VUE and PlantFactory 2021.2 Build 7008031 (x64)

VUE scene live sync to NVIDIA Omniverse
VUE 2021.2 adds live sync support for NVIDIA Omniverse through the Nucleus core. Export the entire VUE scene to USD, enable the live sync option and see how the Omniverse scene updates in real-time as you make changes in VUE.
Both applications: new Live Sync connector for Omniverse
Both applications get a native Live Sync connector for Omniverse, Nvidia's new virtual collaboration platform. Users can create a scene in Vue or a 3D plant in PlantFactory, export it in USD format, then sync any subsequent changes to the Omniverse stage in "near real time". In Vue, the process is unidirectional, and supports geometry, bitmap-based materials, lights, EcoSystems, and to some extent, animation. You can find a full breakdown of the features supported here. In PlantFactory, an additional Omniverse extension makes the process bidirectional, making it possible to send edited USD assets back to PlantFactory, recreating all of the parameters and presets. The connector was one of over 10 new Omniverse integrations that Nvidia announced at GTC last month.
Converting VUE scenes to Redshift in Maya
Learn how you can convert assets from a VUE scene to objects with Redshift materials in Maya. The conversion tool supports Redshift's sprite node and makes it easy to setup your scene in VUE and then render it with Redshift inside of Maya. The conversion will work with all Redshift builds from 3.0.46 and up.
Both applications: native support for Redshift and RenderMan materials
In addition, both Vue and PlantFactory get initial support for materials in the native formats of two key production renderers: Maxon's Redshift and Pixar's RenderMan. Experimental integration plugins convert the materials in a Vue scene or a PlantFactory plant automatically. In the 2021.2 releases, Redshift material conversion is available in Cinema 4D and Maya, but not 3ds Max: e-on says that it plans to add support for other applications in future updates. RenderMan material conversion is available in Maya - the only host software that the applications have in common - and initially supports "basic material properties" like albedo, alpha and normal maps. Native support for V-Ray and Arnold materials was introduced in previous releases.
Setting up clearcoat properties in PBR materials in VUE
PBR materials now support clearcoat properties. Learn how to setup a clearcoat channel in this tutorial.
Both applications: new clearcoat channel in PBR materials
In addition, the PBR material system in both applications gets a new clearcoat channel, intended for mimicking the look of wet or glossy surfaces. It supports intensity, roughness, tint and index of refraction controls, an optional normal map, and a flatten parameter for blending between the clearcoat normal and the regular material and mesh normals. Substance materials with clearcoat properties are also set up automatically in the material graph on import.
Both applications: improved node graph workflow, render denoising and scene loading
Both Vue and PlantFactory also get UX updates to their node graphs intended to make it easier to navigate and edit large graphs. You can find a full list of changes via the links at the foot of this story. AMD's denoiser has been added to the path tracer render engine, accelerating denoising on AMD GPUs. Nvidia's GPU-based OptiX denoiser and Intel's CPU-based Open Image Denoise were already integrated. Performance improvements include "up to 5x faster" scene loading times, with Vue also seeing improvements in render speed, particuarly for large heightfield terrains, atmospheres and clouds.
First look: PlantFactory (& PlantCatalog) integration plugin for Unreal Engine 4
The 2021.2 release of PlantFactory and PlantCatalog includes a technology preview of our plugin for Unreal Engine 4. The plugin supports UE 4.24 through 4.27. Load procedural plants natively into Unreal, edit parameters such as maturity, health or season, generate new variations and adjust the mesh resolution. While the plant is still procedural, it is represented through a low-resolution proxy in the viewport. To get the final quality mesh, you need to convert the procedural plant into a static mesh. The plugin will create an Unreal actor asset as well as pre-made native Unreal materials for you. More features will be added in upcoming releases.
PlantFactory 2021.2: experimental new Unreal Engine
In addition, PlantFactory gets a new Unreal Engine integration plugin, making it possible to import plants in native .tpf format into the game engine, and edit their growth parameters. Plants can then be convered to Unreal actors, with materials conversion handled automatically by the plugin.The initial release is described as a "technology preview", and is compatible with Unreal Engine 4.24-4.27, but not Unreal Engine 5, currently available in early access.
VUE and PlantFactory 2021.2 Build 7008031 Release notes - Date: December 9, 2021

FUNCTION GRAPH
[NEW] Improved the responsiveness of the graph display, added more configurable colors for customization, fixed the display of connection lines that where too thick when zooming out, added a more visible highlight of connections (middle part and ends), made item selection more precise, added highlight on all node lines as we can act on them, added a shift of parameter labels to better show the tab/group/parameter tree structure, added a small motion threshold before moving a node.
[NEW] More visible selection and highlight when graph is zoomed out.
[NEW] Snap to handles when creating a connection.
[NEW] Added a right click contextual menu on graph connections (move to source node / move to destination node / delete connection). Move to source/destination selects and centers that node in the graph view.
[NEW] When creating or moving graph connections, or moving nodes, or selecting by area, the graph will scroll automatically if you move the mouse near the graph border while dragging the connection. The speed increases with mouse position, and scroll direction is relative the center of graph view.
[NEW] Disabled connections are now drawn as dashed lines instead of being invisible. They exist when a connection was created to something that is optional in a node and is currently disabled.
[NEW] Added a specific action in the graph menu to align all nodes, distinct from the alignment option. Option affects future manipulations; action is performed once when clicked.
[NEW] Added overlap indications in the graph: overlapping nodes will have a red "!" icon on top.
[NEW] Added "Vector 2 to Vector 3" and "Vector 3 to Vector 2" conversion nodes to facilitate UV usage in a graph.
[NEW] Added "Arc tangent of (X, Y)" math node (a.k.a. "atan2"), as well as Hyperbolic trigonometric functions and their inverse.
[NEW] Many Math nodes now accept any input type (number, vector 2, vector3, color): the operation is applied on each component separately. For nodes that take two inputs, the second input can either be a number used as parameter for each input component (e.g. pow(input1.x, input2), pow(input1.y, input2) etc.), or a vector of same size as the input, where each component is used as parameter for operating on the corresponding component of the input node (e.g. pow(input1.x, input2.x), pow(input1.y, input2.y), etc.). Vector nodes "Length", "Normalize" and "Dot product" now also accept Vector 2 as input, not only Vector 3.
[NEW] Added edition of parameter layout directly in the material editor published parameter tab.
[NEW] Added edition of parameter layout directly in the MetaNode parameter list.
[NEW] Added position mode option in UV node.
[NEW] Added a node pulling a MetaBall's or HyperBlob's (or a single primitive's) distance field into the graph, in order to delimit a volume in space, typically to define a standalone cloud shape inside a cloud layer. The node's output is a sort of distance to the object but inverted so that positive values define the "inside" space, and negative values the "outside" space.
[NEW] Implement a Smoothing parameter on the "Closest Neighbor" and "1st - 2nd neighbor" variants of the Voronoi noises.
[NEW] Made the "Division" math node vector-compatible as well (other Math nodes had been made vector-compatible earlier on).
[NEW] Added a second output to the "Division" node to get the remainder of the division and add a standalone "Remainder" node.
[NEW] The "Threshold" node (Filter category) now has an option to choose between the Low and the High value when the input is strictly equal to the Threshold (formerly, the High value was silently assigned).
[NEW] Function preview is taking into account scene time.
Fixed graph tooltip that was not always displayed for connections.
Better event handling, the thing you pick on button press is the thing that is used to perform the action (and not the one that is under the mouse after moving a bit).
Click and drag now keeps the mouse capture until release, so that you can move the mouse outside the graph without interrupting the current action).
Edit on node of label or data now happens only on second click on the node, not right away when you select it.
Added a small tolerance before moving a selected node.
Remember the previous position in the graph view when changing of edited graph (when editing a MetaNode for instance).
Better text drawing when graph is de-zoomed. Text is now rasterized at current display size instead of being scaled down.
Added a new option in main graph menu to display a grid in background of the graphs.
Fixed lost mouse capture when dragging the graph view, when the mouse was moved outside of the graph area.
Graph nodes can be freely resized. Minimization happens when node width is set below 1/2 the minimal width. When minimized, the node size is controlled by the vertical component of the resize.
Updated the placement of nodes that are generated by the application.
Fixed broken display of colormaps in graph nodes.
When node height is large, we can better use the space by placing the preview above the label, instead of left. That allows a better preview of material graphs, by resizing the nodes to your convenience. The maximum preview size for textures is currently limited thought.
Added an option to enable/disable the minimap in the graph view.
Added in node preview of 2D filters.
Parent parameter node has been renamed to "Ancestor parameter".
Better placement of input/output nodes inside newly created MetaNodes: the right place is next to the node that uses the input/output.
Removed the useless "Display nodes minimized" option, which prevented a lot of interactions in the graph. Nodes can still be minimized by selecting them, and using the right click menu, or by resizing them.
Better "show preview" options: each node has a Hide/Show/Auto setting. Hide/show overrides the global setting (for nodes that can have previews).
Fixed display of Help of Graph Nodes.
Vector composers, decomposers, 2D/3D converters, and axis permutations are now grouped in the "Vector Composition" subcategory inside the "Math" category of nodes.
Fixed a bug in the "XYZ Product (Separate Parameters)" node that led fractals downstream in the graph to evaluate too few or too many "octaves" (= fractal detail).
Fixed "Turbulence damping" parameter of the "Three Noises" fractal being ignored by mistake (since 2011!).
Fixed inconsistency when switching noise of fractal node. Internal noise scale was changed.
Fixed potential incorrect graph evaluation when containing MetaNode.
Avoided useless invalidation when opening/closing MetaNode function editor.
Select the appropriate output in the graph, when opening it from the different tabs of the Material Editor. .
Disabled contract/ungroup MetaNode icons if the corresponding action is not possible due to current selection.
Fixed copy-pasting a function, material, etc. containing a "Spline Proximity" node, where the copy lost track of which scene Spline to use (when not configured with an internal spline).
Fixed "Spline Proximity" node "Distance" and "2D Distance" outputs when used on the material of an Infinite object (Sea plane, Ground plane, or Infinite Procedural Terrain): the output values were excessively small as to be almost unusable.
RENDERING
[NEW] Render thumbnails are now computed for current screen dpi instead of default resolution.
[NEW] Speed-up rendering (up to 10%, especially with atmosphere rendering).
[NEW] Optimization of up to 20% when rendering clouds.
[NEW] New altitude inputs for clouds.
[NEW] Cloud specific input now supports local, object, world, or legacy coordinates.
[NEW] New position option node for clouds (support local, object, world, or legacy coordinates).
[NEW] Improve soft shadows projected on clouds.
[NEW] When auto-exposure is estimated from a progressive preview render (either Scene Preview, or regular render in "Preview" quality), a first estimation is now computed and applied as soon as the coarsest pass of the render ends, so that both the render and the 3D viewports become readable sooner, in case the exposure gap is large (e.g., when switching atmosphere model). The final auto-exposure estimation is done at the end of render as usual (the difference with the initial estimation is usually quite small).
Reduced the frequency of PathTracer render display during rendering (mainly useful because denoising can be long, reducing the number of denoising process saves time).
Fixed a bug when denoiser were not applied on render with very low sample per pixel.
Fixed artefacts when rendering glow on some materials (animated, non-volumetric).
Fixed the use of the Delete key to delete renders in the Render Stack which led to losing the focus (then subsequent Delete strokes would actually delete objects in the World Browser, for example).
Fixed rendering when some layers of a material layers stack have their "Visibility" icon set to "invisible" or "solid color": many effects were still applied when invisible (bump, displacement or normal mapping, luminous setting, color transmitted/reflected) or when set to "solid color" (Ambient occlusion, Highlights, PBR Metalness, Normal mapping, etc.).
Avoid re-enabling the render stack thumbnails too soon, which could introduce inconsistencies when a message box was displayed at the end of a render.
Fixed the saving of Multi-Pass as multi-layer PSD, when a 16-bit precision is requested.
Fixed the frame number indicated in the information strip, when rendering a single frame of an animation.
Fixed a regression with the linear exposure filter which was only applied to a third of the image.
Fixed a bug with quick renders in OpenGL views: they were deleted when the render preview ended (above the camera controls), or when the spline editor is opened.
Reduced the render time of objects using many materials (a test in a simple scene showed a time divided by 1.6 with 125 materials, 3.2 with 500 materials, 12.8 with 2000 materials. The gain is probably smaller in scenes using costly render effects.).
Fixed bad Altitude influence calculation when using Mixed Material and Layered Materials with "Absolute" and "Relative to Sea" modes for Altitude influence, when the Material layer itself uses non-World coordinate mapping.
Fixed arbitrary "Smooth blending strip" width for Mixed Materials using Absolute or Relative-to-sea modes: formerly the strip width depended on the Transition altitude, which could be zero, leading to a brutal change of material at the boundary even with maximum Smoothness. Now uses the same blending method as the "per-material" mode as a work-around. A better fix would be to offer an additional transition width parameter in these modes, to be able to set a truly Absolute value.
Fixed HyperBlob's underlying material scale ignored when rendering.
Auto-exposure is not reset anymore when rendering is aborted (previous estimation is kept).
Objects hidden from render should not collide with particles (including rain/snow collision).
Slightly increase lens glare resolution in preview mode and for final renders.
Fixed shadows of vegetation primitives with two-sided material.
MISC.
[NEW] Fixed a crash when loading color settings.
[NEW] VUE, PlantFactory and PlantCatalog Exporter will now be able to report the usage of their features. This will help e-on software to focus on the most relevant ones. This option can be enabled/disabled in File -> Options... -> General Preferences -> Send feature usage data.
Drop support for MacOS 10.10 "Yosemite".
Fixed progress bar never updated when saving a material on Mac OS.
Fixed a potential memory leak in file decompression and improved the reading speed of large scenes.
Fixed a case where the application offered to locate missing images several times despite the user saying "No to all".
Improved the compatibility with scenes containing copy-protected content which is not owned by the user: instead of refusing to load the scene, just ignore the missing functions/material layers and display the list of issues at the end of the loading.
Fixed a crash when computing fast OpenGL preview on HiDPI screen.
Removed obsolete OpenGL auto-configuration feature (all GFX support the Shader engine).
Fixed bad amount of VRAM detected for M1 macs (ARM-based).
Fixed Apple M1 "fixed pipeline" hardware renderer being detected as a software OpenGL implementation.
Skipped useless hardware requirements check on Apple M1 which could lead to invalid messages.
Optimize a border case where a group used as single operand of a Boolean (therefore a no-op) would still be baked as a Union (required when used as operand of an actual Boolean operation).
[Documentation] Reorganized Spline Editor section, especially the general description at the beginning (now split between general presentation and subsections "Creation and Edition" and "Additional Spline Tools"). The Spline creation and edition workflow is now presented in a more structured and detailed manner (with hints and shortcuts). The "Terrain Effect" subsection was also improved, with a detailed explanation of the "Amplitude" setting and descriptive examples.
[Documentation] Substantial rephrasing and clarification in the "Material Editor/Mixed Materials" section, especially in "Influence of Altitude".
Try to detect the installed version of V-Ray to pre-fill the version we install (only available on Windows).
Modified installers and updaters to be compatible with Mac OS 12 Monterey.
UI/UX
[NEW] Added long due -help option to the command line interface.
[NEW] Added drag n drop of scene file in Startup panel.
[NEW] Improved error message when export failed.
[NEW] Hooking Point editor is now resizable.
[NEW] In material editor, switch back to previous mode if no picture selected while switching to mapped picture.
[NEW] Rework of ambient light in OpenGL preview that was nearly always black (shader engine only). Now it is a fraction of the overall lights in scene.
[NEW] Fixed French overflowing text in volumetric material editor.
[NEW] Support mouse wheeling to zoom in/out over the Animation Timeline and Animation Properties bars.
[NEW] Allowed ungrouping MetaClouds, useful to reuse a list of spheres generated using the "Convert to MetaCloud" feature, for example. It is now also possible to convert a MetaCloud directly into a MetaBall or a HyperBlob.
[NEW] Added an icon to directly edit the Multi-pass format options from the MultiPass dialog.
[NEW] Added the possibility to override the specimen colors in the viewport, to easily highlight a given population.
Faster scan of files for faster opening of the internal file selection dialogs.
Allow using a complete drive in browser as tab.
Really disconnect constants when using the "Disconnect parameter" in material editor.
Do not remove "unused" graph nodes when using the "Disconnect parameter" in material editor, that still can be useful later on.
Made the image path display in image properties non editable, because sometimes it is not a path but some description (of a generated image), that was confusing to be able to change it and have the application try to load it. .
In "3D filter" editor and "Section profile" editor, do not replace current filter with original filter when we cancel a "Load", that's not a cancel of the current edit.
Fixed a dead lock in the browser (which occurred at least when multi selecting elements).
Asynchronous previews in browser, no need to wait a long time to change folder while previews are computed, they finish in background.
Fixed invisible icons of user defined categories in browsers, can only fix new categories, previously added one need a manual correction (set the icon using the right clic menu on the tabs that have no visible icon).
Correct ill-defined tangent effect in 3D filters: For a given set of points and tangents, we did not obtain the same curve depending on where the points were inserted before being moved. That was also producing asymmetric curves around points, even though the displayed tangent looked symmetric. .
Corrected filter 3D editor to use actual Bezier control points instead of tangents with a varying intensity that depended on the insertion point.
Better cut in the 2D and 3D filter editors, inserting points keep the exact same curve.
Fixed incorrect point highlight in 3D filter editor.
Reset point coordinates on open in the 1D filter editor.
Introduced a -interface_scaling followed by a factor in command line argument to run application in different HiDPi mode. Example: -interface_scaling 2.0 will double the size of every piece of interface.
Change the way edit controls with length react to arrows and page up. Arrow up will now add one of the displayed unit.
Fixed native browser not having quick access on windows.
Minor panel redraw performance improvement (skip obsolete code handling now absent dialog background gradation).
Fixed conflicts between configured shortcuts and edit fields: for example, if you had configured '=' for some action, you could no longer use it in an edit field without also triggering the configured action (except for alphanumerical characters). As a side-effect, on macOS this fixes the fact that Up/Down/PageUp/PageDown keys were inoperant in numerical edit fields (whereas they now properly increment/decrement the value by some fixed amount depending on each edit field).
On macOS, Cmd+Arrow key now has the expected behavior in edit fields, i.e. move/select to the beginning/end of line. The former custom trigger of Alt+Arrow key has been kept for compatibility (edit fields do not support moving/selecting word by word, like Alt+Arrow key should in theory do).
Speed-up loading of the material summary (with hundreds of materials) and display a progression after a few seconds.
Ignored LOD computation in Object preview renderer.
Fixed material name and scale when loading a material to replace a layer.
Fixed Clamping mode not available in Filter editor.
Fixed message boxes not taking into account the modal dialog potentially running (Windows only).
Fixed the behavior of checkboxes in the render information strip options (were displayed as partially selected, and 2 clicks were needed to select an entry).
When adding a new material layer to an existing material, reuse the parent material's mapping mode.
Fixed the position of message boxes generated from the render stack, in multi-screen context.
Fixed wrong cropping of some panels depending on the screen size (options panel on a laptop, typically).
Fixed missing refresh of published parameters tab in EcoSystem, Mixed and Volumetric Material Editors.
Fixed inconsistencies in the Recent Files menu when some of the recent files are no longer accessible.
Avoided the automatic closing of the File Format Options dialog when one clicks outside of it (except when it is opened from the native file browser - in this case, it is mandatory to do so).
Fixed the OpenGL preview being too dark when "Light from scene" viewport option is disabled.
Fixed imprecisions when zooming/dezooming in the render display (now better centered on the cursor position). If using the + and - buttons, the focus is the kept on the current center of the image, instead of the top-left corner.
Closing the render display now closes the NPR Options.
Fixed a regression in the render display: the icons to show the alpha/depth and npr layers could be enabled whereas the layers were not available.
Fixed the black strips that could appear in the render display when zooming/scrolling during the render process.
In the transparency tab of the material editor, the dispersion checkbox is now disabled with the dispersion slider when necessary (to enable it, caustics have to be enabled both in the global render options and in the material render options). This behavior is more consistent with other parts of the editor.
Fixed the scale value displayed in the hypertexture tab of the volumetric material editor.
Reduced latencies when transforming objects with gizmos in scenes with many materials.
Undo/redo operations can now be totally disabled in the Preferences by setting the "maximum number of operations [...]" to 0. This enables making the UI more responsive in heavy scenes.
Fixed the saving of titles for the thumbnails of renders in the stack.
Fixed the application of the Post Render Options to quick renders done in views that are not associated to an actual camera of the scene (top/front/side and perspective views).
Fixed the state of the "Edit Alpha" button in the EcoSystem material editor, so that it always appears as "toggled" when an alpha function is connected.
Avoided the useless horizontal scroll bar that appeared in the population list of EcoSystems.
Fixed "quick render" feature in views using a camera of the scene different from the currently active one (which was always used).
Made the display of meshes with multiple materials more efficient when they have a user-defined preview color (in the "Object - Aspect" dialog in the top right corner of the main VUE window).
Added an icon button (+) on the thumbnail of plants in the EcoSystem material editor, to make the "add preset" feature more visible (it replaces the pop-up menu that appeared when clicking on the thumbnail).
The lines of items in the EcoSystem material editor and in the lens flare editor can now be selected by clicking on their thumbnails.
Fixed the application of the preview colors (defined in the Object Aspect tab) when grouping objects, creating Boolean objects, and splitting meshes (by material). It now takes the "Use auto color whenever possible" preference and the preview colors of objects into account. This is particularly useful in heavy scenes where preview colors are enabled to make the display faster.
Reduced the opening time of the browser for plants presets in the EcoSystem material editor or in the EcoSystem painter (for a plant with 50 presets, it now opens in 0.5s instead of 2.5s).
Improved the "Paint" tab of the Terrain Editor to use all the available space.
Improved the Material list UI at bottom of "Paint" tab.
Removed useless "Equalize" button in Terrain Editor.
Fixed potential crash on add cloud primitive on old MetaClouds.
Fixed MetaNode collection in function editor node list appearing outside of "User MetaNode" category.
Fixed flickering object graph when moving object.
Fixed refresh issue on cancel in function editor.
Fixed sometimes losing focus of the application at the end of a render (causing another application to flash on the top of VUE).
Fixed a crash on mac when rendering with OpenGL preset in main view. .
Fixed some empty browser when selecting specimens for an EcoSystem.
Fixed issue with plant browser sometimes having a wrong layout.
Removed some specific nodes (cloud/particles) on terrain graph menu.
Fixed water surface options synchronization with function editor.
Fixed ghost editor popping when clicking on color control.
Fixed Function Graph node types reappearing when switching between procedural and heightfield terrains.
Fixed previous version menu sometimes not working.
Fixed some case where editors do not respond to click anymore. .
Prevent some rare crash when closing material editor.
Removed some unnecessary scrollbars it published parameters tab in material editor. .
Add button in the Terrain Editor to edit the altitude graph more easily.
Major display optimization when merely moving any window except the main window (i.e., floating windows).
Minor display optimization for large windows on macOS (mostly 4K/5K, Scaled Display).
Fixed edit fields losing focus while typing when it triggers the refresh of a kind of (hierarchical) listbox (e.g. in the Particle Motion editor).
Fixed buggy navigation focus point (used as orbiting center and for navigation speeds) when only ground and/or water planes are selected.
In the Object Properties ("Numerics") panel, input in the X/Y/Z edit fields could end up in the wrong property when switching rapidly between Position and Rotation, for example.
Fixed many cases where the rendered scene preview restarted from scratch when manipulating objects that do not affect the render (non-active camera or its target, objects hidden from render or in hidden layers, objects added to a hidden layer).
Reorganize the Display menu to better group related items.
Prevent cameras from being created with a -4 exposure (especially Top camera, or cameras created from a Perspective camera), and fix wrong exposure in non-active cameras when loading an atmosphere with a different photometric status, same when saving and reloading a camera from a VOB in a scene with a different atmosphere.
Adjust 3DConnexion Space Mouse motion speed depending on the selection or scene dimensions.
Fixed issues with spline geometry effect meshes and terrain's 3D sculpting meshes which can be created in the wrong scene layer or stay visible when their "originating" object is hidden, and similar issues.
More helpful error message when OpenCL initialization failed.
More helpful error message when reading a PS/EPS/AI vector graphics file fails: recommend SVG format.
Fixed EcoSystem visibility issue in conjunction with the option "Show only objects from active layer" (viewports menu): EcoSystems from all layers were visible, whereas only EcoSystems from the focused layer should be.
When loading a scene from the Welcome panel, fixed the default viewport configuration being used instead of the custom one saved in a previous session (for a template scene), and the lack of a warning message when loading some non-template scenes.
Fixed motion speed when a single light or spline control point is selected.
Fixed edition of object under the mouse when double-clicking on a viewport's (transparent) caption bar to maximize the viewport.
More readable Layer name color when using the default Dark grey theme.
Fixed non-respect of the Camera Lock option when using the 3DConnexion SpaceMouse device.
Fixed navigation issues in the Timeline: not possible to zoom when using 3DSMAX navigation preset, pop-up menu showing after a pan on the Animation Property Bar, fix dysfunctional and possibly crashing mouse wheeling support on the Animation Splines Bar.
Fixed exposure in several (mostly top-view) displays: Spline Proximity node's internal spline editor, Terrain Editor's Zone Display, and two steps of the Animation Wizard.
Removed problematic feature in the EcoPainter: secondary action on the top-left corner icon button (to minimize the dialog) does not work properly and leads to confusion.
Fixed a message text referring to obsolete setting names, when converting objects to MetaClouds.
Fixed accelerator hints not showing in the Object Aspect's GL Display quality pop-up menu.
Fixed inconsistent message when changing both color and alpha channel using a single picture in the Alpha Plane editor, when the existing channel pictures have different dimensions.
Fixed Rendered Scene Preview using outdated sea parameters when the Water Surface is opened, and one clicks on the Scene Preview to manually refresh it.
Fixed scene's "Save" button not enabled when dragging a picture into VUE for use as a picture-mapped material.
More explicit message about assets in Content browsers that are available as separate downloads.
Fixed water surface options not working with some material from content.
It is now possible to hide a layer when object selected.
Removed a button doing nothing in SolidGrowth's Plant Editor (rename leaf/trunk subset).
Fixed the behavior of checkboxes in the render information strip options (were displayed as partially selected, and 2 clicks were needed to select an entry).
Removed a useless intermediate dialog when editing the number of variations of a plant in an EcoSystem.
Fixed population of multi-layer EcoSystems when the Material Editor is opened from the summary of materials or the World Browser.
In the World Browser, avoid showing materials of EcoSystem specimens no longer in use.
Fixed persistency of World Browser advanced options (show only material names, show only materials of selected objects...).
Avoided switching a material to dynamic population silently - happened typically when the material has some animated/published parameters.
Avoided refreshing the scene preview as soon as one edits a setting in the EcoSystem Material Editor.
Fixed wrong name and meta-information when replacing a plant by another species with the "Replace By..." menu.
Improved the display of specimen names in Material Editor and EcoSystem Painter, by displaying the preset name (if any) on a separate line.
Fixed preview mode option not sticking: was forced to "Show All Previews in Graph" each time the Function Editor was opened.
Fixed focus changes in Object properties making coordinates values being incorrectly changed.
Fixed double backup being added to Undo/Redo list when editing Object properties with Interactive numerical field changes enabled.
Fixed various bugs related to gamma correction and consistency between HSL/RGB values in ColorMap editor.
Added the ability to enable/disable the exposure of VUE cameras from the VUE render options for a better "artistic" control. Previously, their exposure was enabled with the "Post processing" checkbox, but it led to unexpected renders. The exposure value can be controlled by selecting a VUE camera then by selecting "Object Properties" in the VUE menu.
If no TPF plant variations are selected, loading is aborted.
INTEGRATION AND EXPORT
[NEW] Added the ability to bake the Reflection channel for non-PBR materials (also available in the Convert Tool in plugins).
[NEW] Improved TPF plant export using material baking.
[NEW] Animated wind is taken into account when exporting TPF plant animation.
[NEW] Improved FBX import/export.
[NEW] Added transparency support in C4D export.
[NEW] Added back side baking of two-sided materials when exporting without duplicated faces.
[NEW] USD and FBX export support tiling mode. (Mirror Tiling mode does not work for FBX, it is a FBX limitation).
[NEW] USDZ files creation no longer create construction files next to the final file.
[NEW] Added an option to split the USD exports in multiple files with one file per object and an assembly file for the scene.
[NEW] USD now exports lights.
[NEW] C4D export can use multi-instance or render instance for EcoSystems.
[NEW] C4D export the sky in a native object (use panoramic mode).
[NEW] C4D export PBR materials.
[NEW] C4D export VDB clouds as Volume Set.
[NEW] USD export VDB clouds.
[NEW] When exporting in USD on omniverse://, the objects will be tracked (activate Live Sync on omniverse). .
[NEW] Syncing on omniverse supports deleting of objects. .
[NEW] Added an option to replace pivot at the center of an imported object.
[NEW] Syncing on omniverse supports adding new object (geometry modification is not working yet).
[NEW] Add an option in USD export to use submeshes instead of GeomSubSet (to handle multi material meshes).
[NEW] Syncing on omniverse first support of geometry modification.
[NEW] Syncing on omniverse support of object renaming.
[NEW] Syncing on omniverse support of material modification.
[NEW] Add a Clarisse preset in USD.
[NEW] Syncing on omniverse support of object EcoSystem.
[NEW] Improve export of C4D animated VDB clouds.
[NEW] Improved export of USD camera focal and focus distance.
[NEW] Add clearcoat export in C4D and USD formats.
[NEW] Export clearcoat flatten.
[NEW] USD export Visibility (an object hidden from render will be hidden in USD).
[NEW] Added new option to export .vdb in multiple files.
[NEW] Preserve the EcoSystem hierarchy upon export (grouping instances together with the populated object) - in FBX, C4D and USD formats.
Fixed export of multipass render as PSD: extra components were always saved as linear whereas other color-like channels were gamma encoded. Now all components that can have gamma are encoded with the export gamma (see gamma options).
Fixed broken transition normal map in LeafCluster, billboard export and baked map export.
In the Export Options, the "occlusion treatment" option is now located just below the "ambient occlusion" checkbox.
Fixed a bug when writing a TIFF animation with alpha or depth channel bit per pixel different from the color channel BPP.
USD can now export to omniverse:// files and take advantage of omniverse live sync.
USD export now exports color Space. .
Fixed C4D export.
Improved error message when impossible to write an exported image because of image encoding.
Fixed some issues in the handling of Unicode characters in LWO and OBJ modules.
Store last user choice regarding Nuke import options in environment.
Fixed missing material file (.mtl) when exporting only billboards in OBJ format.
Fixed wrong value of the displacement depth (displayed as "height" in Cinema 4D) in Cinema 4D export preset.
Export the displacement depth in FBX files (even though it's ignored in most of applications).
Added an option to bake the displacement in the exported geometry (previously, it was automatically the case when the displacement channel was not selected in texture map options).
Improved detection of inverted normals upon import.
Fixed the handling of empty file paths in MTL files, in OBJ import (they were leading to confusing error messages).
Fixed the handling of Unicode characters in the reading of ZBrush files (.goz).
Fixed a memory leak when importing a FBX or Alembic file containing instantiated objects.
Fixed a potential memory leak when exporting a large mesh in 3DS format.
Fixed the export of displacement mapping (as a baked texture) when the displacement function is connected to a texture map with mip-mapping enabled.
Fixed the import of displacement map in OBJ format (was interpreted as 100% transparent material...).
Fixed atmosphere export in case of roll and animation of the main camera.
Fixed roughness constant value when exporting to USD.
Fixed branch blending options wrongly applied in presets where it is not present.
Fixed roughness constant value when exporting to USD.
Fixed import FBX camera in Target mode.
Fixed wrong LOD scaling factor.
Export zone does not exclude cameras and sunlight when they are out of export zone.
Fixed potential wrong atmosphere export image when path tracer is activated.
Fixed intensity of EXR export of atmosphere.
In the Real-World Import panel, when the import area's center is off view, zooming now operates towards the mouse position "as usual", not towards the view center.
Real-World Terrain Import detect tiles that are entirely invalid data and fall back to tiles at other levels, to work around "holes" in the data coverage.
Real-World Terrain Import panel display improvement when zooming out but lower level (coarser) tiles are missing: keep using (a reasonable amount of) the higher level (finer) tiles to fill the holes while the coarser tiles are being downloaded.
When the Real-World Terrain Import queried Sentinel tiles of level 16+, the server supplied them but they were only up sampled crops from the lower resolution tiles, resulting in blurry textures and uselessly high workloads for VUE.
Real-World Terrain view tooltip fix: altitude was not properly found when the view was zoomed-in too much.
Real-World Terrain imports resulted in terrain function graphs with two Altitude output nodes.
Better error reporting when OBJ import fails to open or parse material library files (MTL).
Fixed a regression since VUE R5 when importing Real-World Terrains where the base of the terrain would always be at Z=0 instead of the minimal altitude over the whole terrain ("pillar effect"), so that terrains at high altitudes could no longer be dropped onto the ground.
Fixed contrast issues in high altitudes (around 5000m and above) in the Real-World Terrain import dialog by using an additional color key in the default color map.
Fixed several issues when computing the level of tiles to import for Real-World Terrain data that may lead to insufficiently detailed data being used.
When importing a geo-referenced altitude file, retained its name for display in the "World Browser - Links" tab (formerly it used a generic naming convention).
Fixed baked map extension wrongly reset to JPG when exporting through Python.
Do not add an empty group to the scene when importing a file containing only cameras.
Fixed inconsistencies regarding animation options of PlantFactory species (unavailable when editing one plant's export options).
Fixed wrong UVs when exporting a non-square terrain with materials exported as baked texture maps.
Fixed wrong UVs when exporting a real-world terrain with materials exported by conversion of existing maps.
Fixed PlantFactory animation options (bones, points) wrongly greyed out when editing the plant's export options, depending on the export format used previously.
Fixed wrong scale when exporting a height-field terrain restricted to a zone.
Fixed EcoSystems becoming invisible in real-time views after a sky export (or a scene export including an export of the sky map).
Improved MetaBlobs FBX export with better transitions between materials.
Fixed the export of materials using a PBR Workflow Converter node (an empty metalness map was generated).
DENOISER
[NEW] Updated Intel Open Image Denoise from version 1.2.0 to 1.3.0: improved denoising quality (improved sharpness of fine details / less blurriness, fewer noisy artifacts), slightly improved performance and lowered memory consumption, bug fixes and speed improvement for recent processors.
[NEW] Updated Intel Open Image Denoise from version 1.3.0 to 1.4.0: improved fine detail preservation, reduced denoising memory consumption by about 35%.
[NEW] Updated NVIDIA Optix denoiser from version 7.0 to 7.2: improved denoising quality and lowered GPU memory consumption. NVIDIA driver 455 is needed.
[NEW] Added AMD Radeon Image Filter Denoiser version 1.7.0. Any hardware OpenCL, DirectX12 or Metal compatible should be able to run it (except on Apple ARM).
[NEW] Added a Denoiser Strength setting to modulate denoising process, which is available in PathTracer Options Dialog.
[NEW] Fixed a potential crash when using a denoiser with disabled multipass (both disabled in Render Option and in Denoiser Options).
MATERIAL
[NEW] Added support of Normal mapping "Link intensity to object scale" option on TPF plant.
[NEW] Added support for PBR clearcoat layer.
[NEW] Fixed proper independency of PBR clearcoat reflections and highlights from underlying normal perturbations.
[NEW] Properly filter PBR specular highlights with clearcoat tint.
[NEW] Added specific tab for clearcoat settings.
[NEW] Added automatic connection with substance clearcoat outputs.
[NEW] Added Normal Map Intensity and Flatten parameters.
Fixed Alpha output being connected to Projected Map's "Grayscale" output even when an actual alpha channel is present in the selected picture when switching to "Mapped picture" mode in the Alpha tab of the Material Editor.
Fixed the saving of EcoSystem materials with several layers from the Object Aspect dialog (or the world browser) so that they are reloaded with all layers.
PERFORMANCE
[NEW] Improved the speed of EcoSystem painting.
Cleanup previous temporary directories in a background thread to avoid delaying the application start.
Fixed graph related code with exponential behavior, affecting graphs with heavy combinatorics (lots of nodes with lots of interconnected data).
Improved speed of the thumbnail provider (for Windows explorer).
Improved loading time of compressed scenes containing a lot of plant EcoSystem populations (requires saving the scene in 2021.2 first). Up to 5x faster in some cases.
Fixed access to animated textures that was preventing proper multi-threaded render in some cases.
Small reduction of the scene loading time (tests showed a 4% gain for a scene with many images and filters in material graphs).
Reduced the loading time of scenes using thousands of images (for example, 19.3% decrease for 10000 images).
Improved rendering speed with V-Ray and Cinema 4D (around 20% faster when the number of rendering threads matches the number of CPU cores - when the number of threads is greater, the gain becomes huge because VUE did not take this setting into account).
Added multithreading and interruption possibility during the preparation phase before a render, notably when a ventilator influences an EcoSystem and therefore creates plants instances.
PLUGINS
[NEW] Added the possibility to include displacement map in native shaders instead of baking displacement on geometry.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / RenderMan] Implemented the conversion of materials to RenderMan shaders (PxrSurface).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / RenderMan] Added handling of two-sided materials.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / RenderMan] Fixed the conversion of the back of two-sided materials for RenderMan in Maya (the diffuse appeared black, and the backlighting was ignored).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / RenderMan] Added option to generate RIB archives for EcoSystem instances.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / RenderMan] Fixed several instantiation issues introduced by changes in RenderMan 24.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Added the ability to convert VUE materials to Redshift materials in Cinema 4D S24.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Fixed a crash with the latest builds of C4D (S24.111) and Redshift (3.0.50).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] With Redshift in C4D, a protection was added to avoid potential problems with future versions (in case attributes are removed, they will be skipped instead of preventing the whole conversion).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] With Redshift in C4D, two-sided materials now have only one item (the root material) in the list of materials, instead of 3 previously (root, front, and back materials). The sub-materials are still accessible in the graph.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Fixed the creation of two-sided materials with Redshift in C4D, when the "use sprite node" option is enabled.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Fixed a recent regression preventing the conversion of materials for Redshift in C4D.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Fixed the layout of Redshift material graphs in Cinema 4D (all nodes were overlapping).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] VUE materials with sub-layers can now be converted to Redshift materials in C4D (alpha maps are supported, but not the settings in the Presence tab for now. Also due to a Redshift limitation, only 7 layers can be converted.).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Improved the layout of Redshift material graphs in Cinema 4D to better see the hierarchy of nodes.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] VUE backlight and luminous properties are now converted for Redshift in C4D.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Fixed the gamma of texture maps for Redshift in C4D.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Added the ability to convert VUE materials to Redshift materials in Maya (layered materials not yet supported).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] VUE 2-sided materials can now be converted to Redshift materials in Maya.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] VUE materials using a PBR Workflow Converter node can now be converted to Redshift materials (it generates the appropriate maps for the diffuse, metalness and roughness channels).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] The VUE ambient occlusion is now converted to Redshift materials (mixed with the diffuse) in Maya and C4D.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] The Convert Tool now works in Cinema 4D S24 on Mac OS.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Fixed a regression in Maya: the metalness/roughness/reflections maps were not connected if their intensity factor was less than 100%.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Fixed the compatibility with Redshift 3.0.45 in Cinema 4D (the color management was different so it may be helpful for users with this version).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Improved the layout of Redshift material graphs in Cinema 4D (when texture maps are shared between nodes).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Fixed the conversion of VUE simple materials under EcoSystem materials for the Redshift renderer.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Added the support of Redshift in Cinema 4D R23.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] In the Convert Tool Options, the check boxes to enable the baking of the ambient occlusion and highlight are now accessible.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] When a VUE material uses the reflection channel, then its highlights channel is now ignored (as specified in the User Story).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Fixed the baking of the hightlights channel (saving of the generated map + generation of UVs for the mesh).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Avoided the unwanted addition of color correction nodes in Redshift material graphs (probably due to an imprecision with the color correction in the VUE material editor. This also affected plants from the PlantCatalog. Now only color variations greater than 3/255 are considered).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Fixed the conversion of the highlights map without baking (recent regression). The global intensity associated with the map is also taken into account now.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] The VUE clearcoat can now be converted to Redshift in Cinema 4D and Maya (IOR and Flatten parameters still have to be fixed, and the baking is not supported yet).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] The Redshift coating transmittance is now enabled only when there is a non-white color tint to apply (to avoid the darkening of edges with low IOR value).
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] The flatten parameter of the VUE clearcoat is now converted to Redshift in Cinema 4D and Maya.
[NEW] [Convert Tools / Redshift] Fixed the conversion for Redshift after a reverted conversion for another renderer in Cinema 4D.
[NEW] VUE plugins now support Cinema 4D R25 (rendering + convert tool).
[NEW] [Convert Tools] Added the ability to convert VUE splines with a geometry effect.
[NEW] Improved conversion speed and performance in Maya for large EcoSystem populations, using MASH instancer for static instances.
[NEW] Added option to convert EcoSystems using Particle Flow in 3DS MAX, for better performance with 5k+ instances. LIMITATIONS: currently disabled with V-Ray and Arnold procedurals.
[NEW] Updated toolbars for Cinema 4D.
Fixed the conversion of plants with the "animated points" setting (some models had only small parts of their geometry animated).
Added the detection of the mismatch between the version of the current V-Ray renderer and the version of the VUE plugin, to warn the user that it may lead to problems.
The normals of VUE objects are now more accurate (for the display only, the render had no problem).
VUE now uses the number of processors defined for V-Ray (instead of always using all processors).
Fixed a regression in Maya that could make VUE objects and plants using several materials appear in light green in the real-time display.
Fixed a bug with the clipping planes of VUE cameras in Maya (if they were edited in the Maya interface, they were reset to initial values after some operations).
Fixed the display of VUE materials with several layers (now the bottom layer is used to display its maps, instead of the top layer which often contains less visible parts). .
Fixed an error message in the Maya script editor (saying the color of VUE materials couldn't be modified because it was already connected to a map).
Fixed a crash in the VUE plugin for 3ds Max, with scenes containing meshes using multi-materials whose sub-materials were shared with other meshes (regression introduced in R5). This fix may also improve the responsiveness as it avoids the useless recreation of unchanged sub-materials.
In Maya the scene is now correctly cleaned when closing VUE, which avoids problems when reloading the resulting scene (the useless automatic loading of the VUE plugin, or error messages when the plugin is absent).
Fixed the transformations of groups that were abnormally reset to their initial value when doing the first render of a session (with photometric atmospheres), or when changing the exposure control in 3ds Max.
Avoided a random deadlock when rendering with 3ds Max + Backburner + V-Ray. (It was linked to the use of several threads during the preparation of VUE materials and objects. Now a single thread is used, like in older VUE versions.).
The VUE plugin for V-Ray in 3ds Max is now compiled with the SDK from V-Ray 5 update 1.3 (implying a better compatibility with this version).
Fixed a crash when rendering a VUE scene with V-Ray in 3ds Max (if "render elements" different from the VRayDenoiser are present).
Fixed the closing of the VUE progress bar when saving large scenes (using the host app commands for saving).
Fixed the display of the mouse cursor in 3ds Max when hovering over VUE dialogs (it could keep the resizing icons instead of reverting to the arrow).
Fixed the unwanted modification of existing native cameras (translation in Maya, field of view in 3ds max) when adding the first VUE element (scene, object, atmosphere...). Now only the default perspective camera is moved to fit all objects of the scene in the view (+ orthogonal views in 3ds Max).
Fixed a bug in Maya with VUE materials containing dashes (-) in their name: it led to a light green display, and to invisible objects with the Convert Tool.
Fixed problems in the VUE Render Options dialog (the "deterministic indirect lighting" checkbox was ignored, and the "depth of field" checkbox and its associated edit button were useless, so they were removed).
VUE now correctly considers splines as selected after clicking on their geometry effect in the native scene (it makes their edition or conversion easier).
Removed 'Ambient Occlusion' from the list of available multipass layers, for it cannot be computed in the plugin context. .
Fixed the preview of Lens-flares in the Light Editor, which was never refreshed in the context of plugins.
Integrate camera/light synchronization directly in VUE plugins, to avoid having to install a separate VUE synchronization plugin manually.
Fixed the display of EcoSystem instances held by Boolean operations or MetaBlobs.
Avoided displaying a confusing warning when a default scene using a photometric atmosphere was defined by the user, but the atmosphere file just chosen to initiate a new project is *not* photometric.
Fixed a potential crash (and a fuzzy visual effect) when closing Maya while VUE plugin is in use (when trying to reset the grid properties).
[Convert Tools] Propagate bump depth property from original material to native material when we bake material maps.
[Convert Tools] Added conversion of Bump for Cinema 4D's Standard Renderer.
[Convert Tools] Fixed the transformation of instances with skeletons in Maya.
[Convert Tools] Fixed discontinuities in the normals of converted plants.
[Convert Tools] The original extension of texture maps is now preserved (instead of always using the .tif format). For baked textures, the default extension is now .png, as it is more standard format.
[Convert Tools] With the Maya Software renderer, the VUE alpha maps are now loaded in a way that is compatible with the NVIDIA Omniverse Connector plugin (the result in Omniverse was previously inverted).
[Convert Tools] With the Maya Software renderer, normal maps are now connected to materials in a simpler way so that they can be correctly exported to NVIDIA Omniverse (using the Maya Connector plugin).
[Convert Tools] The scale/offset/tiling parameters of the texture maps of VUE materials are now taken into account when converting them to native materials.
[Convert Tools] In the Convert Tool Options, "Don't show upon object conversion" is now applied to next conversions.
[Convert Tools] Fixed the specular weight when converting VUE PBR materials to Arnold and RenderMan materials.
[Convert Tools] In Maya the Convert Tool now generates .tex files for RenderMan to avoid missing textures (when rendering without the Local Queue).
[Convert Tools] Fixed the display of the progress bar when converting objects. Previously, it only showed 1% and was closed at the end of the conversion.
[Convert Tools] When materials are converted by using the original texture maps, the maps are now simply copied from the source folder to the destination folder (if they are present and not transformed) instead of being rewritten by the VUE image modules. It may reduce the conversion time, and it avoids an additional quality loss with the jpg format.
[Convert Tools] Fixed the conversion of materials whose texture maps are inverted in VUE (the color and normal inversions were ignored).
[Convert Tools] Fixed problems with the mapping of texture (scale/offset/rotation) on meshes with UVs, for the conversion and the display.
[Convert Tools] Fixed a crash when closing VUE after converting an object from a group with more than one level of children.
[Convert Tools] Fixed the conversion of VUE constant colors depending on the color space of the Cinema 4D scene.
[Convert Tools] Fixed the conversion of VUE PBR materials that are baked (either in "Automatic" or "Bake to texture maps" mode).
[Convert Tools] Fixed bugs when typing an output directory in the Convert Tool options (".fbx" was added to the path, and texture maps were not written).
[Convert Tools] Fixed the conversion of objects with options that generate separate texture maps, which can happen with the "Automatic" mode or "Bake to texture maps" combined with "Texture per material" for plants. Previously, only one texture was loaded in host applications.
[Convert Tools] Fixed the mapping of textures on VUE primitives (the UVs generated by VUE are now baked in the native geometries in order to better handle all cases, meaning that the scale/offset/rotation in the host applications are neutral and not mirroring the ones in VUE).
[Convert Tools] Fixed the application of the geometry resolution setting when converting VUE objects with the "Convert materials" or "Automatic" modes (ie. when materials are not baked). This was a regression introduced in R6. It did not affect PlantFactory plants (quality controlled in the plant editor).
[Convert Tools] Disabled a useless message when saving a VUE scene after a conversion (asking if prebaked data should be saved).
[Convert Tools] Fixed the mapping of textures when the color channel is constant (UV coordinates were not generated for other channels).
[Convert Tools] Fixed bug: some species of the PlantCatalog had materials considered identical whereas they were different (so not correctly converted).
[Convert Tools] Fixed bug: when several presets/variations of the same species were loaded in a scene/EcoSystem, new materials were created for each of them (now they are shared).
[Convert Tools] Fixed the names of converted materials: the root of 2-sided materials used the name of the front materials (all apps), and default names were applied to nodes in Arnold shaders (C4D).
[Convert Tools] Fixed the color space of texture maps in Maya (it could be wrong depending on the input color space rules in the preferences).
[Convert Tools] Fixed the intensity of displacement in Maya/3dsMax/C4D with all supported renderers.
[Convert Tools] Fixed a bug with the "revert" functionality (from the VUE world browser): converting the same object a second time ignored its material changes.
[Convert Tools] Fixed the conversion of metalness/roughness intensities in mapped picture mode from VUE to V-Ray in Maya and 3dsMax.
[Convert Tools] Fixed the conversion of the front of two-sided materials (wrong reflection settings for PBR materials, and wrong bump & displacement intensities).
[Convert Tools] Fixed a bug (R6 regression) when converting several VUE materials with the same name: the texture maps of the last converted material were used by all others. This fix is useful for PlantFactory plants.
[Convert Tools] Fixed the conversion of VUE highlights settings to RenderMan specular settings in Maya (which were producing a too reflective/shiny effect).
[Convert Tools] The maximum number of bones applied to the conversion of plants is now accessible in the options so that it can be increased (the default value of 500 previously hidden to the user does not always produces good results).
[Convert Tools] In Cinema 4D conversion dialog, when both Multi-Instances and Arnold Procedurals modes are available, use radio buttons instead of mutually exclusive checkboxes.
[Convert Tools] Added missing conversion of highlights and backlights when converting VUE materials using the "baked maps" mode.
[Convert Tools] Fixed wrong geometry scale when converting a procedural terrain.
[Convert Tools] Fixed the conversion of MetaBlobs and Boolean operations.
[Convert Tools] Fixed the conversion of infinite planes (ground, sea...).
[NEW] Added the ability to convert PlantFactory plants to Cinema 4D objects with bones (static or animated) or animated points.
[NEW] With the Convert Tool of the VUE plugin for Cinema 4D and for 3ds Max, VUE PBR materials are now converted to native materials for these renderers: Standard/Physical (C4D), ART (3ds Max), Arnold or V-Ray.
[NEW] Added the compatibility with Maya 2022 (the V-Ray renderer is not supported yet).
With the Convert Tool of the VUE plugin for Maya, VUE PBR materials are now converted to native materials for these renderers: Arnold, V-Ray and Renderman.
Added the compatibility with Cinema 4D S24.
[Convert Tools] The intensity of normal maps is now applied to native materials (for all renderers).
[Convert Tools] Fixed the application of the bump intensity and the orientation of normals for RenderMan in Maya.
[Convert Tools] Fixed the conversion of the alpha channel of the root of VUE two-sided materials. (It was ignored before. Now if it is defined, it overrides the alpha in sub-materials. A better fix will be done in future versions if necessary).
PATH TRACER
[NEW] Enabled back mip-mapped display for the interactive path tracer during the first passes to improve visual feedback when no denoiser is selected.
[NEW] Fixed don't cast shadows material flag handling for the full CPU intersector.
[NEW] Fixed wrong exposure during render for non-photometric atmospheres.
[NEW] Added compatibility with per-light cast shadow amount.
[NEW] Added support for the multipass global alpha channel.
[NEW] Properly handle PBR clearcoat flatten, as well as clearcoat normal mapping intensity settings.
[NEW] Properly handle PBR clearcoat intensity (instead of binary on/off behavior).
When activating the Path Tracer while multi-pass is enabled, made sure we deactivate channels and masks not supported by the Path Tracer render engine, to avoid generating 100% black or messy pictures.
Fixed a bug where groups of meshes used as EcoIntances were losing UV (resulting in textures visual glitches) when rendering with PathTracer render engine.
Fixed a bug where terrains where not updated when their material scale was modified when using interactive PathTracer.
Fixed OpenCL memory leaks.
Prevent the Interactive PathTracer from re-enabling by itself (and not working properly) after undoing some other operation.
Fixed rendering of EcoSystem instances which material has "Subsurface Scattering" translucency.
Reduced the memory footprint of procedural terrains and speed up their preparation for the Path Tracer.
Fixed infinite refresh of Interactive Path-Tracing after extrapolating an object (by duplicating it, moving the copy and pressing the '*' key).
Improved the rendering of primitives in the path-tracer when their materials are using either normal mapping or displacement mapping (the meshes were too faceted).
SPLINE
[NEW] New option to allow a Spline Stroke Material Effect to access the spline's UVs in the material graph. U value can be either "Uniform" or "Stretched" (along the Spline) and can also be automatically rescaled so that mapping of a picture or pattern preserves its aspect ratio.
[NEW] Settings in the Effects tabs are encapsulated in foldable frames, which allows to resize the Spline Editor vertically (with scrollbars, if needed) to reduce its visual footprint.
Allow inserting control points by pressing Shift while clicking to add points near the existing spline curve.
Fixed a possible random ordering of spline control points.
Fixed selection changing when opening the spline editor on the whole spline.
Fixed lingering cubes in the viewports when deleting a spline's control point.
Fixed the "Material Fill" effect that failed to follow the spline curve (filling instead a polygon based on the control points only).
Fixed the Spline's Geometry Effect "Height" and "Z Offset" clipped to the slider ranges whereas they should not be.
Fixed the Spline's Material Effect "Preview as ribbon" checkbox sometimes forcibly checked when reloading a scene where it was unchecked.
Fixed color glitches in the viewports and use cones instead of cubes for tangent's end points.
Spline editor UX improvements: prevent editor from closing when deleting part of the control points and allow selection of individual control or tangent points with Ctrl+Click even when the editor is in "Add" mode (typically, when first creating the spline by picking points in a viewport, previously created points can now be selected and deleted without interrupting the workflow).
Fixed possible crashes when deleting a control point from a spline.
Fixed fill/stroke influence blending with the underlying object's texture when the spline effect material has transparency.
Fixed Spline Stroke or Fill Material Effect not applied on newly created objects until changing something in the Spline editor.
Fixed slider range of the "Path Finding" and "Resample Spline" dialogs (in the Spline Editor).
Fixed physical dimensions of Spline effects reloaded from a VOB saved with a different internal unit than the current scene.
More robust detection of spline end point proximity, before offering to close the spline instead of adding a control point very close to an end point. Also refresh the status of the Cyclic toggle button in the Spline Editor UI when the user answers "Yes" to close the spline.
Fixed render bugs on multi-material objects (e.g. imported models) when splines are present in the scene: render was affected even with material effects disabled, and effect was improperly applied when enabled.
Fixed Material effect width being half of what it should be (except when populating an Ecosystem!).
Optimize scene interaction when the spline editor is opened to add or insert points and the scene has a complex hierarchy of objects.
Fixed insertion of points into cyclic splines not always choosing the right curve piece ("segment").
Fixed insertion of points into splines sometimes choosing a location far from the curve itself, onto background objects.
Fixed insertion of points into splines when no scene object is visible behind the pointed location.
Fixed problems handling control points (trying to delete and move them) after deleting several ones at once from a given spline.
Fixed imported spline (from a vector graphics file) not replacing the scene object when loaded through "Replace by...".
Fixed imported spline not being automatically reloaded when the file is changed in an external application.
Group multi-curve vector graphics at import (fixes subobject placement when drag-dropping into VUE), offset to the group center for more intuitive scene placement, and rename imported group and subobjects after the filename.
Fixed saving cyclic splines (as VOBs or in VUE scenes): tangents for the extremities could not be reloaded correctly. Existing cyclic spline are detected and fixed when the VOB or VUE/FSVUE file is loaded.
Fixed spline terrain effect disabled when duplicating a spline, and not properly re-enabled when restoring from Undo.
Fixed custom user-chosen spline control points and tangents' names being overwritten by VUE.
Fixed rendering of spline Stroke and Fill material effects when the underlying object's material has Layer Presence settings.
Improved the UI to avoid inconsistencies when a spline's stroke or fill material has Eco layers but the corresponding "populate EcoSystem" setting is not enabled, leading to inoperant "Populate" actions in the material editor.
Fixed render using obsolete spline after applying "Path finding" or "Resample spline".
Points and tangents now correctly share their owner Spline's properties (Locked/Hidden/etc.) and cannot be assigned their own. When not set to Automatic, the color configured for the 3D viewport is used (a different color can be set for each point).
Fixed a crash when rotating an invalid spline (a spline with a single point, usually one that is being created) with the viewport gizmos. Also prevent pointless rotation and scaling from being applied at all on an invalid spline.
Fixed invisible spline when editing a Hidden spline and adding points, leading to only the newly added point to be selected and thus visible. Now the whole spline is displayed as soon as one control point or tangent point is selected.
Fixed useless and buggy dropping of splines as a whole: their points are now dropped one by one instead.
Fixed a potential freeze of the application when copy-pasting an EcoSystem material to the Geometry Effect tab of the Spline Editor.
Fixed wrong vertical offset of EcoSystem instances when populating along a road.
Fixed missing terrain lines in the Terrain Effect tab's list of influences: those belonging to groups.
Fixed lost modifications of the EcoSystem settings when the material is opened from the Spline Editor and the EcoSystem is not populated at once.
Fixed a potential corruption of the spline's materials when pressing Cancel in the Spline Editor.
Fixed the rendering of material influences on grouped objects.
Made sure the material influences defined in the Spline Editor never affect EcoSystem instances (could happen when a specimen was created from the existing scene).
PYTHON
[NEW] Save and restore VUE's Python console command history across application sessions.
[NEW] Added Python functions to get/set the current renderer (external or not) and network rendering.
[NEW] Added a Python function to change the denoising mode (for Path-Tracing render engine). Example of usage: eon.EONScene().SetDenoising(eon.Denoiser_NVidiaOptix).
Removed now-useless message asking the user to use asynchronous version of Rendering Python functions.
Access to the EONGeoInterface API described in the documentation.
Fixed the rendering of some Materials using Python, when the rendering occurs in the Standalone Renderer or the command line RenderNode.
Removed non-stop popup message when using the Python Drop function.
NETWORK RENDERING
[NEW] Added long due -help option to the RenderNode's command line.
[NEW] Added the possibility to override the denoising mode (for Path-Tracing render engine) from the RenderNode's command-line: use option -render_denoising).
Improve rendering speed of Physics Particles Ecosystem animations when using RenderCows: each frame required an increasingly long initialization time, as the frame position in the animation grew higher, which is no longer the case.
Fixed IP address unreadable in RenderCow About screen, in German version.
STABILITY
Fixed a crash when the browser explores directories with some "permission denied" folders.
Fixed random failures when trying to open the CrashSender after a crash on macOS.
Fixed potential crash while exit with interactive path tracer activated.
Fixed a potential crash in 3DS Max plugins when executing wrong MAXScript commands internally.
Fixed a potential crash related to displacement mapping, when the subdivision of an object is interrupted in the middle (for a material using uniform subdivision). This could happen with the scene preview, typically.
Fixed a potential memory corruption when rendering with the Path Tracer in the active camera view (problem occurring only with certain values of height).
Fixed a crash when deselecting an object if the material editor and material browser were still opened.
Fixed a crash when rendering the atmosphere's Snow or Rain effects after doing "Purge Memory".
Fixed crashes on macOS when closing the Atmosphere Editor while displaying the Wind tab.
Fixed a crash with some parameters of the "Recursive Strata 3D" filter.
Fixed a crash on macOS when starting VUE with a corrupted docking configuration.
Fixed random crashes when undoing the whole terrain edition session from the Terrain Editor itself using the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+Z).
Fixed crashes when closing a window without closing first its Content browsers (at least in: Function browser opened from the Material editor, Material browser opened from the Material Summary or the Plant Editor).
Fixed possible crashes when editing both a Procedural Terrain (with a visible "isometric" terrain function preview) and its material.
Fixed possible crashes after cancelling a Procedural Terrain Editor and trying to re-open it immediately.
Fixed rare crashes when quitting the StandaloneRenderer (about once every 1000 runs).
Improved robustness of fast save mode (.fsvue), by catching more errors (no space left on device to finalize the scene file, typically).
Fixed a potential crash when editing a SolidGrowth plant created by replacing a previous plant of the same kind.
Fixed a potential crash when exiting the texture manipulation mode.
Fixed a potential crash when opening the Leaf Editor (from the Plant Editor).
DISPLACEMENT
Fixed Color To Vector used for displacement on vegetation .
Outwards-only option can now be set independently on each material layer.
Fixed custom direction (horizontal, vertical, or defined through graph) potentially lost upon baking or Path Tracing.
Fixed potential artefacts (wrong shadows) in displacement using uniform subdivision when depth is high.
Fixed potentially wrong shadows when the displacement amplitude is high, with dynamic subdivision only.
Fixed option "Affect material distribution" applied to all material layers for no reason.
Fixed uniform subdivision on meshes having more than 1 UV layer.
ANIMATION
Fixed a memory leak in MPEG1 and MPEG2 animation saving and repaired the options dialog from those formats on Windows.
Fixed area light parameters not refreshed when changing timeline.
Fixed ghost editor popping when clicking on color control.
Fixed wrong ranges for Render Sequence Start and End edit controls (both for Frame and Time).
Fixed wrong saving of MP4 animations for alpha and depth channels.
Make sure the Alpha channel is computed if the option is checked in the Animation Render Options panel.
Avoid repeating the same subdivision warning (TurboSmooth) at each frame and for each object.
Improved the behavior of "constrain current time" option when the scene has no key-frames but has an animation range defined by the user.
Preserved the target object's material when pasting the animation of another object.
ECOSYSTEMS
[NEW] Re-added the ability to move instances from an object's EcoSystem to a global EcoSystem. To use this, select instances with the EcoSystem painter, then click on the "Manipulate" button then select "Move Instances to...". The command "Change Instance Types to..." has also been fixed for global EcoSystems (the population list wasn't updated).
Fixed a bug preventing to save brushes in the EcoSystem painter when the associated material was encrypted (coming from Cornucopia3D or locked to a user license).
Fixed a bug preventing to open the material editor from the EcoSystem painter brush editor after selecting a new brush (previously it only worked for existing global EcoSystems already present in the scene).
Fixed the rendering of EcoSystems using PlantFactory species with the "Static Mesh" quality, after reloading a "Consolidated Archive" scene in VUE Standalone, and with all scenes in VUE hosted plugins.
Fixed the reloading of the quality boost of plants in EcoSystems (it was always reset to 0).
Fixed a bug in the edition of EcoSystems: after reloading a scene and manually locating a missing file for a plant in an EcoSystem, changing the plant quality re-added a separate plant. Now the existing plant is kept.
Fixed EcoPainter randomly (but frequently) slowing down when hovering the viewports, as well as "action" brushes (Scale, etc.) almost inoperant when in such a situation.
Fixed regular patterns appearing in 360 degrees population when the density is low.
Randomized 360 degrees population depending on the EcoSystem seed.
Fixed a potential memory leak when increasing the number of variations of a PlantFactory specimen.
Fixed potential ghost instances in OpenGL, when disabling the material effect of a spline.
Fixed performance issues (memory and time) when populating along a very large spline.
Fixed a potential crash when a same material using very small instances is populated over multiple objects.
Fixed a potential crash when enabling both dynamic and fast population on a spline.
Fixed potential precision issues (instances floating above the terrain, typically) when populating a procedural terrain.
Fixed potentially null populations in some cases of multi-layer EcoSystem materials.
Avoid displaying a question about luminous materials for materials which are no longer used by any specimen in the scene.
Avoid preparing unused specimen materials for the ray-tracer (this optimization was already live for the Path Tracer engine).
Improved the replacement speed of a PlantFactory specimen (when changing its quality) when there are many instances using it.
Fixed inconsistent results (lost underlying EcoSystems, typically) when populating an individual layer of a multi-layer material used by several objects.
Fixed inconsistencies in population results when sampling quality is boosted: the number of instances could jump very abruptly around certain values of the density slider.
Improved the evaluation of the instance count for spline effects using fast population mode, in order to avoid a warning in some cases.
Fixed wrong instance count displayed in Material Editor when copying an object holding instances (for copy/paste).
Fixed potential inconsistencies when editing an EcoSystem specimen material from the list of specimens in the Material Editor.
Fixed inconsistent handling of specular materials used by EcoSystem instances, leading to potential lighting errors.
Fixed potential loss of modifications done on EcoSystem specimen's materials in fast-save mode (.FSVUE files).
Fixed potentially wrong population (rectangular areas with no instance at all) of spline stroke effect using a large width, when some of the spline's angles are acute.
Fixed the creation of a population from an existing scene object when the latter has animation key-frames.
Avoided the duplication of EcoSystem materials when reading an EcoSystem using several presets of a same PlantFactory species.
Fixed displaced rocks (016b_lime boulder.sto, typically) sometimes floating in the air at render time (when the scene preview is activated).
DISPLAY
Fixed the display in OpenGL views to which a camera of the scene is assigned (the field of view and aspect ratio is now taken into account, instead of always using the settings of the active camera).
Fixed the position of the lens flare in OpenGL views on HiDPI screens.
Fixed support of Apple ARM M1 GPU which forced disabling the "Background draw" feature for no good reason and could also act in some cases as if the back-end driver was a software renderer (OpenGL emulation) instead of a proper hardware-supported renderer.
Fixed wrong display of Alpha Planes in Real-Time views just after their creation.
Fixed ghost objects in viewports after merging individual MetaBalls/HyperBlobs into a single one.
Fixed unexpected cloud billboards in the viewports after closing a scene with MetaClouds and creating or opening another scene with MetaClouds.
TERRAIN
Fixed a bug where cancelling edit in Terrain Editor made artefacts appears on terrain.
Fixed a bug where imported RGB image as terrain would cause the terrain to have the wrong heightmap until next switch back to VUE.
Fixed terrain mesh artifacts (bad interpolation = visible seams, torn meshes, etc.) when 3D-sculpting and when previewing terrains in the 3D viewports, improve code efficiency (parallelization & overall code optimizations).
Fixed conversion problems (related to overall vertical scale, zero-edge effect, and function scaling) when converting a Heightfield into a Procedural Terrain (with or without Heightfield-only nodes + improve performance of this latter case).
Fixed a vertical position and scale issue when converting a Procedural Terrain to a Heightfield.
Fixed both 2D and 3D sculpting being lost when converting a Procedural Terrain to a Heightfield.
Fixed a crash when undoing a cancelled Terrain Editor session involving 2D effects on a Heightfield terrain.
Fixed a material painting misbehavior: when both 'Sculpt' and 'Paint Material' are toggled, checking 'Invert' did not invert material painting, only the sculpting brush.
Fixed undo/redo issues inside the Terrain Editor (square artifacts, function changes not accounted for, scale, extension and gain not undoable for Heightfields, etc.).
Fixed interpolation artifacts with the Custom Erosion node when using the "Smallest Feature" parameter.
Use cubic interpolation to upsample Heightfields baked at an intermediate resolution (Reminder: the full resolution, if > 1024, is only baked for a "real" render, i.e. not for the Scene Preview).
Fixed render artifacts showing as "buggy" pixels (darker or lighter than their surroundings without a reason), actually betraying rays "missing" their intersection with the Heightfield terrain.
Fixed clipping slider issues for the top and bottom clipping planes in the Heightfield Terrain Editor: the altitude values displayed were often wrong, and the clipping planes changed altitude when changing the Heightfield's resolution.
Improve rendering performance for higher resolution Heightfields: about 10% for 2K/4K terrains, up to 30% for 8K terrains.
Fixed lost properties when converting a Heightfield to/from a Procedural Terrain: min/max clipping values, symmetrical flag, skin-only flag.
Fixed material layers not displayed in the Terrain Editor's Brush panel when editing a Procedural Terrain for the first time.
Improve resampling of material painting related data in the Terrain Editor.
Fixed crashes when changing the resolution of a Heightfield with Material Layers painted in the Terrain Editor.
Fixed material painting color changes not taken into account.
Fixed heightmaps (or other pictures) used in Heightfield graphs not showing in the "World Browser - Links" tab, hence not synchronizing.
Fixed non-georeferenced TIF pictures loading as if georeferenced, freezing the scene unit in the process, and not asking whether to be imported as Heightfield or Procedural Terrains.
Fixed Z scaling of non-georeferenced Heightfields imported from pictures.
Removed the Extension related widgets from the Terrain Editor U.I.: new terrains no longer use an Automatic Extension, as selecting the output range of the Altitude function is best left to the user. Existing terrains with Automatic Extension keep their last computed Extension upon reading, which becomes fixed, and is displayed as "Legacy extension" in the terrain editor. Consequently, the ad-hoc adjustments to a Procedural terrain's Extension that used to be made when changing the Altitude function scale or the Vertical gain have been removed. It was a legacy behavior, and Heightfield terrains never behaved like that, so the new behavior makes for a more consistent UX.
In the Procedural Terrain Editor, fixed a bad connection in the modified graph when extracting a zone by carving out the original terrain.
Fixed inconsistent vertical dimensions of newly created terrains, which depended so far on the terrain type (Heightfield vs. Procedural), and on the underlying grid resolution (even for Procedural terrains).
Fixed empty picture name in the World Browser - Links tab for terrain heightmaps or other pictures converted or generated internally by VUE (Geographical dataset import, Real-World Terrain imported heightmap or satellite texture, for example).
Fixed terrain heightmap or satellite texture not always scene along with scene files, when importing Real-World terrains.
In the Procedural Terrain editor, when extracting a zone by carving out a hole, switch the editor to the extracted terrain.
Fixed a possible crash when preparing the Terrain Preview (isometric 3D widget) in the Altitude graph.
Fixed 3D sculpted terrain sometimes becoming invisible in the 3D viewports.
Fixed 16bits pictures converted to 8bits the second time they were loaded into VUE as imported terrains.
Fixed the rendering of procedural terrains part of a group (altitudes were wrongly scaled along Z axis).
Fixed the ray-tracing of procedural terrains using displacement mapping, broken after a first render with the Path Tracer engine.
ATMOSPHERE
Ambient modulation now works as a multiplicative factor when "force ambient color" is unchecked.
Fixed 3D viewports' atmosphere preview never-ending update loop when several viewports display distinct cameras.
Fixed lost modifications of rain / snow material when saving with fast-save (or when reloading an auto-saved version).

GRAPH
[NEW] Improved the responsiveness of the graph display, added more configurable colors for customization, fixed the display of connection lines that where too thick when zooming out, added a more visible highlight of connections (middle part and ends), made item selection more precise, added highlight on all node lines as we can act on them, added a shift of parameter labels to better show the tab/group/parameter tree structure, added a small motion threshold before moving a node.
[NEW] More visible selection and highlight when graph is zoomed out.
[NEW] Snap to handles when creating a connection.
[NEW] Added a right click contextual menu on graph connections (move to source node / move to destination node / delete connection). Move to source/destination selects and centers that node in the graph view.
[NEW] When creating or moving graph connections, or moving nodes, or selecting by area, the graph will scroll automatically if you move the mouse near the graph border while dragging the connection. The speed increases with mouse position, and scroll direction is relative the center of graph view.
[NEW] Disabled connections are now drawn as dashed lines instead of being invisible. They exist when a connection was created to something that is optional in a node and is currently disabled.
[NEW] Added a specific action in the graph menu to align all nodes, distinct from the alignment option. Option affects future manipulations; action is performed once when clicked.
[NEW] Added overlap indications in the graph: overlapping nodes will have a red "!" icon on top.
[NEW] Added "Vector 2 to Vector 3" and "Vector 3 to Vector 2" conversion nodes to facilitate UV usage in a graph.
[NEW] Added "Arc tangent of (X,Y)" math node (a.k.a. "atan2"), as well as Hyperbolic trigonometric functions and their inverse.
[NEW] Many Math nodes now accept any input type (number, vector 2, vector3, color): the operation is applied on each component separately. For nodes that take two inputs, the second input can either be a number used as parameter for each input component (eg. pow(input1.x, input2), pow(input1.y, input2) etc.), or a vector of same size as the input, where each component is used as parameter for operating on the corresponding component of the input node (eg. pow(input1.x, input2.x), pow(input1.y, input2.y), etc.). Vector nodes "Length", "Normalize" and "Dot product" now also accept Vector 2 as input, not only Vector 3.
[NEW] Added edition of parameter layout directly in the material editor published parameter tab.
[NEW] Added edition of parameter layout directly in the MetaNode parameter list.
[NEW] Added position mode option in UV node.
[NEW] Highlight connections while "highlighting tree" (when you pass the mouse over a connected parameter in the parameter tab). Previously only nodes where highlighted.
[NEW] Added a new "Primitive direction" node, which gives the base direction of the current primitive (Z axis of its frame).
[NEW] Added a new "Parent Primitive Radial Direction" node, which gives the direction orthogonal to the axis of the parent primitive at the current primitive insertion point.
[NEW] Added a new "Parent axis direction" node, which gives the direction of the axis of the parent primitive at the current primitive insertion point.
[NEW] Added a new "Parent axis : horizontropic section angle" node, which gives the angle around the axis of the parent primitive, counted from the direction around the axis that points to closest to the zenith, at the current primitive insertion point.
[NEW] The "Section spline" node is now a periodic function, for instance it means you can add a fraction of the primal to its input to twist it when used as a segment section.
[NEW] The "Profile spline" node is now a mirror periodic function of period 2 (f(x) = f(x + 2n) with n integer, and f(1 + x) = f(1 - x), for instance it means you can add a fraction of the primal to its input to twist it when used as a segment section.
[NEW] Added parent selection parameters to the "Parent Primitive Radial Direction", "Parent axis direction", "Parent axis : horizontropic section angle" nodes.
[NEW] Added edition of published parameter layout directly in the preset tab.
[NEW] Node previews are available in plant graph (only for control nodes).
[NEW] Improved node preview for Primal, Section Angle and Radial nodes.
[NEW] Added pruned output in current primitive node.
[NEW] Added "radius", "side radius" and "side diameter" parameter in ancestor node.
Fixed graph tooltip that was not always displayed for connections.
Better event handling, the thing you pick on button press is the thing that is used to perform the action (and not the one that is under the mouse after moving a bit).
Click and drag now keeps the mouse capture until release, so that you can move the mouse outside the graph without interrupting the current action).
Edit on node of label or data now happens only on second click on the node, not right away when you select it.
Added a small tolerance before moving a selected node.
Remember the previous position in the graph view when changing of edited graph (when editing a MetaNode for instance).
Better text drawing when graph is de-zoomed. Text is now rasterized at current display size instead of being scaled down.
Added a new option in main graph menu to display a grid in background of the graphs.
Fixed lost mouse capture when dragging the graph view, when the mouse was moved outside of the graph area.
Graph nodes can be freely resized. Minimization happens when node width is set below 1/2 the minimal width. When minimized, the node size is controlled by the vertical component of the resize.
Updated the placement of nodes that are generated by the application.
Fixed broken display of colormaps in graph nodes.
When node height is large, we can better use the space by placing the preview above the label, instead of left. That allows a better preview of material graphs, by resizing the nodes to your convenience. The maximum preview size for textures is currently limited thought.
Added an option to enable/disable the minimap in the graph view.
Added in node preview of 2D filters.
Parent parameter node has been renamed to "Ancestor parameter".
Better placement of input/output nodes inside newly created MetaNodes: the right place is next to the node that uses the input/output.
Removed the useless "Display nodes minimized" option, which prevented a lot of interactions in the graph. Nodes can still be minimized by selecting them, and using the right click menu, or by resizing them.
Better "show preview" options: each node has a Hide/Show/Auto setting. Hide/show overrides the global setting (for nodes that can have previews).
Fixed display of Help of Graph Nodes.
Vector composers, decomposers, 2D/3D converters, and axis permutations are now grouped in the "Vector Composition" subcategory inside the "Math" category of nodes.
Fixed a bug in the "XYZ Product (Separate Parameters)" node that led fractals downstream in the graph to evaluate too few or too many "octaves" (= fractal detail).
Fixed "Turbulence damping" parameter of the "Three Noises" fractal being ignored by mistake (since 2011!).
Fixed inconsistency when switching noise of fractal node. Internal noise scale was changed.
Fixed potential incorrect graph evaluation when containing MetaNode.
Avoided useless invalidation when opening/closing MetaNode function editor.
Select the appropriate output in the graph, when opening it from the different tabs of the Material Editor. .
Disabled contract/ungroup MetaNode icons if the corresponding action is not possible due to current selection.
Removed the left click menu that appeared when clicking an empty area in the graph, only kept it when you click a node handle (so that it creates a connection to that handle).
Fixed computation of "horizontropic azimuth" in "current primitive instance" node, which did not take into account indirect transformations (that we get when using the "alternate" children placement mode of segments).
Display non evaluated nodes with a yellow stripe pattern, so that they are not mistaken for faded nodes.
The "Current Primitive" node has been replaced by two new nodes "Axis variables" and "Child variables" to clarify what it is for. Old files will show the old node, but it cannot be created from menus anymore.
The value provided by the "Current primitive axis variable: azimuth horizontropic" is now guaranteed to be in "-PI,PI".
Enabled the node preview options of the graph (show all preview, only noise, or none).
Added preview of random range node in Node Observer dialog.
Put missing input back in vegetation graph (Position and Normal Options).
RENDERING
[NEW] Render thumbnails are now computed for current screen dpi instead of default resolution.
Reduced the frequency of PathTracer render display during rendering (mainly useful because denoising can be long, reducing the number of denoising process saves time).
Fixed a bug when denoiser were not applied on render with very low sample per pixel.
Fix artefacts when rendering glow on some materials (animated, non-volumetric).
Fixed the use of the Delete key to delete renders in the Render Stack which led to losing the focus (then subsequent Delete strokes would actually deleting objects in the World Browser, for example).
Fixed rendering when some layers of a material layers stack have their "Visibility" icon set to "invisible" or "solid color": many effects were still applied when invisible (bump, displacement or normal mapping, luminous setting, color transmitted/reflected) or when set to "solid color" (Ambient occlusion, Highlights, PBR Metalness, Normal mapping, etc.).
Avoid re-enabling the render stack thumbnails too soon, which could introduce inconsistencies when a message box was displayed at the end of a render.
Fixed the saving of Multi-Pass as multi-layer PSD, when a 16-bit precision is requested.
Fixed the frame number indicated in the information strip, when rendering a single frame of an animation.
Support for 2nd plane/material hook point in crossed planes.
Fixed shadows of vegetation primitives with two-sided material.
When activating the Path Tracer while multi-pass is enabled, made sure we deactivate channels and masks not supported by the Path Tracer render engine, to avoid generating 100% black or messy pictures.
MISC.
[NEW] Fixed a crash when loading color settings.
[NEW] Transformed the planar bias to a conic bias by the addition of an angle (90 degrees for a plane).
[NEW] Transformed the child horizontropism to a conic tropism by the addition of a direction, cone angle, and possible local coordinates.
[NEW] VUE, PlantFactory and PlantCatalog Exporter will now be able to report the usage of their features. This will help e-on software to focus on the most relevant ones. This option can be enabled/disabled in File -> Options... -> General Preferences -> Send feature usage data.
[NEW] Added the compressed textures to the autosaved data to avoid very long texture recompression during file recovery (after a crash). .
Drop support for MacOS 10.10 "Yosemite".
Fixed progress bar never updated when saving a material on Mac OS.
Fixed a potential memory leak in file decompression and improved the reading time of large scenes.
Fixed a case where the application offered to locate missing images several times despite the user checking "No to all".
Improved the compatibility with scenes containing copy-protected content which is not owned by the user: instead of refusing to load the scene, just ignore the missing functions/material layers and display the list of issues at the end of the loading.
UI/UX
[NEW] Added long due -help option to the command line interface.
[NEW] Added drag n drop of scene file in Startup panel.
[NEW] Improved error message when export failed.
[NEW] Hooking Point editor is now resizable.
[NEW] In material editor, switch back to previous mode if no picture selected while switching to mapped picture.
[NEW] Added edition of preset list.
[NEW] Made filter 3D editors amodal.
[NEW] Added an icon to directly edit the Multi-pass format options from the MultiPass dialog.
Faster scan of files for faster opening of the internal file selection dialogs.
Allow using a complete drive in browser as tab.
Really disconnect constants when using the "Disconnect parameter" in material editor.
Do not remove "unused" graph nodes when using the "Disconnect parameter" in material editor, that still can be useful later on.
Made the image path display in image properties non editable, because sometimes it is not a path but some description (of a generated image), that was confusing to be able to change it and have the application try to load it. .
In "3D filter" editor and "Section profile" editor, do not replace current filter with original filter when we cancel a "Load", that's not a cancel of the current edit.
Fixed a dead lock in the browser (which occurred at least when multi selecting elements).
Asynchronous previews in browser, no need to wait a long time to change folder while previews are computed, they finish in background.
Fixed invisible icons of user defined categories in browsers, can only fix new categories, previously added one need a manual correction (set the icon using the right click menu on the tabs that have no visible icon).
Correct ill-defined tangent effect in 3D filters: For a given set of points and tangents, we did not obtain the same curve depending on where the points were inserted before being moved. That was also producing asymmetric curves around points, even though the displayed tangent looked symmetric. .
Corrected filter 3D editor to use actual Bezier control points instead of tangents with a varying intensity that depended on the insertion point.
Better cut in the 2D and 3D filter editors, inserting points keep the exact same curve.
Fixed incorrect point highlight in 3D filter editor.
Reset point coordinates on open in the 1D filter editor.
Introduced a -interface_scaling followed by a factor in command line argument to run application in different HiDPI mode. Example: -interface_scaling 2.0 will double the size of every piece of interface.
Change the way edit controls with length react to arrows and page up. Arrow up will now add one of the displayed units.
Fixed native browser not having quick access on windows.
Minor panel redraw performance improvement (skip obsolete code handling now absent dialog background gradation).
Fix conflicts between configured shortcuts and edit fields: for example, if you had configured '=' for some action, you could no longer use it in an edit field without also triggering the configured action (except for alphanumerical characters). As a side-effect, on macOS this fixes the fact that Up/Down/PageUp/PageDown keys were inoperant in numerical edit fields (whereas they now properly increment/decrement the value by some fixed amount depending on each edit field).
On macOS, Cmd+Arrow key now has the expected behavior in edit fields, ie. move/select to the beginning/end of line. The former custom trigger of Alt+Arrow key has been kept for compatibility (edit fields do not support moving/selecting word by word, like Alt+Arrow key should in theory do).
Speed-up loading of the material summary (with hundreds of materials) and display a progression after a few seconds.
Ignored LOD computation in Object preview renderer.
Fixed material name and scale when loading a material to replace a layer.
Fixed Clamping mode not available in Filter editor.
Fixed message boxes not taking into account the modal dialog potentially running (Windows only).
Fixed the behavior of checkboxes in the render information strip options (were displayed as partially selected, and 2 clicks were needed to select an entry).
When adding a new material layer to an existing material, reuse the parent material's mapping mode.
Fixed the position of message boxes generated from the render stack, in multi-screen context.
Fixed wrong cropping of some panels depending on the screen size (options panel on a laptop, typically).
Fixed missing refresh of published parameters tab in EcoSystem, Mixed and Volumetric Material Editors.
Fixed inconsistencies in the Recent Files menu when some of the recent files are no longer accessible.
Avoided the automatic closing of the File Format Options dialog when one clicks outside of it (except when it is opened from the native file browser - in this case, it is mandatory to do so).
Better display of material in hooking point editor (double sided, RGBA maps).
Corrected hook point edition when using the back face (edit in mirror).
Fixed some inconsistencies in the "Profile spline" editor: display actual "input" values as used in the graph, place 0 on top with an indicator (red line).
Fixed unstable size when resizing the "Profile spline" dialog, pure vertical resize is disabled.
Show the axis start point and tangent in the preview window (it could already be edited in the 3D filter as well).
Fix branch cut in the preview window to not change the axis.
Moved some segments parameters into meshing group. Added a new group for numerical options (options that affect the way geometric computations are done).
Fix unexpected segment length modification when manually moving a segment. The segment length stays constant (as is the case when you edit the axis parameter from the node).
Fixed display of plant size ruler text on high resolution screens. .
Fixed potential incorrect preview when export as VUE species.
Disable multi-material baking export option for generic uv. It is not supported.
Avoided useless invalidation if mesh does not interact with plant.
Fixed missing discarded transitions.
Improved preset preview edition.
Renamed displacement to radial displacement for better understanding.
Fixed node parameter multi edition.
Improved preview reactivity when lots of bones.
Fixed icon for random parameter not visible.
Removed selector when opening OS browser from scene/species browser.
Fixed multi edition of Boolean parameter defined as frame.
Custom atmospheric wind settings are stored in .tpfp files.
Fixed missing invalidation when a mesh object is selected.
Fixed crash on loading a few PlantCatalog species.
Renamed preview option "Clip plant underground" to "Show plant underground" to reflect behavior.
INTEGRATION AND EXPORT
[NEW] Added the ability to bake the Reflection channel for non-PBR materials (also available in the Convert Tool in plugins).
[NEW] Improved TPF plant export using material baking.
[NEW] Animated wind is taken into account when exporting TPF plant animation.
[NEW] Improved FBX import/export.
[NEW] Added transparency support in C4D export.
[NEW] Added back side baking of two-sided materials when exporting without duplicated faces.
[NEW] Added an option in USD export to use submeshes instead of GeomSubSet (to handle multi material meshes).
[NEW] Added option to export one mesh per primitive.
Fixed export of multipass render as PSD: extra components were always saved as linear whereas other color-like channels were gamma encoded. Now all components that can have gamma are encoded with the export gamma (see gamma options).
Fixed broken transition normal map in Leaf cluster, billboard export and baked map export.
In the Export Options, the "occlusion treatment" option is now located just below the "ambient occlusion" checkbox.
Fixed a bug when writing a TIFF animation with alpha or depth channel bit per pixel different from the color channel BPP.
USD can now export to omniverse:// files and take advantage of omniverse live sync.
USD export now exports color Space.
Fixed C4D export.
Improved error message when impossible to write an exported image because of image encoding.
Fixed some issues in the handling of Unicode characters in LWO and OBJ modules.
Store last user choice regarding Nuke import options in environment.
Fixed missing material file (.mtl) when exporting only billboards in OBJ format.
Fixed wrong value of the displacement depth (displayed as "height" in Cinema 4D) in Cinema 4D export preset.
Export the displacement depth in FBX files (even though it's ignored in most of applications).
Added an option to bake the displacement in the exported geometry (previously, it was automatically the case when the displacement channel was not selected in texture map options).
Improved detection of inverted normals upon import.
Fixed the handling of empty file paths in MTL files, in OBJ import (they were leading to confusing error messages).
Fixed the handling of Unicode characters in the reading of ZBrush files (.goz).
Fixed a memory leak when importing a FBX or Alembic file containing instantiated objects.
Fixed a potential memory leak when exporting a large mesh in 3DS format.
Fixed the export of displacement mapping (as a baked texture) when the displacement function is connected to a texture map with mip-mapping enabled.
Fixed the import of displacement map in OBJ format (was interpreted as 100% transparent material...).
DENOISER
[NEW] Updated Intel Open Image Denoise from version 1.2.0 to 1.3.0: improved denoising quality (improved sharpness of fine details / less blurriness, fewer noisy artifacts), slightly improved performance and lowered memory consumption, bug fixes and speed improvement for recent processors.
[NEW] Updated Intel Open Image Denoise from version 1.3.0 to 1.4.0: improved fine detail preservation, reduced denoising memory consumption by about 35%.
[NEW] Updated NVIDIA Optix denoiser from version 7.0 to 7.2: improved denoising quality and lowered GPU memory consumption. NVIDIA driver 455 is needed.
[NEW] Added AMD Radeon Image Filter Denoiser version 1.7.0. Any hardware OpenCL, DirectX12 or Metal compatible should be able to run it (except on Apple ARM).
[NEW] Added a Denoiser Strength setting to modulate denoising process, which is available in PathTracer Options Dialog.
MATERIALS
[NEW] Added support of Normal mapping "Link intensity to object scale" option on TPF plant.
[NEW] Added specific tab for clearcoat settings.
[NEW] Added automatic connection with substance clearcoat outputs.
[NEW] Added Normal Map Intensity and Flatten parameters.
Fixed Alpha output being connected to Projected Map's "Grayscale" output even when an actual alpha channel is present in the selected picture when switching to "Mapped picture" mode in the Alpha tab of the Material Editor.
PERFORMANCE AND STABILITY
[NEW] Improved the speed of EcoSystem painting.
[NEW] Improved performance on plant with lots of primitives.
Cleanup previous temporary directories in a background thread to avoid delaying the application start.
Fixed graph related code with exponential behavior, affecting graphs with heavy combinatorics (lots of nodes with lots of interconnected data).
Improved speed of the thumbnail provider (for Windows explorer).
Improved loading time of compressed scenes containing a lot of plant EcoSystem populations (requires saving the scene in 2021.2 first). Up to 5x faster in some cases.
Fixed a very slow file saving (in the context of some old files).
Fixed a crash when the browser explores directories with some "permission denied" folders.
Fix random failures when trying to open the CrashSender after a crash on macOS.
Fixed potential crash while exit with interactive path tracer activated.
Fixed a potential crash in 3DS Max plugins when executing wrong MAXScript commands internally.
Fixed a potential crash related to displacement mapping, when the subdivision of an object is interrupted in the middle (for a material using uniform subdivision). This could happen with the scene preview, typically.
Fixed a potential memory corruption when rendering with the Path Tracer in the active camera view (problem occurring only with certain values of height).
Fixed potential crash while playing wind animation.
PLUGINS
[NEW] Added the possibility to include displacement map in native shaders instead of baking displacement on geometry.
[NEW] Implemented the conversion of materials to RenderMan shaders (PxrSurface).
[NEW] [RenderMan] Added handling of two-sided materials.
[NEW] Added support for Unreal Engine 4.24 to 4.27.
[NEW] PlantFactory plugins now support Cinema 4D R25.
[NEW] Added the ability to convert PlantFactory species for the Redshift renderer in C4D and Maya.
[NEW] The option to use Redshift sprite nodes is now accessible (like in the VUE Convert Tool).
fixed the conversion of plants with the "animated points" setting (some models had only small parts of their geometry animated).
Fixed bone animation in Maya.
Avoided the potential duplication of the PlantFactory menu in 3ds Max.
Fixed the installation that added a dependency to an inexistant TPF plugin for V-Ray in 3ds Max 2022.
Added automatic instantiation of exported assets.
Propagate bump depth property from original material to native material when we bake material maps.
Added conversion of Bump for Cinema 4D's Standard Renderer.
In the plugin for Cinema 4D, added the ability to convert plants to Cinema 4D objects with bones (static or animated) or animated points.
DISPLAY
[NEW] TPF can now preview displacement using parallax mapping.
Fixed display of bump (incorrect shadow direction at 90 deg of light source).
Fixed display of bump (very weak effect compared to an equivalent normal map).
Fixed wrong wind preview on leaves.
GEOMETRY
[NEW] Fixed a crash with using mesh objects with both triangles and quads, when the double-sided option is used, and when the plant meshing mode is set to triangle.
[NEW] Added a new child count mode in segment. The new "Per length unit" option allows to have child position fixed on segment when segment length changed.
[NEW] Added new "per ancestor" random dependency.
[NEW] Added "Inherit scale" parameter in Flower node.
[NEW] Added new UV mapping mode for blade.
[NEW] Added "bottom of segment" child parameter.
[NEW] Improved blending with top branch.
[NEW] Added new UV mapping mode in segment.
[NEW] Added bottom cap parameters.
[NEW] Added new branch blending parameter: post blending offset (An offset that is applied after the blending).
[NEW] Added new branch blending parameter: Ignore displacement (Blends on a non-displaced parent geometry).
[NEW] Reduced possible mesh folds and divergence with blending.
[NEW] Added new child positioning method: Automatic transition. Sets the child branch bottom cap inside its parent.
[NEW] Added new branch blending parameter: Bending force. Controls the bending of the axis in the blending zone towards its parent in order to reduce its angle with it.
[NEW] Added new branch orientation parameter: Min. angle with parent (applies a minimum 'final' angle between the parent and the child taking all biases, influences, tropisms, etc. into account).
[NEW] [Flower node] Added an option to blend the normals and the displacement into the "plug" cylinder, it is on by default.
[NEW] Added new parameters to prevent auto folding of the surface of segments with very noisy axis. The "Prevent folds" parameter, with value 1, prevents excessive rotation of the axis and spreads the remaining rotation further away on the axis. The "Offset to inner" parameter allows to shift the mesh sections to the inner side of the local axis curvature. It allows to reduce hard edges that can occur when the segment radius changes at the same time as the axis direction.
[NEW] The segment length is now constant when using "axis perturbation". That is more consistent with other segment modifiers, like the influences, that all keep the segment length constant.
[NEW] Added a new parameter in "Axis perturbation". The "Smooth start" parameter allows to keep the segment axis the original direction and to smoothly transition to the "perturbed" axis.
Tweak the normals at the base of the flower when the "plug radius" is not zero, for a better visual transition with the parent segment.
Support for Z scale for crossed planes billboards.
Fixed wind on segment with imported skin.
Fixed unsupported orange filter when making primitive parameter unique.
Fixed parametric position on segment.
Fixed Hydra child orientation.
Fixed child branch horizontropism mirroring branches on coil with some angle/rotation special cases.
Fixed bad behavior on blending with a branch cut in the blending zone (in the child width range).
Fixed bending of segments with zero radius.
LEAF CLUSTER
[NEW] Added Backface rendering.
Fixed bad hook point placement in generated component.
PYTHON
[NEW] Added 2 options to the ExportAsVueSpecies function: incorporation of dependencies and compression.
Added 2 options to the ExportAsVueSpecies function: incorporation of dependencies and compression.
DISPLACEMENT
Fixed Color To Vector used for displacement on vegetation .
Outwards-only option can now be set independently on each material layer.
Fixed custom direction (horizontal, vertical, or defined through graph) potentially lost upon baking or Path Tracing.
Fixed potential artefacts (wrong shadows) in displacement using uniform subdivision when depth is high.
Fixed potentially wrong shadows when the displacement amplitude is high, with dynamic subdivision only.
Fixed option "Affect material distribution" applied to all material layers for no reason.
Fixed mesh holes with material displacement between the branch and its bottom cap.
ANIMATION
Fixed a memory leak in MPEG1 and MPEG2 animation saving and repaired the options dialog from those formats on Windows.
VUE is the only environment packageon the market that includes everything you need for creating beautiful CG environments. From skies and volumetric clouds to terrains, large-scale EcoSystems, wind-swept vegetation, open water bodies, roads and rocks: everything is right there for you to use out of the box.
Setup and render your project in VUE or use the powerful integration plugins in the Professional & Enterprise versions for creating, exporting and converting entire scenes for rendering in other applications and render engines.
PlantFactory is the most powerful solutionon the market for modeling 3D vegetation. Its procedural, yet artist-friendly toolbox empowers you with unprecedented control over every detail. Create anything, from tiny mushrooms to majestic trees.
Whether you need ultra-realistic, high polygon plants for VFX and archviz, stylized vegetation for commercials or lightweight objects for real-time engines: PlantFactory will cover all your needs while integrating seamlessly into your pipeline.
e-on software's 2021.2 release adds over 800 additional feature, performance and user experience enhancements including shader conversion for Redshift and RenderMan, Unreal Engine PlantFactory importer plugin tech preview, NVIDIA Omniverse Live sync and extensions, AMD denoiser for Path traced renders, new Clearcoat material properties, faster render times, and improved function graph workflow.
We were founded in 1997on the premise that powerful graphics tools should never get in the way of the designer's creativity. After being acquired by Bentley Systems in 2015, we've been able to invest more resources into research and development to ensure we remain at the forefront of the industry. With 20 employees dedicated to our e-on solutions, our once small idea of creating cutting-edge, user-friendly technologies to inspire our user's creativity is growing every day.
Product:VUE and PlantFactory
Version:2021.2 Build 7008031
Supported Architectures:x64
Website Home Page :

https://info.e-onsoftware.com/

Languages Supported:english
System Requirements:PC / macOs **
Size:10.7 Gb

Full Installers
VueX1.7_32132_7008031_Release.zip
PlantFactoryX1.7_7008031_Release_32133.zip
Incremental Updaters
VUE_X1.7_7008031_Release_32132.exe
VUE_X1.7_7008031_Release_32132.dmg
VueX1.7_32130_7008031_Plugins.zip
PlantFactory_X1.7_7008031_Release_32133.exe
PlantFactory_X1.7_7008031_Release_32133.dmg
PlantFactoryX1.7_32129_7008031_Plugins.zip
PlantCatalog Collections
PlantCatalog_2021.2.zip
PlantCatalog_2021.3.zip