We hope this is the FINAL final Release Candidate.
Unless you find a severe issue we have missed, it is supposed to ship on Monday, June 2nd, 2014.
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[size=150]New Features[/size]
- Exposed all internal channels of Stoke Particle Simulator (except for Position) as checkboxes in the channel list. Unchecking the checkbox will cause the channel to not be saved to the PRT file sequence. The channels will still be allocated internally during simulation. If the Disk Cache is reloaded, or the scene is reloaded, the Stoke particle data will not have these channels anymore. This allows you to save PRT files with less than the previously hard-coded layout containing ID, Velocity, Age and LifeSpan in cases where you don’t need that data.
- Also added the ability to control the bit depth of all Float and Vector channels when saving to PRT. By default all channels except for Position will be now 16 bit (down from the previously hard-coded 32 bit), to conserve disk space. ID channel will always be 64 bit, and all other Integer channels will be 32 bit and cannot be changed. To adjust the channel format, use the right-click menu over the channels list.
- Added a new optional channel called NormalizedAge which is set to the result of Age divided by LifeSpan. It can be used in place of these two channels to once again conserve disk space while providing similar control over deleting particles or other time-based Magma operations. Note that the button for adding a Select By Age and Delete by Age modifiers to the stack has been changed to show a menu with two options - one to create the old Age+LifeSpan Magma flow, the other to create the new NormalizedAge flow. You can use either one depending on what channels you have simulated. The new flow already exposes a value to tweak the life of the particles from the command panel.
- Added support for Float channels as Color source in Stoke Field Simulator, Stoke Field Magma, Stoke Field Display, Stoke Field Loader, and Stoke Particle Simulator.
[size=150]Improvements To Existing Features[/size]
- The CurrentMesh input node in Genome will now update the kd-tree acceleration structures for mesh lookups between iterations, allowing for iterative mesh adjustments.
- The Distribution Source list now exposes even more Mesh-related channels which were not available in Stoke 1.x.
- Added a Pick Button to the Stoke Atmospheric UI. Previously, Fields could be added only from a Select By Name dialog.
- Added an error message popup when the picked Deadline partitioning path is not a network path. Previously, it silently refused to accept the path.
[size=150]Bug Fixes[/size]
- Fixed a Stoke Particle Simulator MAXScript error when a PRT Loader is missing frame 0 and a Field is created from it.
- Fixed the Reduction Preset update in Field Simulator which was not updating the spinner (although the value was being set internally)