Hi, Id like to update everyone on the status of SR3. You can expect this service release before the end of the next 10 days to which its availability will be announced on the forums as well as our web site: www.curiouslabs.com Below Ive listed the items addressed within the SR3 release. With kind regards, Katherine ------------------------------------------ Enhancements and bug Fixes in SR3 ------------------------------------------ General Application Speed ------------------------- - Poser start-up times noticeable reduced. When launching Poser for the very first time, some system files are loaded and cached by the system, and hence are not loaded on consecutive starts. Some details on start-up times on selected test systems follow: first start : P4 1.600 Mhz : PIII 650 Mhz ----------------------------------------------- SR 2.1 : 42.0 secs : 65.0 secs SR 3 : 31.0 secs : 45.0 secs second start : P4 1.600 Mhz : PIII 650 Mhz ----------------------------------------------- SR 2.1 : 28.1 secs : 45.0 secs SR 3 : 16.5 secs : 28.0 secs - File loading speed improved. Loading speed in general (both compressed and uncompressed) has been doubled for large files when the app is running. E.g., loading Don Casual from the library yields: load Don : P4 1.600 Mhz : PIII 650 Mhz ----------------------------------------------- SR 2.1 : 20.0 secs : 32.0 secs SR 3 : 9.0 secs : 15.0 secs The improvement tends to be between a speed-up factor of 1.2 and 2.2 on current hardware. These results may differ with various hard disks and CPU configurations. Walk Designer ------------- - Walk Designer has been adapted to the Poser 5 figure proportions. The walk styles now work better on the P5 figures. The number of frames will be set based on the frames necessary to walk along the path with natural speed. You can change this number to change the speed. For example, if the calculated frame number is 160, and the user types in 320, then the generated walk will be half the normal speed; typing in 80 doubles the speed. FireFly Render Engine --------------------- - It is now possible to enable smoothing on a per object basis. - Firefly Draft and Production settings with one infinite light, ray trace shadows on now works. - Some render bugs for global 3D textures have been fixed. Material Room ------------- - Import background image: Fixed a crash bug when the loaded image was too wide (>=4096). - The Global setting on shader nodes now works. - Loading AVIs to the Background Movie shader node now previews and renders correctly. - When reloading a saved pz3 file, AVI movies used as texture or BG Movie are not discarded any more. Face Room --------- - High quality texture support. When exporting or applying a texture to a figure, it's now possible to choose between using the maximum resolution of the inputted image or photo(s) instead of the current default resolution (512x512). If there are no input texture(s), the resolution is read from "Poser.ini". - "Apply Shape" button replaced by "Apply Shape" check box. Allows photo matching (feature point dragging, rotation, translation, scaling) with interactive geometry change. - Higher visible resolution when zooming into the input photo image. - Improved memory handling when loading textures from file. - Ability to adapt the face color to figure color when applying a face to a figure. If the face and the body colour differ, Poser lets choose now to have an automatic color update of the face color to match the body color. - Fixed rotation point for eye morph targets (spawn morph target bug, origin of eyes wasn't adapted correctly) Cloth Room ---------- - Enabled changing the ignore collisions settings after a simulation was created. Python ------ - New functions exposed to configure FireFly render options on actors: * RayTraceShadows() - Query wether this light is using RayTracing for shadows. * SetRayTraceShadows() - Set wether this light is using ray tracing for shadows. * SmoothPolys() - Query wether polygon smoothing is enabled for this actor. * SetSmoothPolys() - Set wether polygons smoothing is enabled for this actor. * BackfaceCull() - Query the actor's backface culling flag. * SetBackfaceCull() - Set the actor's backface culling flag. * VisibleInReflections() - Query wether this actor is visible in reflections. * SetVisibleInReflections() - Set wether this actor is visible in reflections. * VisibleInRender() - Query wether this actor is visible in renders. * SetVisibleInRender() - Set wether this actor is visible in renders. * DisplacementBounds() - Get the actor's displacement bounds. * SetDisplacementBounds() - Set the actor's displacement bounds. * ShadingRate() - Get the actor's shading rate. * SetShadingRate() - Set the actor's shading rate. * ShadowBiasMin() - Get if this light uses ray tracing for shadows. * SetShadowBiasMin() - Set the max shadow bias for depth map shadows on this light. * ShadowBiasMax() - Get the min shadow bias for depth map shadows on this light. * SetShadowBiasMax() - Set the min shadow bias for depth map shadows on this light. * ShadowBlurRadius() - Get the shadow map blur radius for this light. * SetShadowBlurRadius() - Set the shadow map blur radius for this light. * AtmosphereStrength() - Get the atmosphere strength of this light. * SetAtmosphereStrength() - Set the atmosphere strength for this light. Misc ---- - Morph Putty: Clear pins now removes the red dots on figure. - Added a ?Set Parent? button in the Properties palette for hair groups - Solved problems with hair playback and highlighting. - The comma (',') on a keyboard's numeric block now works for numeric input. - Disabled parenting body parts with IK switched off to props. - When an .obj file which is referenced by a .pz3 is moved, the user has to locate the missing geometry file. The new path the user specified is now saved to the .pz3, removing the need for loacting the file on every subsequuent loading of the .pz3.