*** Note that version 6.7 was renamed 6.6.5.0

Hello Everyone,

I'm in the midst of working on 3D Canvas 6.7. I thought it would be nice to have a "progress" discussion topic so I can keep you up to date with how things are going.

As most of you probably know, Version 7.0 has been under development for a very long time. Since there is a need for a new version now, I have stopped work on 7.0 temporarily and am concentrating on putting out a new version that works properly with current hardware. This new version will include a small number of new features, but is mostly intended to make 3D Canvas run properly on all new hardware.

For the past four years I have been working on a 3D Canvas redevelopment project. I completed the redevelopment the other day (August 22nd). This frees me up to work on projects to improve the performance of 3D Canvas and work on new features.

I expect a Beta of 3D Canvas 6.7 to be released in about two weeks.

Richard

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The first new feature of Version 6.7 is an improvement to the "Group Selection Tool". Holding down the Ctrl key while dragging selects all edges within the selection rectangle.



I think this will be handy, and is more or less required for an upcoming 6.7 feature that will operate on multiple edges.

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I've modified that the Edge operation so that it can connect the centers of selected edges.

For example in the next picture I've used the new function from above to select edges creating a loop around the cylinder. Applying the Edge operation creates a new cylinder cross section. This, of course, can be used on any object. I think this will be handy for cross section modelling when you need a new cross section. It saves dividing each the edges manually and then connecting up the points individually with the Edge operation.



Another example:

Over the last couple of days I have managed to re-write much of the 3D Canvas material functions. As a result Operation writers will now be able to compare materials simply by "If Material0 Is Material1".

I have modified the Edge operation so that it can now connect multiple edges in a single operation.

In the following example I created edges on three faces with one operation.



I have completely re-written the Edge operation to take advantage of the new features of the 3D Canvas Scene Graph. The result is a much faster operation.

I've been working on improving the Divide operation. I have entirely re-written it. The biggest change is that it is now possible to divide multiple edges with a single operation.

There are some performance improvements, especially to the division of multiple faces in one operation. It is dramatically faster.

Eveything is looking good for a beta release by September 12th. There are still a lot of things to fix and re-write, but it all looks manageable.

I've made something of a fundamental change in 3D Canvas. In previous releases all points were automatically linked to each other if they were located in the same location. This won't be the case in the new release.

In the first of the following pictures I used the "Unlink" operation to unlink the points. In the second picture I moved the faces.



In previous releases moving the face would have stretched the object. You won't see much difference normally because most operations optimize points so this won't happen. If you find a case where the points are not linked you can use the Optimize operation to correct it.

This change was made to provide flexibility and to speed up the selection of points and edges.

I'm still expecting a beta release by September 12th.

I've decided to call this release 6.6.5.0 not 6.7. Even though the changes between this release and 6.6 is massive internally, there really aren't many new functions. This also gives me the opportunity to officially release version 6.6.

4 days and counting - I'm looking forward to Tuesday

It's been ages since I had to "re-do" my plugins.

I'm glad to see that someone's interested. :-)

You shouldn't have to make many changes. The plug-in interface didn't change much. Operations on the other hand will need lots of changes. I still plan to do a bit of tidying of the interface between Beta 1 and Beta 2 so perhaps you would be better off waiting for Beta 2. Also, you will have documentation of the interface then which could come in handy. :-)

I managed to figure out how to expose the 3D Canvas Scene Graph to plug-ins. I had started it ages ago, but it didn't work out so I pulled out the changes. I finally figured out how to do it. So, hopefully that will happen soon.

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Over the last few months I made drastic changes to the renderer that 3D Canvas uses to display 3D objects. The last couple of days I have been looking for, and fixing, bugs.

The main benefit of the new renderer is lower memory usage. I created a complex scene with five views open to compare memory usage between previous versions of 3D Canvas:

5.7a - 109,272k
6.5.1.0 - 130,628k
6.6.1.0 - 144,172k
6.6.5.0 - 93,184k

That's a solid improvement, and I think I can get memory usage even lower.

I also noticed that the new renderer is dramatically faster than version 6.5.1.0 when rendering solid outline.

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quote:

I'm glad to see that someone's interested. :-)

Sorry...I thought this post was just for your own use...like Paul I'm really keen to give this a try.
The new Edge operation will be a massive time saver to me....great stuff.

Bazza

Nope, it's not a private post. Anyone who has anything to say can. I can imagine with all of the missed deadlines I've had there is a lot of "I'll believe it when I see it". This time I'm going to be on time. :-)

Unfortunately, I didn't have any luck getting the memory usage down. I could reduce it by going to a maximum of 65k points/object, but I'm not sure that's a good idea. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

(Actually, I'm not sure that >65k points works yet anyhow)

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I managed to confirm that 6.5.5.0 can actually display more than 65k points. There still seems to be a limit,but I'm not entirely sure. There is a limit to the number of triangles a given graphics card can display. I'll have to look into it if people have problems.

Today I've been working on fixing bugs.

I managed to find and fix a memory leak. That was the most critical, and most difficult, bug left in 3D Canvas.

There are still dozens of bugs to fix. I won't fix all of them before the Beta release. It simply isn't possible. The goal is to have a release where the main editing functions work properly.

Since this is a developmental phase and things are fresh in your mind, would it be possible to develop a utility tool that could find individual points (vertices), lines or faces in the *.3dc files for trouble shooting. Occasionally there have been invisible polygons or vertices (what is sometimes referred to as flying polygons) in models that inhibit the performance of the model in its environment. It would be nice to be able to locate these rogue data points and remove them if possible.

Mike.

I've just thought of something. In a post in the General Forum I found that many of my textures and materials disappeared when I did a reinstall of Windows XP due to the fact I used a NVidea driver more recent than version 7.8. This was corrected by uninstalling ver 9.xx and installing ver 7.8

What with the advanced graphics coming to us in games and simulators and the new dual NVidea cards and motherboards designed around them, I dont think driver ver 7.8 is going to adequate for much longer.

Will the improved version 6 3DC and the new version 7 of 3DC be compatable with all current NVidea drivers and their future upgrades? Having to keep reinstalling drivers each time you want to use 3DC is not something a lot of modellers would want.

I stick with NVidea as ATI are not very good with customer support. As a lot of people have discovered ATI just dump their clientelle after a few years and do not offer any technical help for older ATI equipment in more current computers. I dont trust ATI anymore, so its NVidea and their drivers for me ... and also a lot of other 3DC users.

Thanks for listening to me,

Mike.

As far as I know, the upcoming version of 3D Canvas should work properly with new NVIDIA hardware and drivers. That's one of the goals of the new version.