Strata 3D CX 5.1 » 5.5 | Strata 3D CX 5.0.1 » 5.1 | Strata 3D CX 5.0 » 5.0.1

What's New and Improved in CX 5.5

• New Jittered anti-alias sampling in the Raytracer when the anti-alias filter checkbox is on.
• Strata 3D[in] Photoshop Plug-In technology now supported.
• File menu items: Send Model and Send Image to Photoshop from Strata 3D CX 5.5.
• Button bar addition, "Send to PS" buttons, left of the button bar.
• Collada I/O support
• Multi-processor support for up to 8 processors.
• Significant Improvements to the OBJ I/O.

Notable Changes

• Increased the default window size to 800x600.
• Finished snapshots are now associated with the document. This means finished snapshots will now close when you close a model.
• Lathing a 2D profile now switches back to the selection tool and automatically does a "re-center" on the resulting object.
• "Exclude Background" is now retained between sessions (persistent checkbox).
• Enhancements to anti-aliasing and alpha channel.
• PDF (AI) Importer changes that allow for more objects with holes to import, such as text letters with holes.
• Added a 30 second timeout to the sequence detection alert, and a new line of text in the alert letting the user know about the 30 second timeout.
• Shape insertion - Added new shape insert functionality. (See explanation below).
• Shape insertion - Added a new Preference item "Orient inserted shapes to view". The new default shape insertion (drag-n-drop) behavior is to orient the inserted shape toward the active view. For more information see the "New Shape Insert Functionality" explanation below.
• OBJ - Added support for handle embedded textures.
• OBJ - Added support for exporting multiple selected objects.
• OBJ - Added support for exporting the whole model when nothing is selected.
• OBJ - When a texture file can't be found while loading a material (MTL) file, it will now search the OBJ/MTL directory. If the file isn't found, then the user will be prompted to locate it. The directory selected by the user will be added to the search paths and will be searched for any other missing textures during the import.
• Changed the Auto Grid default to off (will only be noticed if existing CX 5.x users reset their preferences).
• Changed the View Set Center to be at +2 on the Y axis.
• Enlarged the initial Grid sizes.
• New Scripting menu item, "Set Object Origin". This script allows for accurately (numerically) positioning an object's origin point (blue dot).
• New Scripting menu item, "Enable Auto Grids". This script allows the enabling and disabling of the Auto Grid Preference option.
• Removed "Use neutral interface colors" Preference item. We are now auto de-saturating the system color themes/settings. If you select a neutral color theme, you get neutral colors.
• Using a new mechanism to draw the Windows version palettes (title bars, etc).
• New Auto Grid behavior - the Auto Grid function will not switch to a system (X, Y, Z) grid if a User (custom) Grid is active.
• GL transparency now supported in GL shaded renderers (Flat, Smooth, and Shaded HiddenLine).
• The PSD Layers Rendering Presets have been slightly modified. The modification was made so that these presets would work better with the Strata 3D[in] Ps Plug-Ins, which are now a part of Strata 3D CX 5.5. The item "Enable shadow optimizations" has been disabled. This must be off if you are rendering using the Photoshop filter, Strata 3D CX > Render, which is setup to capture reflections and shadows on an active "Ps Grid" (special grid objects) passed to CX from the plug-ins. You also need to have Render Alpha and the Exclude Background rendering options enabled in the Render dialog.

New Shape Insert Functionality:

Default behavior...

• drag-n-drop (no modifiers): At mouse release position, on active grid, oriented to the active view.
• insert button (no modifiers): On active grid, oriented to and near the center of the active view.

• command: At mouse release position, on active grid (not oriented to the view).
• option/alt: At mouse release position, shape's origin point retained.
• command+option/alt: Origin point re-centered, shape placed at the "view set center" (not oriented to the view).
• shift+modifier keys (and no selected objects): Works like the Insert button options (see Insert button section).

• command: On active grid, near the center of the active view (not oriented to the view).
• option/alt: Origin point re-centered, shape placed at the "view set center" (not oriented to the view).
• command+option/alt: Shape's origin point retained, set at World 0,0,0.

• single object selected...
• shift: Origin point re-centered and placed at the selected object's origin point.
• shift+command+option/alt: Shape's origin point retained and placed at the selected object's origin point.
• with multiple objects selected...
• shift: Origin point re-centered and placed at center of the selected objects.
• shift+command+option/alt: Shape's origin point retained and placed at the center of the selected objects.

Fixes Since CX 5.1

• Fixed a Box Wrapper file saving corruption problem.
• Fixed the importing of Illustrator CS3 (v13) files.
• Fixed the copy/paste and duplication of cameras to retain all their info, including aspect ratio, backdrops, etc.
• Fixed the Mactel PICT Save problem.
• Fixed the Mactel 16 bit color mode issue with the Splash screen and modeling window.
• Mactel - Fixed camera backdrops in GL (red and blue color switching).
• Fixed the activation of custom grids.
• Constrained Camera view zooming, if aspect ratio lock is set.
• Off-screen windows will now be repositioned upon Open.This usually occurs with files generated using a larger monitor/resolution and opened on a system with a smaller monitor or resolution.
• Fixed a bug caused by the OBJ file having a line longer than the line buffer.
• Fixed a suspended rendering issue.
• Fixed an OpenGL crasher when using large Backdrops.
• Fixed the Resource palette crasher when two resources have the same name.
• Made a Raytracer change to deal with coplanar polygons -- The way this works is that back facing polygons are pushed back a bit, leaving the front facing polygons to be rendered.
• Fixed a Texture OP Coverage problem.
• Fixed an OBJ file rendering crasher.
• Increased significantly the View's visual limits.
• Fixed the World Trident display for non-ortho OpenGL views. Note: Due to increasing the view's visual limits (the clipping area size), the trident can get into a situation where it is not displayed.
• Fixed the issue with not loading normals on some VRML2 files.
• Extended the Resource palette's Library popup menu, so that longer names are not cut off.
• Changed the application Quit window closing order so that secondary windows and snapshots close before the main modeling windows. This avoids the situation where you quit the application, but cancel and are then left with no modeling window, but still have an open model.
• Fixed a Project window crasher when double-clicking an event marker.
• Shape insertions are now undoable.
• Now,Êonly asking the user once per session about a file sequence.
• Made several optimizations to certain object types: Boolean, Lathe, Extrude and Text. The objects now use less memory and in some cases render more quickly.
• Significant performance improvement when rendering volumetric shadows buffers on multi-processor(core) machines.

Strata 3D CX 5.1 is a Mac Universal application, meaning it will run natively on both the Mac PPC and the Mac Intel platforms.

What's Been Fixed/Enhanced!

• Fixed large blur size crasher
• Fixed a scripting problem with dialog displaying
• Render to layers - PSD file layer compression is now supported.
• Fixed a Texture tab crasher. The fix for this issue now correctly disables texture editing of selected objects that do not have textures applied to them or if multiple objects are selected.
• Fixed a random crasher when canceling renderings shortly after the rendering was started.
• Fixed a crasher with selecting the About Strata 3D CX... menu item while the About screen was still open.
• Fixed an issue that resulted in rendering artifacts and a crasher on multi-processor systems when rendering a model with two or more non-global volumetric textures with a camera set within the volumetric texture space.
• A "crawling" or shifted texture problem on Mactel and Windows (Intel) systems is fixed.
• The 'Play movie' button in the Image Load dialog works again.
• Fixed a random crasher that occurred when dragging items from the resource palette.
• Fixed the crasher when editing/ending a reshape of a deformation lattice.
• Fixed a multi-processor rendering crashing bug.
• Fixed an issue with selecting a bone in the bone list in the Skeleton OP and the bone selection in the modeling window not updating and vice versa.
• Fixed a move, rotate and scale issue.Ê Rotation is the default, however changing the rotation value would cause the bone to move not rotate when the Apply button was pressed.Ê This would be corrected, however, once you selected the move setting, as which point the numeric edit fields would sync backup.
• Fixed a popup menu conflict with Skeleton and the micro-polish popup menus.
• Removed the obsolete "PICT Resource" file format option.
• Fixed suspension restarts, on Windows, that are writing to a QuickTime file, but failing.Ê The user will now be prompted for a save file.
• Fixed a significant performance hit on the Mac Intel platfom when rendering with feedback on. Feedback now updates less often. This fix also benefits the Mac PPC and Window platforms, though to a lesser degree than the Mac Intel platform.

What's Been Fixed/Enhanced!

• Fixed the problem with using UVs on subdivision objects.
• Added an alert when auto-loaded scripts have errors. The error details appear in the scripting console.
• Fixed a crash that occurred when moving keyframes for a camera position while the camera window was open.
• Cured the "Delete Selected" crash involving deleting textures and working in the Project Window.
• Added global rendering control for flatten database (default) and Minimize memory usage in the Raytrace expert setting dialog.
• Added shape specific Project Window control of flatten database (default) and Minimize memory usage.
• Added an alert for out-of-memory conditions for raytrace renderings with flatten database enabled (default).
• Displaying unnamed textures in the Object Properties Texture tab.
• Fixed the text redraw issue in the OBJ Import dialog on Windows.
• Corrected a spelling error in the OBJ Import dialog.
• Fixed a crash when loading a file that has a subdivision mesh attached to a skeleton when subdivision was applied after the attach.
• Fixed a crash when editing a skeleton after the attached mesh was subdivided.
• Subdivided meshes now properly update when applied to a mesh attached to a skeleton.
• Added command-clicking in the title bar of windows that have an associated file on the disk for Mac OS X.
• We have limited the size of a snapshot window to no larger than the display to avoid a Mac OS X window server crash.
• Now giving an error message for PSD files that exceed dimensional and file size limits.
• Various Lua scripting improvements and fixes.
• XMM now exports the alpha value correctly, so that Live 3D can read it in.
• Fixed Particle FX (Hair, etc) previews.
• Fixed the issue where black spots were occurring in renderings.
• Fixed an issue dealing with Meld and transparency.
• Fixed crashes related to having deleted a shape from the resource palette.
• Fixed a particle/shape crasher when selecting the Shapes tab in the Resource palette.
• Changes the Resource Palette previews background color. Shapes use the Window color Preferences option and FX shaders use black as the background.
• Fixed the image window so that saving is not allowed unless the image is actually savable.
• A "single layer" image is now savable when opened using Strata 3D.
• OBJ - Texture limit removed.
• OBJ - Fixed the non-multi-object file crasher. An alert is displayed indicating that the import failed and what to do to import the file.
• Fixed undo of texture positioning.
• Fixed the displacement crasher when converting to polymesh or when rendering.
• Added fill light and simple anti-aliasing of all previews.
• FixedÊa crash when copying from and changing linked psd layer in texture.
• Fixed Spot and Point light undo actions.
• Fixed the arrow style light dome widget resetting/shifting when switching to camera window.
• Object Properties Transform modes are now persistent.
• Retaining ngons and/or quads when converting to polygon group.
• Fixed the Image Texture not resetting when canceling.
• Fixed the issue with the Light distances reverting to 0.0 when set to INF.
• Changes made to avoid an animation (or rendering) crasher.
• A few GUI tweaks.
• Fixed the rapid clicking (double-clicking) texture remove crasher.
• Changes to try and avoid some random rendering crashes.
• Made the compression setting persistent for image formats.
• Retaining object names across Group/Ungroup operations and avoiding changing the order of these objects in the Project Window.
• Better Silk shader support on Polygon Mesh objects.

• Fixes for undo issues on move, scale, and rotate when the animate clock icon is not enabled.
• Fixed a scale undo crash.
• Enhancement - Fit view to selection will now fit to the selected elements.
• Fixed a potential crasher when undoing/redoing polymesh edits.
• Fixed the Reshaper tool palette always displaying as point mode when switching between multiple windows.
• Fix for selection not updating when changing gravity.
• Fix for a bug that caused animated meshes to explode when editing.
• Fixes for selection issues so that the actions get committed when the selection changes in the reshaper.
• Fixed to magic wand not properly handling selections that cross equators.