Cheetah3D 7.0 - Early Adopters Beta Test

Martin

Martin

0
Cheetah3D 7.0 - Early Adopters Beta Test

Hi,
first of all I'm really sorry for that pretty extreme delay of Cheetah3D 7.0. Since Cheetah3D is already a 15 years old project a big cleanup of the underlying architecture and a refresh of the UI was more than overdue. Thanks to that modernization work Cheetah3D 7 lost quite some weight (MBytes) while gaining lots of new features.

Since many users asked me to get access to the beta builds I'm happy to finally make the next step and start the Cheetah3D 7.0 Early Adopters Beta Test. I've picked that special form of public beta test since I want to increase the number of beta testers slowly. So a completely open beta test was no real option for me.

Although many features are already very mature there are still some open problems on which I have to work. So please don't forget that it's still beta software. But I'm optimistic that Cheetah3D 7.0 is now ready for a wider audience.

Since the documentation hasn't been updated yet the early adopter betas are mainly for adventurous Cheetah3D users who can't await to get their fingers on the new v7 features. I will update the documentation and sample files once I've finalized the UI.

New Features:
  • New renderer
  • NGon booleans
  • Movie textures
  • Soft selections
  • Collada import
  • Layers
  • Full OpenEXR 2 workflow
  • Big UI update
  • and much much more
The full Cheetah3D 7 feature list is way too long for this posting so I've added it to the .DMG file of the Beta version. Since the feature set hasn't been nailed down yet please be aware that things might still change.

License:
The Early Adopter Beta version already requires a Cheetah3D 7.x compatible registration number if you want to save your work. If you bought Cheetah3D 6.x after April 1st 2015 you have nothing to do since you already received a Cheetah3D 7.x compatible registration number (due to the Free Cheetah3D 7.0 Upgrade program).
If you purchased Cheetah3D before April 1st 2015 you can already Upgrade to Cheetah3D 7 by purchasing a Cheetah3D 6.x Upgrade which comes with a free Upgrade to Cheetah3D 7.x. That will also give you access to a Cheetah3D 7.x compatible registration number.

System requirements:
-64Bit Intel CPU
-OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) or newer

Localizations:
-English

Attention:
THIS IS BETA SOFTWARE SO DON'T USE IT ON IMPORTANT DATA. CHEETAH3D 7 WILL CONVERT THE RENDER TAGS TO THE V7 RENDER PREFERENCES DURING IMPORT SO THE V7 GENERATED .JAS FILES ARE NOT 100% BACKWARD COMPATIBLE. V6 CAN'T LOAD THE V7 RENDER SETTINGS!!! SO PLEASE BE CAREFUL THAT YOU DON'T ACCIDENTALLY SAVE A SCENE WITH V7 IF YOU STILL WANT TO OPEN IT WITH V6.

Download link of Cheetah3D 7.0 (released Oct. 4th 2017):
http://www.cheetah3d.com/download/download/Cheetah3D.dmg

I hope you enjoy Cheetah3D 7.:smile:

Kind regards
Martin

Cheetah3D_v7.png
 
Last edited:
A more complete list of new features would help us explore v7. Otherwise looking forward to playing around! Thanks. OOPs I just re-read your initial list! Full list on the way thanks.
 
Hello, All.

thank you Martin for starting early adopters beta test!

Can we upload any screen shot or rendering images on our own twitter or web site? or it's still closed?

Best

tg_jp, Hiroto.
 
A small suggestion: name the application on the DMG Cheetah3D-beta so people don't overwrite the release version (I suppose they can coexist on the same system.)
 
Plus another: Please restore camera zoom on the Apple mighty mouse without having to press any modifier keys. Thx!
 
Gavin said:
A small suggestion: name the application on the DMG Cheetah3D-beta so people don't overwrite the release version (I suppose they can coexist on the same system.)
Click to expand...
MacOSX will ask you before you can replace it.
Gavin said:
Plus another: Please restore camera zoom on the Apple mighty mouse without having to press any modifier keys. Thx!
Click to expand...
Scroll-wheel will now change the selection radius in first place.

Cheers
Frank
 
frank beckmann said:
MacOSX will ask you before you can replace it.

Scroll-wheel will now change the selection radius in first place.

Cheers
Frank
Click to expand...

None of these are very good answers, because the default OS X behavior for the mighty mouse is zoom or scroll. – Meaning people have to unlearn acquired behavior. Besides people probably spend more time zooming and navigating around their model than selecting.

Yes, it will ask before replacing, but there is no way to rename the version in the DMG as it is read only, so you first will have to copy to a different location, then rename and finally place in applications. More steps and more error prone.

Otherwise it looks great so far! ;-)
 
frank beckmann said:
MacOSX will allow both versions in the application folder - so you can rename it there - I know: just one extra step. ;)

Cheers
Frank
Click to expand...

Yeah, I know, but someone will overwrite the release install, and you are the one who get to handle the support calls. ;-))
 
Gavin said:
Yeah, I know, but someone will overwrite the release install, and you are the one who get to handle the support calls. ;-))
Click to expand...

Hi,
I don't think too many will ignore the OS X warning. If that really becomes a problem I can rename Cheetah3D in the next beta. But it would surprise me.

Bye
Martin
 
A question about compatibility:

Are there any features or file format changes that prevents a model written by the beta to open in the release version (apart from bugs obviously)?

Thanks,
 
Gavin said:
None of these are very good answers, because the default OS X behavior for the mighty mouse is zoom or scroll. – Meaning people have to unlearn acquired behavior. Besides people probably spend more time zooming and navigating around their model than selecting.
Click to expand...

The various camera navigation types are often used in combination. You rarely make just a zoom or just a rotation or just a move. It's often a combination of these three. I think it's more consistent if all camera navigation types require the ALT key. Please don't forget that the standard OS X behaviour was not intended for a 3D camera.

Preview.app also uses ALT+Scroll wheel for zooming when viewing DAE files. So ALT+Scroll wheel for zooming is not too uncommon in OS X.

Since the scroll wheel is now also used for other tasks it would be pretty inconvenient to press/release the ALT key again and again during camera navigation.

Gavin said:
Otherwise it looks great so far! ;-)
Click to expand...

I'm happy to hear that.
 
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