter: secondary action on the top-left corner icon button (to minimize the dialog) does not work properly and leads to confusion.
Fixed a message text referring to obsolete setting names, when converting objects to MetaClouds.
Fixed accelerator hints not showing in the Object Aspect's GL Display quality pop-up menu.
Fixed inconsistent message when changing both color and alpha channel using a single picture in the Alpha Plane editor, when the existing channel pictures have different dimensions.
Fixed Rendered Scene Preview using outdated sea parameters when the Water Surface is opened, and one clicks on the Scene Preview to manually refresh it.
Fixed scene's "Save" button not enabled when dragging a picture into VUE for use as a picture-mapped material.
More explicit message about assets in Content browsers that are available as separate downloads.
Fixed water surface options not working with some material from content.
It is now possible to hide a layer when object selected.
Removed a button doing nothing in SolidGrowth's Plant Editor (rename leaf/trunk subset).
Fixed the behavior of checkboxes in the render information strip options (were displayed as partially selected, and 2 clicks were needed to select an entry).
Removed a useless intermediate dialog when editing the number of variations of a plant in an EcoSystem.
Fixed population of multi-layer EcoSystems when the Material Editor is opened from the summary of materials or the World Browser.
In the World Browser, avoid showing materials of EcoSystem specimens no longer in use.
Fixed persistency of World Browser advanced options (show only material names, show only materials of selected objects...).
Avoided switching a material to dynamic population silently - happened typically when the material has some animated/published parameters.
Avoided refreshing the scene preview as soon as one edits a setting in the EcoSystem Material Editor.
Fixed wrong name and meta-information when replacing a plant by another species with the "Replace By..." menu.
Improved the display of specimen names in Material Editor and EcoSystem Painter, by displaying the preset name (if any) on a separate line.
Fixed preview mode option not sticking: was forced to "Show All Previews in Graph" each time the Function Editor was opened.
Fixed focus changes in Object properties making coordinates values being incorrectly changed.
Fixed double backup being added to Undo/Redo list when editing Object properties with Interactive numerical field changes enabled.
Fixed various bugs related to gamma correction and consistency between HSL/RGB values in ColorMap editor.
Added the ability to enable/disable the exposure of VUE cameras from the VUE render options for a better "artistic" control. Previously, their exposure was enabled with the "Post processing" checkbox, but it led to unexpected renders. The exposure value can be controlled by selecting a VUE camera then by selecting "Object Properties" in the VUE menu.
If no TPF plant variations are selected, loading is aborted.
INTEGRATION AND EXPORT
[NEW] Added the ability to bake the Reflection channel for non-PBR materials (also available in the Convert Tool in plugins).
[NEW] Improved TPF plant export using material baking.
[NEW] Animated wind is taken into account when exporting TPF plant animation.
[NEW] Improved FBX import/export.
[NEW] Added transparency support in C4D export.
[NEW] Added back side baking of two-sided materials when exporting without duplicated faces.
[NEW] USD and FBX export support tiling mode. (Mirror Tiling mode does not work for FBX, it is a FBX limitation).
[NEW] USDZ files creation no longer create construction files next to the final file.
[NEW] Added an option to split the USD exports in multiple files with one file per object and an assembly file for the scene.
[NEW] USD now exports lights.
[NEW] C4D export can use multi-instance or render instance for EcoSystems.
[NEW] C4D export the sky in a native object (use panoramic mode).
[NEW] C4D export PBR materials.
[NEW] C4D export VDB clouds as Volume Set.
[NEW] USD export VDB clouds.
[NEW] When exporting in USD on omniverse://, the objects will be tracked (activate Live Sync on omniverse). .
[NEW] Syncing on omniverse supports deleting of objects. .
[NEW] Added an option to replace pivot at the center of an imported object.
[NEW] Syncing on omniverse supports adding new object (geometry modification is not working yet).
[NEW] Add an option in USD export to use submeshes instead of GeomSubSet (to handle multi material meshes).
[NEW] Syncing on omniverse first support of geometry modification.
[NEW] Syncing on omniverse support of object renaming.
[NEW] Syncing on omniverse support of material modification.
[NEW] Add a Clarisse preset in USD.
[NEW] Syncing on omniverse support of object EcoSystem.
[NEW] Improve export of C4D animated VDB clouds.
[NEW] Improved export of USD camera focal and focus distance.
[NEW] Add clearcoat export in C4D and USD formats.
[NEW] Export clearcoat flatten.
[NEW] USD export Visibility (an object hidden from render will be hidden in USD).
[NEW] Added new option to export .vdb in multiple files.
[NEW] Preserve the EcoSystem hierarchy upon export (grouping instances together with the populated object) - in FBX, C4D and USD formats.
Fixed export of multipass render as PSD: extra components were always saved as linear whereas other color-like channels were gamma encoded. Now all components that can have gamma are encoded with the export gamma (see gamma options).
Fixed broken transition normal map in LeafCluster, billboard export and baked map export.
In the Export Options, the "occlusion treatment" option is now located just below the "ambient occlusion" checkbox.
Fixed a bug when writing a TIFF animation with alpha or depth channel bit per pixel different from the color channel BPP.
USD can now export to omniverse:// files and take advantage of omniverse live sync.
USD export now exports color Space. .
Fixed C4D export.
Improved error message when impossible to write an exported image because of image encoding.
Fixed some issues in the handling of Unicode characters in LWO and OBJ modules.
Store last user choice regarding Nuke import options in environment.
Fixed missing material file (.mtl) when exporting only billboards in OBJ format.
Fixed wrong value of the displacement depth (displayed as "height" in Cinema 4D) in Cinema 4D export preset.
Export the displacement depth in FBX files (even though it's ignored in most of applications).
Added an option to bake the displacement in the exported geometry (previously, it was automatically the case when the displacement channel was not selected in texture map options).
Improved detection of inverted normals upon import.
Fixed the handling of empty file paths in MTL files, in OBJ import (they were leading to confusing error messages).
Fixed the handling of Unicode characters in the reading of ZBrush files (.goz).
Fixed a memory leak when importing a FBX or Alembic file containing instantiated objects.
Fixed a potential memory leak when exporting a large mesh in 3DS format.
Fixed the export of displacement mapping (as a baked texture) when the displacement function is connected to a texture map with mip-mapping enabled.
Fixed the import of displacement map in OBJ format (was interpreted as 100% transparent material...).
Fixed atmosphere export in case of roll and animation of the main camera.
Fixed roughness constant value when exporting to USD.
Fixed branch blending options wrongly applied in presets where it is not present.
Fixed roughness constant value when exporting to USD.
Fixed import FBX camera in Target mode.
Fixed wrong LOD scaling factor.
Export zone does not exclude cameras and sunlight when they are out of export zone.
Fixed potential wrong atmosphere export image when path tracer is activated.
Fixed intensity of EXR export of atmosphere.
In the Real-World Import panel, when the import area's center is off view, zooming now operates towards the mouse position "as usual", not towards the view center.
Real-World Terrain Import detect tiles that are entirely invalid data and fall back to tiles at other levels, to work around "holes" in the data coverage.
Real-World Terrain Import panel display improvement when zooming out but lower level (coarser) tiles are missing: keep using (a reasonable amount of) the higher level (finer) tiles to fill the holes while the coarser tiles are being downloaded.
When the Real-World Terrain Import queried Sentinel tiles of level 16+, the server supplied them but they were only up sampled crops from the lower resolution tiles, resulting in blurry textures and uselessly high workloads for VUE.
Real-World Terrain view tooltip fix: altitude was not properly found when the view was zoomed-in too much.
Real-World Terrain imports resulted in terrain function graphs with two Altitude output nodes.
Better error reporting when OBJ import fails to open or parse material library files (MTL).
Fixed a regression since VUE R5 when importing Real-World Terrains where the base of the terrain would always be at Z=0 instead of the minimal altitude over the whole terrain ("pillar effect"), so that terrains at high altitudes could no longer be dropped onto the ground.
Fixed contrast issues in high altitudes (around 5000m and above) in the Real-World Terrain import dialog by using an additional color key in the default color map.
Fixed several issues when computing the level of tiles to import for Real-World Terrain data that may lead to insufficiently detailed data being used.
When importing a geo-referenced altitude file, retained its name for display in the "World Browser - Links" tab (formerly it used a generic naming convention).
Fixed baked map extension wrongly reset to JPG when exporting through Python.
Do not add an empty group to the scene when importing a file containing only cameras.
Fixed inconsistencies regarding animation options of PlantFactory species (unavailable when editing one plant's export options).
Fixed wrong UVs when exporting a non-square terrain with materials exported as baked texture maps.
Fixed wrong UVs when exporting a real-world terrain with materials exported by conversion of existing maps.
Fixed PlantFactory animation options (bones, points) wrongly greyed out when editing the plant's export options, depending on the export format used previously.
Fixed wrong scale when exporting a height-field terrain restricted to a zone.
Fixed EcoSystems becoming invisible in real-time views after a sky export (or a scene export including an export of the sky map).
Improved MetaBlobs FBX export with better transitions between materials.
Fixed the export of materials using a PBR Workflow Converter node (an empty metalness map was generated).
DENOISER
[NEW] Updated Intel Open Image Denoise from version 1.2.0 to 1.3.0: improved denoising quality (improved sharpness of fine details / less blurriness, fewer noisy artifacts), slightly improved performance and lowered memory consumption, bug fixes and speed improvement for recent processors.
[NEW] Updated Intel Open Image Denoise from version 1.3.0 to 1.4.0: improved fine detail preservation, reduced denoising memory consumption by about 35%.
[NEW] Updated NVIDIA Optix denoiser from version 7.0 to 7.2: improved denoising quality and lowered GPU memory consumption. NVIDIA driver 455 is needed.
[NEW] Added AMD Radeon Image Filter Denoiser version 1.7.0. Any hardware OpenCL, DirectX12 or Metal compatible should be able to run it (except on Apple ARM).
[NEW] Added a Denoiser Strength setting to modulate denoising process, which is available in PathTracer Options Dialog.
[NEW] Fixed a potential crash when using a denoiser with disabled multipass (both disabled in Render Option and in Denoiser Options).
MATERIAL
[NEW] Added support of Normal mapping "Link intensity to object scale" option on TPF plant.
[NEW] Added support for PBR clearcoat layer.
[NEW] Fixed proper independency of PBR clearcoat reflections and highlights from underlying normal perturbations.
[NEW] Properly filter PBR specular highlights with clearcoat tint.
[NEW] Added specific tab for clearcoat settings.
[NEW] Added automatic connection with substance clearcoat outputs.
[NEW] Added Normal Map Intensity and Flatten parameters.
Fixed Alpha output being connected to Projected Map's "Grayscale" output even when an actual alpha channel is present in the selected picture when switching to "Mapped picture" mode in the Alpha tab of the Material Editor.
Fixed the saving of EcoSystem materials with several layers from the Object Aspect dialog (or the world browser) so that they are reloaded with all layers.
PERFORMANCE
[NEW] Improved the speed of EcoSystem painting.
Cleanup previous temporary directories in a background thread to avoid delaying the application start.
Fixed graph related code with exponential behavior, affecting graphs with heavy combinatorics (lots of nodes with lots of interconnected data).
Improved speed of the thumbnail provider (for Windows explorer).
Improved loading time of compressed scenes containing a lot of plant EcoSystem populations (requires saving the scene in 2021.2 first). Up to 5x faster in some cases.
Fixed access to animated textures that was preventing proper multi-threaded render in some cases.
Small reduction of the scene loading time (tests showed a 4% gain for a scene with many images and filters in material graphs).
Reduced the loading time of scenes using thousands of images (for example, 19.3% decrease for 10000 images).
Improved rendering speed with V-Ray and Cinema 4D (around 20% faster when the number of rendering threads matches the number of CPU cores - when the number of threads is greater, the gain becomes huge because VUE did not take this setting into account).
Added multithreading and interruption possibility during the preparation phase before a render, notably when a ventilator influences an EcoSystem and therefore creates plants instances.
PLUGINS
[NEW] Added the possibility to include displacement map in native shaders instead of baking displacement on geometry.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / RenderMan] Implemented the conversion of materials to RenderMan shaders (PxrSurface).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / RenderMan] Added handling of two-sided materials.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / RenderMan] Fixed the conversion of the back of two-sided materials for RenderMan in Maya (the diffuse appeared black, and the backlighting was ignored).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / RenderMan] Added option to generate RIB archives for EcoSystem instances.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / RenderMan] Fixed several instantiation issues introduced by changes in RenderMan 24.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Added the ability to convert VUE materials to Redshift materials in Cinema 4D S24.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Fixed a crash with the latest builds of C4D (S24.111) and Redshift (3.0.50).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] With Redshift in C4D, a protection was added to avoid potential problems with future versions (in case attributes are removed, they will be skipped instead of preventing the whole conversion).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] With Redshift in C4D, two-sided materials now have only one item (the root material) in the list of materials, instead of 3 previously (root, front, and back materials). The sub-materials are still accessible in the graph.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Fixed the creation of two-sided materials with Redshift in C4D, when the "use sprite node" option is enabled.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Fixed a recent regression preventing the conversion of materials for Redshift in C4D.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Fixed the layout of Redshift material graphs in Cinema 4D (all nodes were overlapping).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] VUE materials with sub-layers can now be converted to Redshift materials in C4D (alpha maps are supported, but not the settings in the Presence tab for now. Also due to a Redshift limitation, only 7 layers can be converted.).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Improved the layout of Redshift material graphs in Cinema 4D to better see the hierarchy of nodes.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] VUE backlight and luminous properties are now converted for Redshift in C4D.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Fixed the gamma of texture maps for Redshift in C4D.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Added the ability to convert VUE materials to Redshift materials in Maya (layered materials not yet supported).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] VUE 2-sided materials can now be converted to Redshift materials in Maya.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] VUE materials using a PBR Workflow Converter node can now be converted to Redshift materials (it generates the appropriate maps for the diffuse, metalness and roughness channels).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] The VUE ambient occlusion is now converted to Redshift materials (mixed with the diffuse) in Maya and C4D.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] The Convert Tool now works in Cinema 4D S24 on Mac OS.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Fixed a regression in Maya: the metalness/roughness/reflections maps were not connected if their intensity factor was less than 100%.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Fixed the compatibility with Redshift 3.0.45 in Cinema 4D (the color management was different so it may be helpful for users with this version).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Improved the layout of Redshift material graphs in Cinema 4D (when texture maps are shared between nodes).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Fixed the conversion of VUE simple materials under EcoSystem materials for the Redshift renderer.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Added the support of Redshift in Cinema 4D R23.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] In the Convert Tool Options, the check boxes to enable the baking of the ambient occlusion and highlight are now accessible.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] When a VUE material uses the reflection channel, then its highlights channel is now ignored (as specified in the User Story).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Fixed the baking of the hightlights channel (saving of the generated map + generation of UVs for the mesh).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Avoided the unwanted addition of color correction nodes in Redshift material graphs (probably due to an imprecision with the color correction in the VUE material editor. This also affected plants from the PlantCatalog. Now only color variations greater than 3/255 are considered).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Fixed the conversion of the highlights map without baking (recent regression). The global intensity associated with the map is also taken into account now.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] The VUE clearcoat can now be converted to Redshift in Cinema 4D and Maya (IOR and Flatten parameters still have to be fixed, and the baking is not supported yet).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] The Redshift coating transmittance is now enabled only when there is a non-white color tint to apply (to avoid the darkening of edges with low IOR value).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] The flatten parameter of the VUE clearcoat is now converted to Redshift in Cinema 4D and Maya.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Fixed the conversion for Redshift after a reverted conversion for another renderer in Cinema 4D.
[NEW] VUE plugins now support Cinema 4D R25 (rendering + convert tool).
[NEW] [Convert Tools] Added the ability to convert VUE splines with a geometry effect.
[NEW] Improved conversion speed and performance in Maya for large EcoSystem populations, using MASH instancer for static instances.
[NEW] Added option to convert EcoSystems using Particle Flow in 3DS MAX, for better performance with 5k+ instances. LIMITATIONS: currently disabled with V-Ray and Arnold procedurals.
[NEW] Updated toolbars for Cinema 4D.
Fixed the conversion of plants with the "animated points" setting (some models had only small parts of their geometry animated).
Added the detection of the mismatch between the version of the current V-Ray renderer and the version of the VUE plugin, to warn the user that it may lead to problems.
The normals of VUE objects are now more accurate (for the display only, the render had no problem).
VUE now uses the number of processors defined for V-Ray (instead of always using all processors).
Fixed a regression in Maya that could make VUE objects and plants using several materials appear in light green in the real-time display.
Fixed a bug with the clipping planes of VUE cameras in Maya (if they were edited in the Maya interface, they were reset to initial values after some operations).
Fixed the display of VUE materials with several layers (now the bottom layer is used to display its maps, instead of the top layer which often contains less visible parts). .
Fixed an error message in the Maya script editor (saying the color of VUE materials couldn't be modified because it was already connected to a map).
Fixed a crash in the VUE plugin for 3ds Max, with scenes containing meshes using multi-materials whose sub-materials were shared with other meshes (regression introduced in R5). This fix may also improve the responsiveness as it avoids the useless recreation of unchanged sub-materials.
In Maya the scene is now correctly cleaned when closing VUE, which avoids problems when reloading the resulting scene (the useless automatic loading of the VUE plugin, or error messages when the plugin is absent).
Fixed the transformations of groups that were abnormally reset to their initial value when doing the first render of a session (with photometric atmospheres), or when changing the exposure control in 3ds Max.
Avoided a random deadlock when rendering with 3ds Max + Backburner + V-Ray. (It was linked to the use of several threads during the preparation of VUE materials and objects. Now a single thread is used, like in older VUE versions.).
The VUE plugin for V-Ray in 3ds Max is now compiled with the SDK from V-Ray 5 update 1.3 (implying a better compatibility with this version).
Fixed a crash when rendering a VUE scene with V-Ray in 3ds Max (if "render elements" different from the VRayDenoiser are present).
Fixed the closing of the VUE progress bar when saving large scenes (using the host app commands for saving).
Fixed the display of the mouse cursor in 3ds Max when hovering over VUE dialogs (it could keep the resizing icons instead of reverting to the arrow).
Fixed the unwanted modification of existing native cameras (translation in Maya, field of view in 3ds max) when adding the first VUE element (scene, object, atmosphere...). Now only the default perspective camera is moved to fit all objects of the scene in the view (+ orthogonal views in 3ds Max).
Fixed a bug in Maya with VUE materials containing dashes (-) in their name: it led to a light green display, and to invisible objects with the Convert Tool.
Fixed problems in the VUE Render Options dialog (the "deterministic indirect lighting" checkbox was ignored, and the "depth of field" checkbox and its associated edit button were useless, so they were removed).
VUE now correctly considers splines as selected after clicking on their geometry effect in the native scene (it makes their edition or conversion easier).
Removed 'Ambient Occlusion' from the list of available multipass layers, for it cannot be computed in the plugin context. .
Fixed the preview of Lens-flares in the Light Editor, which was never refreshed in the context of plugins.
Integrate camera/light synchronization directly in VUE plugins, to avoid having to install a separate VUE synchronization plugin manually.
Fixed the display of EcoSystem instances held by Boolean operations or MetaBlobs.
Avoided displaying a confusing warning when a default scene using a photometric atmosphere was defined by the user, but the atmosphere file just chosen to initiate a new project is *not* photometric.
Fixed a potential crash (and a fuzzy visual effect) when closing Maya while VUE plugin is in use (when trying to reset the grid properties).
[Convert Tools] Propagate bump depth property from original material to native material when we bake material maps.
[Convert Tools] Added conversion of Bump for Cinema 4D's Standard Renderer.
[Convert Tools] Fixed the transformation of instances with skeletons in Maya.
[Convert Tools] Fixed discontinuities in the normals of converted plants.
[Convert Tools] The original extension of texture maps is now preserved (instead of always using the .tif format). For baked textures, the default extension is now .png, as it is more standard format.
[Convert Tools] With the Maya Software renderer, the VUE alpha maps are now loaded in a way that is compatible with the NVIDIA Omniverse Connector plugin (the result in Omniverse was previously inverted).
[Convert Tools] With the Maya Software renderer, normal maps are now connected to materials in a simpler way so that they can be correctly exported to NVIDIA Omniverse (using the Maya Connector plugin).
[Convert Tools] The scale/offset/tiling parameters of the texture maps of VUE materials are now taken into account when converting them to native materials.
[Convert Tools] In the Convert Tool Options, "Don't show upon object conversion" is now applied to next conversions.
[Convert Tools] Fixed the specular weight when converting VUE PBR materials to Arnold and RenderMan materials.
[Convert Tools] In Maya the Convert Tool now generates .tex files for RenderMan to avoid missing textures (when rendering without the Local Queue).
[Convert Tools] Fixed the display of the progress bar when converting objects. Previously, it only showed 1% and was closed at the end of the conversion.
[Convert Tools] When materials are converted by using the original texture maps, the maps are now simply copied from the source folder to the destination folder (if they are present and not transformed) instead of being rewritten by the VUE image modules. It may reduce the conversion time, and it avoids an additional quality loss with the jpg format.
[Convert Tools] Fixed the conversion of materials whose texture maps are inverted in VUE (the color and normal inversions were ignored).
[Convert Tools] Fixed problems with the mapping of texture (scale/offset/rotation) on meshes with UVs, for the conversion and the display.
[Convert Tools] Fixed a crash when closing VUE after converting an object from a group with more than one level of children.
[Convert Tools] Fixed the conversion of VUE constant colors depending on the color space of the Cinema 4D scene.
[Convert Tools] Fixed the conversion of VUE PBR materials that are baked (either in "Automatic" or "Bake to texture maps" mode).
[Convert Tools] Fixed bugs when typing an output directory in the Convert Tool options (".fbx" was added to the path, and texture maps were not written).
[Convert Tools] Fixed the conversion of objects with options that generate separate texture maps, which can happen with the "Automatic" mode or "Bake to texture maps" combined with "Texture per material" for plants. Previously, only one texture was loaded in host applications.
[Convert Tools] Fixed the mapping of textures on VUE primitives (the UVs generated by VUE are now baked in the native geometries in order to better handle all cases, meaning that the scale/offset/rotation in the host applications are neutral and not mirroring the ones in VUE).
[Convert Tools] Fixed the application of the geometry resolution setting when converting VUE objects with the "Convert materials" or "Automatic" modes (ie. when materials are not baked). This was a regression introduced in R6. It did not affect PlantFactory plants (quality controlled in the plant editor).
[Convert Tools] Disabled a useless message when saving a VUE scene after a conversion (asking if prebaked data should be saved).
[Convert Tools] Fixed the mapping of textures when the color channel is constant (UV coordinates were not generated for other channels).
[Convert Tools] Fixed bug: some species of the PlantCatalog had materials considered identical whereas they were different (so not correctly converted).
[Convert Tools] Fixed bug: when several presets/variations of the same species were loaded in a scene/EcoSystem, new materials were created for each of them (now they are shared).
[Convert Tools] Fixed the names of converted materials: the root of 2-sided materials used the name of the front materials (all apps), and default names were applied to nodes in Arnold shaders (C4D).
[Convert Tools] Fixed the color space of texture maps in Maya (it could be wrong depending on the input color space rules in the preferences).
[Convert Tools] Fixed the intensity of displacement in Maya/3dsMax/C4D with all supported renderers.
[Convert Tools] Fixed a bug with the "revert" functionality (from the VUE world browser): converting the same object a second time ignored its material changes.
[Convert Tools] Fixed the conversion of metalness/roughness intensities in mapped picture mode from VUE to V-Ray in Maya and 3dsMax.
[Convert Tools] Fixed the conversion of the front of two-sided materials (wrong reflection settings for PBR materials, and wrong bump & displacement intensities).
[Convert Tools] Fixed a bug (R6 regression) when converting several VUE materials with the same name: the texture maps of the last converted material were used by all others. This fix is useful for PlantFactory plants.
[Convert Tools] Fixed the conversion of VUE highlights settings to RenderMan specular settings in Maya (which were producing a too reflective/shiny effect).
[Convert Tools] The maximum number of bones applied to the conversion of plants is now accessible in the options so that it can be increased (the default value of 500 previously hidden to the user does not always produces good results).
[Convert Tools] In Cinema 4D conversion dialog, when both Multi-Instances and Arnold Procedurals modes are available, use radio buttons instead of mutually exclusive checkboxes.
[Convert Tools] Added missing conversion of highlights and backlights when converting VUE materials using the "baked maps" mode.
[Convert Tools] Fixed wrong geometry scale when converting a procedural terrain.
[Convert Tools] Fixed the conversion of MetaBlobs and Boolean operations.
[Convert Tools] Fixed the conversion of infinite planes (ground, sea...).
[NEW] Added the ability to convert PlantFactory plants to Cinema 4D objects with bones (static or animated) or animated points.
[NEW] With the Convert Tool of the VUE plugin for Cinema 4D and for 3ds Max, VUE PBR materials are now converted to native materials for these renderers: Standard/Physical (C4D), ART (3ds Max), Arnold or V-Ray.
[NEW] Added the compatibility with Maya 2022 (the V-Ray renderer is not supported yet).
With the Convert Tool of the VUE plugin for Maya, VUE PBR materials are now converted to native materials for these renderers: Arnold, V-Ray and Renderman.
Added the compatibility with Cinema 4D S24.
[Convert Tools] The intensity of normal maps is now applied to native materials (for all renderers).
[Convert Tools] Fixed the application of the bump intensity and the orientation of normals for RenderMan in Maya.
[Convert Tools] Fixed the conversion of the alpha channel of the root of VUE two-sided materials. (It was ignored before. Now if it is defined, it overrides the alpha in sub-materials. A better fix will be done in future versions if necessary).
PATH TRACER
[NEW] Enabled back mip-mapped display for the interactive path tracer during the first passes to improve visual feedback when no denoiser is selected.
[NEW] Fixed don't cast shadows material flag handling for the full CPU intersector.
[NEW] Fixed wrong exposure during render for non-photometric atmospheres.
[NEW] Added compatibility with per-light cast shadow amount.
[NEW] Added support for the multipass global alpha channel.
[NEW] Properly handle PBR clearcoat flatten, as well as clearcoat normal mapping intensity settings.
When activating the Path Tracer while multi-pass is enabled, made sure we deactivate channels and masks not supported by the Path Tracer render engine, to avoid generating 100% black or messy pictures.
Fixed a bug where groups of meshes used as EcoIntances were losing UV (resulting in textures visual glitches) when rendering with PathTracer render engine.
Fixed a bug where terrains where not updated when their material scale was modified when using interactive PathTracer.
Fixed OpenCL memory leaks.
Prevent the Interactive PathTracer from re-enabling by itself (and not working properly) after undoing some other operation.
Fixed rendering of EcoSystem instances which material has "Subsurface Scattering" translucency.
Reduced the memory footprint of procedural terrains and speed up their preparation for the Path Tracer.
Fixed infinite refresh of Interactive Path-Tracing after extrapolating an object (by duplicating it, moving the copy and pressing the '*' key).
Improved the rendering of primitives in the path-tracer when their materials are using either normal mapping or displacement mapping (the meshes were too faceted).
SPLINE
[NEW] New option to allow a Spline Stroke Material Effect to access the spline's UVs in the material graph. U value can be either "Uniform" or "Stretched" (along the Spline) and can also be automatically rescaled so that mapping of a picture or pattern preserves its aspect ratio.
[NEW] Settings in the Effects tabs are encapsulated in foldable frames, which allows to resize the Spline Editor vertically (with scrollbars, if needed) to reduce its visual footprint.
Allow inserting control points by pressing Shift while clicking to add points near the existing spline curve.
Fixed a possible random ordering of spline control points.
Fixed selection changing when opening the spline editor on the whole spline.
Fixed lingering cubes in the viewports when deleting a spline's control point.
Fixed the "Material Fill" effect that failed to follow the spline curve (filling instead a polygon based on the control points only).
Fixed the Spline's Geometry Effect "Height" and "Z Offset" clipped to the slider ranges whereas they should not be.
Fixed the Spline's Material Effect "Preview as ribbon" checkbox sometimes forcibly checked when reloading a scene where it was unchecked.
Fixed color glitches in the viewports and use cones instead of cubes for tangent's end points.
Spline editor UX improvements: prevent editor from closing when deleting part of the control points and allow selection of individual control or tangent points with Ctrl+Click even when the editor is in "Add" mode (typically, when first creating the spline by picking points in a viewport, previously created points can now be selected and deleted without interrupting the workflow).
Fixed possible crashes when deleting a control point from a spline.
Fixed fill/stroke influence blending with the underlying object's texture when the spline effect material has transparency.
Fixed Spline Stroke or Fill Material Effect not applied on newly created objects until changing something in the Spline editor.
Fixed slider range of the "Path Finding" and "Resample Spline" dialogs (in the Spline Editor).
Fixed physical dimensions of Spline effects reloaded from a VOB saved with a different internal unit than the current scene.
More robust detection of spline end point proximity, before offering to close the spline instead of adding a control point very close to an end point. Also refresh the status of the Cyclic toggle button in the Spline Editor UI when the user answers "Yes" to close the spline.
Fixed render bugs on multi-material objects (e.g. imported models) when splines are present in the scene: render was affected even with material effects disabled, and effect was improperly applied when enabled.
Fixed Material effect width being half of what it should be (except when populating an Ecosystem!).
Optimize scene interaction when the spline editor is opened to add or insert points and the scene has a complex hierarchy of objects.
Fixed insertion of points into cyclic splines not always choosing the right curve piece ("segment").
Fixed insertion of points into splines sometimes choosing a location far from the curve itself, onto background objects.
Fixed insertion of points into splines when no scene object is visible behind the pointed location.
Fixed problems handling control points (trying to delete and move them) after deleting several ones at once from a given spline.
Fixed imported spline (from a vector graphics file) not replacing the scene object when loaded through "Replace by...".
Fixed imported spline not being automatically reloaded when the file is changed in an external application.
Group multi-curve vector graphics at import (fixes subobject placement when drag-dropping into VUE), offset to the group center for more intuitive scene placement, and rename imported group and subobjects after the filename.
Fixed saving cyclic splines (as VOBs or in VUE scenes): tangents for the extremities could not be reloaded correctly. Existing cyclic spline are detected and fixed when the VOB or VUE/FSVUE file is loaded.
Fixed spline terrain effect disabled when duplicating a spline, and not properly re-enabled when restoring from Undo.
Fixed custom user-chosen spline control points and tangents' names being overwritten by VUE.
Fixed rendering of spline Stroke and Fill material effects when the underlying object's material has Layer Presence settings.
Improved the UI to avoid inconsistencies when a spline's stroke or fill material has Eco layers but the corresponding "populate EcoSystem" setting is not enabled, leading to inoperant "Populate" actions in the material editor.
Fixed render using obsolete spline after applying "Path finding" or "Resample spline".
Points and tangents now correctly share their owner Spline's properties (Locked/Hidden/etc.) and cannot be assigned their own. When not set to Automatic, the color configured for the 3D viewport is used (a different color can be set for each point).
Fixed a crash when rotating an invalid spline (a spline with a single point, usually one that is being created) with the viewport gizmos. Also prevent pointless rotation and scaling from being applied at all on an invalid spline.
Fixed invisible spline when editing a Hidden spline and adding points, leading to only the newly added point to be selected and thus visible. Now the whole spline is displayed as soon as one control point or tangent point is selected.
Fixed useless and buggy dropping of splines as a whole: their points are now dropped one by one instead.
Fixed a potential freeze of the application when copy-pasting an EcoSystem material to the Geometry Effect tab of the Spline Editor.
Fixed wrong vertical offset of EcoSystem instances when populating along a road.
Fixed missing terrain lines in the Terrain Effect tab's list of influences: those belonging to groups.
Fixed lost modifications of the EcoSystem settings when the material is opened from the Spline Editor and the EcoSystem is not populated at once.
Fixed a potential corruption of the spline's materials when pressing Cancel in the Spline Editor.
Fixed the rendering of material influences on grouped objects.
Made sure the material influences defined in the Spline Editor never affect EcoSystem instances (could happen when a specimen was created from the existing scene).
PYTHON
[NEW] Save and restore VUE's Python console command history across application sessions.
[NEW] Added Python functions to get/set the current renderer (external or not) and network rendering.
[NEW] Added a Python function to change the denoising mode (for Path-Tracing render engine). Example of usage: eon.EONScene().SetDenoising(eon.Denoiser_NVidiaOptix).
Removed now-useless message asking the user to use asynchronous version of Rendering Python functions.
Access to the EONGeoInterface API described in the documentation.
Fixed the rendering of some Materials using Python, when the rendering occurs in the Standalone Renderer or the command line RenderNode.
Removed non-stop popup message when using the Python Drop function.
NETWORK RENDERING
[NEW] Added long due --help option to the RenderNode's command line.
[NEW] Added the possibility to override the denoising mode (for Path-Tracing render engine) from the RenderNode's command-line: use option -render_denoising).
Improve rendering speed of Physics Particles Ecosystem animations when using RenderCows: each frame required an increasingly long initialization time, as the frame position in the animation grew higher, which is no longer the case.
Fixed IP address unreadable in RenderCow About screen, in German version.
STABILITY
Fixed a crash when the browser explores directories with some "permission denied" folders.
Fixed random failures when trying to open the CrashSender after a crash on macOS.
Fixed potential crash while exit with interactive path tracer activated.
Fixed a potential crash in 3DS Max plugins when executing wrong MAXScript commands internally.
Fixed a potential crash related to displacement mapping, when the subdivision of an object is interrupted in the middle (for a material using uniform subdivision). This could happen with the scene preview, typically.
Fixed a potential memory corruption when rendering with the Path Tracer in the active camera view (problem occurring only with certain values of height).
Fixed a crash when deselecting an object if the material editor and material browser were still opened.
Fixed a crash when rendering the atmosphere's Snow or Rain effects after doing "Purge Memory".
Fixed crashes on macOS when closing the Atmosphere Editor while displaying the Wind tab.
Fixed a crash with some parameters of the "Recursive Strata 3D" filter.
Fixed a crash on macOS when starting VUE with a corrupted docking configuration.
Fixed random crashes when undoing the whole terrain edition session from the Terrain Editor itself using the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+Z).
Fixed crashes when closing a window without closing first its Content browsers (at least in: Function browser opened from the Material editor, Material browser opened from the Material Summary or the Plant Editor).
Fixed possible crashes when editing both a Procedural Terrain (with a visible "isometric" terrain function preview) and its material.
Fixed possible crashes after cancelling a Procedural Terrain Editor and trying to re-open it immediately.
Fixed rare crashes when quitting the StandaloneRenderer (about once every 1000 runs).
Improved robustness of fast save mode (.fsvue), by catching more errors (no space left on device to finalize the scene file, typically).
Fixed a potential crash when editing a SolidGrowth plant created by replacing a previous plant of the same kind.
Fixed a potential crash when exiting the texture manipulation mode.
Fixed a potential crash when opening the Leaf Editor (from the Plant Editor).
DISPLACEMENT
Fixed Color To Vector used for displacement on vegetation .
Outwards-only option can now be set independently on each material layer.
Fixed custom direction (horizontal, vertical, or defined through graph) potentially lost upon baking or Path Tracing.
Fixed potential artefacts (wrong shadows) in displacement using uniform subdivision when depth is high.
Fixed potentially wrong shadows when the displacement amplitude is high, with dynamic subdivision only.
Fixed option "Affect material distribution" applied to all material layers for no reason.
Fixed uniform subdivision on meshes having more than 1 UV layer.
ANIMATION
Fixed a memory leak in MPEG1 and MPEG2 animation saving and repaired the options dialog from those formats on Windows.
Fixed area light parameters not refreshed when changing timeline.
Fixed ghost editor popping when clicking on color control.
Fixed wrong ranges for Render Sequence Start and End edit controls (both for Frame and Time).
Fixed wrong saving of MP4 animations for alpha and depth channels.
Make sure the Alpha channel is computed if the option is checked in the Animation Render Options panel.
Avoid repeating the same subdivision warning (TurboSmooth) at each frame and for each object.
Improved the behavior of "constrain current time" option when the scene has no key-frames but has an animation range defined by the user.
Preserved the target object's material when pasting the animation of another object.
ECOSYSTEMS
[NEW] Re-added the ability to move instances from an object's EcoSystem to a global EcoSystem. To use this, select instances with the EcoSystem painter, then click on the "Manipulate" button then select "Move Instances to...". The command "Change Instance Types to..." has also been fixed for global EcoSystems (the population list wasn't updated).
Fixed a bug preventing to save brushes in the EcoSystem painter when the associated material was encrypted (coming from Cornucopia3D or locked to a user license).
Fixed a bug preventing to open the material editor from the EcoSystem painter brush editor after selecting a new brush (previously it only worked for existing global EcoSystems already present in the scene).
Fixed the rendering of EcoSystems using PlantFactory species with the "Static Mesh" quality, after reloading a "Consolidated Archive" scene in VUE Standalone, and with all scenes in VUE hosted plugins.
Fixed the reloading of the quality boost of plants in EcoSystems (it was always reset to 0).
Fixed a bug in the edition of EcoSystems: after reloading a scene and manually locating a missing file for a plant in an EcoSystem, changing the plant quality re-added a separate plant. Now the existing plant is kept.
Fixed EcoPainter randomly (but frequently) slowing down when hovering the viewports, as well as "action" brushes (Scale, etc.) almost inoperant when in such a situation.
Fixed regular patterns appearing in 360 degrees population when the density is low.
Randomized 360 degrees population depending on the EcoSystem seed.
Fixed a potential memory leak when increasing the number of variations of a PlantFactory specimen.
Fixed potential ghost instances in OpenGL, when disabling the material effect of a spline.
Fixed performance issues (memory and time) when populating along a very large spline.
Fixed a potential crash when a same material using very small instances is populated over multiple objects.
Fixed a potential crash when enabling both dynamic and fast population on a spline.
Fixed potential precision issues (instances floating above the terrain, typically) when populating a procedural terrain.
Fixed potentially null populations in some cases of multi-layer EcoSystem materials.
Avoid displaying a question about luminous materials for materials which are no longer used by any specimen in the scene.
Avoid preparing unused specimen materials for the ray-tracer (this optimization was already live for the Path Tracer engine).
Improved the replacement speed of a PlantFactory specimen (when changing its quality) when there are many instances using it.
Fixed inconsistent results (lost underlying EcoSystems, typically) when populating an individual layer of a multi-layer material used by several objects.
Fixed inconsistencies in population results when sampling quality is boosted: the number of instances could jump very abruptly around certain values of the density slider.
Improved the evaluation of the instance count for spline effects using fast population mode, in order to avoid a warning in some cases.
Fixed wrong instance count displayed in Material Editor when copying an object holding instances (for copy/paste).
Fixed potential inconsistencies when editing an EcoSystem specimen material from the list of specimens in the Material Editor.
Fixed inconsistent handling of specular materials used by EcoSystem instances, leading to potential lighting errors.
Fixed potential loss of modifications done on EcoSystem specimen's materials in fast-save mode (.FSVUE files).
Fixed potentially wrong population (rectangular areas with no instance at all) of spline stroke effect using a large width, when some of the spline's angles are acute.
Fixed the creation of a population from an existing scene object when the latter has animation key-frames.
Avoided the duplication of EcoSystem materials when reading an EcoSystem using several presets of a same PlantFactory species.
Fixed displaced rocks (016b_lime boulder.sto, typically) sometimes floating in the air at render time (when the scene preview is activated).
DISPLAY
Fixed the display in OpenGL views to which a camera of the scene is assigned (the field of view and aspect ratio is now taken into account, instead of always using the settings of the active camera).
Fixed the position of the lens flare in OpenGL views on HiDPI screens.
Fixed support of Apple ARM M1 GPU which forced disabling the "Background draw" feature for no good reason and could also act in some cases as if the back-end driver was a software renderer (OpenGL emulation) instead of a proper hardware-supported renderer.
Fixed wrong display of Alpha Planes in Real-Time views just after their creation.
Fixed ghost objects in viewports after merging individual MetaBalls/HyperBlobs into a single one.
Fixed unexpected cloud billboards in the viewports after closing a scene with MetaClouds and creating or opening another scene with MetaClouds.
TERRAIN
Fixed a bug where cancelling edit in Terrain Editor made artefacts appears on terrain.
Fixed a bug where imported RGB image as terrain would cause the terrain to have the wrong heightmap until next switch back to VUE.
Fixed terrain mesh artifacts (bad interpolation = visible seams, torn meshes, etc.) when 3D-sculpting and when previewing terrains in the 3D viewports, improve code efficiency (parallelization & overall code optimizations).
Fixed conversion problems (related to overall vertical scale, zero-edge effect, and function scaling) when converting a Heightfield into a Procedural Terrain (with or without Heightfield-only nodes + improve performance of this latter case).
Fixed a vertical position and scale issue when converting a Procedural Terrain to a Heightfield.
Fixed both 2D and 3D sculpting being lost when converting a Procedural Terrain to a Heightfield.
Fixed a crash when undoing a cancelled Terrain Editor session involving 2D effects on a Heightfield terrain.
Fixed a material painting misbehavior: when both 'Sculpt' and 'Paint Material' are toggled, checking 'Invert' did not invert material painting, only the sculpting brush.
Fixed undo/redo issues inside the Terrain Editor (square artifacts, function changes not accounted for, scale, extension and gain not undoable for Heightfields, etc.).
Fixed interpolation artifacts with the Custom Erosion node when using the "Smallest Feature" parameter.
Use cubic interpolation to upsample Heightfields baked at an intermediate resolution (Reminder: the full resolution, if > 1024, is only baked for a "real" render, i.e. not for the Scene Preview).
Fixed render artifacts showing as "buggy" pixels (darker or lighter than their surroundings without a reason), actually betraying rays "missing" their intersection with the Heightfield terrain.
Fixed clipping slider issues for the top and bottom clipping planes in the Heightfield Terrain Editor: the altitude values displayed were often wrong, and the clipping planes changed altitude when changing the Heightfield's resolution.
Improve rendering performance for higher resolution Heightfields: about 10% for 2K/4K terrains, up to 30% for 8K terrains.
Fixed lost properties when converting a Heightfield to/from a Procedural Terrain: min/max clipping values, symmetrical flag, skin-only flag.
Fixed material layers not displayed in the Terrain Editor's Brush panel when editing a Procedural Terrain for the first time.
Improve resampling of material painting related data in the Terrain Editor.
Fixed crashes when changing the resolution of a Heightfield with Material Layers painted in the Terrain Editor.
Fixed material painting color changes not taken into account.
Fixed heightmaps (or other pictures) used in Heightfield graphs not showing in the "World Browser - Links" tab, hence not synchronizing.
Fixed non-georeferenced TIF pictures loading as if georeferenced, freezing the scene unit in the process, and not asking whether to be imported as Heightfield or Procedural Terrains.
Fixed Z scaling of non-georeferenced Heightfields imported from pictures.
Removed the Extension related widgets from the Terrain Editor U.I.: new terrains no longer use an Automatic Extension, as selecting the output range of the Altitude function is best left to the user. Existing terrains with Automatic Extension keep their last computed Extension upon reading, which becomes fixed, and is displayed as "Legacy extension" in the terrain editor. Consequently, the ad-hoc adjustments to a Procedural terrain's Extension that used to be made when changing the Altitude function scale or the Vertical gain have been removed. It was a legacy behavior, and Heightfield terrains never behaved like that, so the new behavior makes for a more consistent UX.
In the Procedural Terrain Editor, fixed a bad connection in the modified graph when extracting a zone by carving out the original terrain.
Fixed inconsistent vertical dimensions of newly created terrains, which depended so far on the terrain type (Heightfield vs. Procedural), and on the underlying grid resolution (even for Procedural terrains).
Fixed empty picture name in the World Browser - Links tab for terrain heightmaps or other pictures converted or generated internally by VUE (Geographical dataset import, Real-World Terrain imported heightmap or satellite texture, for example).
Fixed terrain heightmap or satellite texture not always scene along with scene files, when importing Real-World terrains.
In the Procedural Terrain editor, when extracting a zone by carving out a hole, switch the editor to the extracted terrain.
Fixed a possible crash when preparing the Terrain Preview (isometric 3D widget) in the Altitude graph.
Fixed 3D sculpted terrain sometimes becoming invisible in the 3D viewports.
Fixed 16bits pictures converted to 8bits the second time they were loaded into VUE as imported terrains.
Fixed the rendering of procedural terrains part of a group (altitudes were wrongly scaled along Z axis).
Fixed the ray-tracing of procedural terrains using displacement mapping, broken after a first render with the Path Tracer engine.
ATMOSPHERE
Ambient modulation now works as a multiplicative factor when "force ambient color" is unchecked.
Fixed 3D viewports' atmosphere preview never-ending update loop when several viewports display distinct cameras.
Fixed lost modifications of rain / snow material when saving with fast-save (or when reloading an auto-saved version).
[NEW] Convert EcoSystem instances to Arnold procedurals (proxy files in Arnold format) in 3ds Max, Maya and Cinema4D.
[NEW] The conversion is faster and more transparent (not using the 3D file import of host apps anymore, which made the user interface blink).
[NEW] Convert materials to native renderer materials (V-Ray, Arnold) for a better fidelity (In the previous version, default materials were used) in 3ds Max, Maya and Cinema4D.
[NEW] Added the ability to use the command "Convert to [3DS/Maya/C4D] Object" on native objects (Only the population is converted. If it's native instances, VUE simply releases them for the host application).
[NEW] Added compatibility with LightWave 2020.
[NEW] Added compatibility with C4D R23.
[NEW] Added compatibility with the V-Ray denoiser in 3dsMax and Maya.
[NEW] Improved generated maps by using Running Color algorithm, as we do for export.
[NEW] Allow normal map baking as well, when material export mode is set to "bake to texture maps".
[NEW] VUE objects (including TPF plants) can now be converted using V-Ray materials (tested with V-Ray 5 beta).
[NEW] VUE instances are now converted to C4D Multi-Instances (feature introduced in R20 and normally more efficient). If the creation of Arnold Procedurals is enabled in the options of the Convert Tool, standard render instances are used.
[NEW] Fixed the application of materials on converted populations with V-Ray.
[NEW] [Cinema 4D/Maya] Use new icons in Cinema 4D and Maya toolbars.
[NEW] Added the ability to load native objects into VUE EcoSystems when the renderer is Redshift or Octane. Then with the Convert Tool, the VUE EcoSystems can be converted to Cinema 4D multi-instances, which are well rendered by Redshift (Octane could not be tested yet).
[NEW] Apply current conversion options to EcoSystem specimens if no custom export options have been set to the converted object/specimens.
[NEW] Converted materials now have the same name as in the VUE scene (non-ascii characters are replaced by "_" at the moment to avoid any bug. They will be enabled in the next version).
[NEW] Fixed conversion of global ecosystems.
[NEW] Added the ability to abort the conversion of objects (baking process only for now), useful if it is too long.
[NEW] PlantFactory plants in VUE EcoSystems can now be converted with animation in 3ds Max and Maya.
[NEW] Added the ability to revert the conversion of global EcoSystems (like for single objects, they are moved in a separate layer in the VUE world browser).
[NEW] Added the ability to select the output directory for texture maps in the Convert Tool Options.
[Convert Tools] Export texture maps to human-friendly paths, so that the user can edit the exported maps afterwards more easily.
Fixed the display of texture maps on VUE objects with EcoSystem materials.
Fixed a potential crash after converting a VUE object holding an EcoSystem to a 3dsMax object.
Fixed Material Editor opening on the wrong material when coming from the plugin's World Browser.
[Cinema 4D] Fixed wrong preview of texture maps in Cinema 4D's viewports when tiling mode is set to mirror.
Fixed the World Browser created when loading a scene saved with the World Browser opened (was empty and unusable before the fix).
When saving the VUE part of the scene, skip native splines which have not been converted to VUE format.
Fixed EcoSystem instances not converted when held by a procedural terrain.
Fixed the conversion of TPF plants to native objects when they are loaded in EcoSystems with the "Static Mesh" quality (the mesh was rebaked which was useless).
Fixed the conversion of objects in EcoSystems with the export mode set to "Convert Materials (using original texture maps)".
[Maya] fixed disappearance of materials of converted objects after closing VUE.
Fixed conversion of groups of procedural terrains.
Fixed crash when closing VUE after converting a group.
[3dsMax] Fixed a possible crash when closing VUE after converting a native object with an EcoSystem on it.
[3dsMax] Fixed conversion of native groups with EcoSystems (instances were not attached to groups).
[Hybrid Rendering] Fixed the optional application of the VUE render options to the native renderers (the number of samples is now correctly converted, and the V-Ray sampler type is fixed for the currently supported versions).
Fixed a regression in the baking of materials using world coordinates for single objects in the scene (not in EcoSystems).
Fixed the handling of bump (maps and intensity) with the option "Convert materials using original texture maps".
Partially fixed the display of animable rigged objects, either when loaded as single objects in the VUE scene or as population items in EcoSystems (however if they contains several sub-meshes, only the first one appears).
[Maya] Fixed the display of EcoSystems as boxes when the Maya "hardware texturing" is enabled.
[CONVERT TOOLS] Fixed a crash when converting EcoSystems containing PlantFactory plants using the "Animated Mesh" quality.
Fixed a bug when converting an object using a material shared with another non-converted object in the VUE scene (crash in 3dsMax, and duplication of materials in Maya and C4D).
The mesh resolution of converted PlantFactory plants can now only be controlled from the Plant Editor (using the "global mesh resolution" published parameter, or the Refine/Simplify buttons). It also applies to plant populations.
Fixed the display of EcoSystem instances with the billboard quality.
Fixed the display of EcoSystems in Maya when the PlantFactory plugin is also present and loaded (EcoSystems were not visible).
Fixed a crash when converting a plant with animation a second time, if the first conversion was aborted.
Fixed a crash during the reopening of the Atmosphere Editor, if one had edited a cloud material from the previous instance of the Atmosphere Editor.
Fixed a crash when converting PlantFactory plants with bones (static or animated).
INTEGRATION AND EXPORT
[NEW] New USD export format which supports animated bones, point level animation, PBR materials, scene hierarchy, EcoSystem instances incl. USD point instancer for non-skeleton Ecosystems, panoramic skymaps, cameras and camera paths. You can either export as USDA, USDC or USDZ. We've also included a direct export preset for NVIDIA's Omniverse.
[NEW] FBX file format handling now supports objects hierarchy.
[NEW] Reworked export to native .c4d file format: support of displacement, EcoSystems, camera, 2-sided materials.
[NEW] Improved handling of highlight.
[NEW] Added double sided delta to move the polygons in case of double sided material (to avoid Z-fighting).
[NEW] Added highlight maps to bake to texture options.
[NEW] Added option to duplicate two-sided material face only.
[NEW] Export back material textures of two-sided materials even if 3D format does not support two-sided materials.
[NEW] Changed back orientation handling of C4d plugin ("good export" is XZY).
[NEW] Two-sided materials are correctly baked when using duplicated polygon option.
Fixed potential wrong normal when exporting animated planes.
Fixed final preset always used to render exported skymap.
Let the user choose the range and FPS of animation export.
Fixed reading of eHDR/BIL images by selecting their HDR header file instead of the BIL file (the header was confused as a Radiance HDR image file, which is another format).
Imported cameras are now centered with the objects if the option is checked.
When exporting entire scene, always save the atmosphere file (if any) in the same folder as the exported scene file.
Export ground plane, if any, when exporting the entire scene (restricted to a zone, like infinite terrains).
Fixed export of infinite terrains: the restriction to the export zone was wrongly shifted and scaled.
When activating export preview on an infinite object, propose to define the export zone at once.
Corrected export of baked texture maps color extension to be more gamma correct.
[Ptex] Upgrade library to version 2.3.2 (minor upgrade).
Fixed reset export options between two exports.
Fixed a potential crash when exporting ambient occlusion for an EcoSystem specimen.
Fixed some map name that are not supported by the filesystem.
Fixed a potential crash when exporting a same EcoSystem (or an entire scene containing EcoSystems) twice.
Fixed potential issues in ambient occlusion export, when a PF species has a time-dependent graph.
[OBJ] Fixed loading texture names with double-quotes in the MTL.
Fixed inconsistent UI in some cases: when exporting exactly 1 object having custom settings, the default export settings were possibly displayed instead.
Make sure per specimen export options are correctly saved (bug specific to fast-save mode).
Fixed material export mode always reverting to automatic when loading a scene.
Editing default object export options should not require any export zone.
Fixed inconsistent scale of EcoSystem instances when global export scale is different from 1.
Added a warning when exporting TPF plants with baked texture mode while plant contains node with disabled baking option.
When loading a preset in export dialog, do not override settings that are not disabled (typically, we used to switch baked maps to JPEG).
Fixed potential crash when exporting point level animated plant twice.
Detected flipped vertex normals upon import, and propose to fix them.
Fixed a potential crash in case of export of very badly formed meshes.
Blender preset extract alpha by default.
Fixed the baking of Ambient Occlusion for most of objects (were 100% white).
Fixed invalid library dependencies on macOS (necessary for LW2020 on macOS 10.14 but may betray other problems).
Fixed wrong scale and pivot when exporting a single billboard.
Fixed the export of a spline's EcoSystem instances when the spline has no geometry.
Avoid repeating the question about dubious vertex normals: instead, apply the same choice for all meshes in the imported file.
Fixed potential failure of Alembic export when exporting an EcoSystem with different species.
Fixed wrong scaling of VDB clouds when exporting entire scene.
Fixed missing data from USGS imagery layers (PNG tiles without the PNG extension could not be read, while JPG tiles without the JPG extension could).
Fixed texture mapping artifacts in the PathTracer for Procedural Terrains imported and textured using the Real-World Import panel.
Fixed VDB cloud exporting only the bottom part of a cloud zone.
MISC.
[NEW] [ATMOSPHERE] Sharpness modualtion no longer limited to 100%.
[NEW] Added Cloud specific input in "Object Specific" input node in Clouds Material Graph for Cloud Height, Starting and Ending Altitude and also for Ambient lighting.
[NEW] Added support for the new macOS 11 version (on Intel chipsets only!), with one known limitation: HiDPI only supported on multiple screen setups if all monitors are HiDPI (hybrid multi-screen setup isn't supported yet).
[NEW] Implemented compression in .tpf format (option was ignored previously, when saving species).
[ATMOSPHERE] Fixed modulation of clouds connected to a constant not updated when the value of the constant change.
Fixed artefacts with OpenGL meshes of symetrical terrains.
Fixed black hole on Terrain in render when painting altitudes in Terrain Editor.
Fixed opposite modification being applied when canceling Terrain Editor.
[TerrainEditor] Fixed interpolation when doubling/halving terrain and improve performance.
[macOS] Minor optimization of the terrain brushing subsystem (some loops were only running on all cores on Windows).
[TERRAIN] Fixed crash when use "reset 2D only".
Fixed Heightfield function error when 2D-painting for the first time and the "last" node (the most downstream) in the graph is NOT connected by its first output (eg Grayscale output of any Texture map node, Roughness output of a Fractal node, etc.).
Stop update process when we cannot create back folder.
Fixed errors when reading some of the particle systems available in the content library.
Fixed CrashSender unable to find macOS crash file (at least on Catalina).
ECOSYSTEMS
[NEW] Added the possibility to clean the EcoSystem cache from the General Options panel.
Fixed wrong materials when a specimen based on a SolidGrowth (.veg) species uses displacement only on a sub-part of the plant.
Fixed modified season not taken into account in EcoSystem after saving the plant as species (because of remaining variation).
Fixed invisible instances when the EcoSystem is created from an object hidden from render.
Fixed EcoSystem instances sometimes disappearing from viewport (at the end of scene preview).
Fixed the inability to open the ecosystem painter from the material editor if the current material had a mixed/grouped/2-sided material above it in the layer hierarchy.
Fixed potential artefacts with PlantFactory species (blurriness introduced by the handling of LODs), when rendering static scenes.
MATERIAL EDITOR
[NEW] Added option to define displacement depth with real dimensions. Warning: this is not only a display question: the displacement will actually be computed differently if your objects uses a non-uniform scaling, or if the edited material is used by more than 1 object. Limitation: if several instances use the same material and have different scales, the depth will be computed only once for all instances (for obvious performance reasons).
[NEW] PBR: it is now possible to edit the "Origin of material" and "Global transformation" for PBR materials, in the effect tab of the material editor.
[NEW] PBR Replaced minimum reflectivity setting with specular level, in range [0, 1], corresponding to [0%, 8%] minimum reflectivity, to conform to other software.
[NEW] PBR Enabled PBR Workflow and Emissive to Luminous converter nodes image mapping without a Substance node (for texture display in OpenGL and interactive path tracer viewer).
[NEW] Indicator for geometric map transfos in material editor, and display the size taking into account the map rotation. Display the original size in the gamma dialog.
[NEW] Properly handle variable highlights over PBR materials for both the raytracer and the path tracer.
[NEW] Added "Extend" texture clipping mode (also called ClampToEdge) that uses the value from the nearest pixel when UVs are outside of the texture. Note it is not yet fully supported for plugins/export.
Corrected modified image detection for "incorporated and synchronized" images (changes done after the scene save were not detected).
Made the ambient occlusion tab visible in the advanced material editor.
Improved support of custom graph for normal mapping.
Material scale is correclty taken into account for preview.
Fixed uvs of baked primitives.
Improved consistency of displacement depths in mixed materials.
[Material Editor] Applied the same Displacement subdivision strategy to the whole material hierarchy, and never propose to animate it.
Reduce memory footprint in case of Displacement uniform subdivision.
Corrected texture map autoloading when loading from highlight map.
Used recognized file tags to avoid asking data type and check connection in material graph.
Added option to ignore displacement for next render, when the required memory exceeds the warning threshold.
Set linear gamma for maps that require it when loading it from inside the material graph.
Automatically use the right mipmap computation depending on whether an image is color or data (avoids problems when the gamma is not set correctly on data image).
Fixed possible random gamma assignment to content objects.
Fixed broken color inversion in render.
Fixed interpolation artefacts that occurred mostly with rotated/flipped images.
Fixed incoherent shading in case of dynamic subdivision, when the displacement depth becomes high.
PATH TRACER
[NEW] The path tracer now supports NPR (Non-Photorealalistic-Rendering).
[NEW] The path tracer now supports dynamic relighting.
[NEW] During offline render, incremental denoised renders are displayed. One can switch between noised and denoised displays in Render Display.
[NEW] [Denoiser/NVIDIA] Improved feedback when graphic card is too old to support NVIDIA Denoiser (need Maxwel architecture or newer).
Fixed a bug where renders with large resolution and high sample-per-pixel count never reached the end.
Improved error retrieval during denoising.
[ProcTerrain] Fixed "Object Parametric" texture-mapping of Procedural Terrains in the PathTracer.
Optimized the preparation of EcoSystems in offline render, when the scene contains specimens which no longer participate in the scene.
Reduced textures conversion time (VUE scene to PathTracer) by 70%.
Avoided out-of-memory error for denoiser with Interactive PathTracer when resizing the view.
Fixed crashes with materials using Subsurface Scattering, especially when used with EcoSystems.
RENDERING
[NEW] Reduced the rendering time of some cloud layers by 19% when their density function is not animated. It does not change the color output.
[NEW] Use computed scene preview auto-exposure as auto-exposure initial value for render.
Fixed the rendering of outlines on the first object in the scene when there is no ground plane.
Slightly speed-up non-PBR render with reflection when "Sensitivity to incidence angle" setting is zero.
Avoid artefacts in ray-tracer when a boolean operation contains a low-resolution mesh with smooth normals.
[Ray-tracer] Avoid numeric errors leading to white pixels when the refraction index (computed from the graph) has unexpected values.
Better computation of mipmaps regarding opacity and gamma correction.
Fix old render bug that incorrectly inverted mesh normals (symptom was very visible badly ligthen triangles).
Fixed some crashes with render area and path tracer denoiser (and high DPI).
Detected and fixed wrong normals when reading scenes/VOBs from previous versions.
[NETWORK RENDERING] Optimized transfer of texture maps from HyperVue to RenderCow (especially important for very large textures using a compressed format).
[NETWORK RENDERING] [HyperVue] Fixed "Add" button not working anymore.
Fixed a possible crash when using multipass EXR.
Fixed the saving of multi-layer EXR when masks are checked in Multi-Pass options.
PYTHON
[NEW] Added new Python function ExportSky.
[NEW] Give more control to export, by extending SetExportOption.
[NEW] [PathTracer] Add function to tweak (esp. reduce) quality of texture maps as well as terrains & Metaballs/Hyperblobs.
[NEW] Avoid interactive message when selecting camera from python at non-zero time.
[NEW] [Splines] Fixed handling & default configuration of spline effects through the 'EffectPath' class.
SPLINES
[NEW] Support ""Scalable Vector Graphics"" (SVG) as import format for spline objects. Stroke width can be read on imported Splines through the python API 'GetExtraAttribute_float', mapped to key 'width', and the color using keys 'color_r', 'color_g' and 'color_b'.
[NEW] Allowed loading vector files like object (model) files. Makes it easier to reach and also allows loading them from the python API 'LoadObject' + enables multi-selection.
Avoid losing closed spline status when resampling.
Make control/tangent points visible even when the editor is closed (but when the spline or one of its points at least is selected).
Fixed selection of control/tangent points working randomly when using a Geometry Effect.
[OpenGL] Fixed preview of texture-mapped Geometry Effects.
SPLINE [Displacement] When baking to polygons, Displacement can now be baked on "Geometry Effect" meshes.
Fixed splines bounding boxes in the viewports.
SPLINE [OpenGL] fixed effects meshes (Geometry & Ribbon) ignoring spline's properties (hidden status, lock status, preview color, etc.), and lingering after deleting the spline object or disabling the effect.
Fixed Spline Geometry Effect's 3D preview mesh not rebuilt when moving control points or tangents.
STABILITY
[NEW] [Imagery/Operations/Conversions] speed up image operations (parallelize).
[NEW] Improved generation time with TPF complex plants (25% less time on a test plant with about 1.5M primitives).
[Real-World Terrain] robustness against unexplained case of null resolution and to try and work around an unexplained crash.
Fixed a potential crash in HyperVue when rendering image sequences.
Fixed a potential (rare) crash in batch rendering when auto-save is activated when the job is submitted.
Fixed a potential crash in RenderNode when trying to read a scene not embedding the EcoSystem specimen variations.
Fixes possible crash in the floating "pulsing" progress dialog (used when rendering Substances with the GPU engine).
[Options] Fixed crash on macOS when typing "0" in the "GL polygon limit" field in the Display options panel.
Fixed various random crashes happening after editing objects.
Fixed potential freeze of the application related to images.
Fixed loading of greyscale 32f images from scenes.
Fixed a crash when encrypted items are missing to render a scene and are replaced by a dummy cube.
[ThreeNoiseFractal] Fixed infinite loop when Position input to this fractal has been multiplied by zero in the graph (by mistake or in the course of typing another value).
Fixed potential crashes when camera height lock is activated, and some vegetations use animated materials.
Fixed crash when using rectangular maps with rotations and flips.
Fixed (rare) possibility of crash in graph handling.
[Rendering/SkyDome] Fixed rare crash due to calculation precision and/or invalid meshes, happening typically during prepass.
[Booleans] Improve interruptibility of Boolean operations (might cause the Autosave process to freeze the UI waiting for a background Boolean operation to yield).
Fixed error and/or freeze on MacOS when trying to display the "very large terrain mesh" warning in Terrain Editor.
Fixed invalid normals leading to render artifacts with some older VUE meshes (including some from shipped content).
Fixed crash after unchecking "Displaced water surface" in the Water Surface Options panel.
Fixed a crash when the Material Editor is closed by deselecting all objects but a material browser is still opened.
Fixed a potential crash when transforming a vdb cloud just after the import.
Fixed a crash after selecting the "Paint material" brush (in the Terrain Editor) without using it, then closing and re-opening the terrain editor.
Fixed a potential crash when dropping an object to another one, when some normal mapping is involved (from scene 'moor.vue').
Fixed deadlock when trying to show more Ecosystem Specimen in the viewports than can fit in the allowed video memory footprint.
SUBSTANCE
[NEW] Use of GPU engine to speed up .sbsar texture rendering, especially for large sizes (1024 pixels x 1024 pixels and above). This option is only available in the graphical user interface version of VUE, not in RenderNodes. It can be disabled in General Options panel.
[NEW] Displayed the .sbsar parameters which affect the connected output in material editor tabs (this may not work if other nodes are connected in between the Substance node and the graph output).
[NEW] Handle new .sbsar input position type (v8 engine) as regular 2-dimensional number type.
Fixed crashes at render (introduced since rotate/flip output textures ability).
[Network Renderering] Fixed deadlock when leaving the application (at least with StandaloneRenderer).
Fixed bad handling of 16-bit integer encoded .sbsar outputs (notably fixes ambient occlusion with PathTracer).
Fixed crash when tweaking intensity sliders over Substance widgets in material editor tabs.
Hide Invert checkbox in material editor Normal tab when map comes from a Substance.
Removed gamma selection for .sbsar image inputs.
Fixed handling of 16-bit integer and 32-bit float encoded images in .sbsar image inputs.
Fixed material editor published parameters tab not updating other tabs and material for parameters published from Substance nodes or constant nodes connected to Substance node parameter inputs.
Fixed inverted red and blue values in processing of 16-bit integer and 32-bit float encoded images for .sbsar image inputs with CPU engine.
Fixed 2 and 3-dimensional number .sbsar inputs displayed with slider widgets when no boundaries are defined for value.
Fixed preset not changing to Custom when a parameter input is changed.
Fixed crashes and glitches on .sbsar preview map in widget.
Removed the black border on previews in the material browser, to be like any other preview.
Made sliders stick to integer values upon release for .sbsar 2, 3 and 4-dimensional integer inputs.
Do not display slider when min and max values are the same for .sbsar integer and float inputs.
Fixed normal map by automatically selecting OpenGL normal format if available when loading a .sbsar preset.
UI/UX
[NEW] Many content browsers now support multi-selection to load objects, plants, rocks, metaclouds, cloud layers, scenes (in batch renderer), etc.; This is true for both e-on Browsers and system file selection panels.
[NEW] Drag-dropping 3D models from system browser (Explorer/Finder) now supports multiple paths as well.
[NEW] [GAMMA] Suggest linear gamma correction on load for data images that are not set to linear (alpha, hightlight, metalness, ...) as this is important for correct mipmap computation.
[NEW] [Options] Use 1GB increments for RenderStack and Ecosystem Specimen cache size.
[NEW] Allow picture type modification in the dialogue accessible from the gamma icon.
[NEW] Replaced OpenCL device type selection in PathTracer Option dialog by OpenCL single device selector (showing device type CPU/GPU and device name).
[NEW] Added default keyboard shortcuts for "Save As" and "Save as Consolidated Archive".
[NEW] New option flag in the "Operations" tab to disable cursor warping by some UI widgets hiding the cursor (notably up/down buttons next to Edit fields). This fixes huge increments with Wacom as well as over KVM-like software (synergy/barrier, maybe TeamViewer or even inside VMs?).
[NEW] [GRAPH] Added RGB composer and decomposer nodes.
[NEW] Faster browser display of preview.
[NEW] Improved reactivity of published parameter UI
[NEW] [OpenGL/Textures] Speed up conversion (about x4 with 6cores+HT) of image maps to OpenGL textures for display in viewports.
[NEW] [EditFields] Allow field editor dialog larger than underlying field.
Fixed the thumbnail of saved brushes in the Eco-Painter (missing icon).
The display of thumbnails is now sharper (on HiDPI screens) and faster (all screens) in several parts of the UI: brushes in the eco-painter and in the terrain editor, image tabs of the world browser, environment maps in the material/atmosphere editor...
The small dialog to add objects in EcoSystems now always appear entirely (it could be partially out of the screen in some cases).
[Windows-only] Pressing help shortcut (typically F1) in PathTracer Options dialog opens up documatention at Pathtracer section.
Fixed scrollbar not visible in graph editor Node list.
Fixed some drag&drop issues with material summary.
Fixed a case where browser preview not being refreshed when file has changed.
Fixed Object aspect glitch when unselecting quadratic spot light Object in world browser.
[Import] allow drag-and-dropping multiple 3D model files but only directly from your Explorer/Finder window into VUE viewports for the moment. Also fixed inconsistencies among the formats that could be loaded through menu vs. drag'n'drop, eg. VDB could not be dropped and PRT (terrain presets) could not be loaded through the menu.
[Browsers] Allow multi-selection in all relevant Content Browsers and associated system file selection panels, for example when selecting 3D models, rocks and plants to be loaded in the scene or in an EcoSystem.
[Browsers] Support multi selection in scene browsers (for batch rendering only) and cloud browsers (adding cloud layers from the atmosphere editor).
Fixed wrong error message when loading a camera from a VOB file.
[LightEditor] Fixed photometric light temperature (in Kelvin) not updated when preset selection changes.
[Light Panel] Fixed light emission direction hint (in the 3D viewports) for very flat objects.
Fixed Water surface editor when water mateiral graph has been manually edited.
[Mesh Baking Options] Fixed wrong default value of 101% for some objects (height-field terrains and SolidGrowth plants).
Added "non fatal" error reporting to scene read, for some data loss we can recover from.
Handle DPI change in 2D filter editor (when moving the dialog between monitors).
Automatically enable the fast draw mode for all interactions in the 2D filter editor when the display takes more than 150ms. Can be configured with the environment variable EON_FILTER2D_FINE_DRAW_MAX_MS if needed (value in milliseconds).
For incorporated synchronized images, display which images are to be reloaded when we detect file changes.
Corrected banding artefacts in picture preview.
Fixed crash in render stack when displaying images with extreme aspect ratio.
Display alpha using checker pattern as background in texture previews, so that it is not mismatched for black.
[Material Preview] Fixed menu allowing to change the preview size: no capitalization on unit (m, cm, km...).
Fixed nodes not being updated in Function Graph tab when changes are made in Advanced Material Editor tab.
Assume a "zero" max polygons limit for 3D views means "no limit" (was already partly the case) and make it obvious to user by unchecking "Limit OpenGL polygons" and replacing the value by the default in the grayed-out field.
GRAPH Fixed issue when selecting nodes with shift click.
Fixed render display dialog glitches when it change screen.
Message boxes become scrollable if the message is too long (when many error codes are listed, typically).
[MacOS] Disable dropping files from OS panels opened from (or replacing) a VUE browser, because it behaved badly. Drag'n'drop from a (standalone) Finder windows instead.
Fixed huge increments with Wacom as well as over KVM-like software (synergy/barrier, maybe TeamViewer or even inside VMs?). Added a configuration flag to allow manual override.
[Timeline] Fixed animation preview selection changing when resizing Timeline horizontally.
[Object transformations] Fixed broken 'slant' value when rotating a Group's component or an object that has a Link or Track relationship.
Drastically improve performance when resizing VUE's 3D viewports.
[Memory] Enable degraded modes below 10% by default (formerly 25%), to avoid too frequent resources warnings.
Fixed export dialog going outside the screen.
Fixed the deletion of items from global EcoSystems in the world browser. Previously, it only cleaned the instances, but left the item, which was a weird behavior. Now the item is deleted from the world browser, and from the EcoSystem painter.
Fixed material editor refresh issue when creating layer on top of PBR material.
Fixed popup menu not selecting the right type when asking for image type when loading images from inside the material graph editor.
Do not display mapped picture mode in material editor tabs when PBR Workflow and/or Emissive to Luminous converter nodes are involved in function graph.
Do not display mapped picture mode in material editor for meta nodes.
[Render Display] Fixed UI glitch when accessing previous render done with denoiser.
[GRAPH] Fixed potential broken graph layout when ungrouping metanode.
Fixed hidpi display of category icons (when creating new category).
Stricter file tag match, do not match _Bump in _BumpThing.
Fixed potential crash using invert green in image widget ( on normals ) in material editor.
Fixed the display of the pattern for the gamma calibration.
Fixed a glitch in material editor when activating modulation.
[macOS] Fixed UI freezes during the display of the standalone progress bar when loading a file directly from the Welcome panel.
[ProceduralTerrain] Prevent the default "Entire terrain" zone from being moved outside the Procedural Terrain (when using world mapping and moving the terrain while the Terrain Editor is closed...).
Don't ask about viewport configuration when the result is identical to current configuration.
Fixed visual glitch when changing zoom in Material Summary.
Made the scrolling smoother in the render display, especially on 4K screens.
Fixed the display of tiles when rendering, where gaps could appear (1 pixel wide) when the Windows (OS) scaling was not a round value (like 125%, 150%, 175%...).
Fixed corner cases where maximising viewport does not replace all viewports.
Fixed some desynchronization of previews of vdb clouds when copy pasting them.
Fixed glitch in decimation dialog: removed information and checkbox which are not relevant in this context (regarding displacement mapping).
Fixed a bug where NPR Outline Component Modifiers cannot be unchecked in NPR Options dialog.
Fixed potentially broken UVs of PlantFactory plant OGL preview.
[GRAPH] Fixed potential crash while editing metanode.
Fixed truncated string in function editor on cloud modulation output nodes.
Fixed incorrect camera in viewport when refusing to import viewport scene config when loading scene.
[NEW] [MacOS] Added Integration plugin for Cinema4D R21 and S22.
[NEW] [MacOS] Added Integration plugin for Maya 2020.
[Cinema 4D] Fixed a potential crash when reloading old scenes.
[3DS Max] Fixed the display of real-world terrains in 3DS Max viewport (mirrored texture map).
[MacOS 10.15] Fix display of e-on windows and opengl areas in C4D R21+ and Maya 2019+ in macOS 10.15 (also macOS 10.14 for Maya 2020)
INTEGRATION AND EXPORT
[Alembic] Fixed a potential crash when exporting an EcoSystem to Alembic, when exporting texture maps beside the .abc file (new option from R5).
Fixed a potential crash when trying to export a spline with no geometry, using option to *convert* existing maps.
Updated OpenEXR to version to 2.2.2
Keep original picture gamma after automatic reloading.
Add missing picture type info when auto loading side channels.
[Images] Fixed crashes when reading 4bits-per-pixel grayscale PNGs.
[Images] Fixed reading PNGs with a palette and a transparency chunk.
[Images] When loading content or scenes referencing missing pictures, the folders selected by the user for the first(s) missing pictures should be used as hints for the next ones, to speed up the process, but instead in X1R3 it kept asking again and again, and since X1R4 it would even silently fail to load missing pictures without any warning to the user!
STABILITY
[NEW] Massively reduced the memory usage during render, for EcoSystems using SolidGrowth species.
[Infinite Terrains] Avoid continuous updates of infinite terrains position.
[Terrain/Displacement] Fixed potential crashes when using displacement on a Heightfield where width is inferior to height!
Fixed a potential memory leak in Atmosphere Preview thread.
MISC.
[3D DISPLAY] [ShaderEngine] Fixed lack of transparency in 3D viewports when using shader4 OpenGL engine.
[ATMOSHPERE] Ignore "ignore atmosphere on map" setting when environment map is disabled.
[DISPLACEMENT] [Metablobs] Avoid losing all displacement mapping when animating a MetaBlob.
[INSTALLATION] Fixed installation and upgrade on some filesystems where trying to change file ownership is an error, like Apple's network storage protocol used on some NAS.
[MISC] Fixed potentially invisible or broken pre-animated meshes (example: Elf models provided with new C3D batch) - regression introduced in R5.
[MISC] Fixed potential errors when reading scenes using Turbo Smooth Subdivision.
[MISC] [curl] Upgrade to version 7.70 (from 7.68).
[MISC] [CrashSender/macOS] Wait up to 3 minutes (instead of 1) for the crash data to be generated as long waiting times have been witnessed and most crash reports thus seem to be lost on MacOS.
[NETWORK RENDERING] Fixed potential connection issues when adding a node by its IP address, and added logs.
[PATHTRACER] [Splines/GeometryEffect] Fix texture mapping of Splines' Geometry Effect meshes when rendered in the PathTracer.
[RENDERING] Fixed inconsistent results (in terms of render times and quality) when loading pre-defined preset files (Preview.urs, Final.urs, etc.)
[TERRAIN] Fixed errors during loading of 3 presets from the 'Infinite Terrains' collection.
[UI/UX] [macOS 10.15/All] Fixed display of tooltips.
[NEW] Displacement has been improved dramatically and offers three new subdivision strategies
[NEW] Allow changing the subdivision strategy (no subdivision / uniform / dynamic)
[NEW] Avoid losing displacement whenever one adds a material layer: new option "add to underlying displacement" added to displacement tab
Avoid clamping the displacement function
[Multi-layer material] fixed altitude influence in per-object mode when the full range of altitude should be covered (due to displacement, the top and bottom were cut)
Avoid clamping the displacement function. Therefore, removed the displacement extension options
PATH TRACER
[NEW] Added Intel open-source image denoiser 1.2.0 and NVIDIA Optix denoisers to denoise interactive and offline path tracer renders. Nvidia Optix (if available) or Intel denoiser are enabled when reading old (pre-R5) scene or creating new one
[NEW] Path tracer now supports the "map ground plane" environment mapping option.
[NEW] Added albedo channel to path tracer multipass outputs.
[NEW] Multipass albedo is now recursive through both specular reflection and refraction.
[NEW] Multipass now supports material id channel.
[NEW] Path tracer now supports semi-transparent and semi-reflective materials, as well as transparency & reflectivity distribution maps.
[NEW] Path tracer material color parameter now supports both color shift and color blend settings.
[NEW] Path tracer PBR materials now support ambient occlusion, roughness & metallic image map modulation factors.
Further optimized rendering of billboards with the path tracer (patched for full CPU implementation).
Fixed issues when changing denoiser settings during interactive render. Changes are now applied on the fly, without the need to restart the render from scratch.
Make sure interactive path tracer specific functions are never called during an offline render.
Avoid numerical precision issues with converted object transformation for the path tracer.
Fixed wrong plant billboards shading.
Removed MetaClouds from main depth buffer, as it lacked proper outlining & anti-aliasing.
Path tracer materials now properly modulate luminous amount with diffuse component amount for mixed materials.
Fixed a potential (rare) crash when rendering to main view (depends on the main view size and aspect ratio).
Avoid saving empty alpha/depth files (use multipass to generate and save those channels within the path tracer).
Improved progress bar for offline rendering, for objects which are long to convert (complex Boolean operations, typically).
Optimized case when displaced objects are instantiated (memory foot-print and preparation time).
Fixed a potential crash when rendering a scene containing duplicated splines.
Fixed a bug when activating the interactive PathTracer: render was relaunch from scratch shortly after being started.
Support xml entries for fine-grained device (de-)activation (the only choices in the UI are "CPU-only" and "GPU-only"), needed for example to work around driver issues e.g. with Intel graphics hd 630 on hp-zbook's). Can also be useful to disable a GFX that has not enough memory to render a complex scene, and only allow the more powerful GFX to tackle it. Changing values in the xml can be done after the path-tracer has been activated at least once in the software, by looking up the group of entries named "OpenCL GPU device activation", changing true/false values, and restarting the software (there is also the less useful group of entries "OpenCL CPU device activation" for CPU devices).
TERRAINS
[NEW] [Realworldimport] import texture data from two remote imagery servers: aerial data from USGS and sentinel2 by EOX (worldwide, cloudless), topography & shaded relief from USGS. Note that USGS layers are served but very low def outside the USA
[NEW] Allow loading geo-located terrains inside the "terrain picture" button in the terrain editor, to mix the heightmap with the existing terrain graph.
[NEW] Offer two color interpretation choices when loading an RGB picture for use as a heightmap in the terrain editor (choices are: luminance vs. Red-green encoded).
[NEW] Improved quality of HD heightfields in the scene preview, when they are using displacement/normal mapping.
Fixed wrong default value for proportion slider of import terrain data dialog inside terrain editor.
Fixed bug with invert button of import terrain data dialog inside terrain editor which wasn't working.
Fix "none - 1x1" display in graph for real-world terrain's heightmaps.
[Splineeffect] fix spikes in the terrain editor when there is a spline terrain effect: the terrain editor was never intended to preview the spline effect interactively (it would often be too slow), there is a "bake spline effect" button instead.
MATERIAL EDITOR
[NEW] Automatic loading of material channels from a single filename by looking for files with the same name but with configurable tags.
[NEW] Reworked the export naming of texture maps to use the file tags: the first tag of each channel is used to name the corresponding texture map. Additionally the export as billboard now names the exported maps as x[_front/_side/_top][_alpha/_normal/...].png where x is the TPF file name.
SUBSTANCE
[NEW] Added widget buttons next to preview map to rotate/flip output textures
Fixed substance node 2 and 3-dimensional parameter input sliders in material editor when a scene has been reloaded.
Fixed crash when changing substance node SBSAR graph and choosing auto reconnect in function editor.
Fixed no refresh when loading/removing file in .SBSAR image parameter.
Fixed incorrect handling of non-multiple of 4 pixel width images in .SBSAR image parameter.
Fixed incorrect handling of normal mode loaded images in .SBSAR image parameter.
CLOUDS
[NEW] Cloud Morphing supports material morphing and has received a simplified new dialogue
ANIMATION
[NEW] MetaCloud distance field options can now be animated.
Allow render sequence to exceed animated parameter from timeline.
Animation toolbox handle both MetaCloud and MetaBalls when a MetaCloud is selected.
Morphing cloud fix on rotated MetaSpheres.
Fix in color animation (color modulation) in cloud renders.
ATMOSPHERE
Fixed potential crash in OpenGL old volumetric atmosphere preview.
Do not affect clouds lighting with shadow terminator.
CONTENT
[NEW] Reworked godray atmosphere scenes.
[NEW] 350 new content items
ECOSYSTEMS
[NEW] The same scene object can now be added several times in an EcoSystem as separate items if its materials or transformation have changed.
[NEW] When loading a PlantFactory plant in an EcoSystem of an animated scene, a message box now asks what quality to use (instead of using "animated mesh" by default, which can take a long time to load).
Fixed the loading of objects with EcoSystems from the scene into other EcoSystems: the scene could be saved but not reloaded.
Fixed the OpenGL display of EcoSystems when using the "shaded billboards" quality (lighting, object orientation...). Now the billboards face the camera again, like in older versions of VUE, but it also better supports instances that are not vertical (i.e. Perpendicular to a terrain, or any shape).
Fixed the name of the density and scaling output nodes in the function editor when it is opened from the color tab of the EcoSystem material editor (were visible as "bump" and "transparency").
When converting a material layer to EcoSystem, reset the color output so that we can use the color map widget when enabling variable color.
[Particle systems] fixed material mismatch when loading both fireworks and waterjet particle systems in a scene.
FUNCTION GRAPH
[NEW] Added customizable slider node.
MetaCloud sphere could no longer be chosen in external dependencies (and optimizations).
Fixed transparency that could potentially be used in place of displacement.
Remove a node from the current selection is now possible.
Improved color node handles in graph.
Fixed issues with editing published parameter of MetaNode.
Improved automatic naming of MetaNode inputs and outputs.
INSTALLATION
[NEW] Allow sharing the same PlantCatalog folder for both VUE and PlantFactory.
Improved the error messages, by providing more relevant information whenever possible.
[Uninstall] avoid cleaning the renderstack without informing the user.
INTEGRATION AND EXPORT
[NEW] [Real-world Terrain] allow importing up to 32k but warn heightfields above 8k are not editable in the terrain editor.
[NEW] [Real-world Terrain] handle longitude & latitude coordinates input in D.M.S. (Degrees minutes seconds) and D.D.M. (Degree + decimal minutes).
[NEW] Added PBR channel when exporting billboards.
[NEW] [Images] support more picture formats: jpeg2000, Terragen terrain file support is back, ESRI ehdr (bil), all tiff options (e.g. Deflate, unusual color coding like CMYK, 16- and 32bits per component gray and RGB(a) pixels), extra-large tiff (> 2GB of uncompressed data), some additional options for other formats (e.g. CMYK coding in jpeg files).
[NEW] [Obj/mtl] support 'newmap' and 'usemap' keywords when parsing obj & mtl files where texture maps are specified using this apparently older-style method (e.g. some xFrogs plants).
[Convert tools] Fixed a potential crash when converting a VUE object using displacement mapping.
Collada import/export now support utf-8 characters (which includes all European and Asian letters).
Speed up large VDB cloud OpenGL preview.
Allow loading non-geo-located pictures as heightmap-based terrains.
Support loading 32- and 64bits-precision pictures (RGB or grayscale) but only through GDAL at the moment.
[Real-world Terrain] fix missing data in end result terrain when more tiles are needed for import than fits in the disk cache.
[Real-world Terrain] fix range & increment (e.g. When wheeling) in longitude/latitude edit fields + improve error handling (no more duplicated error messages).
[Real-world Terrain/UX] fix progress bar issues, add view extent hint in left panel, add tile info in tooltip over the map view.
[Real-world Terrain] fix navigation and import near the poles.
Avoid losing link to the original plant/stone model file when loading a .vob file containing such an asset.
Fixed potentially missing maps when reading .TTPF files using seasonality parameters.
[Real-world Terrain] fix downloaded tiles not displayed in map view when navigating in an area with sub-ideal resolution level on server.
[LWO] fix invalid (and useless) transparency channel + work around invalid normal map "auto-detection" on some legacy formats that don't support them (obj, lwo, dae, cob, 3ds).
Fixed reading of files created in VUE easel.
Corrected standardization of view directions (export front / right / top view with reference to standard VUE frame, previously exported back view).
The export dialog does not reset anymore the "alpha treatment" option each time it is opened. It keeps what was set by the user, like the other options.
Avoid truncating long export names when not needed (i.e. all exports but 3ds).
Fixed unused vertices when exporting plant with top transition.
MISC.
Fixed saving of image files with embedded alpha (png, tiff, tga...) Which was only 0 or 1 but not values in-between.
Fixed the opening of the VUE documentation when the default application for pdf files is a web browser (chrome, Firefox, Edge, IE).
Fix loading of content passed with relative path, e.g. in python's addplant.
Fix samples scripts shipped with VUE (except materials/displaycontourlegend.py because of wxwidgets issue
[Crashsender/mac] missing most of the message in case of server downtime, now explain where to find the unsent report & send to support (like when the user cancelled sending by himself).
[Macro] fixed a potential infinite loop in case of error during a macro
[File/save as] fix "save as..." Menu entry offering to save a scene using a picture type.
When an internal error occurs, display the internal code in a field allowing copy-paste.
NETWORK RENDERING
Fixed a potential crash in the reading of the scene by the RenderCow.
[UI] fixed about dialog layout (RenderCow and HyperVue).
Fixed a potential crash of RenderCow in interactive rendering (ie. Render to screen + "use network").
Deactivate hybrid motion blur when rendering with distributed rendering (incompatible, and produced black tiles).
Fixed HyperVue and distributed rendering when aspect ratio is "from main view".
PERFORMANCE
[NEW] Improved mesh smoothing algorithm performance (up to 4x faster), which also benefits to displacement mapping.
[NEW] Optimized displacement mapping preparation when there is no subdivision (4.5 x faster).
Disabled an old way of saving meshes (used for backward compatibility with VUE 2015) in scenes saved as "consolidated archive" (it was taking more disk space and more time to read and write).
Meshes now have their intersection data generated just after the loading of the scene, to avoid a potential freeze when moving the camera for the first time. This operation also benefits to the scene preview and the first actual render.
[Terrain editor] prevent memory usage peak when opening on a large heightmap terrain (more than 1GB saved on a 4k terrain, 4GB on a 8k terrain!) - And fix the max terrain limit, which was 8096 instead of 8192, i.e. "true" 8k terrains could not be created:/.
PLUGINS
[NEW] Added the compatibility with the V-ray render node for Maya (the incorporation of the VUE scene inside the Maya scene must be disabled in the options of the VUE plugin, and the VUE scene must be saved on a network location accessible by all render nodes).
[NEW] Cinema 4D R21 integration plugin.
[NEW] Maya 2020 integration plugin.
[NEW] Added support of Cinema 4D S22.
[NEW] Added support of 3DS Max 2021.
Fixed a random crash in Cinema 4D when creating EcoSystems on/with native objects (it could start occurring with the second object used).
Fixed the display of the diffuse color of VUE objects: it was always gray if the color channel used the constant or procedural mode, combined with a mapped picture in the alpha channel.
Fixed the display of materials on references (=copy) of objects like primitives or terrains (but not meshes that had no problem).
Fixed problems with scenes containing VUE groups in Maya. They were constantly reselected for no reason after some actions, disturbing the manipulation/edition of other objects.
The loading of objects from the VUE scene into EcoSystems now works in the integration plugins (several problems fixed).
The default Maya scene isn't considered animated anymore, which avoids displaying annoying VUE messages and potential problems when editing the VUE scene.
Added a message box warning the user if the VUE scene is too large to be incorporated in the Maya scene instead of failing silently (the size is limited to 2.1 GB by the Maya SDK).
Fixed slowness in code extracting/incorporating the VUE scene inside/from the Maya scene (for a 2GB VUE file the respective times are: 2s/8s instead of 63s/105s).
Fixed a crash in Maya when adding a ventilator, or in scenes containing one (regression introduced in R4).
Fixed a freeze in Maya when launching a render from the v-ray frame buffer.
Editing sub-materials of meshes is now correctly applied in the real-times previews (c4d, Maya, 3ds Max).
[Material editor] fixed zoomed material preview remaining black when opened in a plug-in.
Fixed the writing of synchronization data in all plug-ins, and added plug-in for 3ds Max 2021, Cinema4D R21 and S22.
PYTHON
[NEW] E-on python API now embeds documentation as docstrings (ie. Standard python documentation
[NEW] Improved python documentation: search engine, updated main page, etc...
[NEW] Added global functions: getinternalunit(), VUEtometers(), meterstoVUE(), convertlength(val, sourceunit, destunit), lengthunitname(unit), getshortunitstring(unit) and stringtolengthwithunit(str, destunit)
[NEW] Python node editor has been improved and translated.
[NEW] Added function to bake selection to polygons: bakeselectiontopolygons(int quality)
[NEW] Removed python 2.7 (VUE & TPF) or python 3.7 (LRT) in favor of python 3.8 to run python code inside our soft.
Fixed a freeze when rendering a scene containing python materials/callbacks through the 'render' function used in the synchronous way.
Better reporting of python interpreter initialization errors.
Fix screen capture of a window on MacOS (for internal tests, but also available to users through python).
RENDERING
[NEW] MetaCloud render optimizations.
[NEW] Implemented shadow terminator softening for both ray tracer & path tracer.
Fixed invisible EcoSystems when doing a render with the OpenGL quality (population items were only visible as single points or flat billboards. It now works with all other qualities: shaded billboard, box, smooth shaded...).
Fix some halo appearing around plants with alpha with VDB clouds behind.
Fixed high correlation in secondary PBR samples (seen through one or more reflections).
Fixed sun corona/disc intensity mismatch when raising sun size.
Fixed shadow terminator softening to take backlight into account.
Fixed potential crash in resume render, and infinite saving time, when resume render data is larger than 2GB
[Animation] display a given warning only once during the whole duration of the animation (multiple scattering, typically).
More consistent behavior when displacement is applied to high resolution terrains.
Avoid changing the displacement amplitude too much when halving/doubling a terrain resolution.
Improved normal mapping computation, when used in addition with displacement mapping.
Fixed a mac-only bug: the texture maps loaded for NPR effects had their color component inversed (BGR instead of RGB).
NPR now takes the changes in the relighting settings into account.
STABILITY
Fixed a regression in the material editor: if the current material used a substance node, then selecting another object without substance node caused a crash.
Fix crashes when reading some old scenes (e.g. tutorials/05_ecospheres.VUE from e-on content).
[OpenGL] no longer suggest using an older OpenGL engine ('fixed pipeline' or 'software') even if VUE crashes while in compatibility mode, because 'shadeR4' is the most stable now
[Camera options] fix preview prone to crashing in the advanced camera options.
[Terrain editor] fix crash when trying to open terrain editor on heightfield terrains larger than 8k: heightfields larger than that can still be imported (from a dem file for example) but can no longer be edited in the terrain editor, for performance reasons.
[TPF-plants] try to work around crashes when zooming onto TPF plants on MacOS, pending actual resolution of the issue.
Fixed potential crash while navigating in a scene with PlantFactory vegetations.
[Plugins/Maya] fixed a potential crash when populating an EcoSystem several times in Maya.
[Stereoscopic rendering] fixed a potential crash in stereoscopic rendering, when GPU anti-aliasing is activated.
Fixed potential render issues or even crashes when reloading a same scene using rain or snow with collision enabled.
Fixed a potential crash when a procedural terrain using displacement receives shadows from a mesh object.
Fixed cases when some EcoSystem specimens could be lost while saving a scene or material.
[Ray tracer] fixed a potential crash when enabling subsurface scattering on an imported object.
[Renderstack] fix possible crash in render stack.
[PathTracer] fix possible crash when initializing a path-traced render.
[Real-world Terrain] fix rare crashes when downloading tiles.
[First-launch/MacOS] fix OpenGL configurator failures when VUE is installed in a path with spaces
[Relighting] fix crash when enabling relighting in render settings but the corresponding option is unchecked in the render stack options.
[EcoSystems] do not crash when reading an EcoSystem layer or EcoSystem brush is missing specimen files.
Fixed possible crash with software OpenGL visualization engine.
Prevent crashes when trying to save a 16bits picture as jpeg (through the image widget's "export map" menu
[Images] crashes when reloading linked ("synchronized") images modified in a third-party apps while being used in VUE/PF.
[Material editor] fixed a potential crash when switching from a substance material layer to a non-substance one.
UI/UX
[NEW] Better scaling factor for non-orthographic billboards.
[NEW] EcoSystems can now be hidden by settings the max number of displayed instances to 0 in the VUE options (this can be helpful in large scenes to get a more acceptable framerate).
[NEW] Small improvement of the OpenGL frame rate in large scenes when the texture maps are disabled in the VUE options (+20%).
[NEW] Disabled the selection of variations for PlantFactory items loaded from the VUE scene into EcoSystems (it's still possible to modify the original plant in the scene then re-add it as a new item to the EcoSystem).
[NEW] Made the edition/rendering of NPR lines a little faster by re-using the previous underlying shader render when its settings stay the same
[NEW] It is now possible to disable shadows with the "shader 4" OpenGL engine from the options dialog. This was already possible using a pop-up menu above the views, but this option had to be more visible to users, since it helps increase the frame rate with complex scenes.
[NEW] Improved world browser display.
[NEW] Improved layered material editor layout.
[NEW] [Material editor] hide the color map widget when it has no effect (i.e.. In case of complex color output), in EcoSystem variable color and volume shaded materials (as done for simple materials).
[NEW] Display progression feedback in a popup dialog when loading a scene from the startup panel (or when the status bar is hidden).
[NEW] [Mesh editor] improved the display of polygons and vertices count (coma separator...).
[NEW] [EcoSystem/TPF specimens] moved the 'variations' options to 'EcoSystem item options' sub-dialog (more consistent, and avoid double processing time when changing both variations and quality).
[NEW] [Bake to polygons/convert to MetaCloud] added option to bake displacement or not (previously, it was always baked, except for procedural terrains).
[NEW] [Render stack] added render preparation time to render tooltips
[NEW] Added a way to control the baking quality of procedural objects, for algorithms such as displacement/normal mapping or EcoSystem 360 deg. Population (from object menu: "mesh baking options...").
Fixed preview not updated when editing wind.
Fixed "bake to polygons" of PlantFactory plant using two-sided materials.
Fixed a regression preventing to maximize OpenGL views by double clicking on their title (it was instantly restored).
Fixed the "edit all materials" functionality with the interactive path-tracing (it was causing a crash, and changes were not applied to the scene).
Fixed the unwanted symmetrical resizing of non-horizontal planes when using the resize handles.
Fixed the selection of rotated/scaled planes in the orthogonal views. It's now as precise as with other primitives. It fixes situations where it was impossible to select other objects close to a plane.
Fixed problems with alpha planes seen from the side in the orthogonal views: they were invisible and not selectable.
Fixed the tooltip of some output nodes in the function editor, for mixed/volumetric/EcoSystem materials (incorrect information was shown after the name, inside parentheses).
Preserved the overall name of layered material when adding a new layer at the top.
The popup menu listing the materials of selected objects now uses the overall name of layered materials.
Fixed a regression that broke the option "use color map" in the basic material editor.
Fixed another regression regarding the OpenGL display of EcoSystems: the shaded billboard representing the top view of population items was missing.
Fixed the OpenGL display of EcoSystems instances using the box quality: they were randomly overexposed (almost white).
Fixed another detail with shaded billboards in EcoSystems: top and sides views now appear separately depending the camera position.
Fixed a regression in message boxes with multiple choice (long explanation texts were truncated).
Fixed a regression (since VUE R3) in the render stack: when the path tracer was enabled in the current scene, selecting an old NPR render showed the color picture.
Fixed a regression preventing to edit the NPR settings in the editor of a camera for which NPR was already enabled (since VUE R2).
Fixed a bug when trying to change displayed channel with renders displayed in main view.
Fix non reappearing checkbox on property dialog.
[Renderstack] fix rendered picture following the mouse as soon as one of its scrollbars is hovered (when zoomed in).
[3D views] fix object deselecting themselves for no reason when trying to move them.
[Terrain fractal] adjust slider range for noise type blending.
[Image widget/export map] don't lose alpha when present on exported file
[Spline editor] fix "reset" menu on filters not resetting to editor defaults
[Alphaplane editor] fix drag-and-drop of images and movies into the color and alpha channels.
[Particle systems] fixed plus/minus character (velocity tolerance).
[Particle systems] improved progress bar and fixed confusing text in status bar (regarding dynamic population
[Plant editor] improved message and browser handling when editing a SolidGrowth plant whose model file is missing.
[Plant editor/ SolidGrowth] correctly disable leaf/branch widgets when needed.
[Plant editor/ SolidGrowth] fixed inconsistent behavior (including potential crashes) when changing the plant model file from the plant editor.
Fix mac render area not correctly displaying last render in HiDPI.
Fix small visual glitch on material editor mixed.
Fix a crash in browser.
Fix wrong placed caret when clicking on edit control.
Fix some visual glitches on material editor.
More natural order for left and right rotate icons in material editors.
Fixed section spline edition.
Display the urchin profile as a revolution surface.
Correct section editor event handling (mouse motion not going to right place when rotating the 3d view of the segment section).
Fix insertion of section in section editor (inserted section was not the selected one), refresh after section suppression.
Allow interface scaling using eon_interface_scaling system environment variable (default value is 1, you can use decimal values and the recommended range is 0.5 to 2).
Fix strange dpi issue on main window
[Shader4] fix "use paper" feature.
Improved interface for natural film response filters.
Fixed jpeg options window being closed as soon as we click the quality edit field.
Fixed the display of image sequence paths (material or function editor) when the sequence was incorporated in file.
When resetting options to default, also reset the default viewport configuration and restore disabled messages.
Fixed confusing progression title when exporting only materials or 2d heightmap.
[Menu/online help] added menu entries for online help (technical support, sales support, faq) - VUE and PlantFactory.
Use orthographic billboards in VUE for EcoSystem billboard display.
When using different x and y size in "export billboard" dialog, let the top view stay square so that the sizes of the 3 exported billboards are matching (front width equal to top width, right width equal to top height).
[Material editor] fixed inconsistent angles displayed for slope range (environment influence tab).
[NEW] Automatically retrieve real world terrain data as heightmap or procedural terrains.
CLOUDS
[NEW] New Cloud Morphing technology.
INTEGRATION AND EXPORT
[NEW] Animated clouds and cloud layers can now be exported to animated VDBs (one VDB file for each frame)
[NEW] Bake and export all material PBR channels as texture maps
[NEW] New color bleed blending (smudge + mean average color filler) for exported texture maps
[NEW] Added occlusion treatment option, allowing user to select between ambient occlusion compute, ambient occlusion texture or a mix of both
[NEW] Added some maps (Ambient Occlusion, Blurred Reflections, Luminous, Glow) to write at export
[NEW] Added baking to 16 bits Grayscale textures
[NEW] When baking textures, use the alpha of input textures even if it is not exported, we do not want a different result whereas we activate the alpha export or not.
[NEW] Modified the "generic UV" export algorithm to avoid making thousands of mesh parts in some cases. Made it make more compact parts for better packing.
[NEW] Use a better packing for the "generic UV"
[NEW] Ensure baked normal maps are normalized
[NEW] Reworked and optimized FBX import
[NEW] [Import/DEM] Importing a DEM file now offers the choice between creating a Procedural Terrain or a Heightfield (Note: previously it was Procedural Terrain only)
Limit max size of adaptative maps.
Better placement of fragments in baked texture maps.
Fixed missing materials when importing some Collada files
Added a new option ("Invert transparency maps") at the bottom of the Import Options dialog for Collada files, to force VUE to use the contrary of the transparency rule defined in the file (some exporters don't follow the Collada specifications, like VUE before the other fix below...).
Fixed export of Collada files: transparency maps were always inverted, so never following the transparency mode defined in the file (RGB_ZERO).
Fixed import of Collada files: transparency maps were always inverted (ignoring the transparency mode read in the file), which could lead to fully transparent materials if their mode was A_ONE.
Fixed resizing and center options that were not applied to imported objects
Fixed synchronization of imported objects: saved scenes now store the original import options for each object, so that they can be reapplied when objects are synchronized (=automatically reloaded after a change of the file on the disk). Also, if smoothing options are modified in the Mesh Options, they will now be reapplied in future synchronization of the mesh.
Fixed a bug preventing to export the map of some objects (like alpha planes, imported LW models...), because a wrong extension was used to write images.
Fixed wrongly exported Collada files (not readable by VUE or other apps) when material names use non-ASCII characters.
Fixed export of CSG objects to Collada (materials could be wrong)
Ignore empty grids when importing VDB clouds instead of making an error.
Fixed potential crash when loading a scene with multiple MetaClouds
Upgraded Open VDB SDK version to 6.2.1
[LWO] Fixed crashes with some LWO files
Fixed normal map export on PlantFactory plants
Improved displacement export
Fixed truncated camera animation path when importing FBX file as synchronization data.
[Convert Tools for Maya] Fixed errors when converting more than one VUE object.
[Plugin] Remove Synchro plugin for Cinema4D R15
[Plugin] Upgrade V-Ray SDK to 3.6 and remove support for V-Ray 2
[Plugin] Fixed the automatic loading of the VUE plugin for V-Ray Next update 2 and greater.
SUBSTANCE
[NEW] Gather parameters in dedicated tab in material editor rather than publish them all
[NEW] Added support for multigraph .sbsar
[NEW] Integrated version 7 SDK
[NEW] Added support for additional .sbsar inputs
[NEW] Added support for animated .sbsar
PATH TRACER
[NEW] Path tracer now supports camera orthographic projection and film offset.
[NEW] Added Multi-Pass render outputs for the path tracer.
[NEW] Properly switch off main view last render display when editing scene, while interactive path tracer is enabled.
[NEW] Fixed traversed volume handling when objects intersect.
[NEW] Fixed full CPU (non OpenCL) implementation for path tracer intersection units (wrong lighting).
[NEW] Fixed a potential crash when rendering Boolean operations containing displaced objects.
[NEW] Fixed crash on processors that do not support SSE4.X for the non AVX version.
[NEW] Added SSE2 compatibility check to the OpenCL check to ensure that the path tracer can run properly on the running system.
[NEW] Fixed huge path tracer performance issue when rendering plants with billboard primitives.
PERFORMANCE
Fixed very slow preparation of EcoSystems with plants with lots of primitives
Reduced memory footprint for procedural terrains part of a group and sped up their initializations when rendering several times.
In the export of "generic UV", converted O(N^2) code to O(N)
Optimize undo/redo memory footprint in some specific scenario
STABILITY
Fixed potential random crashes when there are EcoSystems in the scene (after undo/redo operations and grouping of objects with EcoSystems materials)
Fixed potential crashes related to animated objects in the timeline.
[TerrainEditor/Intel] Improved terrain editor stability with Intel chipsets on Windows
[Mac/Drag&Drop] Robustness fixes following the report of a crash after a few hours sitting idle
Fixed a crash (stack overflow) when relaying mouse events in the context of a scrollable group nested inside another group (or scrollable group)
Fixed a crash when opening the format options panel twice
Fixed a crash in Texture Manipulation Editor
[MaterialEditor] Fixed a crash when switching material layer and the function graph is opened
Fixed a possible crash on Mac when closing a dialog opened from a pop-up menu from inside a modal dialog opened from a menu (e.g. color map editor opened from any modal dialog)
Fixed a potential crash when dropping a group (e.g. a Boolean operation) containing a PlantFactory vegetation to the ground.
Prevent a crash when reading a .fsvue file referencing modified .tpf files, and improve feedback in this case.
Fixed a potential crash (or render aborted at once) related to EcoSystem phasing.
[Windows] Work around crashes in third-party library with some specific fonts (CrashSender will show but VUE will no longer crash)
Fixed a potential crash in the render stack when the NPR or depth channels are selected but their data weren't loaded.
Fixed potential crash when loading a scene with atmosphere editor open
Fixed potential crash on Help (F1)
Fixed prevent potential crash with native browser
Fixed potential crashes with multi-selection browser.
Fixed potential crash using enter key in browser
Fixed crash when editing functions from material editor with multiple materials edited
Fixed crash when clicking on convert to MetaCloud when no object in scene
Fixed a possible crash when loading a DAE files bigger than 2 GB. A proper warning message is now displayed.
Fixed python initialization mistakes (macOS)
Fixed a crash related to texture edition
Fixed a potential crash in 3D Views refresh, after importing a FBX file as synchronization data.
Fixed a potential crash in the Material Editor when loading an image with embedded alpha in the alpha channel itself.
Fixed a potential crash when reading TIF files using color palette mode.
ANIMATION
Fixed a potential crash when adding a new keyframe to a rigged mesh whose previous animation was deleted.
Fixed blades breeze animation length on PlantFactory plants
ECOSYSTEMS
Fixed the loading in a 2nd VUE run of scenes with missing TPF file that were in a preview VUE run, if the updated scene was not saved.
Fixed potential initialization issue with animated plants.
Fixed inconsistent results when populating a material containing several EcoSystem layers and used by several objects.
Fixed instance count sometimes reset to zero for no reason when starting eco-painting.
Fixed the 'Clear' button doing nothing in some cases (in EcoSystem materials using stacking).
Fixed missing animation in vegetation specimens configured as animated mesh, when used in a global EcoSystem.
Fixed wrong offset of shaded billboards, along Z axis.
Fixed potential inconsistencies in the scale of instances, when the scene was reloaded from auto-save or fast-save format.
Improved feedback when the creation of a population fails due to licensing (PlantCatalog).
FUNCTION GRAPH
Fixed rare crashes when editing the graph leads to conflicting concurrent access with function nodes' small previews calculation
Fixed a rare crash when changing a node parameter's color value using the "fast color selection" dialog.
[Spline Proximity] Maximize/Minimize spline edition window by double-clicking on the caption bar
Fixed Node Output Observer not refreshing when changing node parameters
Improved edition of noise parameter in fractal nodes
Fixed regression on Function Node Preview
PYTHON
[NEW] Added second argument to AddStone and AddVolumeCloud Python function to specify seed.
Fixed AddAlphaPlane by using Alpha channel instead of Transparency and setting projection mode to parametric.
Allow Python function AddAlphaPlane to load Animation.
Make sure python function 'GetBoundingBox' is consistent for a vegetation object just created.
GetProductVersion now takes the current quarterly release into account (ie. returns "1 R4" (display version) or "15.4" (internal version) for R4).
Added the Python function setTimer which allow to run a Python command after at least a specified delay (example: setTimer(42.42, 'print("Done!")') will print "Done!" in the Python console after 42.42 secondes).
Added the ability to load a MetaNode from its file path inside a graph node parameter (via Graph.SetNodeParameter(NodeIndex, ParamterIndex, FilePath))
Added the ReplaceFunction function to load a function from disk and put it instead of already in place Function. Example: ReplaceFunction(obj.Material().ColorFunction(), file).
[NEW] Allow cube map and octahedron map to be selected as panoramic modes. (also add new layout for cube map)
[NEW] [RenderNode] Introduced a new 'tile_rect' option [-tile_rect x_min y_min x_max y_max], with (1,1) as top-left pixel.
Fixed the inability to enable Stereoscopic rendering in the Render Options dialog.
Fixed badly interpolated materials over MetaBlobs when activating relighting.
Fixed missing underwater physical caustics after their activation if water material caustics flag was initially disabled.
Fixed non sticking physical water absorption & scattering mode when changed in the material editor.
Fixed inconsistent physical water foam behavior along coasts.
Fixed Multi-Pass outputs for PBR materials using alpha mapping.
Optimized fully transparent impacts (avoid lighting calculations when possible).
[Render Options] Fixed alpha & depth paths not updated properly when changing the render output path
Fixed invisible heightfield terrain when used inside a group or Boolean operation (for high resolutions and displacement mapping).
Fixed invisible heightfield terrain when a displacement of depth zero is applied to it (only with high resolutions).
Fixed wrong multi-pass/G-buffer output path upon scene reading, to avoid getting an error when saving render to disk.
Improved shadows for terrains using high amplitude displacement mapping.
Fixed potential alpha mapping issues (white leaves) when using GPU anti-aliasing with PlantFactory EcoSystems.
Improved lighting on displaced meshes using Normal Mapping.
Avoid losing 16-bit precision (if any) on imported bump maps.
[Network Rendering] Fixed rendering cube maps with RenderCows
[Network Rendering] Fixed rendering VDB clouds with RenderCows
SPLINES
Optimized splines where both Ecosystem and Material effects are enabled (Terrain effect no longer recomputed when the Ecosystem is populated)
Improved reactivity when editing terrain effect parameters.
Fixed the dropdown feature for spline control points and tangents
Fixed the dropdown feature when dropping splines with a geometry effect enabled, or when dropping onto such splines
Fixed the Drop-on-Top feature for spline control points and tangents
UI/UX
[NEW] In the render stack, renders can now be cloned from existing clones, not only from the original render (to make post process/exposure tests easier).
[NEW] Hiding a scene layer from render now hides its cloud layers (like other objects)
[NEW] Added the ability to open render options from the sky export options
[NEW] Allow drag & drop from atmosphere browser
[NEW] [RenderArea] Support scaling an existing render area from its center (pressing Alt) & preserving its aspect ratio (pressing Shift)
[NEW] Added the possibility to modify gamma in the camera backdrop editor
[NEW] Drag & drop of atmosphere files (.atm) in the main frame is now possible.
[NEW] Added refresh of "Parent level" and "Cascade" in filter editor (for PlantFactory published parameters)
[NEW] Added min/max edition of "Custom variance" in random range parameters (for PlantFactory published parameters)
[NEW] Added modulation of PBR channel when using map
Allow sending a crash report even when we try to go on executing the program after a crash.
Support loading images (for materials, environment maps, etc.) requiring more than 2GB of uncompressed pixel data
Fixed gizmo size when switching to orthographic camera
Fixed TPF plant preview issue when plant OGL qualities are equal
Added a message asking confirmation before deleting a render from the stack
Fixed incorrect graph connection after choosing "Mapped Picture" mode in the transparency tab of the material editor (the image was connected to the alpha output)
In VUE Creator, it is now easier to set the resolution in the Render Options (the Digital 4K limitation is applied when closing the dialog or before starting the render).
Enabled the edition of the output filename from the Render Options (without having to click on "Browse")
Prevented the addition of objects into EcoSystems when they are not supported (procedural terrains, fans, global EcoSystems...)
Fixed interface update after copy/pasting a material inside the material editor (the current tab wasn't correctly updated).
Fixed the display of the EcoPainter brush on HiDPI screens (radius was wrong)
Fixed several problems when painting EcoSystems without "airbrush style": this mode now works in all views. The number of Added instances only depends on the stroke's curve/path, not on the speed of the cursor (like with the "airbrush style"). There is no overlap or empty areas between sub-segment of strokes anymore. Also, the falloff filter is now applied by taking the path into account.
Fixed the application of the falloff filter when painting EcoSystems in perspective views (only a subpart of the filter was applied, which depended on the current size of the perspective view).
Fixed another problem with the distribution of instances in orthogonal views (there was an hidden "square root" falloff filter)
EcoSystem instances are now Added in the whole circle of the brush on screen which seems more intuitive than the previous behavior which was a "mix" of screen and world projections.
Fixed the slider controlling the roughness of PBR materials (in constant mode). The value used for rendering was not correctly applied and setting a value above 17% was like setting 100%.
Fixed the import of materials for some 3D files, like DAE files created in MakeHuman: wrongly defined transparency maps are now ignored (= using an image with embedded alpha already used by the Color and Alpha channels).
Fixed favorites not saved when closing the browser without loading an item (browser)
Fixed Material Editor keeping the size of the function Editor when we close the function editor
Fixed gizmo issues on 4K screen
Fixed glitch on filter editor when switching monitor (with different DPI)
Fixed post render options status bar not flashing sometimes
Fixed animated MetaCloud OpenGL incorrect refresh
Fixed black previews of plant specimens in plant browser
When you reset a cloud material, you got a new cloud material.
Fixed wrong preview in browser when loading species of plants
Localization of hardcoded English strings in MetaNode pop-up menu (Function Editor nodes list)
[Render area] Fixed disappearing render area when editing it would for example move the right border to the left of the left border (same with top/bottom & corners)
[TerrainEditor] Altitudes color bar below the 3D preview was improperly drawn when the "Adapt to clipping" button was toggled down.
[ColorMapEditor] Display real units (e.g. altitude in meters in the Terrain Editor) for key color positions
[Gizmo icons] Inadvertent drag of the mouse of even a single pixel over a gizmo icon (P/L/G and M/R/S icons in the 3D viewports) would deselect the current object.
[ColorMapEditor] Fixed manual edition of the key color position field pushing around other keys
[SplineProximity/Edition] Fixed conflicts between Edit/Insert fast-switch keys and regular triggers + support deletion of a control point with Backspace (useful on Mac keyboards)
[TerrainEditor] Fixed 'adapt to clipping' button status not remembered
[Menu] Fixed varying shortcut displayed as menu item hints before and after opening the Options panel (for shortcuts with an editable and a non-editable version like Undo, Copy and Paste)
Avoid displaying the vegetation variation browser if the file cannot be loaded due to licensing (PlantCatalog).
Remember the last folder from which a Python script was loaded by user for next session.
Fixed a crash in camera backdrop when selecting a picture rotated by 90 or -90 degrees
Improved image mapping on primitives
Avoid bad interaction between sliders and scroll bars.
Better error handling of image/animation loading
Report each parameter loading error
Avoid exiting when accelerator file cannot be read, pop a message but go on.
Fixed erratic random range slider behavior for integer values.
Fixed tabbed dialog not correctly resized when maximizing/minimizing main window
Fixed on preview for 4GB images in browser
Improved error management while reading/writing files
Fixed issues when trying to load a list of images.
Fixed a possible crash when clicking on convert to MetaCloud when no object in scene
Fixed MetaCloud interpolation of amount parameter (used in cloud animations)
Fixed edition of colors in MetaNodes.
MISC.
[NEW] Allow sending a crash report even when we try to go on executing the program after a crash.
Improved the reloading of imported objects when there are instances (avoids losing all references).
Fixed a potential corruption of the scene when replacing/reloading a master object.
Displays additional information about objects locked from export (when exporting a scene).
Fixed broken seams in generic UV export
[Plugin] Fixed a bug in the Convert Tool: global EcoSystems that were completely selected for conversion were not converted, and still deleted. It worked only when selecting their children.
[Plugin] Fixed a potential crash when converting a VUE object to a native 3DS Max object.
[Plugin] Removed confusing OK/Cancel buttons in xStream Object Properties (replaced by Close).
[Plugin] Improved progress bar displayed during the loading of VUE scenes.
[Plugin] Fixed a regression: relaunching xStream with the default scene after having deleted the Config folder produced an error about a missing default atmosphere file.
[Plugin] Fixed potential crash when leaving c4d R20 on mac after using vdb from VUE plugin
RENDERING
[NEW] Allows the use of the RenderNode Network option with Path Tracer renderer.
[NEW] Improved robustness of GPU anti-aliasing.
[NEW] Added orthogonal projection in CameraOptions.
Improved subsurface scattering match with the ray-tracer.
Fixed empty multi-pass object masks in some rare cases
Fixed the rendering of imported VDB clouds through HyperVue/RenderCow network.
Fixed a potential crash when saving G-Buffer while generation of Alpha is off.
Fixed path of G-buffer files sometimes wrong (lost extension) on Mac OS.
PERFORMANCE
[NEW] When saving a material, sped up the computation of the preview for meta-cloud materials.
[NEW] Hidden node previews in the function editor are not recomputed anymore (wasting CPU time)
[NEW] Moved the compilation of nodes in the thread function to reduce latency
[NEW] Reduced the latency in the function editor when editing parameters (mainly useful for complex graphs).
Avoided useless restart of the scene preview after "de-minimizing" VUE (= restoring the same size as before minimizing it)
ATMOSPHERE
[NEW] Made IceRings and Rainbow effects work in photometric mode.
Fixed a possible crash when adding a new location to heliodon map
Fixed a bug with cloud layers that change looks when changing time in timeline.
Fixed flickering of material in clouds and MetaClouds when origin of material is big and when size/altitude changes during the animation
Improved reactivity of function editor with material preview and fixed a potential crash
Moved pivot and center of imported clouds so that the displayed position is the center of the VDB cloud
DISPLACEMENT
[NEW] Ability to subdivide cube & pyramid primitives before displacing (like planes already are), to avoid a much lower visual quality when compared to 'curved' primitives like spheres, cones, cylinders and tori.
[NEW] Improved the rendering of cubes when both displacement and normal mapping is activated.
ECOSYSTEMS
Fixed billboard animation of PlantFactory plants used in ecosystems as baked mesh.
Improved the estimation of the final instance count (used to trigger a popup message).
Fixed the static EcoSystem population on Hyperblob objects.
Fixed a potential crash in optimized material copy, introduced in R2 to speed up the render scene preview.
Improved message when creating a TPF specimen in an animated scene (the default quality is "Animated Mesh" in this case).
Fixed a potential crash in dynamic EcoSystem population involving several layers.
Fixed instance stacking when populating along a spline.
Fixed potentially invisible instances when dynamic population is used with population along splines.
FUNCTION GRAPH
[NEW] Improved MetaNode edition
[NEW] Improved connection edition
[NEW] Improved graph layout when loading old functions
Fixed connection dragging
Fixed a crash at the end of this scenario: create a heightfield, open the terrain editor, click "reset function" (graph panel), load a picture as heightmap using the button in the left toolbar, edit the resulting function, delete the Blender node.
Fixed edition of fractal node noise parameter
PYTHON
[NEW] Added functions to get/set multi-pass and G-Buffer output path.
[NEW] Added function to override the output folder for all channels.
True and "false" (note the lowercase, previously defined to respectively 1 and 0 as integer) does not exist anymore. Uses Python standard Booleans "True" and "False" instead (or defines them manually when needed with "true = True" and "false = False").
Global Python function "HideAllButLayer()" default value is now -1.
Fixed broken Python function AddTerrainFromMap.
Python function AddTerrainFromMap now generates Heightfield Terrain without Zero Edge enabled (Zero Edge forces border terrain altitude to 0).
STABILITY
Function Graph Editor: Fixed potential crash when deleting/cutting nodes which includes outputs of the graph.
Fixed memory leaks and possible crashes related to image handling
Fixed rare crashes when closing FE
Fixed random crashes when there are imported objects in the scene (after maximizing the main view and other cases...)
Fixed several crashes within the scene preview and even when just changing the material
[ScenePreview] fixed crashes when leaving the mesh options dialog or using the mesh decimation dialog
[Browser/robustness] Fixed crashes in Content Browsers when a file exists but is not or no longer readable (e.g. corrupted)
Fixed a possible crash after a series of copy/paste/undo operations on Boolean objects
Fixed potential crashes in GIF module, if the file is not recognized.
Fixed crash when closing browser and previews are not displayed
[Browser/robustness] Fixed crashes in Content Browsers when adding a folder whose first file is invalid
[Images] Fixed a crash when reading some invalid HDR files + possible issues when reading invalid BMP and PCX files
[Rocks] Fixed border case where building a rock can freeze VUE
Fixed a potential crash in the timeline, when selecting an individual bone.
SUBSTANCE
[NEW] Handles opacity map
[NEW] Handles image parameter
Fixed reading scenes with previously unsupported parameters
Fixed numb widgets after clicking on map preview in material editor
Restored 4096 output size texture computing with a warning
TERRAINS
Fixed a bug with HeightField Terrain where Invert Heightmap didn't invert user paintings.
Worked around rare crashes with 3D-displaced terrains when brushing led to geometrical artifacts
Does not ask to replace (displaced) sea surface by infinite terrain
UI/UX
[NEW] Uses visible handles for tangent manipulation in the filter editor.
[NEW] Enabled the K shortcut to break tangents in the filter editor.
[NEW] Double clicks in filter editor makes a new point where you have clicked.
[NEW] Native HiDPI drawing of the filter editor.
[NEW] Allows you to remove a filter point by double clicking on it.
[NEW] Vastly improved the reading speed of compressed files.
[NEW] When saving a material file, a dialog now displays the progression of the rendered preview, and it can be stopped by pressing the escape key.
[NEW] Replaced the 4 icon buttons (6 in hosted plugins) to load items in EcoSystems by a single "Add Item" button and a popup menu. The popup menu can also be accessed by right clicking in the population list.
[NEW] The auto-exposure computed in the scene preview is now applied in the OpenGL views (with the shader 4 mode)
[NEW] Exposure and post-process settings are now applied while rendering with the path tracer (but not for interactive rendering)
[NEW] Added a filter to hide old SolidGrowth plant when browsing for plant.
[NEW] Improved the automatic naming of plants by taking the species filename into account.
[NEW] Improved graph layout when loading old functions
[NEW] Improved reactivity when first opening a browser
[NEW] Improved quality of OpenGL preview of atmosphere
[NEW] [browser] Created a button to hide downloadable content
[NEW] [browser] More buttons now support ALT shortcut to switch to native browser
Fixed the reloading of materials saved before VUE 8 which could lose their displacement effect.
Fixed the reloading of EcoSystems with plants located by the user (which were not loaded).
Fixed the reloading of files (scene, object, material, EcoPainter brush...) with external dependencies (images, plants...): VUE now automatically finds the files beside those that were indicated by the user during the loading session (and asks if they can be loaded).
Fixed orphan texture and duplicate texture from appearing in timeline
Fixed bad motion in filter editor when moving a non-selected point while having a multi selection.
Improved loading error feedback
Fixed the subdivision +/- in the plant editor for TPF plants with manual subdivision mode.
Avoid making empty meshes for preview of TPF plants when quality settings are low. The first non-empty mesh when raising quality is used.
Fixed the display of hypertextures scale in the Object Aspect window (it is now the same as the scale shown in the material line).
Avoided the display of a black picture when resizing the material preview in the function editor.
The name of objects with subdivided geometry (procedural terrains, objects with displacement...) being prepared before a render is now visible in the status/progress bar
Fixed a bug in the material editor: after adding a new layer, the icons of the newly added line were not aligned with the parent line.
Fixed problems with the control for the render stack size: the value is now correctly clamped to 100MB (preventing a zero size); values without spaces before units are accepted; TB unit can be used.
Fixed several correspondence problems between the OpenGL skybox and the actual render.
Fixed a bug with the OpenGL display of terrains: it wasn't always updated after changing the material mapping mode.
Fixed wrongly positioned control in the Mixed Material editor (Transition Altitude)
Disabled the addition of Plants and Rocks in Particles (eco)systems (same behavior as in R2).
Fixed crash on closing terrain editor tab
[MAC] Fixed OpenGL scale ugly look
Fixed issues when using "Specific camera" (view port attached to a given non-main camera) as well as random occurrences of broken display when loading/creating a scene
Added many fixes when closing viewports, maximizing, adding a tab, etc.
Fixed drag'n'drop of an image from OS browser into VUE on Mac + fixed missing OpenGL refresh after dropping replaces an image
Fixed possible bad OpenGL display when starting up or opening a new scene where the active viewport is hidden or closed.
Fixed incorporation glitches, especially missing pictures under specific circumstances after reloading a scene
Fixed issues regarding the previews of IES profiles: black previews in VUE browser and wrong size of preview in native browser.
Small fix in G-Buffer Options: pre-select the correct file format (.rla or .rpf) when opening the native browser.
Spline Editor: fixed a tool tip in French version (was Japanese).
Made all sliders movable in ColorMapEditor, for opacity and color
Added MessageCheck when loading an atmosphere to keep the sun position of the scene instead of using the atmosphere settings
Synchronized MessageCheck for SunPosition with MessageCheck for Camera Settings when loading new atmospheres or creating new scenes.
Prevented path-tracer and NPR to be activated at the same time.
Fixed wrongly positioned control in the Mixed Material editor (Transition Altitude)
Fixed orphan texture and duplicated texture from appearing in timeline.
Improved maximize views (execution and menus)
Fixed glitch on horizontal separator
Fixed editing for names in the world browser that weren't popping up in the right place (4K screens)
Improved zoom icons for clarity on browser
[Function Editor/Fractal Options] Fixed dialog, too narrow (OK button not visible)
Improved preview of images in browser
[Browser] Fixed a potential crash when leaving browser.
[Browser] Fixed a potential crash when closing Application just after closing a browser.
Fixed wind preview on blade.
Fixed viewport configuration not saved on default scene and when setting default scene
Fixed interaction issue with lens flare lines
MISC.
[NEW] A commercial license can now read a scene created in the Trial version on the same machine.
[NEW] Added cloud modulation for MetaClouds and VDB volumes
[NEW] Users can choose VDB grids to export
[NEW] Optimization of VDB saves
[NEW] Multi-thread cloud export
Fixed cloud export importing with wrong orientation in c4d
Fixed crash trying to import VDB with no scalar grid
Fixed sea level preventing export of clouds
Corrected filter type for cloud density (and other data)
Fixed clouds not exported in VDB when too many steps (overflow)
Fixed atmosphere export coherency artifacts
INTEGRATION AND EXPORT
[NEW] [Plugins] Added compatibility with 3ds Max 2020.
[NEW] [Plugins] Added compatibility with Maya 2019 (no compatibility with V-Ray Next and no Mental Ray).
[NEW] [Plugins] Added compatibility with LightWave 2019.
[NEW] [Plugins] Improved render speed in all host applications whenever there are spectral clouds, texture anti-aliasing or Boolean operations.
[NEW] When exporting heightmap, set 16bits as default precision for every image format (including PNG).
[NEW] Allow changing some post-processing options in the plug-ins (including artistic gamma tweak).
[NEW] [import/Terrain] automatically center non-geolocated altitude rasters instead of popping up mostly useless centering dialog
[Plugins] Fixed potentially wrong rotations in Maya on Mac OS (either in gui or in Mental Ray/V-Ray).
Fixed a memory problem when closing C4D on Mac (detected in debug mode, not sure if it caused a crash however)
[Export] Fixed C4D export preset (alpha treatment and texture maps not in sub-folder).
[Convert Tool] Fixed conversion of some plants in C4D (missing alpha in leaves).
Fixed problems in the Plugins render options: when selecting the "User" quality preset, the previous one remained checked, and the "Custom" settings in the Advanced Effects sub-dialog could be disabled.
Fixed export as obj for some corner cases
Fixed export as fbx for some corner cases
Set default file format to PNG for Terrain Heightmap export in Unreal Export Preset.
[ZBrush Link] Fixed a bug where each click in GoZ button inside ZBrush would open a new VUE instance when the origin object does not originally come from VUE.
[Import/Terrain] Fixed terrains exported from VUE's terrain editor being reimported with holes where altitude is in the upper half
[Import/Terrain] Fixed vertical scale of 35km when importing terrains exported from VUE (initial scale is still lost but at least now a more reasonable value is used)
[Plugins] Fixed the display of substance materials
[Plugins] improved the display of mixed and 2 sided materials when they use texture maps. Now the map of the first sub material will be shown (like in the OpenGL display of VUE).
PATH TRACER
[NEW] Added support of Displacement mapping
[NEW] Added support for camera backdrop.
[NEW] Added support for texture map repeat modes (repeat, mirror, or once).
[NEW] Added generalized support for backlight and highlights.
[NEW] Added support for highlight color output.
[NEW] Added support for 2 sided materials
[NEW] Added support for texture mapped luminous output on path tracer side.
Fixed bad vegetation object conversion to the path tracer in mixed quad/triangle polygon mode.
Fixed potentially missing physical caustics from the sun in photometric mode.
Prevent render buffer transfer and render display OpenGL texture update when no new samples are accumulated into the buffer.
Grey out "OpenGL atmosphere preview" option in Options when PT running (and show tooltip to explain why)
Fix possible instabilities when closing the scene or quitting VUE
Resume path tracer when changing auto-pause options (eg when adding some more time, or disabling the auto-pause)
CPU usage now (almost) zero when path tracer is paused or disabled
Fixed intensity of reflective caustics generated by refractive objects in the path tracer.
Fixed never-ending interactive path tracer refreshes when duplicating area lights.
Fixed mesh and plants billboards rendering in the path tracer.
Fixed a rare case of directional lights wrongfully considered as the sun the path tracer.
SUBSTANCE
[NEW] Loaded Substance cache mechanism
[NEW] Hide channel Substance parameters when detected
[NEW] Speed up Substance previews
[NEW] Handle 4-dimension Substance parameters
[NEW] Display Substance parameter groups
[NEW] Display component labels for 2-int and 2-float parameters when any (X/Y remain by default)
Fixed picker values for color parameters
STABILITY
Fixed crash in Terrain editor after Export Dialog has been closed
[Viewport] Fix crash when VUE starts up with a maximized viewport and you demaximize it
Fixed potential crash in plant editor
Fixed some random application crash
Fixed crash (stack overflow) when rendering reflective materials in C4D.
[Collada/DAE] Fixed crash on some files (following customer report with file exported from SketchUp)
Fixed crash when enabling NPR from camera options
[Legacy Standard Terrains] Fixed memory leak when converted to Heightfield at load time
[EcoSystem/DynamicPopulation] Fixed a potential crash when the camera is inside a dynamic EcoSystem using a very low density.
[VUE/TurboSmooth] Fixed potential crashes with multi-material meshes.
Fixed a crash in the Text Editor when selecting a sub-letter in the world browser.
Fixed partial freeze on text editor
Fixed potential crash when saving collection xml
[UX] Fixed navigation blocked when intersection returns an invalid position
[Cameras] Fixed crash when leaving VUE and using "specific camera" viewports + clean/optimize closing time wrap-ups a bit (eg. useless viewport resizing)
Fixed the freeze of the OpenGL display when a material uses an image sequence
[Scene Preview] Fixed potential random crashes with displaced objects holding EcoSystem instances.
[Save Object] Fixed potential conflicts with the auto-save thread, possibly leading to random crashes.
Fixed crash when sorting materials by name in the world browser.
Fixed potential crash when deleting key frames
Avoid crashing on exit when dealing with application error
PERFORMANCE
[NEW] Improved default OpenGL polygons limit (new default = 5Mpolys per GB of total VRAM). Note that values of 1Mpoly will be assumed to be the old default unchanged, not a value set or left on purpose, so the polygons limit may change "behind your back" but normally for the better.
[NEW] [mesh_IO/animation] Speed up the reading & writing of deformable meshes (eg. imported Alembic meshes).
[NEW] Fixed severe slow-down when background draw thread is disabled
[NEW] Prevent waiting on draw thread inside UpdateWindow (allowing draw thread again on Mac!) and improve responsiveness noticeably for large scenes
[NEW] [MacOS] Improved various process speed using multi-thread computation: skybox computation for OpenGL preview, Function adding for Terrain Editor, various computation: marching cubes, symmetrical objects, terrain slope computing, compute bounding box for Terrains...
[NEW] Improved render scene preview responsive when there are a lot of materials in the scene
[NEW] [GlobalNodes] optimization of about 5% on Blur & Slope/Convexity nodes
[OpenGL] Fix severe slow-down when background draw thread is disabled
Avoided various useless updates of previews (material and/or scene) when using material editors (simple, volumetric, etc.) and doing trivial actions like changing the tab, clicking in edit fields, activating another dialog, etc...
Avoided a useless update of the scene preview just after opening object editors
Avoided another useless restart of the scene preview (with a finished render) shortly after opening the Camera Options.
Disabled useless updates of the scene when the material editor loses the focus (wihch may avoid slowness problems in some cases)
Fixed slowness (potentially big) when opening the system browser when the current folder contains many or large images.
Fixed slowness (regression) in the atmosphere editor when switching the light tab (when there are many objects in the scene)
Prevent (non-reproducible) crashes related to camera index in caption dialogs
UI/UX
[NEW] Updated filter dialog
[NEW] Made the scrolling smoother in the parameters area for published parameters when the graph is heavy.
[NEW] Hide MetaClouds spheres in the WorldBrowser
[NEW] Dynamically apply torus & metablobs options in scene preview
[NEW] Added the ability to load objects from the scene in ecosystem materials (new button)
[NEW] EcoPainter now also has the ability to load native objects
[NEW] Zoom where the mouse is in graph view, handle slowdown key, allows smaller zoom.
[NEW] Grouped materials in a sub-menu (in mat preview > down arrow > popup)
[NEW] Added the ability to copy/paste images in the material and function editors (from the popup menu)
[NEW] [Material Editor] Added automatic opening of image browser when switching to Mapped Picture mode
[NEW] [Material Editor] moved material's render options in separate dialog
[NEW] Added the ability to delete material layer from the popup menu (in the world browser and material editor)
[NEW] [Material Editor] top part can now be resized (to enlarge the list of layers)
[NEW] [UI/Mac] Multi-monitor setups: lift limitation to horizontal-only arrangements
[NEW] [Browsers] New shortcut Alt+click on "Load..." buttons allow to bypass VUE's Content browser and jump directly to the OS native browser just once.
[Render Stack/Mac] Fixed "Fullscreen" feature for main monitor (Note: still KO on non-main monitors, both on Win & Mac)
Fixed the inability to reload quality settings for render stacked in a previous VUE session and using a non-user preset (=preview/final/etc...)
Mac: Fixed the access to a specific popup menu when right-clicking on the thumbnail of renders in the stack
Fixed MetaCloud renaming when selected in the world browser
Fixed useless scrollbar in export options
Mac: Fixed autosave freezing VUE when it happens during a render (which is possible only when the menu Render > Render is used, not when rendering using a button or the F9 shortcut...)
[Heightmap/import] Fixed regression (from R1P1) when importing non-geolocated terrain but "center terrain" is disabled in the import options dialog
Fixed "Edit graph" button in German (truncated) and in French (too tight).
Fixed several correspondence problems between the OpenGL skybox and the actual render.
Improve published parameters color on light grey default
[AVX] Fixed resume render when using global illumination.
[Boolean operations] Fixed boolean mesh operations (aka CSG) often yielding buggy results (regression from Vue 11)
[Render/Abort] Fixed abort render broken on Windows when uptime is close to 25 days
Fixed the selection of bevel and extrusion profiles in the text editor
Fixed a bug with the ecosystem painter: hidden objects don't block the effect of ecosystem brushes anymore (like the eraser and others)
Fixed a bug with published parameters in the volumetric material editor: their tab is now correctly shown/updated when adding them from the function editor.
Fixed wrong icon for CSG union
Fixed flickering on caption dialog icons
Do not save main window position on plugins
Fixed old bug when opening the camera options: the post process settings were disabled in the VUE scene preview.
Fixed Material Editor maximize
Fixed a bug with "Select Render Area": when used after a full render in the main view, it made the render disappear.
Fixed old bug when opening the camera options: the post process settings were disabled in the VUE scene preview.
Fixed wrong Render area when scene loaded from startup dialog
[Material Editor] Fixed disappearing new load save button
[Gizmo/HiDPI/Mac] Fixed gizmo axes position in hidpi on mac
[Scene loading] don't ask user which viewport config to load when loading template scene or creating new scene using default scene
[EcoSystem/FastPop] Fixed a bug blocking the interactive population (in Material Editor) as soon as a layer uses particles below the edited one.
[VUE/export/clouds] avoid altering global export options when exporting only clouds.
Fixed selection problems in the world browser when opening/closing the Text Editor
Fixed potential loss of texture filtering setting when using the render options
Removed compression frame and slider for PNG options.
Improved focal display to avoid strange clamping situation
[Function Editor] Fixed preview of nodes in parametric mode
[UI] Fixed active view status not passed to another view when closing active view
[UI][CameraControls/view-through] Fixed view-through spotlight not operated in some cases + navigation speed & orbit point not correct in this mode
[UI] Minor File menu entries reordering
[PathTracer] Disabled path-tracer when closing the viewport it's running in (otherwise it keeps running in the background + atmosphere preview is not restored) + grey out some options in viewport menu which are not currently supported with PT.
[MetaCloud] Fixed menu to add primitives to MetaCloud when it is selected or when several spheres are selected
[Material Editor] Fixed top part moving when changing material sublayer
Fixed the reading of old Standard Terrain with references which end-up completely flat.
Added image name when finding missing texture
Disabled transparency on splash screen on mac plugins (was not working)
Fixed dem import dialog
Hide last render when maximizing windows
[UI] Account for "interactive slider changes" user setting in "dual" & "ring" sliders behavior
Fixed editing of content in scenes made when shipped content was in install dir (eg. plants in "Room Radiosity" example scene)
Fixed the display of small pictures in the image browser (There was a mosaic effect / black grid)
Fixed the display of CSG objects inside groups (they remained in wireframe mode after editing them)
Fixed the display of eco instances as boxes with the "Fixed pipeline" OpenGL engine
Fixed the inability to reduce the display quality of specimens with the "Fixed pipeline" OpenGL engine.
Added a scroll bar for the list of lights for relighting settings.
Prevented the user to accidentally overwrite the default eco brush tools with the save button
Fixed reaction when editing "Force extension" numerical edit control.
Some fixes about maximized dialog reopening on wrong screen.
GAMMA HANDLING
[NEW] Improved gamma management by creating new Natural Film Response filters (and improved auto-exposure)
[NEW] Ask how to update gamma for old scenes: Convert using new settings or Apply a gamma tweak.
[NEW] Automatic conversion of old scene proposed during loading
Fixed the display of colors in OpenGL views (with the shader 4 mode) for materials only showing a constant color (without texture). The gamma was applied twice which produced colors that were too bright and washed-out/desaturated.
Correct gamma of render as OpenGL
Export C4D color constants using the gamma output value
Fixed default Albedo scale for all default Photometric Atmospheres
Fixed current camera exposure filter override when saving atmosphere
Fixed exposure not restored on atmosphere cancel
RENDERING
Properly take IES profiles during photon mapping. Also take light transform into account once IES direction has been sampled.
Fixed point & spot lights radiosity power in photometric mode.
Fixed radiosity intensity in photometric mode and apply the same irradiance logarithmic filtering as in standard mode.
Fixed missing reflective caustics generated by refractive objects.
Fixed missing caustics when global caustics photon count becomes very large.
Fixed Multipass output of signed data to unsigned formats
Fixed too bright Depth Multipass.
Fixed black parts on some Multipass channels and Relighting buffers in case of Stereo Rendering (for sky or very distant objects).
MATERIAL EDITOR
Fixed a bug in the Volumetric Material Editor: the cloud scaling was set to 0 after moving the altitude variation to 0.
MISC.
[NEW] [Import & Export] Switched to Alembic 1.7.10.
[NEW] SkinVue fixed and Added to VUE (for legacy compatibility only)
Better error reporting during application startup
Fixed wrong warning regarding GoZ and other plug-ins version mismatch.
Added saving of 10 missing render quality settings (for .urs files and stacked renders)
Display only custom note when opening options for 16 bits grayscale PNG (aka Terrain Heightmap).
Fixed saving of instances modifications with the fast save system.
Fixed version stored in macros which could lead to macro execution glitches.
Added compatibility with Cinema 4D R20 (requires the standalone plugin installer)
Fixed error message appearing in Maya when rendering after deleting VUE objects (but not preventing the render)
Fixed problems in Cinema 4D and Lightwave when transforming VUE groups while the world browser was opened
Fixed position of OK/Cancel buttons in the dialog for the selection of native objects (EcoSystems)
Fixed random crash when closing LightWave
Fixed weird behavior in Maya when converting VUE objects to MetaClouds: the display was updated for each added sphere.
Reduced slowness when converting objects to MetaClouds in 3dsMax
Fixed bugs with imported OpenVDB clouds (they are now correctly displayed in the real-time previews of the host application and can be transformed like other objects).
The dialog to convert objects to MetaClouds now stays in front of other dialogs (it could be hidden and difficult to access).
In C4D, fixed reloading of scenes with MetaClouds (too many materials were added to the native scene)
Fixed potential bug in reloaded Maya scenes with VUE content: adding/importing a new VUE object could cause an error if there was an existing object with the same name.
Fixed export zone not displayed
Fixed the loading of VUE dlls in old LightWave versions.
Fixed instances not updating in host app when changing only "inflate spheres" parameter
PATH TRACER
Fixed a potential crash with some multi-material objects, when only part of them have a normal map.
Fixed spectral atmosphere rendering when air, decay or haze mean altitude is set to zero.
Fixed subsurface scattering in the path tracer.
Fixed blurry specular highlights when lights have softness when rendering with the path tracer.
TERRAINS
Fixed a possible crash when eroding non-square Heightfield terrains
Fixed algorithm issues in Erosion, Gradient & Convexity nodes
RENDERING
Fixed area lights physical power for photon mapping in photometric mode.
[Spline/Influence] Fixed application of spline's material (not population which is OK) on underlying objects
[Displacement] Fixed missing propagation of some options to the displaced geometry (only shadows / cast shadows / receive shadows).
[Displacement] Fixed black render when a mesh has no normals but is "smooth".
[Heightfield Terrains] Optimized render times for high-resolution terrains using normal mapping.
[Heightfield Terrains] Fixed scaling issues (terrain too small) in scene preview, in some cases of displacement/normal mapping.
Improved cylindrical environment mapping mode.
[PBR] do not modulate specular highlights with ambient occlusion.
RENDERSTACK
Fixed black output when saving the same G-Buffer or Multipass channel twice in a row
Fixed saving channels from a non-stacked render not saving the chosen channel (eg Gbuffer or Multipass)
Fixed position, size and zoom factor of the dialog not preserved when re-opening
Fixed wrong merged position when using render areas in conjunction with "render to screen"
Saving from the render stack no longer uselessly restarts the scene preview
Disambiguate the zoom hint in the title when rendering
Restored last selected item when reopening
Fixed dialog becoming much larger than screen when fitting window to a very large or zoomed render
avoid scrollbars when fitting window
prevent the window from being moved when trying to downsize below the minimum dialog size
add second action to Fit button to fit render to window
Fixed main window toolbar button status not updated when loading scene with a render area
Fixed crashes when trying to merge or compare some incompatible layers (mostly NPR)
Fixed Gbuffer not properly saved in the RenderStack since an optim in R6 (would crash when trying to read them)
Fixed merge render button in render display
Fixed import of external images in the render stack (no more natural film response, and the image is now automatically selected)
Import/export vdb files with 90 of pitch to match industry standard
MATERIAL EDITOR
Fixed the inability to change the channel mode from Procedural to Mapped Picture when the function scale was not equal to (1,1,1)
Removed useless text ("Displacement direction") in the PBR advanced material editor.
Fixed the inability to change the channel mode from Procedural to Mapped Picture when the function scale was not equal to (1,1,1)
The "Force Extension" value was not correctly filled (Displacement tab of the material editor)
Displacement parameters were not correctly set after opening the material editor.
The material editor now keeps its size when selecting another layer or changing the material type.
Italic title for tabs with default settings has been restored, with a lighter color, so that the tabs with non-default settings are more clearly visible.
Fixed disappearing scrollbars
Fixed a potential crash when selecting/editing an EcoSystem layer in the material editor.
Correct reading of "invert on back face" (in normal settings of material)
[Image Widget] Show options depending on image type. Disable controls if there's no image.
UI/UX
Prevent quick succession of shift+click or ctrl+click from triggering "edit object"
Combo box too narrow for shutter speed of eg 1/1000 (camera/postrender options > exposure value dialog)
Fixed gamma of rendered preview in the plant editor, when the OpenGL engine is "Fixed pipeline"
Fixed uninstaller being too small on 4k screen
[Help] Help now works with Batch Rendering Dialog and Browser.
[Help] Help button (F1) works neither in modal dialogs (render options, render stack, NPR options, welcome panel), in message boxes, nor in the Setup
[Help] Fixed possible crash when pressing F1 in a message box (eg path tracer limitation message) + help not opened at the right page!
Fixed separator wrongly placed on 4k screen
Fixed brush editor not closing with close button
Fixed double clicks not working on mac on material control (4k screen)
Fixed HiDPI preview of filter editor node
Fixed Disappearing OpenGL view border
Fixed default function editor layout
Improved workspace on first launch on mac
Fixed editing two-sided material graph from summary
Reworked add collection dialog
[EcoPainter] Fixed incomplete tooltip and change title when minimized
Improve OpenGL placement of OpenVDB cloud proxy
[TerrainEditor] Restore missing quality boost slider (cut-off in the UI)
[TerrainEditor] Fixed button "Add new material" no longer working
Fixed problems when setting up MS Windows to swap left and right mouse buttons (reported on Win7, witnessed also on Win10)
Support MetaCloud wireframe box display quality
[RenderNode] Fixed render progression in case of stereo rendering.
Don't duplicate the object when using the trigger while hovering the rotation handles near the bounding box because it comes too often in the way of an orbiting action
[Browser] Ctrl/Command+Wheel to change the size of previews
Fixed lost focus when typing a height value in a camera's Object Aspect panel (prevents entering 2-digits heights)
Random parameter publish is back
Fixed Gamma calibration tool in hiDPI
MISC.
Fixed welded imported mesh position
[Export-to-LumenRT] Fixed the detection of LumenRT (not applicable to Creator).
Added crash interception system to RenderNode (but no crash sender).
Avoided the unwanted automatic activation of displacement when editing a material created in VUE 2016 and older versions
Fixed a potential crash at exit if NPR was used during the VUE session.
Fixed crash at the automatic reloading of 3D files modified outside VUE.
Fixed a potential crash when closing VUE
Fixed a potential crash related to layers in the world browser.
Fixed a potential issue on gamma options (when changing DPI)
Fixed a potential crash when opening Atmosphere editor while scene preview is dealing with MetaClouds
Fixed a potential crash when reopening the Text Editor after a render, when the text object uses displacement/normal mapping.
Fixed crash when saving a heightfield as VOB and choosing a realtime preview on Windows
PLANTFACTORY SPECIES
[UI/UX] Fixed "Apply" vs "OK" in axis and section editors (not going back to Apply when editing)
[Flower Node] Fixed radial continuity of flower node surface for export
[Basic Material Editor] Removed "use color map" option in dialog for bump and normal
[Hooking point Editor] Account for screen gamma when displaying texture in hooking point editor
[Hooking point Editor] Handle texture offset
[Hooking point Editor] Handle mirror mode
[Hooking point Editor] Apply texture scaling to prevent confusions
[Hooking point Editor] Display default hooking point in editor
[Seasonal Editor] Added gamma options for each image
[Seasonal Editor] Corrected seasonal color map values
[Seasonal Editor] Correct gamma of normal maps
[Seasonal Editor] Fixed gamma handling of seasonal color shift
[Render] Fixed Aspect Ratio not taken into account in render in some case
[Display] Apply Diamond UV transformation to normals too
[Display] Fixed a possible crash during file recovery
[Display] Fixed corrupted display of rotated mipmapped images
[NEW] Improved the responsiveness of the graph display, added more configurable colors for customization, fixed the display of connection lines that where too thick when zooming out, added a more visible highlight of connections (middle part and ends), made item selection more precise, added highlight on all node lines as we can act on them, added a shift of parameter labels to better show the tab/group/parameter tree structure, added a small motion threshold before moving a node.
[NEW] More visible selection and highlight when graph is zoomed out.
[NEW] Snap to handles when creating a connection.
[NEW] Added a right click contextual menu on graph connections (move to source node / move to destination node / delete connection). Move to source/destination selects and centers that node in the graph view.
[NEW] When creating or moving graph connections, or moving nodes, or selecting by area, the graph will scroll automatically if you move the mouse near the graph border while dragging the connection. The speed increases with mouse position, and scroll direction is relative the center of graph view.
[NEW] Disabled connections are now drawn as dashed lines instead of being invisible. They exist when a connection was created to something that is optional in a node and is currently disabled.
[NEW] Added a specific action in the graph menu to align all nodes, distinct from the alignment option. Option affects future manipulations; action is performed once when clicked.
[NEW] Added overlap indications in the graph: overlapping nodes will have a red "!" icon on top.
[NEW] Added "Vector 2 to Vector 3" and "Vector 3 to Vector 2" conversion nodes to facilitate UV usage in a graph.
[NEW] Added "Arc tangent of (X,Y)" math node (a.k.a. "atan2"), as well as Hyperbolic trigonometric functions and their inverse.
[NEW] Many Math nodes now accept any input type (number, vector 2, vector3, color): the operation is applied on each component separately. For nodes that take two inputs, the second input can either be a number used as parameter for each input component (eg. pow(input1.x, input2), pow(input1.y, input2) etc.), or a vector of same size as the input, where each component is used as parameter for operating on the corresponding component of the input node (eg. pow(input1.x, input2.x), pow(input1.y, input2.y), etc.). Vector nodes "Length", "Normalize" and "Dot product" now also accept Vector 2 as input, not only Vector 3.
[NEW] Added edition of parameter layout directly in the material editor published parameter tab.
[NEW] Added edition of parameter layout directly in the MetaNode parameter list.
[NEW] Added position mode option in UV node.
[NEW] Highlight connections while "highlighting tree" (when you pass the mouse over a connected parameter in the parameter tab). Previously only nodes where highlighted.
[NEW] Added a new "Primitive direction" node, which gives the base direction of the current primitive (Z axis of its frame).
[NEW] Added a new "Parent Primitive Radial Direction" node, which gives the direction orthogonal to the axis of the parent primitive at the current primitive insertion point.
[NEW] Added a new "Parent axis direction" node, which gives the direction of the axis of the parent primitive at the current primitive insertion point.
[NEW] Added a new "Parent axis : horizontropic section angle" node, which gives the angle around the axis of the parent primitive, counted from the direction around the axis that points to closest to the zenith, at the current primitive insertion point.
[NEW] The "Section spline" node is now a periodic function, for instance it means you can add a fraction of the primal to its input to twist it when used as a segment section.
[NEW] The "Profile spline" node is now a mirror periodic function of period 2 (f(x) = f(x + 2n) with n integer, and f(1 + x) = f(1 - x), for instance it means you can add a fraction of the primal to its input to twist it when used as a segment section.
[NEW] Added edition of published parameter layout directly in the preset tab.
[NEW] Node previews are available in plant graph (only for control nodes).
[NEW] Improved node preview for Primal, Section Angle and Radial nodes.
[NEW] Added pruned output in current primitive node.
[NEW] Added "radius", "side radius" and "side diameter" parameter in ancestor node.
Fixed graph tooltip that was not always displayed for connections.
Better event handling, the thing you pick on button press is the thing that is used to perform the action (and not the one that is under the mouse after moving a bit).
Click and drag now keeps the mouse capture until release, so that you can move the mouse outside the graph without interrupting the current action).
Edit on node of label or data now happens only on second click on the node, not right away when you select it.
Added a small tolerance before moving a selected node.
Remember the previous position in the graph view when changing of edited graph (when editing a MetaNode for instance).
Better text drawing when graph is de-zoomed. Text is now rasterized at current display size instead of being scaled down.
Added a new option in main graph menu to display a grid in background of the graphs.
Fixed lost mouse capture when dragging the graph view, when the mouse was moved outside of the graph area.
Graph nodes can be freely resized. Minimization happens when node width is set below 1/2 the minimal width. When minimized, the node size is controlled by the vertical component of the resize.
Updated the placement of nodes that are generated by the application.
Fixed broken display of colormaps in graph nodes.
When node height is large, we can better use the space by placing the preview above the label, instead of left. That allows a better preview of material graphs, by resizing the nodes to your convenience. The maximum preview size for textures is currently limited thought.
Added an option to enable/disable the minimap in the graph view.
Added in node preview of 2D filters.
Parent parameter node has been renamed to "Ancestor parameter".
Better placement of input/output nodes inside newly created MetaNodes: the right place is next to the node that uses the input/output.
Removed the useless "Display nodes minimized" option, which prevented a lot of interactions in the graph. Nodes can still be minimized by selecting them, and using the right click menu, or by resizing them.
Better "show preview" options: each node has a Hide/Show/Auto setting. Hide/show overrides the global setting (for nodes that can have previews).
Fixed display of Help of Graph Nodes.
Vector composers, decomposers, 2D/3D converters, and axis permutations are now grouped in the "Vector Composition" subcategory inside the "Math" category of nodes.
Fixed a bug in the "XYZ Product (Separate Parameters)" node that led fractals downstream in the graph to evaluate too few or too many "octaves" (= fractal detail).
Fixed "Turbulence damping" parameter of the "Three Noises" fractal being ignored by mistake (since 2011!).
Fixed inconsistency when switching noise of fractal node. Internal noise scale was changed.
Fixed potential incorrect graph evaluation when containing MetaNode.
Avoided useless invalidation when opening/closing MetaNode function editor.
Select the appropriate output in the graph, when opening it from the different tabs of the Material Editor. .
Disabled contract/ungroup MetaNode icons if the corresponding action is not possible due to current selection.
Removed the left click menu that appeared when clicking an empty area in the graph, only kept it when you click a node handle (so that it creates a connection to that handle).
Fixed computation of "horizontropic azimuth" in "current primitive instance" node, which did not take into account indirect transformations (that we get when using the "alternate" children placement mode of segments).
Display non evaluated nodes with a yellow stripe pattern, so that they are not mistaken for faded nodes.
The "Current Primitive" node has been replaced by two new nodes "Axis variables" and "Child variables" to clarify what it is for. Old files will show the old node, but it cannot be created from menus anymore.
The value provided by the "Current primitive axis variable: azimuth horizontropic" is now guaranteed to be in "-PI,PI".
Enabled the node preview options of the graph (show all preview, only noise, or none).
Added preview of random range node in Node Observer dialog.
Put missing input back in vegetation graph (Position and Normal Options).
RENDERING
[NEW] Render thumbnails are now computed for current screen dpi instead of default resolution.
Reduced the frequency of PathTracer render display during rendering (mainly useful because denoising can be long, reducing the number of denoising process saves time).
Fixed a bug when denoiser were not applied on render with very low sample per pixel.
Fix artefacts when rendering glow on some materials (animated, non-volumetric).
Fixed the use of the Delete key to delete renders in the Render Stack which led to losing the focus (then subsequent Delete strokes would actually deleting objects in the World Browser, for example).
Fixed rendering when some layers of a material layers stack have their "Visibility" icon set to "invisible" or "solid color": many effects were still applied when invisible (bump, displacement or normal mapping, luminous setting, color transmitted/reflected) or when set to "solid color" (Ambient occlusion, Highlights, PBR Metalness, Normal mapping, etc.).
Avoid re-enabling the render stack thumbnails too soon, which could introduce inconsistencies when a message box was displayed at the end of a render.
Fixed the saving of Multi-Pass as multi-layer PSD, when a 16-bit precision is requested.
Fixed the frame number indicated in the information strip, when rendering a single frame of an animation.
Support for 2nd plane/material hook point in crossed planes.
Fixed shadows of vegetation primitives with two-sided material.
When activating the Path Tracer while multi-pass is enabled, made sure we deactivate channels and masks not supported by the Path Tracer render engine, to avoid generating 100% black or messy pictures.
MISC.
[NEW] Fixed a crash when loading color settings.
[NEW] Transformed the planar bias to a conic bias by the addition of an angle (90 degrees for a plane).
[NEW] Transformed the child horizontropism to a conic tropism by the addition of a direction, cone angle, and possible local coordinates.
[NEW] VUE, PlantFactory and PlantCatalog Exporter will now be able to report the usage of their features. This will help e-on software to focus on the most relevant ones. This option can be enabled/disabled in File -> Options... -> General Preferences -> Send feature usage data.
[NEW] Added the compressed textures to the autosaved data to avoid very long texture recompression during file recovery (after a crash). .
Drop support for MacOS 10.10 "Yosemite".
Fixed progress bar never updated when saving a material on Mac OS.
Fixed a potential memory leak in file decompression and improved the reading time of large scenes.
Fixed a case where the application offered to locate missing images several times despite the user checking "No to all".
Improved the compatibility with scenes containing copy-protected content which is not owned by the user: instead of refusing to load the scene, just ignore the missing functions/material layers and display the list of issues at the end of the loading.
UI/UX
[NEW] Added long due --help option to the command line interface.
[NEW] Added drag n drop of scene file in Startup panel.
[NEW] Improved error message when export failed.
[NEW] Hooking Point editor is now resizable.
[NEW] In material editor, switch back to previous mode if no picture selected while switching to mapped picture.
[NEW] Added edition of preset list.
[NEW] Made filter 3D editors amodal.
[NEW] Added an icon to directly edit the Multi-pass format options from the MultiPass dialog.
Faster scan of files for faster opening of the internal file selection dialogs.
Allow using a complete drive in browser as tab.
Really disconnect constants when using the "Disconnect parameter" in material editor.
Do not remove "unused" graph nodes when using the "Disconnect parameter" in material editor, that still can be useful later on.
Made the image path display in image properties non editable, because sometimes it is not a path but some description (of a generated image), that was confusing to be able to change it and have the application try to load it. .
In "3D filter" editor and "Section profile" editor, do not replace current filter with original filter when we cancel a "Load", that's not a cancel of the current edit.
Fixed a dead lock in the browser (which occurred at least when multi selecting elements).
Asynchronous previews in browser, no need to wait a long time to change folder while previews are computed, they finish in background.
Fixed invisible icons of user defined categories in browsers, can only fix new categories, previously added one need a manual correction (set the icon using the right click menu on the tabs that have no visible icon).
Correct ill-defined tangent effect in 3D filters: For a given set of points and tangents, we did not obtain the same curve depending on where the points were inserted before being moved. That was also producing asymmetric curves around points, even though the displayed tangent looked symmetric. .
Corrected filter 3D editor to use actual Bezier control points instead of tangents with a varying intensity that depended on the insertion point.
Better cut in the 2D and 3D filter editors, inserting points keep the exact same curve.
Fixed incorrect point highlight in 3D filter editor.
Reset point coordinates on open in the 1D filter editor.
Introduced a --interface_scaling followed by a factor in command line argument to run application in different HiDPI mode. Example: --interface_scaling 2.0 will double the size of every piece of interface.
Change the way edit controls with length react to arrows and page up. Arrow up will now add one of the displayed units.
Fixed native browser not having quick access on windows.
Minor panel redraw performance improvement (skip obsolete code handling now absent dialog background gradation).
Fix conflicts between configured shortcuts and edit fields: for example, if you had configured '=' for some action, you could no longer use it in an edit field without also triggering the configured action (except for alphanumerical characters). As a side-effect, on macOS this fixes the fact that Up/Down/PageUp/PageDown keys were inoperant in numerical edit fields (whereas they now properly increment/decrement the value by some fixed amount depending on each edit field).
On macOS, Cmd+Arrow key now has the expected behavior in edit fields, ie. move/select to the beginning/end of line. The former custom trigger of Alt+Arrow key has been kept for compatibility (edit fields do not support moving/selecting word by word, like Alt+Arrow key should in theory do).
Speed-up loading of the material summary (with hundreds of materials) and display a progression after a few seconds.
Ignored LOD computation in Object preview renderer.
Fixed material name and scale when loading a material to replace a layer.
Fixed Clamping mode not available in Filter editor.
Fixed message boxes not taking into account the modal dialog potentially running (Windows only).
Fixed the behavior of checkboxes in the render information strip options (were displayed as partially selected, and 2 clicks were needed to select an entry).
When adding a new material layer to an existing material, reuse the parent material's mapping mode.
Fixed the position of message boxes generated from the render stack, in multi-screen context.
Fixed wrong cropping of some panels depending on the screen size (options panel on a laptop, typically).
Fixed missing refresh of published parameters tab in EcoSystem, Mixed and Volumetric Material Editors.
Fixed inconsistencies in the Recent Files menu when some of the recent files are no longer accessible.
Avoided the automatic closing of the File Format Options dialog when one clicks outside of it (except when it is opened from the native file browser - in this case, it is mandatory to do so).
Better display of material in hooking point editor (double sided, RGBA maps).
Corrected hook point edition when using the back face (edit in mirror).
Fixed some inconsistencies in the "Profile spline" editor: display actual "input" values as used in the graph, place 0 on top with an indicator (red line).
Fixed unstable size when resizing the "Profile spline" dialog, pure vertical resize is disabled.
Show the axis start point and tangent in the preview window (it could already be edited in the 3D filter as well).
Fix branch cut in the preview window to not change the axis.
Moved some segments parameters into meshing group. Added a new group for numerical options (options that affect the way geometric computations are done).
Fix unexpected segment length modification when manually moving a segment. The segment length stays constant (as is the case when you edit the axis parameter from the node).
Fixed display of plant size ruler text on high resolution screens. .
Fixed potential incorrect preview when export as VUE species.
Disable multi-material baking export option for generic uv. It is not supported.
Avoided useless invalidation if mesh does not interact with plant.
Fixed missing discarded transitions.
Improved preset preview edition.
Renamed displacement to radial displacement for better understanding.
Fixed node parameter multi edition.
Improved preview reactivity when lots of bones.
Fixed icon for random parameter not visible.
Removed selector when opening OS browser from scene/species browser.
Fixed multi edition of Boolean parameter defined as frame.
Custom atmospheric wind settings are stored in .tpfp files.
Fixed missing invalidation when a mesh object is selected.
Fixed crash on loading a few PlantCatalog species.
Renamed preview option "Clip plant underground" to "Show plant underground" to reflect behavior.
INTEGRATION AND EXPORT
[NEW] Added the ability to bake the Reflection channel for non-PBR materials (also available in the Convert Tool in plugins).
[NEW] Improved TPF plant export using material baking.
[NEW] Animated wind is taken into account when exporting TPF plant animation.
[NEW] Improved FBX import/export.
[NEW] Added transparency support in C4D export.
[NEW] Added back side baking of two-sided materials when exporting without duplicated faces.
[NEW] Added an option in USD export to use submeshes instead of GeomSubSet (to handle multi material meshes).
[NEW] Added option to export one mesh per primitive.
Fixed export of multipass render as PSD: extra components were always saved as linear whereas other color-like channels were gamma encoded. Now all components that can have gamma are encoded with the export gamma (see gamma options).
Fixed broken transition normal map in Leaf cluster, billboard export and baked map export.
In the Export Options, the "occlusion treatment" option is now located just below the "ambient occlusion" checkbox.
Fixed a bug when writing a TIFF animation with alpha or depth channel bit per pixel different from the color channel BPP.
USD can now export to omniverse:// files and take advantage of omniverse live sync.
USD export now exports color Space.
Fixed C4D export.
Improved error message when impossible to write an exported image because of image encoding.
Fixed some issues in the handling of Unicode characters in LWO and OBJ modules.
Store last user choice regarding Nuke import options in environment.
Fixed missing material file (.mtl) when exporting only billboards in OBJ format.
Fixed wrong value of the displacement depth (displayed as "height" in Cinema 4D) in Cinema 4D export preset.
Export the displacement depth in FBX files (even though it's ignored in most of applications).
Added an option to bake the displacement in the exported geometry (previously, it was automatically the case when the displacement channel was not selected in texture map options).
Improved detection of inverted normals upon import.
Fixed the handling of empty file paths in MTL files, in OBJ import (they were leading to confusing error messages).
Fixed the handling of Unicode characters in the reading of ZBrush files (.goz).
Fixed a memory leak when importing a FBX or Alembic file containing instantiated objects.
Fixed a potential memory leak when exporting a large mesh in 3DS format.
Fixed the export of displacement mapping (as a baked texture) when the displacement function is connected to a texture map with mip-mapping enabled.
Fixed the import of displacement map in OBJ format (was interpreted as 100% transparent material...).
DENOISER
[NEW] Updated Intel Open Image Denoise from version 1.2.0 to 1.3.0: improved denoising quality (improved sharpness of fine details / less blurriness, fewer noisy artifacts), slightly improved performance and lowered memory consumption, bug fixes and speed improvement for recent processors.
[NEW] Updated Intel Open Image Denoise from version 1.3.0 to 1.4.0: improved fine detail preservation, reduced denoising memory consumption by about 35%.
[NEW] Updated NVIDIA Optix denoiser from version 7.0 to 7.2: improved denoising quality and lowered GPU memory consumption. NVIDIA driver 455 is needed.
[NEW] Added AMD Radeon Image Filter Denoiser version 1.7.0. Any hardware OpenCL, DirectX12 or Metal compatible should be able to run it (except on Apple ARM).
[NEW] Added a Denoiser Strength setting to modulate denoising process, which is available in PathTracer Options Dialog.
MATERIALS
[NEW] Added support of Normal mapping "Link intensity to object scale" option on TPF plant.
[NEW] Added specific tab for clearcoat settings.
[NEW] Added automatic connection with substance clearcoat outputs.
[NEW] Added Normal Map Intensity and Flatten parameters.
Fixed Alpha output being connected to Projected Map's "Grayscale" output even when an actual alpha channel is present in the selected picture when switching to "Mapped picture" mode in the Alpha tab of the Material Editor.
PERFORMANCE AND STABILITY
[NEW] Improved the speed of EcoSystem painting.
[NEW] Improved performance on plant with lots of primitives.
Cleanup previous temporary directories in a background thread to avoid delaying the application start.
Fixed graph related code with exponential behavior, affecting graphs with heavy combinatorics (lots of nodes with lots of interconnected data).
Improved speed of the thumbnail provider (for Windows explorer).
Improved loading time of compressed scenes containing a lot of plant EcoSystem populations (requires saving the scene in 2021.2 first). Up to 5x faster in some cases.
Fixed a very slow file saving (in the context of some old files).
Fixed a crash when the browser explores directories with some "permission denied" folders.
Fix random failures when trying to open the CrashSender after a crash on macOS.
Fixed potential crash while exit with interactive path tracer activated.
Fixed a potential crash in 3DS Max plugins when executing wrong MAXScript commands internally.
Fixed a potential crash related to displacement mapping, when the subdivision of an object is interrupted in the middle (for a material using uniform subdivision). This could happen with the scene preview, typically.
Fixed a potential memory corruption when rendering with the Path Tracer in the active camera view (problem occurring only with certain values of height).
Fixed potential crash while playing wind animation.
PLUGINS
[NEW] Added the possibility to include displacement map in native shaders instead of baking displacement on geometry.
[NEW] Implemented the conversion of materials to RenderMan shaders (PxrSurface).
[NEW] [RenderMan] Added handling of two-sided materials.
[NEW] Added support for Unreal Engine 4.24 to 4.27.
[NEW] PlantFactory plugins now support Cinema 4D R25.
[NEW] Added the ability to convert PlantFactory species for the Redshift renderer in C4D and Maya.
[NEW] The option to use Redshift sprite nodes is now accessible (like in the VUE Convert Tool).
fixed the conversion of plants with the "animated points" setting (some models had only small parts of their geometry animated).
Fixed bone animation in Maya.
Avoided the potential duplication of the PlantFactory menu in 3ds Max.
Fixed the installation that added a dependency to an inexistant TPF plugin for V-Ray in 3ds Max 2022.
Added automatic instantiation of exported assets.
Propagate bump depth property from original material to native material when we bake material maps.
Added conversion of Bump for Cinema 4D's Standard Renderer.
In the plugin for Cinema 4D, added the ability to convert plants to Cinema 4D objects with bones (static or animated) or animated points.
DISPLAY
[NEW] TPF can now preview displacement using parallax mapping.
Fixed display of bump (incorrect shadow direction at 90 deg of light source).
Fixed display of bump (very weak effect compared to an equivalent normal map).
Fixed wrong wind preview on leaves.
GEOMETRY
[NEW] Fixed a crash with using mesh objects with both triangles and quads, when the double-sided option is used, and when the plant meshing mode is set to triangle.
[NEW] Added a new child count mode in segment. The new "Per length unit" option allows to have child position fixed on segment when segment length changed.
[NEW] Added new "per ancestor" random dependency.
[NEW] Added "Inherit scale" parameter in Flower node.
[NEW] Added new UV mapping mode for blade.
[NEW] Added "bottom of segment" child parameter.
[NEW] Improved blending with top branch.
[NEW] Added new UV mapping mode in segment.
[NEW] Added bottom cap parameters.
[NEW] Added new branch blending parameter: post blending offset (An offset that is applied after the blending).
[NEW] Added new branch blending parameter: Ignore displacement (Blends on a non-displaced parent geometry).
[NEW] Reduced possible mesh folds and divergence with blending.
[NEW] Added new child positioning method: Automatic transition. Sets the child branch bottom cap inside its parent.
[NEW] Added new branch blending parameter: Bending force. Controls the bending of the axis in the blending zone towards its parent in order to reduce its angle with it.
[NEW] Added new branch orientation parameter: Min. angle with parent (applies a minimum 'final' angle between the parent and the child taking all biases, influences, tropisms, etc. into account).
[NEW] [Flower node] Added an option to blend the normals and the displacement into the "plug" cylinder, it is on by default.
[NEW] Added new parameters to prevent auto folding of the surface of segments with very noisy axis. The "Prevent folds" parameter, with value 1, prevents excessive rotation of the axis and spreads the remaining rotation further away on the axis. The "Offset to inner" parameter allows to shift the mesh sections to the inner side of the local axis curvature. It allows to reduce hard edges that can occur when the segment radius changes at the same time as the axis direction.
[NEW] The segment length is now constant when using "axis perturbation". That is more consistent with other segment modifiers, like the influences, that all keep the segment length constant.
[NEW] Added a new parameter in "Axis perturbation". The "Smooth start" parameter allows to keep the segment axis the original direction and to smoothly transition to the "perturbed" axis.
Tweak the normals at the base of the flower when the "plug radius" is not zero, for a better visual transition with the parent segment.
Support for Z scale for crossed planes billboards.
Fixed wind on segment with imported skin.
Fixed unsupported orange filter when making primitive parameter unique.
Fixed parametric position on segment.
Fixed Hydra child orientation.
Fixed child branch horizontropism mirroring branches on coil with some angle/rotation special cases.
Fixed bad behavior on blending with a branch cut in the blending zone (in the child width range).
Fixed bending of segments with zero radius.
LEAF CLUSTER
[NEW] Added Backface rendering.
Fixed bad hook point placement in generated component.
PYTHON
[NEW] Added 2 options to the ExportAsVueSpecies function: incorporation of dependencies and compression.
Added 2 options to the ExportAsVueSpecies function: incorporation of dependencies and compression.
DISPLACEMENT
Fixed Color To Vector used for displacement on vegetation .
Outwards-only option can now be set independently on each material layer.
Fixed custom direction (horizontal, vertical, or defined through graph) potentially lost upon baking or Path Tracing.
Fixed potential artefacts (wrong shadows) in displacement using uniform subdivision when depth is high.
Fixed potentially wrong shadows when the displacement amplitude is high, with dynamic subdivision only.
Fixed option "Affect material distribution" applied to all material layers for no reason.
Fixed mesh holes with material displacement between the branch and its bottom cap.
ANIMATION
Fixed a memory leak in MPEG1 and MPEG2 animation saving and repaired the options dialog from those formats on Windows.
[NEW] New Cinema4D Importer plugin Technology Preview, with support of Standard, Arnold and Vray material conversions.
[NEW] Converted materials now have the same name as in the TPF plants (non-ascii characters are replaced by "_" at the moment to avoid any bug. They will be enabled in the next version).
[NEW] Menu commands to edit and convert plants now work even if no plant is selected (it forces the selection of the first plant in the scene).
[Maya] Fixed a crash when editing plants and if the selected renderer was Arnold or V-Ray.
[Maya] Removed an orange overlay on some faces of plants after editing them.
Materials and their graphs are now re-used when editing a plant, instead of being replaced by new ones.
Avoided useless update of the plant when closing the plant editor.
Simplified the assignation of materials (which can make the update of heavy meshes faster).
Export texture maps to human-friendly paths, so that the user can edit the exported maps afterwards more easily.
Removed the slider controlling the resolution of the mesh of the exported plant. It should now be controlled either with the "global mesh resolution" published parameter (for plants having it, like those of the Plant Catalog), or with the Refine/Simplify buttons in the Plant Editor (for other plants without a resolution parameter).
Fixed crash when opening the plant editor.
[3dsMax] Fixed a crash when editing plants and if the selected renderer was ART or Scanline.
Fixed images not copied to given convert folder.
Fixed a crash when converting a plant with animation a second time, if the first conversion was aborted.
In the Convert Tool Options, the "Converted maps directory" is now correctly saved and reloaded when re-opening the dialog.
INTEGRATION AND EXPORT
[NEW] New USD export format: supports animated bones, point level animation, PBR material. Export as USDA, USDC or USDZ.
[NEW] Improved handling of highlight.
[NEW] Added double sided delta to move the vertices in case of double sided material ( to avoid Z-fighting ).
[NEW] Added highlight map to bake to texture options.
[NEW] Added a warning when exporting TPF plants with baked texture mode while plant contains node with disabled baking option.
[NEW] Added option to duplicate two-sided material face only.
[NEW] Added two-sided material support in C4D export.
[NEW] Fixed orientation of faces and normals in c4d export.
[NEW] Export back material textures of two-sided materials even if 3D format does not support two-sided materials.
[NEW] Change back orientation handling of C4d plugin ("good export" is XZY).
[NEW] Baking : Unwrap segments as cylinders, it makes less artefacts.
[NEW] Two-sided materials are correctly baked when using duplicated polygon option.
Fixed Animation UI not being refreshed.
Corrected export of baked texture maps color extension to be more gamma correct.
[Ptex] Upgrade library to version 2.3.2 (minor upgrade).
Fixed reset export options between two exports.
Fixed autogrowth export with mixed quad/triangle meshing.
when loading a preset in export dialog, do not override settings that are not disabled (typically, we used to switch baked maps to JPEG).
Fixed potential crash when exporting point level animated plant twice.
Detect flipped vertex normals upon import, and propose to fix them.
Fixed branch not being able to be baked.
Fixed Ambient Occlusion being exported with gamma encoding instead of linear.
Fixed billboard Ambient Occlusion export.
Improved material baking of blades.
Fixed two-sided material baking of flower node.
Blender preset extract alpha by default.
Fixed the baking of Ambient Occlusion with Generic UVs (were 100% white).
Fixed invalid library dependencies on macOS.
Avoid repeating the question about dubious vertex normals: instead, apply the same choice for all meshes in the imported file.
Fixed potential failure of Alembic export when exporting an EcoSystem with different species.
LEAF CLUSTER
[NEW] Export plant as textures to be used in a leaf node.
[NEW] Generate a component to be loaded directly in your graph.
[NEW] AO export is computed by the render.
[NEW] Added RT preview for exported file.
[NEW] Component import ungroups automatically node when loading leaf cluster.
[NEW] Added Texture Padding option.
[NEW] Added input to component import.
[NEW] Added correct hook point exported component node.
GEOMETRY
[NEW] Added 3D Displacement parameter in Segment node.
Fixed wrong child when inherited scale is 0.
Improved discarded top transition for no good reason.
Fixed normal computation of blade in manual mode.
Fixed imported object skinned segment with MixedQuadTriangle mode.
Fixed double sided on imported skin segment.
MATERIALS
[NEW] Added option to define displacement depth with real dimensions:
use the small icon beside the Depth slider to toggle the option.
Warning: this is not only a display question: the displacement will actually be computed differently if your objects uses a non-uniform scaling, or if the edited material is used by more than 1 object.
Limitation: if several instances use the same material and have different scales, the depth will be computed only once for all instances (for obvious performance reasons).
[NEW] PBR: it is now possible to edit the "Origin of material" and "Global transformation" for PBR materials, in the effect tab of the material editor.
[NEW] Enable PBR Workflow and Emissive to Luminous converter nodes image mapping without a Substance node (for texture display in OpenGL and interactive path tracer views).
[NEW] Set linear gamma for maps that require it when loading it from inside the material graph.
[NEW] Automatically use the right mipmap computation depending on whether an image is color or data (avoids problems when the gamma is not set correctly on data image).
[NEW] Indicator for geometric map transfos in material editor, and display the size taking into account the map rotation. Display the original size in the gamma dialog.
[NEW] Added "Extend" texture clipping mode (also called ClampToEdge) that uses the value from the nearest pixel when UVs are outside of the texture. Note it is not yet fully supported for plugins/export.
Corrected modified image detection for "incorporated and synchronized" images (changes done after the scene save were not detected).
Preview of ambient occlusion for classic materials in TPF/LRT to match VUE render. Also made the ambient occlusion tab visible in the advanced material editor.
Improved support of custom graph for normal mapping.
Material scale is correctly taken into account for preview.
Use recognized file tags to avoid asking data type and check connection in material graph.
Fixed possible random gamma assignment to content objects.
Fixed broken color inversion in render.
Fixed interpolation artefacts that occurred mostly with rotated/flipped images.
Fixed incoherent shading in case of dynamic subdivision, when the displacement depth becomes high.
RENDERING
[NEW] During offline render, incremental denoised renders are displayed. One can switch between noised and denoised displays in Render Display.
[NEW] Replaced OpenCL device type selection in PathTracer Option dialog by OpenCL single device selector (showing device type CPU/GPU and device name).
[NEW] [Denoiser/NVIDIA] Improved feedback when graphic card is too old to support NVIDIA Denoiser (need Maxwel architecture or newer).
[NEW] Optimized rendering of "user defined" leaves.
Avoided out-of-memory error for denoiser with Interactive PathTracer when resizing the view.
Better computation of mipmaps regarding opacity and gamma correction.
Fixed old render bug that incorrectly inverted mesh normals (symptom was very visible badly lighten triangles).
[PathTracer] Improved OpenCL error reporting.
Denoiser were sometimes disabled when switching back to RayTracer render settings.
PERFORMANCE AND STABILITY
[NEW] Implemented compression in .tpf format (option was ignored previously, when saving species).
[NEW] [Imagery/Operations/Conversions] Speed up image operations (parallelize).
[NEW] Reduced texture conversion time (scene to PathTracer) by 70%.
[NEW] Improved generation time with complex plants (25% less time on a test plant with about 1.5M primitives).
Fixed a crash related to node selection.
Fixed crash when creating new scenes several times.
Fixed loading of greyscale 32f images from scenes.
Fixed crash when using rectangular maps with rotations and flips.
Fixed (rare) possibility of crash in graph handling.
Fixed potential crash while editing transition (in extreme cases).
SUBSTANCE
[NEW] Use of GPU engine to speed up .sbsar texture rendering, especially for large sizes (1024 pixels x 1024 pixels and above). It can be disabled in General Options panel.
[NEW] Display the .sbsar parameters which affect the connected output in material editor tabs (this may not work if other nodes are connected in between the Substance node and the graph output).
[NEW] Handle new .sbsar input position type (v8 engine) as regular 2-dimensional number type.
[NEW] Made sliders stick to integer values upon release for .sbsar 2, 3 and 4-dimensional integer inputs.
Fix crashes at render (introduced since rotate/flip output textures ability).
Fixed bad handling of 16-bit integer encoded .sbsar outputs (notably fixes ambient occlusion with path tracer).
Fixed crash when tweaking intensity sliders over Substance widgets in material editor tabs.
Hide Invert checkbox in material editor Normal tab when map comes from a Substance.
Remove gamma selection for .sbsar image inputs.
Fixed handling of 16-bit integer and 32-bit float encoded images in .sbsar image inputs.
Fixed material editor published parameters tab not updating other tabs and material for parameters published from Substance nodes or constant nodes connected to Substance node parameter inputs.
Fixed inverted red and blue values in processing of 16-bit integer and 32-bit float encoded images for .sbsar image inputs with CPU engine.
Fixed 2 and 3-dimensional number .sbsar inputs displayed with slider widgets when no boundaries are defined for value.
Fixed preset not changing to Custom when a parameter input is changed.
Fixed crashes and glitches on .sbsar preview map in widget.
Removed the black border on previews in the material browser, to be like any other preview.
Do not display slider when min and max values are the same for .sbsar integer and float inputs.
Fixed normal map by automatically selecting OpenGL normal format if available when loading a .sbsar preset.
UI/UX
[NEW] GRAPH: Added "Position in distribution" parameter in Parent node.
[NEW] Allow picture type modification in the dialogue accessible from the gamma icon.
[NEW] New option flag in the "Operations" tab to disable cursor warping by some UI widgets hiding the cursor (notably up/down buttons next to Edit fields). This fixes huge increments with Wacom as well as over KVM-like software (synergy/barrier, maybe TeamViewer or even inside VMs?).
[NEW] GRAPH Added RGB composer and decomposer nodes.
[NEW] GRAPH Added normal input node.
[NEW] Improved UX for PBR material edition.
[NEW] Faster browser display of preview.
[NEW] GRAPH Modified radius evaluation so that "min radius" is not affected by "radius reduction" of pruning options. The radius will only be reduced up to the min radius value.
[NEW] [EditFields] allow field editor dialog larger than underlying field.
[NEW] Improved support of Ambient Occlusion in preview.
Made the default "imported elements" dialog bigger.
Handle DPI change between monitors for Sun and Force gizmos of the preview.
Handle DPI change in 2D filter editor (when moving the dialog between monitors).
Automatically enable the fast draw mode for all interactions in the 2D filter editor when the display takes more than 150ms. Can be configured with the environment variable EON_FILTER2D_FINE_DRAW_MAX_MS if needed (value in milliseconds).
For incorporated synchronized images, display which images are to be reloaded when we detect file changes.
Corrected banding artifacts in picture preview.
Fixed crash in render stack when displaying images with extreme aspect ratio.
Display alpha using checker pattern as background in texture previews, so that it is not mismatched for black.
[Material Preview] Fixed menu allowing to change the preview size: no capitalization on unit (m, cm, km...).
Fixed nodes not being updated in Function Graph tab when changes are made in Advanced Material Editor tab.
GRAPH Fixed issue when selecting nodes with shift click.
[UpDownButtons] Fixed huge increments with Wacom as well as over KVM-like software (synergy/barrier, maybe TeamViewer or even inside VMs?). Added a configuration flag to allow manual override (may add an option in Preferences later if relevant).
PATHTRACER Replaced OpenCL device type selection in PathTracer Option dialog by OpenCL single device selector.
Fixed preset tab display.
Fixed wind widget.
Fixed potential plant not updated while editing age, season or health.
Fixed missing material summary refresh when painting component.
fixed losing scrollbar when minimizing/maximizing.
Improved custom variance edition.
Fixed popup menu not selecting the right type when asking for image type when loading images from inside the material graph editor.
[RenderDisplay] Fixed UI glich when accessing previous render done with denoiser.
Fixed export dialog going outside the screen.
GRAPH Fixed potential broken graph layout when ungrouping metanode.
Fixed autogrowth manual subdivision edition.
Fixed hidpi display of category icons (when creating new category).
Stricter file tag match, do not match _Bump in _BumpThing.
Fixed potential crash using invert green in image widget ( on normals ) in material editor.
Improved reactivity of published parameter UI.
PATHTRACER Improved the name of AMD board in PathTracer Render Options OpenCL device selection.
UI/UX [macOS] Fixed UI freezes during the display of the standalone progress bar when loading a file directly from the Welcome panel.
Removed incompatible options from Animation Options panel (network rendering, OpenGL).
Don't ask about viewport configuration when the result is identical to current configuration.
Fixed displayed polygon count.
Fixed visual glitch when changing zoom in Material Summary.
Fixed potential crash while editing metanode.
Fixed flower node displacement from "position".
Better default flower node displacement (that gives a zero displacement).
MISC.
[NEW] Added support for the new macOS 11 version (on Intel chipsets only!), with one known limitation: HiDPI only supported on multiple screen setups if all monitors are HiDPI (hybrid multi-screen setup isn't supported yet).
Added "non fatal" error reporting to scene read, for some data loss we can recover from.
[INSTALLATION] Stop update process when we cannot create back folder.
[MACOS] Direct support of older macOS versions (10.10 Yosemite and 10.11 ElCapitan) without patching libpython38.dylib.
Fixed CrashSender unable to find macOS crash file (at least on Catalina).
Fixed the saving of multi-layer EXR when masks are checked in Multi-Pass options.
[NEW] [MacOS] Added Integration plugin for Maya 2020
INTEGRATION AND EXPORT
[NEW] Keep original picture gamma after automatic reloading.
Add missing picture type info when auto loading side channels.
[Images] Fixed crashes when reading 4bits-per-pixel grayscale PNGs.
[Images] Fixed reading PNGs with a palette and a transparency chunk.
[Images] When loading content or scenes referencing missing pictures, the folders selected by the user for the first(s) missing pictures should be used as hints for the next ones, to speed up the process, but instead in X1R3 it kept asking again and again, and since X1R4 it would even silently fail to load missing pictures without any warning to the user!
MISC.
[STABILITY] Fixed unexplained crashes when using zBrush bridge with bake texture maps activated.
[MISC] [curl] Upgrade to version 7.70 (from 7.68).
[MISC] [CrashSender/macOS] Wait up to 3 minutes (instead of 1) for the crash data to be generated as long waiting times have been witnessed and most crash reports thus seem to be lost on MacOS.
[INSTALLATION] Fixed installation and upgrade on some filesystems where trying to change file ownership is an error, like Apple's network storage protocol used on some NAS.
[NEW] PlantFactory Integration plugins now support Arnold & Vray next in Maya and 3ds Max
[NEW] Added Animation point export
[NEW] Automatic load of point cache in Maya plugin.
[NEW] Automatically convert materials to Arnold native materials.
[NEW] Maya 2019 TPF importer plugin for Mac
[NEW] Maya 2020 TPF importer plugin for Windows
Removed DDS compression for performances.
Removed resolution options in veg editor.
Fixed the estimation of the polygon count when exporting plants (was always 0).
Fixed a crash when loading some plants (could happen with Melia azedarach LD).
Disabled the instant feedback when typing in numerical fields (gives an impression of slowness and updates the geometry with unwanted values when typing the digits of numbers).
The plant is now instantly updated when changing its seed (the editor had to be closed to see the change).
UI/UX
[NEW] PlantFactory Integration plugins now support Arnold & Vray next in Maya and 3ds Max
[NEW] Correct display of PBR leaves: take into account the intensity slider when there is a map, take into account the AO map.
[NEW] Enabled preview of PBR materials with a new background that looks more like the one of the VUE render.
[NEW] Added a "show checker" option for the preview ground (mainly to better see mirror like materials).
[NEW] Added a Skybox options to select skybox type in preview.
[NEW] Corrected highlight map preview to work with the PBR display and take into account highlight filters.
[NEW] Minimum directional light can be set to zero using the mouse wheel on the light gizmo, as we have a secondary lighting with IBL.
[NEW] Preview window has a simple sky model and checker ground with settable colors (allows better view of reflective materials)
Corrected backlight intensity to respect the 0, removed extra ambient.
Fixed disabled shift click to multi select nodes in the graph.
Update the seasonal window when enabling seasonal parameters.
Fixed "Add new material" option in Material Summary.
Fixed "Export map" in basic material editor.
More natural order for left and right rotate icons in material editors.
Fixed section spline edition.
Display the urchin profile as a revolution surface.
Correct section editor event handling (mouse motion not going to right place when rotating the 3D view of the segment section).
Fixed insertion of section in section editor (inserted section was not the selected one), refresh after section suppression.
Allow interface scaling using EON_INTERFACE_SCALING system environment variable (default value is 1, you can use decimal values and the recommended range is 0.5 to 2).
Fixed strange dpi issue on main window.
Improved interface for Natural Film Response filters.
Fixed JPEG options window being closed as soon as we click the quality edit field.
Fixed the display of image sequence paths (Material or Function Editor) when the sequence was incorporated in file.
When resetting options to default, also reset the default viewport configuration and restore disabled messages.
Fixed confusing progression title when exporting only materials or 2D heightmap.
[Menu/Online Help] Added menu entries for online help (technical support, sales support, FAQ) - VUE and PlantFactory.
Use orthographic billboards in VUE for EcoSystem billboard display.
When using different x and y size in "export billboard" dialog, let the top view stay square so that the sizes of the 3 exported billboards are matching (front width equal to top width, right width equal to top height).
[Material Editor] Fixed inconsistent angles displayed for slope range (environment influence tab).
DISPLACEMENT
[NEW] Allow changing the subdivision strategy (no subdivision / uniform / dynamic).
[NEW] Avoid losing displacement whenever one adds a material layer: new option "add to underlying displacement" added to displacement Tab.
[Multi-layer material] Fixed altitude influence in per-object mode when the full range of altitude should be covered (due to displacement, the top and bottom were cut).
Avoid clamping the displacement function. Therefore removed the displacement extension options.
GEOMETRY
[NEW] Added UV parameters in Urchin Node.
[NEW] Added Displacement parameters in Urchin Node.
[NEW] Added possibility to deform crossed planes leaves, same as simple leaves.
Fixed manual meshing parameter for secondary cap.
Optimization in Segment node.
Fixed potential crash using Grow on object.
Improved wind support on urchin.
Fixed potential glitch with "Grow on object".
Corrected subdivision number for small segment radius in manual quad mode, with "by unit length" subdivision parameter.
Fixed UV mapping on blades with "UV extension" ON and "parametric" OFF.
GRAPH
Allow use of vegetation nodes inside any plant graph MetaNodes .
Fixed potential crash when creating MetaNode in plant graph.
Fixed minimum subdivisions use on lower LODs and possible variable minimum (with filter on segments in manual triangle mode).
Fixed transparency that could potentially be used in place of displacement.
Remove a node from the current selection is now possible.
Improved color node handles in graph.
Fixed issued with editing published parameter of MetaNode.
Improved automatic naming of MetaNode inputs and outputs.
INSTALLATION
[NEW] Allow sharing the same PlantCatalog folder for both VUE and PlantFactory.
Improved the error messages, by providing more relevant information whenever possible.
[Uninstall] avoid cleaning the renderstack without informing the user.
INTEGRATION AND EXPORT
[NEW] The export as billboard texture maps are named following the content of the "File tag" dialog in the options
[NEW] Added names to ABC export face sets and stopped splitting the mesh by materials.
[NEW] Added PBR channel when exporting billboards.
[NEW] [Images] Support more picture formats: JPEG2000, Terragen Terrain file support is back, ESRI EHdr (BIL), all TIFF options (e.g. Deflate, unusual color coding like CMYK, 16- and 32bits per component Gray and RGB(A) pixels), extra-large TIFF (> 2GB of uncompressed data), some additional options for other formats (e.g. CMYK coding in JPEG files).
[NEW] [OBJ/MTL] support 'newmap' and 'usemap' keywords when parsing OBJ & MTL files where texture maps are specified using this apparently older-style method (e.g. some xFrogs plants).
Corrected useless points that were exported when using segment placed on top of each other, when geometry blending was enabled.
Fixed normals not computed on import for FBX file format.
Fixed imported quad mesh being triangulated when importing an FBX file.
Corrected export of seasonal materials to LRT, when the color and alpha are using the same picture file.
Fixed possible crash on export dialog (by pressing the export button multiple times).
Fixed mesh name when export as VUE mesh.
Added support of billboard leaves when export as VUE Mesh.
[LWO] Fix invalid (and useless) transparency channel + work around invalid normal map "auto-detection" on some legacy formats that don't support them (OBJ, LWO, DAE, COB, 3DS).
Corrected standardization of view directions (export front / right / top view with reference to standard VUE frame, previously exported back view).
The export dialog does not reset anymore the "alpha treatment" option each time it is opened. It keeps what was set by the user, like the other options.
Avoid truncating long export names when not needed (ie all exports but 3DS).
Fixed unused vertices when exporting plant with top transition.
MATERIALS
[NEW] Added seasonal PBR materials for billboards, the seasonal channels depend on the base material type (start from a PBR material to have the PBR seasonal channels).
[NEW] Enhanced automatic loading of material channels from a single filename for seasonal materials
[NEW] Added a configuration dialog for automatic loading of seasonal channels. Open it at the bottom of the editor.
[NEW] Automatic loading of material channels from a single filename by looking for files with the same name but with configurable tags.
[NEW] Reworked the export naming of texture maps to use the file tags: the first tag of each channel is used to name the corresponding texture map. Additionally the export as billboard now names the exported maps as X[_front/_side/_top][_alpha/_normal/...].png where X is the tpf file name.
Also remove alpha when removing RGBA color file from seasonal material editor.
Warn that we cannot invert alpha of RGBA picture in seasonal material editor.
MISC.
When an internal error occurs, display the internal code in a field allowing copy-paste.
PATH TRACER
[NEW] Added Intel Open-Source Image Denoiser 1.2.0 and NVIDIA OptiX Denoisers to denoise Interactive and offline Path Tracer renders. NVIDIA Optix (if available) or Intel denoiser are enabled when reading old (pre-R5) scene or creating new one.
