Hi everyone,
The latest frontier builds are:
4.4.18 on Windows and Linux
4.4.16 on Mac.
If you have a license of Terragen 4 Professional or Creative and your maintenance or subscription is current, use the Check for Updates feature in the application to get links to the latest 4.4 build.
Here's the change log:
Quote
Build 4.4.18 (Frontier Build) <-- Windows, Linux
Fixed a bug in the path tracer that sometimes made it impossible to finish or stop renders and previews.
Build 4.4.17 (Frontier Build)
Improved the performance and reduced the memory use of the 2D and 3D previews.
When an OBJ file is read into a project for the first time, it creates material nodes for any material references in the OBJ (or groups/objects if there are no material references) as well as materials defined in the MTL file (if any). It does this regardless of whether a MTL file is found.
Build 4.4.16 (Frontier Build) <-- MacOS
There is a new checkbox at the top right of the main window called "Dynamic Layouts". This controls what happens when you click on the Layout Buttons to the left of it. When it is checked, the user interface behaves as it did before. If you uncheck this box, Terragen won't automatically open or close the 3D Preview or Node Network (except when you click on the Node Network layout button) and it won't automatically change the shading, atmosphere and lighting settings on the 3D Preview.
The Preferences item "Centre on nodes selected in node lists" is respected when switching between layouts. Previously it was respected only when manually clicking on nodes in node lists, and a change of layout caused centering to occur regardless of this preference.
New variables can be used in rendered output filenames. The complete list is now as follows:
${BUILDNUMBER} // e.g. 4.4.09.1
${CAMERA} // the name of the camera at the moment the frame started rendering
${IMAGETYPE} or IMAGETYPE // e.g. tgSurfDirect, tgCloudRgb etc. If used for the main output it will insert tgBeauty
${LAYER} or ${RENDERLAYER} // the name of the render layer at the moment the frame started rendering, if one was connected
${RENDER} or ${RENDERER} or ${RENDERNODE} // the name of the render node at the moment the frame started rendering
${RENDERSECONDS} // render time in seconds, e.g. 134
${RENDERTIME} // render time formatted with hours, minutes and seconds (e.g. 1h07m24s), or without the hours if shorter than 1 hour, e.g. 02m14s
${TGDNAME} // the name of the last saved or loaded TGD file at the moment the frame started rendering (or "Untitled"), without the path and without the extension
More RTP improvements and bug fixes:
Fixed some bugs related to path tracing in RTP.
Corrected the normals of instanced (populated) objects in RTP mode.
Translucency of direct lights is rendered in RTP mode if shading is enabled.
Fixed a bug in the interaction with license servers.
Build 4.4.11 (Frontier Build)
Changes to RTP:
- The 3D Preview allows objects, lights and cameras to be manipulated when in RTP mode. Camera wireframes are drawn and handles are shown for objects and lights. When hovering over a handle, the object is drawn in the same way it is in non-RTP mode, according to the Object Display Mode (bounding box, wireframe, smooth shaded or textured).
- Specular highlights (from direct lights) are rendered in RTP mode if shading is enabled.
- Path Tracing can be enabled or disabled in RTP mode by clicking on the gold cup icon or by using the right-click menu (context menu) in the 3D Preview while in RTP mode.
- RTP iteration limit is now 36 (it was 20 before).
Build 4.4.09 (Frontier Build)
Rendered output filenames can include the following variables (Feature #611). The curly braces are optional but recommended for consistency with future syntax that may rely upon them:
${BUILDNUMBER} // e.g. 4.4.09.1
${IMAGETYPE} // same as IMAGETYPE, e.g. tgSurfDirect, tgCloudRgb etc. If used for the main output it will insert tgBeauty
${RENDERSECONDS} // render time in seconds, e.g. 134
${RENDERTIME} // render time formatted with hours, minutes and seconds (e.g. 1h07m24s), or without the hours if shorter than 1 hour, e.g. 02m14s
${TGDNAME} // the name of the last saved or loaded TGD file, without the path and without the extension
The default output filename and extra output filename are "${TGDNAME}.%04d.tif" and "${TGDNAME}.${IMAGETYPE}.%04d.tif" respectively.
Output folders are verified and automatically created if necessary at the start of a render that outputs files. The render aborts if output folders don't exist after attempting to create them. (Feature #742)
Temporary/automatic render output files (the ones named "tgout") have a new filename format that includes the render time and the version of Terragen.
When tgSurfIndirectDiff is enabled in a render layer, two new elements tgSurfIndirectDiffRefl and trSurfIndirectDiffTrans are automatically output as well. When tgSurfIndirectSpec is enabled, two new elements tgSurfIndirectSpecRefl and tgSurfIndirectSpecTrans are automatically output as well. Please note that these images are not being properly generated in this build; they are always black.
Path Tracing Improvements:
- Faster Path Tracing when combined with the Robust Adaptive Sampling. When rendering with the robust adaptive sampler, that path tracer optimises the samples of some elements of the lighting equation according to the noise levels detected in those elements, and also considers atmosphere, cloud, surface emission, surface direct to further optimise the samples.
- Path tracer's max ray depth is now 5. (Developer controls allow this to be set as high as 13.)
- Path tracer clamps albedo to 1 on all bounces except the first. This is necessary to be physically correct and to avoid extremely bright samples after multiple bounces.
- Various other optimisations and quality tweaks.
Faster, Higher Quality Cloud GI:
- Cloud GI calculation is now much faster in scenes with high micropoly detail and/or high ray detail multiplier. This change comes at the expense of slightly reduced correctness which is unlikely to be noticeable in renders.
- Slightly increased the spatial resolution of cloud GI (relative to the number of voxels), taking advantage of the faster calculation in this version.
Faster, Higher Quality Robust Adaptive Sampling:
- Two changes were made to the the Robust Adaptive Sampler (BETA) to produce better looking images in a shorter render time. We fixed an important bug in the way it handled colours, and implemented a new method of evaluating contrast. Both of these changes provide a better ratio of image quality to render time. The noise threshold might need calibrating in future builds, so we are still calling this feature Beta.
Corrected some flaws with motion blur when the pixel sampler is adaptive, by reverting to a random sampling strategy in this case.
Bump maps and displacement maps are read from OBJ MTL files and are applied to the displacement channel.
Populator V4 "terrain shader" and "object to sit on" inputs are hidden from the network view so that they don't draw connections. The change was made because terrain shader connections from every populator were causing a lot of ugliness in projects.
Steppers are provided in the GUI alongside many edit boxes.
Mac only: Some changes have been made to work better in the OS's dark mode, but this is still a work-in-progress. If you switch the OS between light mode and dark mode you should restart Terragen to allow it to adjust to the new mode. This change was also included in 4.3.23.
Constant Colour node has individual parameters to control red, green and blue values.
Enjoy!
