We're very pleased to release Clarisse iFX 3.5 SP1!
As usual, you can download this release from your “Download Area”.
What's new since Clarisse iFX 3.5 SP1:
New Features and Enhancements
General
- Added the possibility to change the animation range of Alembic cameras. (#7155)
- Native visibility property support for Alembics:
- Imported, referenced, and Alembic Bundles now support the standard visibility property ("visible").
- The Alembic visibility property value is used to drive the visibility attributes "Display Visible" and "Unseen By Renderer", or Shading Groups visibility in the case of Bundles.
- A new attribute "Visibility Mode", under the "Visibility" group, defines how the visibility attributes are driven:- Use Preferences (default): Visibility Mode is driven by Application or Project Preferences.
- Override: visibility attributes are set by the user (legacy behavior).
- Use Property: visibility attributes are read only and their value is updated automatically based on the Alembic property value and the current time.
- Animated visibility can be constrained by the attributes "Animation Behavior" and "Force Animation Range".
Known limitations:
- Scatterers: time offset applied by the scatterer does not work on animated visibility.
- In the Material Linker, shading groups visibility column should be read-only when "Visibility Mode" is set to "Use Property", but it is not. Therefore the user can override the visibility even if it should not be possible.
- Combiners with "Use Sub Items Settings" enabled: like for regular geometry objects, Alembic objects only propagate the "Unseen By Renderer" attribute but not the "Display Visible" attribute.
- Alembics with animated visibility can suffer performance degradations if the animated visibility property is high in the hierarchy and the number of objects is high.
- Saved projects with imported Alembics (versus referenced), will not load or reload the visibility information. To get around this limitation it is recommended to reference the Alembic file (File > Reference) instead of importing it (File > import > Scene). In general, it is recommended to always reference alembic files instead of importing them.
Known bug:
- If Clarisse visibility attributes are animated while Visibility Mode is "Override", then, when setting Visibility Mode to "Use Property", the attributes will continue using the overridden values as if they were in "Override" mode. (#7071) - Use Preferences (default): Visibility Mode is driven by Application or Project Preferences.
Rendering
- Added the possibility to print Open Shading Language statistics, like Open Image IO ones. (#7192)
- Improved OSL shader metadata import: "min", "max", "slider", "slidermin" and "slidermax" are now supported on attributes. (#4865)
- Improved distribution of samples among combined BXDFs in the presence of Fresnel effects, leading to visible noise reduction for rough dielectrics and the standard material, among others. (#7263)
- Modified the microfacet model used for the refraction part of the physical dielectric material so as to match the microfacet model of its reflection.
- Added the GGX NDF for rough refraction in the transmission material. (#7237)
Bug Fixes
Application
- Render Manager path error messages are now more detailed. (#7282)
- Fixed a crash that could happen when using the search then deleting an object. (#7231)
- Fixed an issue with the eye icon. It now works correctly with multi-selection, enabling or disabling all selected items. (#5926)
- Fixed "revert value" feature not working properly after creating overrides in the renderer. (#7105)
- Added Alembic tool abctree in Windows installer. (#7269)
- Fixed a bug when writing EXR files : The data window wasn't computed correctly when a crop region was set. (#7288)
- Added color_tag.cfg file which was missing. (#7272)
- Removed the "*.abc" file extension option in the import dialog of import polyfile script. (#6601)
- Fixed a bug when applying a scatterer time offset on Alembic bundles: looping animations were not correctly read. (#7140)
- Fixed a refresh issue when changing the Override Material of a geometry used in a Scatterer. (#7236)
- Fixed an issue when applying an override on a referenced alembic files: in some cases the disabled option was wrongly set. (#7207)
- Fixed a crash when loading an alembic as a bundle with kinematic deformation only. (#7309)
- Fixed a bug in the deep output, the alpha channel wasn't correctly computed. (#7284)
- OSL shaders instantiation is now properly handled. (#4923)
- Overrides are now supported on referenced OSL attributes. (#5010)
- Added support for animated attributes in OSL shaders. (#3849)
- Fixed a potential crash when accessing an empty property in alembic files. (#7215)
- Fixed an issue where connections were lost after reloading a project with references in a sub context. (#7250)
- Fixed an issue with "Make Local" feature not working properly when applied on a referenced project with disabled items. The disabled items remained disabled and locked like if the make local was not applied to them. (#7251)
- Fixed bugs/inconsistencies in editable state of the SSS weight, reflectivity, edge tint and transmission_linked_to attributes when changing the respective colors in the standard material, and revised general behavior of attributes' editability in the dielectric, reflection, transmission and standard materials. (#7275)
- Fixed an inconsistency in the normal map evaluation on the material physical standard. The SSS part of the material was sometimes not using the right map depending on the order of attributes manipulation.(#7274)
- Fixed an issue that was setting an undefined value when resetting the attribute "Integration Model" in a raytracer. (#7190)
- Fixed regression on rough refractions of transmission/dielectric/standard materials, as well as possible infinite loop on rough reflections/refractions of reflection/iridescent/dielectric/standard materials using a Beckmann NDF. (#7266)
- Improved numerical precision for low roughness values on the dielectric material. (#7268)
- Fixed an issue in the physical standard material, the opacity of the transmission was not correctly attenuated by the fresnel during shadow computations.(#7260)
- Fixed an issue in the physical standard material, the metallic fresnel could give slightly incorrect result. (#7261)
- Fixed an issue in the physical standard material, the emission was not attenuated by the fresnel correctly.(#7259)
- Fixed an issue in the physical standard material, the attribute "emission strength" was grayed out when the "emission color" was textured or had a shading variable. (#7141)
- Fixed an issue in the russian roulette that could lead to invalid values in renders. (#7049)
- Fixed a crash when rendering a material legacy mix using the path tracer. (#7333)
- Fixed a crash when texturing a light color with an object switch texture. (#7295)
- Fixed a potential crash when enabling the Uv Bake. (#7147)
- Fixed a potential crash when changing the material of a geometry used in a combiner which is scattered or combined. (#7197)
- Fixed a crash when modifying the "Focal length" attribute of an instanced camera perspective advanced. (#7254)
- Fixed an issue with OSL sending dirtiness when the current frame was updated. (#3848)
- Fixed a crash that occurred when baking an emtpy scatterer. (#7311)
- Fixed a bug in the shading layer, the rules weren't interactively updated when moving objects inside contexts. (#5546)
- Fixed a bug in the shading layer editor, the case sensitiveness option for search&replace wasn't working. (#7308)
- Fixed a bug in the shading layer, connections with disabled clip maps were sometimes lost when re-opening the project. (#7144)
- Fixed a bug in the shading layer editor, when the source text to replace is empty. (#7291)
- Fixed a crash in the particle paint, when right clicking during a paint session. (#7200)
SDK Changes
IO
- GeometrySceneInfo::init() : new parameter 'visbility_mode'. Specifies how the visibility of each object is determined. Values are: 0 = User must specify per object visibility, 1 = Visibilities are set in Clarisse (With material linker, shading layer, etc...).
- GeometrySceneInfo::set_item() : new parameter 'visibility'. Specifies if the the geometry is visible.
- GeometrySceneInfo::get_visibilities: new method. Return the list of object visibilities. (#7071)
- Fixed a bug when applying overrides on custom attributes, the target attribute wasn't correctly set. (#5010)
- It is now possible to declare generic statistics loggers at the AppObject level. (#7192)
- All SDK samples are now up to date.
- GeometrySceneInfo::build_shading_groups() must now be called instead of GeometrySceneInfo::build_shading_group_names() when initializing geometry bundle shading group data. (#7325)
- Fixed an issue in the sphere instancer example, the support matrix wasn't properly used. (#7332)
