News
News Archive
v1.29.00 06/01/2006
  • IMPROVEMENTS
    • Global Illumination:
      • The render of the global illumantion modalities has been improved (Distributed, Final Gathering, Irradiance Cache).
    • Reflections:
      • Distributed Reflections (Options/Reflection/Distribution/Enable= True):
        • The algorithm for the distributed reflections has been improved
        • The distributed reflections for anisotropics materials have been added (Ward, Ashikhmin).
      • Using the Bump map:
        • Now using surfaces with a bump map applied the wronged pixels on the final picture don't appear.
    • Materials:
      • The Blinn material render has been improved.
    • Photons:
      • The speed of the rendering by photons has been increased (also for Final Gathering and Irradiance Cache) even of 300% thanks to the KD-Tree algorithm implementation.
      • The render of materials with applied bump map (with filters HDR or Bitmap) has been improved.
      • Irradiance Cache:
        • The "Irradiance Gradients" algorithm has been implemented, this means that a rendering of the scene elaborated by Irradiance Cache is more smooth and realistic.
      • Photons fired:
        • Now for each GI bounce will be fired only a photon, with the chance to fire more photons GI without increase the speed elaboration or decrease the quality.
        • The use of the files contains the photons table has been removed. Since now you don't need to download and install the N3DPhotonsPack1.EXE file to get more photons to fire.
        • New photons fire modalities have been added, as for the Point lights (Detail property) so the spot lights (Spot Lights Detail property). Now you can fire 250, 500, 1000, 1000000 and 5000000 photons for Point lights and 500000 photons for the spot lights.
    • Other optimizations:
      • Optimizations and speeding up to the code for the maps with filters Bitmap and HDR, with increase up to 10% of the rendering speed.
  • ADDITIONS
    • Irradiance Cache:
      • The Radius attribute has been added, this is useful for increasing the Irradiance Cache points density control and to get a render more accurate for environment photons (Photons/Global Illumination/Environment=Yes).
  • INTERFACE CHANGES
    • Photons:
      • The photons gathering modality has been removed. Now Radius type is the default with the possibility to restrict the photons number by inserting a value greater than zero on the Threashold attribute.
      • The information about the time estimated for the Irradiance Cache and Photons elaboration has been added.
      • The Irradiance Cache elaboration has been set of default in case of Final Gathering.
      • New photons visualization in the preview window in wireframe modality (Options/Options/Show Photons=Yes)
    • Menu:
      • The "Auto Alignment" function has been modified to optimize the working area in case of screen size ratio different from 4/3 (ex: 16/10)
  • BUG FIX
    • Crash Rendering View:
      • Fixed a bug which caused a crash in case of a scene rendering with particular windows rendering size.
      • To repeat the Bug: Change the "window size" properties of the Camera in 512x341 and execute a rendering.
    • Object Light type brightness:
      • Fixed a bug wich caused a wronged Object Light type brightness in case of rendering by Photons.
      • To repeat the Bug: Create a scene with a Sphere of light type, set at "Yes" the Real Simulation parameter of the light, enable the rendering by Photons, as a result you can see a wrong brightness of the Sphere.
    • Irradiance Cache fake points:
      • Fixed a bug wich caused the creation of much Irradiance Cache fakes points in case of material of transparent type, as a result you have the increase of the rendering time elaboration.
      • To repeat the Bug: Just elaborate a Scene containing a Glass Sphere in the Irradiance Cache modality.
v1.28.00 11/16/2005
  • IMPROVEMENTS
    • Blinn Material:
      • The material Blinn type render has been improved.
      • The Blinn Ior proprierty of the material has been eliminated, as a result it is replaceable by a simple FallOff filter applied to the Specular Map.
    • Anisotropic (Ward) Material:
      • The Ward material render has been improved (now renamed "Anisotropic (Ward)").
      • Thanks to two new properties of the Glossy map is possible to manage the Anisotropic effect.
      • New Properties: Material/Glossy/Anisotropic/
        • Orientation
          • Defined by degree is useful to change the anisotropy orientation angle.
        • Anisotropy
          • Useful to decrease (the material will be similar to the Blinn type) or increase the anisotropy.
      • You can get good results for the metal materials render.
    • Bump Map:
      • At the end the Bump Map with the Bitmap or HDR filters works fine.
  • AGGIUNTE
    • Orthographic Camera:
      • New Camera type, useful for schematic draws or for realizing VideoGames with isometric graphic.
    • Irradiance Cache:
      • A new method for the Global Illumination calculation through which you can get in a few time good approssimations of your scenes.
      • This method is about elaborating the Final Gathering just for some points on the screen while the other points will elaborate by interpolation.
      • New Properties: Options/Photons/Final Gathering/Irradiance Cache/
        • Enable
          • This attribute is useful to enable the Irradiance Cache and it must be used together with the abilitation of the Global Illumination, the Photons and the Final Gathering.
          • Once enabled the Irradiance Cache elaboration it will be possible to use the option Options/Options/Show Photons to view the generated Final Gathering points position.
        • Accuracy
          • This property is useful for increasing the detail at disadvantage of elaboration times more long.
      • The Irradiance Cache elaboration is linked with the Final Gathering/Samples property, it will be enough to set a right samples value to improve the result.
    • Metal Material:
      • Based on the Cook-Torrance algorithm is a material type useful for the isotropic metal material render.
    • Anisotropic (Ashikhmin) Material:
      • New anisotropic material type based on the Ashikhmin algorithm, with a more realistic look compared to the Ward, as for metallic than diffusive materials.
      • On the picture above you can see three vases with the Anisotropic (Ashikhmin) applied: the first with anisotropy = 0; the second with anisotropy = 96 and orientation = 90; the third with anisotropy = 96 and orientation = 0
    • Geometric Antialiasing:
      • Useful for speeding up the rendering of simple scenes (also of 50%), thus with various distribution samples algorithms disabled (Global Illumination, Reflection, Refraction, Shadow, DOF).
  • PLUGINS
    • Import Object:
      • Added the loading of PLY format objects as for Ascii than Binary.
    • Painter 3D:
      • Modified the camera type used for visualization in Orthographic, for a better control on the objects.
    • Object by Path Generator:
      • Enabled the use of the Close Path for loaded path.
  • CODE CHANGES
    • N3D interface for the Script:
      • Added the usermsg property at the n3d object of the script. Useful for writing anything on the status bar (for example the frames rendering progress).
  • BUG FIX
    • Pixel lost:
      • Fixed a bug which caused lack rendering of a little border portion of mathematical objects type.
      • Has been revealed on the sphere mathematical above all.
    • HighLight disappearance:
      • Fixed a bug which caused the HighLight disappearance for the follow preview modality: Flat, Gouraud and QuickPhong.
      • It was enough to create an object with a material which has a diffusion coefficient less than 100.
    • Crash selecting a material:
      • Fixed a bug (with the ending of the program) about a material selection in the modality Menu/Preferences/Scene/Split materials from the Scene.
      • It was enough to download a scene with just a material and then to select the material tab.
v1.27.00 02/04/2005
  • Bug Fix
    • The LineInObjTexture function which don't work for the sphere perfect objects has been adjusted.
    • Bug fix about the wrong refresh of the lights properties and of cameras during the scene loading.
  • Improvements
    • The code of the follow algorithms of rays distribution has been rewrote:
      • DoF, Area Shadow, Reflection, Refraction, FinalGathering, Global Illumination by Rays, Global Illumination by Photons.
      • This new code brings a complex improvement of quality about a number of rays greather than 9.
    • The adaptive modalities for the distributions have been eliminated:
      • DoF, Reflection, Refraction, FinalGathering, Global Illumination by Rays.
      • Because their "legacy" after the implementation of the new distribution algorithm.
    • The algorithm to the base of the soft shadow (light object) has been rewrote completely:
      • The code has been subdivided in shadows come from light objects of perfect sphere type and not, as a consequence there are improvement to the quality.
    • The photons distribution for the directional lights has been improved.
    • The Antialiasing algorithm has been rewrote completely so there is more quality and fastest above all in the "High" modality.
    • The elaboration accurancy of the Global Illumination with the Ray Distribution has been improved.
    • The preview modalities have been speedup: FlatShading, GouraudShading, QuickPhong, Phong
  • Additions
    • First version of the modelling inside N3D
      • Two new functionality of ToolBar and of the PopUp menu associated to the four main windows of N3D visualization.
      • Select
        • With modality "Modelling" disabled:
          • Thanks to this operator we can select an object (with a simple click).
        • With modality "Modelling" enabled:
          • Thanks to this operator we can select some vertexes (through the Drag of an selection area).
          • With the contemporary press of the Shift Key we can add aother vertexes to the actual selection.
          • With the contemporary press of the Ctrl Key we remove some vertexes to the actual selection.
      • Modelling modality
        • Thanks to this modality we can editing (Move, Rotate, Scale and Select) the vertexes of the selected object.
    • Photons/Global Illumination/Enabled
      • Now it is possible to choose if use Photons or the Rays Distribution for the Global Illumination elaboration in the Photons Modality.
    • Bounce Quality
      • Thanks to the "Bounce Quality" property is possible to control the rays number fired after the first bounce (Depth>1), for the follow distributions:
        • Diffuse (Global Illumination by Rays), Reflection, Refraction.
      • If this value is high the simulation will be more accurate but slow. On the contrary if this value is low the simulation will be less accurate but speeder.
    • AntiAliasing/Adaptive/Size
      • This property is useful to get an AntiAliasing more or less smooth.