Professional Soft Collection 1.02

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R3 ALPHA 3.1 DOC 4/14/93 CONFIDENTIAL -- AUTODESK INC. (R3PA) This is the last alpha release of April. Expect the next release during the week of May 3rd. The following items are not discussed in the hardcopy alpha document. Please print this file out and attach it to your alpha doc for easy reference. This contains important information! - There ARE samples included with this release. Inside the SAMPLES.ZIP file you'll find SAMPLES.DOC. Read through it... it'll have instructions about what to do with them. - We've located what was causing the "Can't locate dropdown code 914" message, and we've eliminated both the cause and the message. We've also fixed a few of the bugs in Medit that caused it to crash in the ALPHA 3.0 release. - Alert: Be careful of IPAS routines and ADI drivers that may have been compiled with the Watcom compiler. These .exp files will allocate all available memory within 3DSr3 when initialized, forcing paging to happen immediately. - Installed .AI file save from the Shaper. These .AI files should load into Corel Draw just fine. (please test) - We've implemented functionality that duplicates a "variable plane camera" (sometimes called a "perspective-adjusting camera") for architect-types. How? We've added an "Enlarge" function, which takes any subportion of the screen and renders it full-screen. We've added the command (named for the time being "Render Blowup") to the Renderer subbranch. Note that this doesn't really work right with backgrounds: the whole background is rendered, instead of stretching the right sub-rectangle out to fill the screen. Its fixable, but I don't know if its worth it. Note- by setting a large FOV and enlarging an area away from the center of the screen, you can get the affect of a variable plane camera. - Added the Material Rename command to the Editor. You can finally rename materials while they're in the scene. - The problem we had with super-dense particle systems slowing intolerably down in the A-buffer is fixed. It should actually be faster than rendering particle systems with the old 2.0 renderer now. (although it'll still take awhile on those first few frames, when hundreds of particles (especially with transparency) are overlaying each other on a single pixel. - KF: Implemented Next- & Previous-key functions. ALT-, takes you to the previous key, and ALT-. takes you to the next key. - Fixed some bugs in drag-and-drop of names in Medit that you might have seen in ALPHA 3.0. - Fixed a problem in ALPHA 3.0's summed-area table lookup that cause light & dark areas when you zoomed close to objects. Summed-area tables ought to be production-worthy by now. - Added the Super Sample button/feature to Medit. When on, any pixels that are occupied by a super-sampled material are put through an 2x4 supersampling filter. It increases rendering time up the yinyang, but it might sometimes be necessary to eliminate texture scintillation with tight bump-mapped surfaces or dense sxp's. We'll be added more control to do smaller samples to make this go faster soon. Remember, since you can do texture filtering on a map-by-map basis, you should try to increase your bump map filtering percentage before you take the plunge and decide to super- sample the material! - In Medit, the ',' and '.' keys can be used to switch between the active material. This is incredibly handy if you need to copy a map from one material to another. Just pick up the map, and while you're in the middle of the drag operatation, hit the , or . key to switch materials. Drag the map over to the slot you want in the new material, and drop it. - You can now drag-and-drop map names from the bitmap slots to the ViewImage button. This is an extremely easy way to view a bitmap that you're using as a material component. - File Gamma and Video Color Checking for Files is now working. (Note that gamma is still low-color-res gamma, so I DO NOT RECOMMEND USING it. Wait till we finish the high- color-res gamma.) - To force two-sided rendering from the command line, the switch /2 should do the trick. - New 3DS.SET option (as per MF's instructions) that allows you to specify an RGB value besides 0,0,0 to be your transparent color for compositing. (it should only work with RGB0,0,0 and Pseudo-alpha methods). VP-TRANSPARENT = 0,0,0 - Big convenience item: When you're in a scroller dialog, pressing ALT + the first letter of the item you're looking for will scroll the scroller to the start of the items beginning with that character. Works for A-Z and 0-9. - The Safe Frame is now available in any Ed/KF viewport. Fixed bugs in earlier version with coordinate adjustment for the views using the safe frame. - Background images are now available in any Ed/KF viewport. - Added ability to force the mapping icon aspect ratio from a bitmap file -- Surface/Mapping/Adjust/Bitmap Fit. (yay!) This makes sure that the mapping icon will apply a texture map in a 1:1 aspect ratio to the bitmap. Only works properly with bitmap files which contain aspect ratio information -- if they don't, it assumes a pixel aspect ratio of 1.0. - TGA files are now saved with extra information, including aspect ratio. This takes advantage of the Targa extended data area. Other information which is now written: 3DS program name and version, file creation date. Do we want to put in the 4 lines of user comments (80 chars each)? You can see these comments in the Files/View Info dialog. (Note: We've also added the image filename to the View Info dialog.) - You now have the ability to load custom 3DS.SET files from the command line. (good for debugging ADI drivers, or for radically changing your system options without hassles) To use, type 3DSI SET=<filename> and the program will load the specified file instead of 3DS.SET. Example: 3DSI SET=FROON.SET. After loading the specified SET file, 3DS loads the network 3DSNET.SET file. - You can now have up to 250 map-paths. (If you need more, there's something wrong with you. This could be expanded, if we need to, but more than that would REALLY slow down image file searching.) In order to accomplish this, the Map Paths button in the Configure dialog now brings up a dialog with a scroller with paths and four buttons: EDIT: When selected, a click on an existing path entry brings up a file selector, which enables the user to select a different path. ADD: When selected, a click in the scroller list brings up a file selector. If OK'd, the new path is inserted at the indicated point in the scrolling list. MOVE: When selected, a click in the scroller selects a map- path to be moved, and you can move it to re-prioritize its position within the map-path search queue. (you probably won't use this option much, but it's good to have it there when you need it) DELETE: When selected, a click in the scroller list prompts you as to whether or not the indicated path is to be deleted. The ALT key acts as a modifier to delete all paths. The 3DS.SET entry MAP-PATH="D:\PATH" is used to load these slots. The old MAP-PATHx= lines are recognized, but the paths are plugged into the list in the order in which the path statement is encountered in the .SET file. Eventually, we will eliminate the old-style numbered path statements and allow only "MAP-PATH=". Project files: Existing project files will be read properly, loading in as many map-paths as there are in the file, in the proper order. New project files use a new chunk identifier for these paths, so this is NOT backward compatible. Sorry. - New automatic map-path feature called "Auto Search Path". It's completely invisible... no user interface. Here's how it works: If you want to store an entire project's worth of stuff together in one subdirectory (meshes, maps, etc), you can do that without having to manual assign that directory as a map-path. The path you load the .3ds or .prj from is added to the top of the map path list if it's not the current project or mesh path. Very convenient. - If you want a shock, hit F11. The screen will be taken up by a full-screen text editor display, with menu bar, tool bar, editing area and scroller. The menu bar works (this is a nifty modification to 3ds -- menu bars in dialogs, if we want to use them). Select File/Exit to leave the editor. When complete, the editor will have user-defined additional dropdowns and an icon toolbar, and will be callable from IPAS routines. Gee... I wonder what kind of an IPAS routine could possibly use an editor... Not any of our _current_ types... hmmm... must be something new going on in there. <g> - I wanted to supply a sample MEDIT.CUB file (this is the file that Medit will look for to as a sample when it renders auto-cubic reflection maps inside of the material editor. However, I ran out of disk space by about 10K (rats). You can make one yourself (according to the instructions in the docs), but if you want to just get my copy from me quickly, send me an email on Compuserve (76702,413) and I'll shoot it over to you (the zip file is only 17K). - Make sure that you read the section in the docs about rendering quality (this is within introduction in the first 10 pages). Items like the pixel size setting are very important! - When assigning a JPEG file as a texture map, you'll have to manually enter the JPG extension in the wildcard field (there's no button yet for it). Just type in *.JPG and then click on another field. - The TELLME.EXE file referenced in the Alpha docs was removed from this disk because it wouldn't fit. If you've got it from the Alpha 3.0 release, keep it. (The beta release will be a 2-disk set.) Network rendering: - Network issues: Things are looking pretty smooth with the network stuff. This version adds a bunch of cool "machine crash detection" features. I've fixed up some of the typos in the 3DSNET.SET file, and have added an END statement (thank you). - NET-MACHINE-TYPE=SLAVE now sets the machine up as if it had been started from the command line as a slave. That is, it allows running without a hardware key and, when ESC is hit, it returns to DOS. - <ANY> now overrides any other machine selections on a queue item. If you click on ALL, you'll get <ANY> in the queue. - Network machine-crash timeout detection is working. Here's what you need to do: A) Set NET-TIMEOUT-CHECK=ON B) Make sure all your systems are set to the same time. On Lantastic, the NET CLOCK \\SERVERNAME should be added to the STARTNET.BAT file. use this statement on all machines on the network, using the same server name. This will automatically set all your machines to the same time at startup. When a machine has not squawked in the time period specified by NET-TIMEOUT (in minutes), that machine is marked as FAILED, and the frame it was rendering is reassigned to the next available machine. If it is the only machine in a single-machine process (without <ANY>), you should delete the process and restart it. - Added NET-TIMEOUT=1-60 (default=3) to 3DS.SET. This is the time, in minutes, that a machine will be allowed to sit without squawking before it is assumed to have crashed. Any machine that has not squawked in the specified time is assumed to be lost, and the frame it was working on is assigned to the next available machine. - Added NET-SQUAWK=10-180 (default=60) to 3DS.SET. This is the interval, in seconds, that a machine waits between squawks. As a general rule, I'd set NET-SQUAWK to 1/3 of NET-TIMEOUT, just to give a margin of error. For example, 60 seconds in NET-SQUAWK should have a NET-TIMEOUT of 3 minutes. - Added NET-TIMEOUT-CHECK=ON/OFF (Default=ON) -- determines whether the network render will check for machine timeouts. - Fixed an ALPHA 3.0 problem with Video Post network rendering -- it no longer leaves net machine in Video Post mode after a VP render runs. - Fixed a problem with the MCS being accessed by two machines at the same time. This only occurred if the MCS wasn't present, and two machines tried to access it at the same time -- This is now fixed by an alert when (A) you try to start a new render or (B) try to edit the queue. You will be told: "MCS does not exist. Create it?" A YES response creates the MCS, then allows you to edit it or start the render. The mechanism should prevent future problems. - Slaves may be taken offline remotely by deleting the .EQP file for the machine to be taken offline. DEL *.EQP takes all slaves offline. - In answer to Jamie's query: If NET-SERVER-PATH doesn't exist, the images are written to the startup drive. This is shown as a warning at startup. [end]