Terragen 4.2.10 Release Change Log

    Build 4.2.10 (Release)

    July 10, 2018

    Rendering

    Much faster ray tracing of displaceable surfaces in some cases, especially where rays travel nearly parallel to the surface.

    Corrected a flaw in the rendering of clouds whenever the camera’s altitude is higher than the base altitude of a cloud layer (either within the cloud layer or looking down on them from above). The distant part of the cloud layer was being cut off where the planet’s curvature should make the layer visible from underneath. This flaw was sometimes noticeable when looking towards the horizon with the camera near the clouds, and also at higher altitudes if clouds should be seen curving around the planet near the horizon.

    Reflections can pass through a Surface Layer that has child layers as long as “Apply Colour” and “Enable Test Colour” are disabled and the child layers are disabled (or don’t interfere with reflections by themselves). This won’t work if the child layers are function nodes (blue nodes) because they automatically convert to black Lambert shaders when they are disabled.

    Luminosity (emission) can pass through a Surface Layer that has child layers as long as “Apply Colour”, “Enable Test Colour” and “Luminous” are disabled and the child layers are disabled (or don’t interfere with luminosity by themselves). This won’t work if the child layers are function nodes (blue nodes) because they automatically convert to black Lambert shaders when they are disabled.

    Export

    Micro Exporter allows you to choose which texture space to use for the exported UVs or UVWs. “Image UV (render projection)” or “UVW from Compute Terrain or Tex Coords)”. You should select “Image UV (render projection)” if you want to use the rendered image as a texture for the exported object. You can use this with any type of camera, including spherical cameras.

    Groups and Notes in Network View

    After moving groups with the mouse, those groups auto-capture any nodes they surround.

    After resizing a group with the mouse, the group auto-captures any nodes it surrounds.

    After moving or resizing a Group or Notes node, they snap to the grid in a similar way to other nodes. When you first use this on an existing project you may find that the contents of a group shift around a bit, but after they have snapped once they should behave predictably.

    Until now, the resize handle along the top edge of a Group or Note was gradually reduced as we zoom out to make it easier to click on the title bar at low zoom, but this made it harder to grab the top edge for resizing. Other edges kept the same screen space size for the resize handle. Now, rather than making it progressively difficult to resize the top edge at low zoom, it’s simply disabled when zoom is below a certain level. Left, right and bottom edges can still be grabbed at any zoom level.

    Inputs and outputs in Network View

    Shaders’ main input which was previously called “Input node” in the GUI is now called “Main input”.

    Labels are shown above some input plugs that have a connection to another node, even when you’re not hovering over them. The labels fade out and disappear when zoom is below a certain level. To reduce clutter, “Main input” and “Input 2” are not labeled (except when hovering over them).

    Gradually fade opacity of input/output arrows when zoomed very far out.

    New preview options

    Heightfield Shader has a checkbox “Show b-box in preview”. This controls whether previews should show a bounding box and manipulation handles for the heightfield.

    Simple Shape Shader has a checkbox “Show b-box in preview”. This controls whether previews should show a bounding box and manipulation handles for the shape. Moved “Draw shape edges” up alongside “Show b-box in preview”.

    Camera has new checkboxes “Show frustum in preview” and “Show path in preview” below the existing “Show camera body in preview”. When showing neither the camera body nor the frustum, no manipulation handle is shown or selectable in the preview.

    File and image handling

    Added “Reload File” to the popup menu for file parameters.

    Renamed “Open Preview” to “Preview Image” in the popup menu for image file parameters.

    Licenses and key files

    Fixed problems auto-updating key files that have expired or are are invalid because of maintenance date.

    Changes to splash screen for expired keys and keys that are invalid because of maintenance date: text more accurately describes the reason why it’s running in non-commercial mode (expiry or maintenance date) and that text is coloured red. In this situation the “Buy Now” button is labeled “Upgrade/Renew” and opens a different URL in the browser.

    If running in Free mode because of an expired license, when you check for updates it will still report available versions according to what type the license was before it expired.

    Additional Changes Since 4.1 Release

    Build 4.1.25 (Release)

    We’ve made some changes to help you understand the status of your license, and to see what’s new when software updates are available:

    • Check for Updates (Updates Available Window): Made some changes to what’s shown when there are updates that are outside of maintenance. The main improvement is that you can click on a “View Latest Update” button to see the change log of the latest version and instructions for renewing maintenance.
    • The Help menu has a new item called “Show License Info” which brings up a message box with detailed license info and options to copy that info to the clipboard.
    • For users with a time-limited license, the menu item “Reveal Licence Key File” is shown even when the license has expired.
    • Detailed license info is printed to stdout when the app starts.

    Icon changes (Windows only):

    • Updated the app icon to solve scaling/resolution issues in various situations.
    • Removed the ‘4’ from the icon that is associated with TGD files.

    Build 4.1.21 (Release)

    Fixed another bug which caused most render elements to ignore the EXR bit depth setting. SurfRgb, SurfAlpha and SurfDepth were not affected by this bug.

    Fixed a problem with “smooth surface” enabled in Compute Terrain and Compute Normal which would cause some renders to hang. Also fixed another problem in those shaders which could have made some shaders render incorrectly since v4.1.

    Build 4.1.19 (Release)

    Mac and Linux only: Fixed mistakes with the following object rendering modes: invisible, shadowless, invisible to other rays, force displacement.

    Build 4.1.18 (Release)

    32-bit EXR option works correctly for command line render, Sequence Render and Render All to Disk.

    Fixed a bug that affected populations anchored to displaceable objects. This problem occurred in builds 4.1.15, 4.1.16 and 4.1.17.

    Plugins can query the last-known filename of the project using Root()->FindParam(“filename”).

    Build 4.1.17 (Release)

    Fixed a problem with loading some 8-bit greyscale images with dimensions larger than 32767.

    Reduced the memory requirements for some 8-bit greyscale images by no longer converting internally to RGBA.

    “Voxel scattering quality” slider in GI Settings goes from 0 to 100 (although higher values can be entered). The default is still 50.

    Build 4.1.15 (Frontier Build)

    Professional edition only: “Holdout” mode is working again for ray-traced objects.

    Corrected another problem in the handling of materials which may have led to crashes.

    Fixed a couple of bugs which caused licensing problems if key files were placed in the program folder or custom key path.

    No longer prints “AddClass: added class…” to stdout.

    Build 4.1.14 (Release)

    Fixed a crash bug in atmosphere with low exp heights.

    Corrected a problem in the handling of materials which may have led to crashes in 4.1.11.

    In Preferences you can choose 32 bit EXR for automatically saved renders.

    Evaluation of lights while rendering may be slightly faster.

    Windows only: updated to FBX 2016.1.2 from 2013.2.

    Mac only: Changed the way the app bundle is signed.

    Linux only: Resolved an openvdb dependency that prevented 4.1.11 from running properly on Linux.

    End of changes.

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    Planetside Software

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