テンプレート:Release Notes/2.46/Misc

Matt Ebb

Added selection by similar edge seams and sharpness to the "Select Similar" menu (Shift G). Also did some tweaking in there to make the menu a bit more sensible.

Added Menu entries for Object Mode Show/Hide hotkeys

When saving render result images from the image editor with image->save as, default to the scene image type settings (just like with F3: save rendered image).

Multilayer is still available in the list but most of the time, it's not what you want by default. Too many times I've saved out a render and frustratingly ended up with a huge 'filename.png.exr'.

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• Raised hardcoded limit for curve 'extrude' from 5 to 100.

• New feature on compo scale node: "Scene Size %"

This option sets the relative scaling factor to the amount set in the scene "100%/75%/50%/25%" buttons. It's useful when you've got a fixed background image, and want to do preview renders at a lesser percentage, so you don't have to go and change the scale node each time you change the %.

Also removed unnecessary use of a global from texture node.

• Menu entry for relax pose

Shader nodes

• Geometry node: Front/back output

This is used as a mask for determining whether you're looking at the front side or back side of a mesh, useful for blending materials, my practical need was giving different materials to the pages of a magazine: http://mke3.net/blender/etc/frontback-h264.mov

Give 1.0 if it's the front side, and 0.0 if it's the back side.

• Extended material node

This is the same as the material node, but gives more available inputs and outputs, (basically just connecting up more of ShadeInput and ShadeResult to the node). I didn't want to add it to the normal simple Material node since you don't always need all that stuff, and it would make the node huge, but when you do need it, it's nice to have it.

Comp nodes

1. Invert node - Inverting is something that happens all the time in a node setup, and this makes it easier. It's been possible to invert previously by adding a mix node and subtracting the input from 1.0, but it's not the best way of doing it. This node:
   • makes it a lot faster to set up, rather than all the clicking required with the mix node
   • is a lot more usable amidst a complex comp setup, when you're looking at a node tree, it's very helpful to be able to see at a glance what's going on. Using subtract for inverting is easily mixed up with other nodes in which you are actually subtracting, not inverting, and looks very similar to all the other mix nodes that usually litter a comp tree.
   • has options to invert the RGB channels, the Alpha channel, or both. This saves adding lots of extra nodes (separate RGBA, subtract, set alpha) when you want to do something simple like invert an alpha channel. I'd like to add this option to other nodes too.

   NOTE: There's also a shader node version too.

2. Also a few fixes that I committed ages ago, but seems to have been overwritten in Bob's node refactor:
   • adding new compbufs to the set alpha and alphaover nodes when you have only one noodle connected to the lower input
   • making the fac value on RGB curves still work when there's nothing connected to it
3. Added a hotkey (T) for the sculpt mode flatten brush

patch #6795 by James C (sheep): This converts the Ipo editor and Timeline windows to use the BIF_ API for drawing international/antialiased text, following the user preference or being drawn in Bitmap/Pixmap/Texture mode.

Thanks James!

• Change to the working of the left mouse select preference
  

Previously, the implementation of this was quite awkward, with the preference swapping mouse buttons globally, rather than just selection, as is advertised on the pref. This had the effect of changing the painting in sculpt/texture paint/weight paint/etc to the left mouse button. This was totally silly, since when using a tablet, left mouse select is the sane way to go, but it meant that every time you wanted to sculpt or paint, you had to switch the mouse buttons around so you could actually use the tablet as normal.
This commit fixes that, and makes the preference do just what it says, use left mouse for selection (i.e. in object/edit mode) and only that.

• Updated the max particle amount to 1 million. I've been using it

here for a while and it's been fine - I'm pretty sure it's safe, as long as you've got enough RAM :)

• Curve tilt interpolation types

Just a quickie feature I needed here at work- the previous linear interpolation of tilt in curves can give nasty pinching problems when trying to do flowing curves like a ribbon. This commit lets you choose the interpolation type, between Linear, Cardinal, and BSpline. The code was already set up for it pretty easily, mainly needed to make the choice visible to the user.

Example: http://mke3.net/blender/devel/etc/tilt_interp_types.png

Works on selected curve 'lines', menu in 'curve tools' panel in edit mode.

• Added 'Zoom within border (Shift B)' to the 3d view menus.

Can people *please* not commit tools with only hotkeys to access them?

• Slight change to lamp energy calculation - make lamps invisible

for shading if their 'visibility factor' is below 0.001. This gives no perceptible visual difference in my tests, but can significantly speed up shading when using lots of omni lights with quad falloff over a large area. Since quad lamps never actually fall off to 0, previously every lamp would be considered for shading each pixel, even if such lamps had a tiny falloff distance, and were miles away.

Update of czech translation from Genom

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• QMC Raytracing

This introduces QMC sampling for use in glossy reflections/refractions, soft raytraced shadows, and ambient occlusion.

This work includes many new features and speed-ups, so check out the nice docs here:

Glossy Reflection/Refraction http://www.blender.org/development/current-projects/changes-since-245/glossy-reflectionrefraction/

Raytraced Soft Shadows http://www.blender.org/development/current-projects/changes-since-245/raytraced-soft-shadows/

QMC Sampling http://www.blender.org/development/current-projects/changes-since-245/qmc-sampling/

Many thanks to Brecht van Lommel for some initial code snippets and for reviewing the patch, and especially to Alfredo de Greef who gave me a lot of guidance and help along the way!

• Tweaked the knife tool header info text, making mention of the previously hidden ability to use MMB to constrain to screen axes.

• Raised some hard coded limits such as mist/envmap clipping ranges

• Extra lamp falloff options, including custom curve!

This adds some new lamp attenuation options to the Lamp panel, replacing the old 'Quad' button. Yes, the panel layout is still nasty here, but I've ignored it for now to address properly in the panels cleanup work.

• Constant

http://mke3.net/blender/devel/rendering/falloff-constant.jpg Lamp doesn't decay with distance

• Inverse Linear

http://mke3.net/blender/devel/rendering/falloff-invlinear.jpg Default, and same as in older Blender without 'Quad' on. Decays linearly, with 'Dist' value as the lamp's half-energy-distance

• Inverse Square

http://mke3.net/blender/devel/rendering/falloff-invsquare.jpg A sharper, more realistic decay, good for most electric lights (i.e. not sunlight). This is similar to the old Quad option with slight changes.

• Lin/Quad weighted

Exactly the same as in older Blenders with the old 'Quad' button enabled. When this setting is chosen, two sliders are shown, 'Linear' and 'Quad' (previously Quad1 and Quad2), which controls the 'linearness' or 'quadraticness' of the falloff curve. Lamps in old files with the 'Quad' button on will be initialised to this setting.

But much better for precise control over the lamp falloff now is:

• Custom Curve

This shows an extra 'Falloff Curve' panel, where you can use the standard Blender curve UI control to precisely control how the light falls off. The Y axis is intensity, and the X axis is distance, stretched over the length of the 'Dist' value.

Some example curves and renders: http://mke3.net/blender/devel/rendering/falloff-curve1-curve.png http://mke3.net/blender/devel/rendering/falloff-curve1.jpg

http://mke3.net/blender/devel/rendering/falloff-curve2-curve.png http://mke3.net/blender/devel/rendering/falloff-curve2.jpg

http://mke3.net/blender/devel/rendering/falloff-curve3-curve.png http://mke3.net/blender/devel/rendering/falloff-curve3.jpg (whee)

• Tiny tweak to 'set border render (shift B)'. It was always

annoying to have no hotkey to disable render border, having to switch to render buttons to disable it even though you used a hotkey shift B to enable it.

This change makes it so that if you drag the border to cover the entire camera view, it will automatically disable border rendering.

• Change/fix to texture comp node

Previously if the texture node was not connected directly as the second input to a node like Mix, the size of the generated image was initialised to 140x140, which is not that useful. It now is initialised to the size of the render result if it exists, and if not, the size of the scene render sizeX/sizeY.

This alleviates bug #7068, which is caused by the displace node trying to get pixels from a texture node, where the texture node doesn't contain pixels to cover the entire image (only 140x140) but it's not really a bulletproof solution...

• changed a few hardcoded low frame limits in wave modifier to use MAXFRAMEF

• Patch #6877: Zoom to Mouse Position

by Fahrezal Effendi (exavolt)

This adds an additional preference to the view and controls section, which uses the mouse's position as the centre of the zoom when zooming in the 3D View with Ctrl-MMB or the mouse wheel. It's very nice for big scenes, thanks Fahrezal!

A nice todo would be to add this for 2D views as well.

• Adaptive QMC AO feature - "Adapt from speed vectors"

This is a new feature that can make using AO a lot more attractive when rendering animations with vector blur. It uses the speed vector info calculated in the 'Vec' speed vector pass, in order to reduce AO samples where pixels are moving more quickly. There's not much point calculating all those AO samples when the result is going to be smeared anyway, so you can save a bit of render time by doing a more noisy render in those areas.

You can use this with a new slider in the Adaptive QMC settings 'Adapt Vec'. The higher the value, the more aggressively it will reduce samples. 0.0 means no reduction, and 1.0 reduces one sample per pixel of average displacement for that pixel. 0.25 or so generally gives decent results, but it depends on how fast things are moving.

Here's a demo (compare the final blurred result, and render times): http://mke3.net/blender/devel/raytracing/adapt_speed_off2.jpg http://mke3.net/blender/devel/raytracing/adapt_speed_on2.jpg

And a less contrived example, a short clip from macouno's 'petunia' bconf animation: http://mke3.net/blender/devel/raytracing/petunia-adaptvec-noblur-h264.mov http://mke3.net/blender/devel/raytracing/petunia-adaptvec-blur-h264.mov

the 'adapt vec' requires a Vec pass enabled to work, and there was also some shuffling in the ao panel.

• Two usability tweaks in adding objects, with user prefs

This changes the default behaviour in adding new objects, which has been discussed for a long time, in person, on the funboard, and in the tracker, and was agreed to be implemented during the 2.5 release cycle, so here it is. They have been made default, with preferences to bring back old behaviour since although people like myself still prefer the new default anyway, it will benefit new users the most.

The preferences are in the 'Edit Methods' section, changing back to old behaviour is as simple as a click of a button.

- Switch to edit mode preference

By default, now adding a new object doesn't automatically switch to edit mode. Not only can this be annoying (most of the time when setting up scenes and models I don't want to edit it straight away anyway), but it's a major hurdle in the learning curve that new users have had to deal with at a very early stage.

Blender's different modes are an important part of understanding how the software works and should have clear behaviour. The problem is that when a user selects something from the add menu, he's not telling Blender to change modes, he wants to add an object. But Blender then goes ahead and changes modes underneath him anyway, something that was never explicitly asked for, something that's unrelated to the mental task at hand, and fundamentally important to the operation of the software.

We observed plenty of people struggling with this during the training sessions that we ran during Project Orange, and there's also no shortage of "why can't I select other objects" questions on the forums.

- Aligned to View preference

Now by default, adding a new object doesn't rotate it so it's aligned facing the view, but rather, it's remains unrotated in world space. This is something that's more of a convenience issue (allowing people like me to stop the 'Add->Tab->Alt R dance), but also makes things easier for new users, especially when doing things like rigging.

For a lot of tools in Blender, like curve deform, path cycling, constraints, it's necessary for your objects' local axes to be aligned. This requirement isn't that obvious, and I've had to debug rigs a few times from the animator in our studio, who has everything set up correctly, but he just happened to be in a different vie at the time he added the object, so they're misaligned and causing problems. Having all objects get created aligned to worldspace, by default, makes a lot of these problems go away. It's much more understandable when rotations are caused by something you've done explicitly, rather than as a side effect of the software.

For convenience as well, most of the time, when I'm working in context and I decide I need a new object, particularly working on production scenes that involve more than just one model, an Alt R is almost always required after adding, since I don't want to have to disrupt the current view of the scene by switching to top view, just to add an object. It's a bit arbitrary, the view from which you want to look at your objects isn't usually the way you want them to be looking at you.

• Visualise the Map Old/Map New setting in the timeline with a stippled overlay in the stretched section

• New material option: TexFace Alpha

This is an additional option for 'TexFace', which uses the alpha of the UV assigned faces as well as the colour. It appears in material buttons as a little 'A' button next to 'TexFace', when 'TexFace is switched on. It's a bit horrible, but no point tweaking that layout in isolation at this stage.

This image is using texface alpha, with different assigned images, all sharing the one material: http://mke3.net/blender/devel/rendering/texface_alpha.jpg

Usually I consider texface (and teaching people to use it for UV mapping) to be pretty evil, but in some cases, when you have lots of separate images that you want to control in the one material, it can be quite handy.

• Don't swap mouse buttons for particle painting - similar thing

was done a while ago in trunk, but this probably never made it through to particle branch.

• Displacement map baking

This is an extension on the work Brecht already did to implement normal map baking. I've updated the release notes page here with info and pics:

http://www.blender.org/development/current-projects/changes-since-244/render-baking/