Hello,
I thought I would give you a sneak peek at the feature list for Terragen 2.3, which we expect to release in the next few weeks.
It's possible that some of this might change, as we wrap things up and do final testing, but we hope to keep all of these changes in. We're really looking forward to this release!
64 Bit
64 bit builds will be available for Windows and Mac.
The main advantage here is that Terragen can use more than 4 Gb of RAM on 64-bit computers, allowing you to render more complex scenes and larger images than before, as long as you have enough physical RAM in your computer to really take advantage of it.
Terragen 64-bit also runs slightly faster than previous 32-bit versions. If you don't have a computer capable of running 64-bit software, now is the time to upgrade!
32-bit builds will also be available. At the time of writing, 32-bit v2.3 on Windows is slightly slower than v2.2 due to a change in our compiler (we hope to fix that soon), but 64-bit builds are faster in most cases.
Rendering
Rendering with a larger number of threads is now much faster (up to twice as fast) on the Mac and also improved to a lesser degree on Windows. This improvement applies to both 32 bit and 64 bit.
Some aspects of the ray tracer which were previously limited to distances of 1e8 (one hundred thousand kilometres) are now theoretically limited to 1e16 (10 billion kilometres).
New Colour Picker and Node Palette
There is a new colour picker. You can still use the OS colour picker by clicking the Palette icon in the TG2 colour picker.
There is a new Node Palette window available from the View menu. It lets you browse the nodes by category or choosing favourites. You can create nodes by double clicking in the list or dragging and dropping from the list to a network view. You can open multiple node palette windows. Node palette windows are saved and restored across sessions by default. This can be controlled with a preference in the General prefs panel.
Node Network
A Note node is available to write notes in the network view. You might use these to document your work, provide useful reminders or draw attention to parts of your project. Notes are created from the "Create Other" submenu of the Network View's context menu.
Double clicking on a internal network icon (little "+" ) in the network view now takes you to the internal network.
Lots of other network view improvements.
Terrain Export
New node: Micro Exporter, to replace the LWO Micro Exporter. The Micro Exporter can output OBJ, LWO and TGO.
Removed the main cause of holes and missing triangles in exported geometry, by sending geometry to the micro exporters prior to the final stage of back-face culling and culling of invisible micro-triangles.
Animation
Object readers support sequences using %04d (for example) in the filename.
Some other improvements if you are using animation. Bigger changes are coming in v2.4, however.
Shaders
The Transform Shader can now apply rotation. It uses the same rotation convention as objects and cameras.
The Transform Shader has an option to "use world space (final position)". One possible use of this is for using shaders to vary the colour of plants in a population. Previously this was only possible with shaders that could bypass the texture coordinates, e.g. the Image Map Shader with "Camera Projection" mode.
The Heightfield load node now displays the size in metres and height range of the loaded heightfield.
3D Preview
The 3D Preview compass has changed. You can now choose between a compass which shows 0 degrees heading (which is what the old North-South compass was confusingly doing) and a set of 3D XYZ axes. You can switch between compass modes with shift-C. There is a preference to choose the default compass style in the Navigation prefs panel.
There is a new object node called Landmark. This can be used to place landmarks/points-of-interest in the 3D Preview. The Landmark objects only render in 3D Previews, not actual renders.
General
Lots of Undo improvements.
Lots of improvements to the Errors and Warnings window and how errors are reported.
Some changes have been made to the way progress windows are handled. Progress windows now only display after a short delay, which prevents situations where you get them flickering on and off the screen really quickly, as well as reducing the problem of them stealing focus when you're typing etc. A timer/wait cursor is shown for quick operations so you have an idea something is going on.
Most lists now support type selection, which means the list selection will update as you type while the list has focus.
Many things which are sorted alphabetically, certain menus for example, are now sorted using a natural order sort instead of a lexicographical sort. In short, the sorting will make a little more sense overall.
Made some optimisations which will improve opening of complex project files and working with the network view etc. when there are a lot of nodes.
The recently opened files items are now retained if TG2 crashes.
-Matt
