============================= Build 4.9.05 (Frontier Build) ============================= Bug fix: RTP was not rendering displaced surfaces correctly in 4.9.04 Frontier Build. Surface Layer's new "Direction limits" tab has a "Direction key" parameter that allows you to choose between "Final normal", "Terrain normal" and "Planet/object normal", similar to the slope key on the slope limits tab. Distribution Shader V4 has a new "Direction limits" tab that is similar to the one in Surface Layer, and the other constraints tabs have been relabeled as "Altitude limits" and "Slope limits". ============================= Build 4.9.04 (Frontier Build) ============================= Command line option "-camera". Command line option "-noloadobjects". This tells Terragen not to load any objects automatically. This can be used when you want to load a project more quickly and don't need the objects to be loaded during the session. The MDD reader in object reader nodes can work with files larger than 2Gb. The MDD reader in object reader nodes can use the options on the Sequence tab, including Loop, Ping Pong and Frame Offset. There are options on the Sequence tab that let you choose to apply these options to either the file sequence, the MDD reader, or both. "Apply these options to file sequence" is ON (checked) by default (and is harmless if not using file sequences). "Apply these options to MDD reader" is OFF when loading old projects so as not to change their behaviour, but is turned ON automatically when creating new object readers (and is harmless if not using the MDD reader). The MDD reader uses frame indexing based on 1 (the first frame in the MDD is considered to be frame '1', not '0') whenever "Apply these options to MDD reader" is ON. However, to render older projects without changes the first frame in the MDD is considered to be '0' (the old behaviour) whenever "Apply these options to MDD" is OFF, which it defaults to when loading old projects. For example: If "Apply these options to MDD" is ON, the MDD's first frame will appear on rendered frame 1 if Sequence First/Last/Offset are set to 1/240/0, or will appear on rendered frame 1001 if Sequence First/Last/Offset are set to 1/240/-1000. If "Apply these options to MDD" is OFF, then the MDD's first frame will always appear on rendered frame 0 and the Sequence First/Last/Offset parameters will have no effect. Object Space shading and texturing is now supported by the renderer. You can use this with new features that have been added to Transform Input Shader and Transform Merge Shader and with the brand new Get Point node. Object Space texturing allows you to go beyond UVs but still shade independently of the object's location, scale or rotation, unlike World Space texturing. Object Space works on instanced/populated objects as well as non-instanced objects, and can be used on any kind of object, including Planets, so it's easier to create effects like polar ice caps, or you can enhance the shaders of your imported objects in all sorts of ways. Transform Input Shader and Transform Merge Shader have new options that allow you to apply textures in object space, instance/object position space, and other options to reset the texture space if it has been transformed or warped by downstream nodes. One possible use for the "Instance/object position" mode is to map textures to populations while keeping the sampled colour constant within each instance. New function node: Get Point. When used in shader networks, the Get Point node gives you coordinates of the point being sampled, either in texture space, object space or world space, with some sub-variants in each case. Get Point can be used as a general replacement for Get Position in Texture, Get Position in Geometry, and Get Position, but the additional options give you access to information that was not available before. https://planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Get_Point New function node: Get Object Vector. When used in shader networks, the Get Object Vector node gives you information about the object or instance being shaded or displaced. It can return a 3D vector containing the object's position (including an option for the anchor point if the object is an instance), size (either the size of the bounding box or the scale factor of an instance), and rotation information via direction vectors. One possible use for this node is to apply random variations to every instance in a population by feeding the instance position through a Perlin 3D node. https://planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Get_Object_Vector Surface Layer has a new tab "Direction limits'. The altitude constraint and slope constraint tabs have been renamed to "Altitude limits" and "Slope limits". Direction limits can be use to simulate snow accumulating more surfaces that face in a particular direction, or moss that grows on one side of a tree, etc. Heightfield Shader's built-in fractal warp feature has some optimisations which allow it to calculate faster, which can improve render times in scenes using heightfields. Fractal Warp Shader has some optimisations which allow it to calculate nearly twice as fast, which can improve render times in some scenes. RTP uses a new code path when shading the triangles that have been generated from displaced surface (e.g. terrain), which allows the BSDF to be different at each sample, not constant within each polygon. Bug fix: Populator's tint features were not being applied in RTP renders. Some changes to the appearance of node network plugs or connections on disabled nodes. The File menu has been rearranged slightly, putting "Revert To Saved" in the same section as the other items related to opening files, and there is a separator bar above "Save". In atmosphere and cloud nodes, "Fake dark power" has been relabeled as "Fake terminator darkness", and the slider for "Fake dark sharpness" has a range from 0 to 32. The are just UI changes; the functionality has not changed. Clarified some of the text shown when there are errors related to "-renderlayer" and "-rendernode" command line options.