New version: Terragen 2 Technology Preview update

Started by Matt, March 15, 2007, 09:17:26 PM

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Matt

Hello,

We have released an update to the Terragen 2 Technology Preview!

Important! If you have pre-purchased the Deep Edition or Deep with Animation, you should have already received a separate email with instructions for updating to the latest version. If you have not received that email, please contact us at registrations@planetside.co.uk for update information.

How to update your "Free Non-Commercial Edition":

http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/tg2/tg2tp/index.html

We recommend that you un-install previous versions of Terragen 2 before
installing this update.

This update provides fixes for many bugs and stability problems that were found in previous versions, and introduces some useful new features. A complete list of changes is below.


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Build 1.8.76.0

Changes since build 1.8.64.0


OBJ Reader:
    Material indices are set up for objects that have no defined materials (eg. no .mtl file)
    (allows user to manually set up shaders with the Multi Shader)
    Negative vertex and texture indices are correctly interpreted as relative indices, not absolute indices.
    (This allows us to use some objects that would crash in earlier versions.)
    "g" and "o" increment material indices if there are no deliberate material assignments in the object.

TGO Reader: renders ok with objects that are loaded with no materials.

Cloud Layer V2:
    Removed some severe blockiness when using acceleration cache.
    Change to the way density shaders are looked up;
    more shaders will now work as expected, eg. Distance Shader

Clouds and atmosphere: Internal change to give them higher quality GI/envirolight sampling
(this may increase pre-pass render time but results should be better for any given settings).

Water Shader: renders the same each time the project is loaded. Can be changed with a seed parameter.

Render node: default output paths start with "/" on the Mac.


General:

"Check for Updates" feature. Can be enabled/disabled from Preferences.
In Preferences the user can choose which project file is loaded at startup or File -> New.
(Deep Edition only) Command line arguments are working again. Command line rendering is possible.
On the Mac, the second command line argument is never interpreted as the name of a project file.
(Deep Edition only) A warning is displayed if no license key can be found.

Changed GUI text to say that the default inputs preset is "Universal".
"Abort" renamed "Stop" on RenderView and in message boxes.
"Do you want to stop rendering?" message boxes have "Continue Rendering" as the default.
Rearranged order of some message box buttons.
Can save .tif images (valid extensions are ".tif" and ".tiff").
Node network help displays keys from the inputs preferences (although this is still not hooked up yet).


Miscellaneous bux fixes:

Fixed a crash that could happen when closing the program or loading a new project.
Fixed some inconsistencies and crashes with the Objects Node List.
(Windows only) Improved behaviour of tab controls on XP Classic Theme
Fixed a minor bug with positioning of floating parameter windows.
Some timer problems fixed.
Some list drawing problems possibly fixed.
About box is shown before main window is opened (to avoid problems with error messages during project load).
Addressed some other GUI problems.
Fixed a number of problems in the renderer in order to improve stability.
Fixed an infinite recursion crash when Heightfield Shader is used as a blendshader.
Some code changes to String class that may improve stability, although it is unlikely.
Some other changes that may improve stability.


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Enjoy!

Matt (on behalf of The Planetside Software team)
Just because milk is white doesn't mean that clouds are made of milk.