====================================================== REALFLOW 4.0 Release Notes (4.3.8.0124) ====================================================== 1.- System requirements ----------------------- (32bits) * Software requirements - Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional - Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional (Service Pack 2 or higher) - Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 WS or higher. - SUSE Linux 9.1 or higher. - Fedora core 2 or higher. - Apple® Mac® OS X 10.3.5 or higher (X11 subsystem required) * Hardware requirements - Intel® Pentium® II or higher - AMD Athlon™ processor - Macintosh® G4, G5, Intel. - 512 MB RAM - Hardware-Accelerated OpenGL® graphics card - 3-button mouse with mouse driver software - 50 MB of hard disk space (64bits) * Software requirements - Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64. - Microsoft Windows 2003 Server x64. - Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0 WS or higher. - Fedora Core 4. * Hardware requirements - Intel® Pentium® 4 EMT64-Enabled. - AMD Athlon/Opteron 64 - 512 MB RAM - Hardware-Accelerated OpenGL® graphics card - 3-button mouse with mouse driver software - 50 MB of hard disk space 2.- Features added or modified ------------------------------ - New system script from Mark Stasiuk at Fusion CI Studios (www.fusioncis.com) to normalize the age of the particles. This script will re-set the ages of particles from absolute values (seconds) to normalized values (0 at birth to 1 at death). Normalized age is the standard input for particle rendering in 3D packages. - New scripting function "getSelectedVertices" for the "Emitter" class. - New scripting function "getSelectedFaces" for the "Emitter" class. - New scripting function "setSelectedVertices" for the "Emitter" class. - New scripting function "setSelectedFaces" for the "Emitter" class. - New scripting function "addRealWave" for the "Scene" class. - If the environment variable "RF4SCENESPATH" is defined RealFlow will use the folder defined on that variable as the default scenes folder ignoring the scenes folder set by the user in the preferences. - If the environment variable "RF4SCRIPTSPATH" is defined RealFlow will use the folder defined on that variable as the default scripts folder ignoring the scripts folder set by the user in the preferences. - If the environment variable "RF4LAYOUTSPATH" is defined RealFlow will use the folder defined on that variable as the default layouts folder ignoring the layouts folder set by the user in the preferences. - If the environment variable "RF4OBJECTSPATH" is defined RealFlow will use the folder defined on that variable as the default folder shown when the "Import Object..." action is invoked from the user interface. - If the environment variable "RF4DEFAULTPROJECT" is defined RealFlow handling of the projects will be different than the default behaviour. RealFlow will use the folder defined on this variable as the project folder where all the scenes' files (.flw) are saved by default. As a result the "project" dialog box is only shown when the "new project" option is selected. - The process of loading OBJ files have been problematic until this version because the files don't have memory of the platform that was used to export the object. Because of that reason RealFlow assumed all the OBJ files as been exported from a 3D platform with the YXZ(Ligthwave, Cinema4D) axis convention. This funtionality has been improved in this version just making the axis conversions needed to keep the geometry unchanged under different axis setup. - The stacking procedure in the rigid body solver has been improved up to 4 times faster. - The stacking procedure in the rigid body solver is more stable fixing several problems related with an increase of energy during the process. - Fixed some stability issues of constraints in collision. - Collision detection between keyframed rigid bodies now is detected using the scripting function "getCollidingObjects" in the "Object" class. - Spline emitter manipulation has been improved. Now the axis handle can be used to move the control points. - Daemon emitter manipulation has been improved. Now the axis handle can be used to move the control points. - Built-in primitives' geometry is now stored as part of the workspace file. - A new tool has been added in the "Edit->Reset Transformations" menu to reset the transformation matrix of a node. It is a shortcut of setting the position, rotation and angles of the node to their initial values. - A new tool has been added in the "Edit->Freeze Transformations" menu to reset the transformation matrix of an object but preserving the vertices at their current positions. This tool also works for any other node type but the effect is just the reset of the transformation matrix. Whereas this tool can be used with objects coming from external files the changes in the vertices are not kept within the workspace file, only built-in objects keep the changes in the vertices. - New scripting function "resetTransformations" for the "Object" class. - New scripting function "freezeTransformations" for the "Object" class. - A new object primitive "Capsule" has been added. - New scripting function "addCapsule" for the "Scene" class. - Significant improvement in the speed of playing or scrubing in the time line a particles' cached sequence of emitters with "Elastic" type. - Improved interaction between fluids and rigid bodies with "dynmotion" set to "No". - Due to the proliferation of spam filter applications we have detected that sometimes the license files we send as an attachment to our clients are removed or even the email is not received. To avoid this we have improved the license mechanism. Users holding a license file can still use it. New licenses will be included in the email as normal text so the user can “cut & paste” the license text into a license form. This license form is also available in the command line versions of RealFlow©. Just specifying the “-license” option the license form will be shown ready to receive the license text. This avoid also the difficulty of placing the old “licensenode.dat” file in the proper place so RealFlow© could find it. - A new command line option "-reset" has been added. When this option is enabled the scene is reset before the simulation. - New scripting function "eulerFilter" for the "Curve" class will remove angle discontinuities when applied to rotation curves. - New scripting function "removeAllKeys" for the "Curve" class. 3.- Limitations --------------- - Limitation #1 Undo/Redo doesn't work in the curve editor. - Limitation #2 Switching Hypermesh from "No" to "Yes" casues the RW surface to grow. - Limitation #3 Clone option only works with some type of nodes. - Limitation #4 References to removed nodes are not retrieved when we "undo" the remove command. For example the "Parent to" parameter. - Limitation #5 Center selected is not working with all node types. - Limitation #6 RealWave particle layer is not loaded at play time so it is difficult to make a mesh including those particles at play time. To workaround this we recommend to create a BinaryLoader with the particles from the particle layer and use this as a source for mesh creation at play time. - Limitation #7 When a SD file which is part of a scene is not found during the scene loading process and the browse action for looking for a replacement is skipped the rest of nodes of the scene are not loaded. 4.- Known bugs -------------- - Bug #487 Curve editor: TCB nodes are not saved when the curve is exported. Workaround: None. - Bug #495 RealWave: Depth texture is reset when a value related to the geometry is changed. Workaround: None. - Bug #629 Age Daemon: icon's does not move with the axis in viewports. Workaround: None. - Bug #639 Curve Editor: l10(t) expression cannot be used. Workaround: You can use scripting to mimic the behaviour of an expression. - Bug #679 Initial state ignores Xform when reset. Workaround: None. - Bug #683 Emitters: xform does not work for parented emitters. Workaround: None. - Bug #696 Trying to use .jpg and .bmp bitmaps generated by realwave used as normal textures crashes RF. Workaround: None. - Bug #802 Velocity option in daemons do not work with rigid bodies. Workaround: None. - Bug #902 Path control points used for RealWave are not rotated when the RealWave surface is rotated. Workaround: None. - Bug #959 Particle selection tool doesn't work with the "Object emitter". Workaround: Export to BIN files and load them using a BIN Loader emitter. 5.- Fixed bugs -------------- - Bug #1090 (x64 specific) RealFlow crashes when the stacking option is enabled in some specific scenes. -Bug #1108 (Linux x64 specific) RealFlow hungs when generating the mesh in a Linux x64 platform where the glibc library is 2.4 or higher version.