New in PD Artist 8.0 (Jan 9, 2013)
- In the past, many filters were implemented as external plugins and have now been internalized. In many cases this resulted in better performance, sometimes much better (depending on whether the time was mostly spent on sending the data to the plugin or on actual number crunching (the kind of stuff we sometimes like to call "computer stuff happening"). Those internalized external plugin files having been removed from the distributable, making it a little simpler and smaller. Another benefit: In some rare cases, randomly launching those files from the plugin panel may also have been a way to destabilize the program under some circumstances. Problem solved.
- The custom brush system in now multithreaded for more speed on multi-core machines.
- There's a new smoothing mode to smooth out the motion of the mouse or tablet. Drawing is less gittery and more refined looking with this option.
- Brush rotation now no longer jumps when cycling between 360-0.
- The watercolor FX mode now more correctly supports dryout
- The last used color tab is now remembered when you restart the application
- The color compact has been reduced in size to make it more compact, since it was basically a duplicate of the one on the color tab.
- Rotoscoping now supports motion blur.
- It's now possible to zoom out to 10% instead of 25%, which should help with large images.
- There's a new Clone fill feature. You can use it to replace a selection with another portion of the image.
- Certain rubber band drawing while using fill tools and circular gradient mode did not work correctly when zoomed. Fixed.
- The circular gradient fill mode now centers to the shape that's being drawn until the user specifically sets a new center with the rubber band.
- Fixed drag and drop bug on color swatches. You can now shift-click to edit a color on the swatch.
- The motion module makes better utilization of multiple cores.
- Possible crash fixed if brush accessed before being initialized.
- new brush resample panel.
- Attempt to address problem when using the pan and zoom with tablet. The pan and zoom tools work by changing the pointer coordinates to the center of the working window. This caused problems with tablet devices that work in absolute coordinates.
- The "Build palette from wells" plugin is internalized. This tool would sometimes experience automation errors.
- Addressed browser issue. The browser has been identified as a component that could keep a part of the Dogwaffle.exe in memory if shutdown while still scanning a folder. This could result in future instances of dogwaffle being seen as a second instance, causing plugins to behave incorrectly.
- Several areas of bottlenecks regarding interactivity have been addressed on the browser, including switching folders more quickly.
- Speed improvement to the browser. The browser now uses GDI+ to read certain file types more quickly (about 5 formats including jpegs, bmps, tiffs, and etc.) If they can't be read by GDI+, the older reader is used.
- The browser was formerly implemented as a plugin and has now been internalized, including new multiple instances.
- Algorithm and speed improvements to Soft contrast filter.
- Timeline: You can now move keyframes on the timeline after they are created.
- Fixed a slight inaccuracy in the timeline related to selecting the current frame.
- Fixed several bugs in curve interpolation on the timeline. Previously, when the linear setting was active, the lines were drawn with a curve instead of a straight line, so they looked a little non-linear, though the were linear internally.
- Faster onion skin.
- Not huge, but drawing a lasso no longer flickers when selected (which has accrued into a minor annoyance over the years)
- Eliminated possible division by zero in ColorFX.
- Smear mode is reimplemented. Fixed bug in when Custom brushes in smear or clone mode would incorrectly change orientation.
- Fixed a bug in value noise filter. It is now 2x faster.
- Fixed bug with text rendering after changing settings in the settings panel.
- We have a new "optional" policy on .net framework. We originally added it for several reasons. For one, we wanted to support plugin creation on a modern and freely available program language. Users didn't like having to install it, so we've reduced our use of it. It is now considered optional at the expense of just a few features, including the batch browser and picture framer. There were some problems however. For one, many users just didn't want to install it (although increasingly, you may find that it will be installed as part of other applications too).
- Layers: Toggling the view state of a layer no longer selects that layer. This means that if you have multiple layers enabled and you are working on a specific layer, you can hide other layers without loosing 'focus' of the current layer. The current layer remains the same.
- The alpha marquee ('marching ants' when there's a selection) is no longer refreshed while an animation is playing. Looks cleaner, faster.
- Plugins that have previously been internalized in some cases still used automation instead of internal classes, which is valid, but not ideal.
- Migration away from the .net framework related (features that no longer use the .net framework:
- The gradient editor is internalized and ported from the .net framework.
- Wigglewarp is internalized and ported from the .net framework.
- Create animated brush is internalized
- The .net framework is no longer an official requirement. It's been downgraded to "a requirement for certain plugins if you wish to use them, including the Batch Browser, Picture Framer, and several others."
- There is a new menu item to check if the right version of the .net framework is installed (should you want to use it). Look for it in the Window menu.
- Fixed a buffer overrun in calculation of normal map that affected 3d designer, lighting tool, wax filter. It's not clear if this was a beta issue or if it affected version 7.2 (carrot juice)
- Allowed larger lasso selection buffer.
- Fieldpack has been deprecated in favor of the newer motion prediction module and built in interlace support, and has thus been removed.
- Brick texture filter is internalized.
- Functions that previously used Lua or GUI server that have been integrated:
- Sunset filter.
- Fog filter.
- Star filter (photographic filters menu)
- Duotone.
- Multicolor, renamed tritone.
- Gamma.
- Brick texture.
- FX tab related - There have been many small corrections and tweaks to the FX tab on the brush settings ('o' for options) panel.
- Emboss, or "impasto" mode now can work in negative values. This can be used with grime sets for battle damage, or to create dents or impact graters. Great stuff for cool game artists, or was that cool stuff for great game artists?...
- Dryout is now correctly rendered in watercolor modes
- Paper bump was incorrectly treated the same as the dry brush option. The emboss mode now correctly handles paper bump where it previously only rendered the shape of the brush.
- There's a new gouache option for more of an opaque and single color effect.
- There is also a new gel mode which is similar to impasto.
- There's a new pigment parameter to make the paint color lighter or darker. It can also be used with lifting to create watery effects.
- The fx tab rendering now more resembles that of the penny pluggin.
- the watercolor mode now supports a 'lift' setting that causes color to be diffused under the brush stroke.
- General speed improvements.
- fixed a gui rendering bug on the mosaic panel.
- Additional features that have received threading:
- bycubic resampling.
- Motion module additional threading. Previously only the refinement pass was threaded.
- Lens flares now thread on more than 2 threads.
- linear and circular gradient tools
- rendering animation with the 3d designer.
- Twirl
- Apply paper
- tint
- Jitter
- certain things that use box filtering.
- Auto adjust.
- Fisheye
- Custom blur
- Tritone
- A lot more functions are internal, there are fewer externalized plugins, so the distributable has shrunk to around 24 megs. That also means a number of features are faster now (and have new options as well)
- The Z-rings and marble filters have been combined into one (and with new options)
- Filter/Render/noises/Fractal noise has been internalized.
- We're experimenting with GPU. On the cool side, our GPU shading code now supports more realistic shading, including specular.
- Jitter blur plus was one of the latest to be ported. There are a number of filters that have changed, from sunset, fog, duotone, tritone (previously multicolor), etc, etc.
- 3D Designer is now accessible in the Timeline! See the Landscape animation as an example
- New options in Lighting panel See details
- New options in Spherize panel: Bump textures, Size,... See details
- Filter: Render > Cellular and Render > Checkerboard have been updated.
- Filter: Adjust > Value is now multithreaded
- Filter: Transform > Crystalize is multi threaded and has new options including 3D lighting (shading) and a few more controls for parameters similar to the Render>Cellular filter. See details
- Slider Controls: Sliders now have additional clickable buttons to fine-tune their values in small increments. See details
- Use of twist parameter for tablets that support it. (such as Wacom Intuos)
- fixed TGA file sequence loading crash if not using "use external loader" in the load sequence dialog box.
- Working on fixing possible 'blob' that may appear at beginning of drawn line when using tablet with custom brushes.