Changes from Beta Build 0.9.4 to 0.9.6 (as of January 4rd, 2007)
HISTORY ROLLOUT
• Added Delete Preset/Thumbnail buttons with the option to delete both preset+thumbnail, just thumbnail or cancel.
• Added red cross to the no thumbnail/deleted thumbnail bitmaps.
• When a thumbnail was stored but later deleted, its stand-in bitmap will be darker gray than for "no thumbnail" stand-ins.
• History Thumbnail saved only when rendering, not when saving particles to disk.
• Added indexed sorting by file creation date for History and Presets and also for Load and Save dialogs.
• Added Thinking and PrtLoaders to scene info,
• Added an internal exclusion list for controls (all Deadline controls are now excluded from presets/ history)
• Added Frame Render Time / Frame Save Time value saving in the Scene Info of history records. This will give you an idea how fast/slow the rendering was with the given settings.
• Compressed the rollout controls a bit and increased the size of the Scene Info lists to show more lines incl. the Frame Time.
MAIN CONTROLS ROLLOUT
• Added checkbuttons for Particle types to Render/Save - Pflow Geometry, Legacy Particles, Thinking Particles and Particle Loaders will be checked by default.
• Added preset buttons for MBlur Bias
• Moved saving to Main Rollout, removed file loading option
• Added Specular Shading switch, Specular Level and Glossiness controls (currently for Vertex Particles only)
• When switching to and from Blended Z Depth and Blended Camera Distance color modes, a prompt will inform the user of the defaults for Use Lighting and Post-Divide by Alpha and let him accept or reject the changes. If the settings are already correct, no prompt will be issued. This respects the Volumetric Density vs. Additve Density settings, so Lighting will be suggested as ON only when Volumetric is used.
• Typing in a new path in the Save path field will suggest creating the path if it does not exist yet. .PRT extension and a trailing underscore will be added automatically.
PARTICLE LOADERS
• Implemented new KrakatoaPrtLoader GeometryClass plugin as stand-in for loading PRT and BIN files and binding to scene nodes.\
• Added Particle Loaders rollout to Scripted GUI
• Added lots of callbacks for Particle Loader display incl. select, rename, create, delete, undo and parameter changes.
• Added Selection, Visibility and Mode controls for selected loaders in the Particle Loaders rollout.
• Added Create New Loader button which automatically prompts with file sequence loading dialog.
• The Particle Loader currently has the following features:
• Turn on and off display of particles in the viewport
• Control the percentage of particles to be displayed in the viewport
• Display either every Nth particle (even distribution) or first N (read from beginning).
• Limit the max. number of particles to be displayed in the viewport with an option to toggle the limit on and off
• Display particles either with their saved colors, with the loader's wireframe color, or with the loader's material (self.illum. channel including maps)
• Same controls for Rendering, with the option to use the Viewport loading mode and color display mode for Rendering
• The file list can contain an arbitrary number of file sequences.
• The files can be loaded as sequences with optional time offset, or as a single frame based on the file name.
• The particles can be either attached to the node's transformations (allowing PRS keyframing), or placed where they were saved.
• The Particle Loader can display an optional Krakatoa logo with user-defined size in the viewport.