Cheetah3D 7.5 Beta 1

Hi,
my main focus was on cleaning up and improving the texture tools. I have big plans for the texture painting tools in 2020 so this is just the beginning. So far I mainly worked on speeding up the drawing code. Especially on dedicated GPUs the paint tool was frustratingly slow. Luckily I already made quite some progress in that department. I also want to make the paint tool to work more like in other painting apps so. Although that's still a long way to go.
Beside the paint tool v7.5 also adds support for rendering stereoscopic panoramas using the OSD projection. So if you have a VR headset that might be of interest for you.

New features in v7.5 Beta 1
Code:
-improved the texture painting tools
   -added stroke smoothing (quadric interpolation of brush strokes)
   -added some common brush properties (hardness, flow)
   -much faster texture drawing (expeciall on big textures)
   -much faster texture updates in 3D view during drawing (especially on dedicated GPUs)
-added support for rendering omni directional stereoscopic panoramas (OSD)
-added "r", "g", "b", "a" properties to Vec4D Javascript class
-fixed rounding bug in steppers
-fixed crashing bug when exchanging textures

Attention:
PLEASE BE AWARE THAT THIS IS BETA SOFTWARE SO DON'T USE IT ON IMPORTANT DATA.

Download link of Cheetah3D 7.5b1:
http://www.cheetah3d.com/download/Cheetah3D7.5b1.dmg

I hope you like the new features in Cheetah3D 7.5.:smile:

Kind regards
Martin
 
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Nice, thanks Martin!

There's something wrong with the download link though. It gives me a "Failed to Open Page" error.

I have an Oculus Rift S at home, so that will be pretty neat. Would that mean we can view VR directly in C3d, or would that only work for exported files?
 
Thanks for the tip. I fixed the download link. Don't get it from where those extra characters came from. Very strange copy&paste bug.:unsure:
 
Thanks so much for posting the beta. I am so happy that Cheetah 3D can now make true VR 3D movies.

First observations and issues:

1) Very minor typo. In the camera settings the menu says OSD should be ODS for the camera type.
2) Just after I opened 7.5b1 a dialog appeared that said Cheetah3D has crashed but I only saw a flash on the screen. Cheetah3D still appeared to function normally and I used it to export an ODS movie with the new camera setting. Could it be the video card only crashed? With further thought, maybe this is an issue with my system since I spent all day yesterday debugging a program I wrote that talks to the video card. Maybe I left the video card in an unstable state.

Here is a link to a YouTube ODS video using the new camera:

 
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Thanks for the update Martin! Will check out the texture painting tools.
I'm curious if we'll see SSS anytime in the near future? I have a project that I believe would definitely benefit from that.
--shift studio.
 
I can confirm that texture painting feels faster and smoother.

There are really quite a few suggestions I could make for C3D to become useful as a painter app – but I'm sure many of them are already planned. One thing I really have a hard time with is not being able to use bracket keys for enlarging and decreasing paintbrush size (and also polygon brush tool too). I know the bracket keys are used for going forward and backward in tool history, but I would gladly remap them if I could.
Regarding what you have planned, any hints? Possibly paint diffuse, roughness, metalness and depth concurrently in 3D viewport? That would take C3Ds texturing up a level for sure.
--shift studio.
 
Why the UV maps are always backwards and upside down?
No matter which way the UV's are un wrapped.
I am constantly using UV Stepper to correct this. Can this be fixed?
C3D mapping.jpg
 
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Thanks so much for posting the beta. I am so happy that Cheetah 3D can now make true VR 3D movies.

I'm happy to see that it gets used. Unluckily I can't test it by myself since I have no VR headset.

1) Very minor typo. In the camera settings the menu says OSD should be ODS for the camera type.

Thanks, I've fixed that.

2) Just after I opened 7.5b1 a dialog appeared that said Cheetah3D has crashed but I only saw a flash on the screen. Cheetah3D still appeared to function normally and I used it to export an ODS movie with the new camera setting. Could it be the video card only crashed? With further thought, maybe this is an issue with my system since I spent all day yesterday debugging a program I wrote that talks to the video card. Maybe I left the video card in an unstable state.

That sounds very strange. Do you have a crashlog of the crash?
 
Thanks for the update Martin! Will check out the texture painting tools.
I'm curious if we'll see SSS anytime in the near future? I have a project that I believe would definitely benefit from that.
--shift studio.

In 2020 the main focus will be on the OpenGL->Metal transition which is already a hell lot of work. Beside that I want to renovate the drawing tools as a side project and since I will use Metal for them too.

Should there still be some time left them denoising support will be my highest priority for the renderer. So for SSS there will be probably no time left. Sorry.
 
There are really quite a few suggestions I could make for C3D to become useful as a painter app – but I'm sure many of them are already planned. One thing I really have a hard time with is not being able to use bracket keys for enlarging and decreasing paintbrush size (and also polygon brush tool too). I know the bracket keys are used for going forward and backward in tool history, but I would gladly remap them if I could.
Regarding what you have planned, any hints? Possibly paint diffuse, roughness, metalness and depth concurrently in 3D viewport? That would take C3Ds texturing up a level for sure.
--shift studio.

Yes, proper PBR shader support is planed in for the Metal version. Plus many other positive side effect which will result from that transition.
 
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In 2020 the main focus will be on the OpenGL->Metal transition which is already a hell lot of work
Will the Metal transition open the doors for GPU rendering on AMD cards?

Should there still be some time left them denoising support will be my highest priority for the renderer. So for SSS there will be probably no time left. Sorry.
Yes please! Denoising is a very exciting prospect. Too bad about SSS :( I suppose there is little/no chance of volumetrics in 2020 either?

Yes, proper PBR shader support is planed in for the Metal version. Plus many other positive side effect which will result from that transition.
Thats exciting too - looking forward to seeing what you can do!

Thanks for the responses.
--Shift Studio.
 
I'm happy to see that it gets used. Unluckily I can't test it by myself since I have no VR headset.

That sounds very strange. Do you have a crashlog of the crash?

If you have a relatively recent smartphone (iOS or Android) you can buy a Google Cardboard for only a few dollars. The Cardboard is just some folded cardboard that holds your phone with some lenses glued to it. That will give you access to any 3D content on YouTube with the Google Cardboard App. It's more of a toy than a tool but it works.

I looked for a crashlog and there isn't one. I should be more cautious about claiming this as a problem. I have not seen it happen again.
 

No one else have this problem??[/QUOTE]
I don't think I've noticed it, but I don't do much UV mapping. Most of the time it's a texture mapped to a plane though. So overall pretty simple stuff and rarely do I ever even enter the UV editor. How are you creating your textures? I've had weird issues even in other programs depending on how I create the bitmap.
 
Possible Bug - Reduce Selection command doesn't work on points in some situations.
  1. Add a Sphere and make it editable.
  2. In Point Mode use the Select All command - cmd/a.
  3. Use Area Select with the command key for area deselection. cmd/area selection
  4. Area deselect some points.
  5. Now the Reduce Selection command does not work.
  6. Increase Selection still works.
 
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