Thea Render Revision 370

[giannis]

Dear friends,

this new revision could be entitled the "animation revision". We have basically
enhanced the animation support inside Studio and you can now go on with
setting up your key frames with much better functionality. Apart from the
enhancement for point lights and cameras, group animation has also been fixed.

There is also a Motion sub-menu in the right click context menu that has
various options regarding the animation curves. Not only that, but copy/paste
can now take place, your camera can follow a specific object (you will need
to paste a motion as a target for the camera) and even more, motion curves
can be saved on disk as presets to be applied later.

Apart from all these, sun/sky animation works now out of the box. You just
need to go to Render Settings > Animation panel and enable it. The default
start clock has been set to 05:00 and the end to 20:00, but you can obviously
change them to something more appropriate depending on the location.

We are also proud that with this revision, Thea has an improved intersection core,
giving exceptional quality when rendering huge landscapes. SSS "glow" bug
appearing occasionally when rendering high scattering materials is also fixed.

This revision fixes also crashes appearing when rendering with command line
on Linux/MacOSX.

The import options for 3ds/obj formats are enriched and normally, these
formats should be opened & rendered out of the box without any problems,
using the default import values.

Finally, something important for commercial customers on Linux/MacOSX.
Licenses folder is now placed outside the application bundle and more specifically,
on Linux it is: "~/Documents/Thea Render/Licenses" while on MacOSX,
it is: "~/Library/Application Support/Thea Render/Licenses". These directories
are created the first time that Thea runs. This change facilitates licensing,
since commercial users won't have to copy anymore the licenses from one
version bundle to the other (but they will still need to do it when upgrading
from RV355->RV370 by copying the licenses in the above folders).

Please note that we will try to make another update soon. We have gathered
a lot of bug reports while there are also some important features that we
want to implement, like improved navigation, saving preferences, and a
surprise feature for next revision.

The new revision links can be found in the usual thread:
viewtopic.php?f=61&t=1849&p=14289#p14289

As always, for those who want to stay on the safe side, it is recommended
to wait until this revision undergoes some testing and becomes available
from our web site.

best regards
Ioannis Pantazopoulos

[velopl]

Yes yes yes It will be busy weekend !!!

[SandroS]

thanks - downloading now!

Please note that we will try to make another update soon. We have gathered a lot of bug reports while there are also some important features that we want to implement, like improved navigation, saving preferences

nice!

and a surprise feature for next revision.

even nicer!

[caronte]

This revision fixes also crashes appearing when rendering with command line
on Linux/MacOSX.

Good!

...This change facilitates licensing,
since commercial users won't have to copy anymore the licenses from one
version bundle to the other

Nice!

Please note that we will try to make another update soon. We have gathered
a lot of bug reports while there are also some important features that we
want to implement, like improved navigation, saving preferences, and a
surprise feature for next revision.

WoW! I can't wait!

[Frederik]

Excellent, Giannis...!
Looking forward to test this...
Will post some nice renders soon...

[pckmark]

Downloading now, cant wait to test this!

Surprise feature for the next revisions... Your killing us

Amazing work once again, i am very impressed by the changelog, damn...

Download is finished in 10 seconds, so i have to go now

[Solo]

Very cool, thanks a bunch guys.

I hope to be done with my current project (Cayman Islands ) and get playing soon.

[Hikaru]

Not a small update!

Good work Giannis, and Thea team of course It's deeply appreciated! This last years I've been growing in my way of being aware other people good work, either customers, partners, suppliers or friends.

I feel satisfied been around this forum, not just in the customer side.

Greets.

[renderiche]

Great news, thanks to Thea Team!
Every day that passes I feel more comfortable with this super-engine!!!

Thanks again!

[giannis]

Not a small update!

It was rather a difficult update because the animation support was incomplete.
Most of the work was in that area; we paid special attention to adding targets
for camera motion, sun/sky dawn-till-dusk animations and motion I/O, that
can work now out of the box.

Of course, we don't claim that Thea animation is competing with high-end
modeling solutions. Our goal here is to add another "weapon" to our users
that want to deliver something quickly given a static scene. More complex
animations can only be made by scripting where partial of full scene updates
are possible (like texture changes, vertex deformations, etc.) and we expect
this power to be taken advantage by all plugins with time.

best wishes