Hi All,

3D Canvas 6.6 is now available:

Download 3D Canvas 6.6

What's New in 3D Canvas 6.6
---------------------------

o) New 3D Renderer

The 3D Canvas 3D renderer has been completely re-written so as to allow
for the new rendering features of today's 3D graphics cards.


o) Real-time True Shadows

True shadows can now be rendered in real time.


o) Bump Mapping

The new 3D Canvas renderer supports Dot Product 3 bump mapping.


o) Cartoon Rendering

Real-time Cartoon Rendering is now supported.


o) Anisotropic Filtering

Textures can be filtered using Anisotropic filtering.


o) Improved support for Targa and PNG textures

3D Canvas now loads Targa and PNG textures more quickly.


o) Improved Point and Face Selection

The selection of points and faces on heavily deformed objects is now
more accurate.


o) Improved Outline Rendering Mode

Outline mode now renders lines more clearly.


o) Hardware Anti-aliasing of Snapshots and Videos (3D Canvas Pro only)

3D Canvas now renders snapshots and videos using hardware anti-aliasing.


Note that not all features are supported by older computers and older
3D Graphics cards.

3D Canvas 6.6 can be installed alongside 3D Canvas 6.5. There should be no significant conflicts. It should be possible to open models created in version 6.6 with version 6.5. You will have to re-enter your license code after installing version 6.6.

One important note: Some 3DC/3DO files created prior to version 6.0 may not load properly. This will be the case in the final version also since there were some older versions of operations that couldn't realistically be implemented with the new renderer. Odds are this will not happen or when it does the problems will be small.

Also note that only Windows XP/2000 are supported with this version of 3D Canvas. There is no longer support for Windows 9x/Me. As many of you know Microsoft dropped support for Windows Me last December and Windows 9x a while back. That being said, you may find that 3D Canvas works just fine with Window 9x/Me, but it isn't "officially" supported.

Known problems in this Release
------------------------------

o) Bumpmapping does not work properly on first generation Radeon based video cards.

Plug-ins created for release 6.5.0.6 will NOT work with this release.

Richard

The Amabilis created plug-ins for version 6.6 are now avialable for download:

Merge Faces

Create Triangle

Add Triangle To Edge

3rd party plug-ins are not yet available.

Richard

Just one problem I've experienced with 6.6 Beta 2 that I've just had some troubles with. When I import a tree that I've made in 3DS Max as a test and then try to use the change materials plug-in it crashes 3DC. Subsequently when trying to run 3DC again in order to recover the model no recovery option is shown and I get a new scene. I suppose its no real problem but it would be nice to have the option to recover just in case.

Is this with the beta? It could be fixed in the released version.

Richard

Yes Richard its with Beta 2.
I can email you a copy of the model if you would like.

Yeah. Go ahead. (support@amabilis.com)

I'd rather you post only issues with the official release from now on. Posting issues with the beta just adds work for me since whatever you find in the beta may already be fixed in the release. Thanks.

Richard

I gave this a try and even with beta 2 I had no problems. It was slow though.

Richard

It's possible that the import with an immediate material update caused the problem (rather than after the load of a 3DC file). Could you send me the original 3DS file?

Richard

with 6.6 - add a cube and select it then pressing F7 causes it to crash - (I was trying to find the auto smooth on/off button )

edit

I think F7 just crashes it ?

Yep, F7 causes a crash here too.
there seems to be no shortcut key for wireframe

I now get to see a material in the preview
window, where I didn't before. When I load 6.6
first, it was there. Then loaded 6.505 and it just worked. That's great

Cartoon rendering wasn't working in beta2 but
it's working in 6.6

Right you are. The "Tools->Select Rendering Mode" menu should read:

F2 - Smooth
F3 - Flat
F4 - Solid Outline
F5 - Points
F6 - Cartoon
F7 - Crash

There is no way to select "wireframe" with F keys or menus, but you can select Points which will allow you to get at a cage point hidden below the surface. Or you can select wireframe using the drop down rendering mode menu.

I've got this corrected and it will be in 6.6.0.1.

Richard

Hi,

Has anyone tried getting the trainsim wizard to load? I have imported an old model into 6.6 and the trainsim wizard option does nothing!
I have only tried 6.6 on my laptop which has a Radeon 9600 card in it.
The Hardware Renderer seems to struggle with two sided (faced) textures, not showing anything through transparent textures.

My main concern at present though, is not being able to publish using the train sim wizard.

Any ideas?

Cheers, Chris

The most likely reason the TrainSim Wizard would not work is if the Pro upgrade for 6.6 was not installed. It can downloaded from the Help menu.

I'd be curious to see an example 3DC file that does not render properly (support@amabilis.com). I would appreciate if you could send it to me (and all associated textures). Thanks.

Richard

Hi Richard,

Thanks for the reply. I have completely removed both 3D canvas 6.5 and 6.6 and just put 6.6 back on. This has cured the Train Sim Wizard Problem. I still have one or two issues with the rendering, which i have e-mailed to you.

Thanks again

Chris

First off, I think the cartoon rendering and shadows are great. I have noticed a few things though... not necessarily bugs, but possibly. When using cartoon rendering, the shading seemed to be affected by the first point light. If a second is added, and moved around, the shading doesn't appear to change. I dont know if this is a computational limitation, but I wouldn't think that it is. I noticed that when you place a point light (with cast shadow) that the shadow is for the most part correct. If you place another light next to it, the shadow becomes darker. I know this is just a result of how the shadows are rendered but it could be modified so that areas that are hidden from all light sources are darkened the same amount (which would be determined by ambient lighting I guess) but areas that are exposed to a portion of the lights on the scene could be shaded according to the exposed lighting to total lighting ratio... Probably not an easy task. I guess really its your job to decide implementation, Richard. Another thing was that the computation of the shadow appears to be parallel for all points considered on each object. The position of the point light relative to the origin of the object is used, correct? As an example, place a torus just above the grid and a light above it so that a shadow is visible underneath. Move the light source down into the middle of the torus and youll see that the shadow doesnt stretch like would be expected. You'd need to find vectors between each point on the object and the light source to change this, which I imagine would be a bit of load for real time rendering... Anyway... just mussings from a radical.

I just realized... the whole multi shadow blending thing would be easy. Just divide the opacity of each shadow by the total number of lights in the scene... well.. unless you want to account for the individual brightness of each one... Oh! what about shadow color?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: coder0xff,

Now I found a real bug... sorry if this is getting irritating place a sphere (or something) in the scene and then place a shadow-casting light directly behind it from the current view point (might have to move it around to get it in the right spot). It looks like a shadow is being cast on the viewing plane (or something), except that where this giant shadow is seen the object doesnt have its hidden surfaces shaded from the light source. Beats me!

Chris,

I had a look at your model and figured out the cause. Translucency is a bit tricky to implement. In order to render translucency a program needs to sort translucency and render from back to front. 3D Canvas 6.5.0.6 and earlier sorted all translucent polygons. Version 6.6 sorts the groups. When I was testing 6.6 this seemed to be sufficient. I'm not so sure anymore. I really hadn't considered models like yours when I was implementing translucency. I'm guessing what I am doing in 6.6 is similar to what Train Simulator does since it requires you to indicate which faces are translucent and a "priority" for them.

I'm going to have to look into possible solutions. The obvious solution is to sort each translucent polygon but that is really time consuming since it has to be re-determined every time you change your viewing location or the object is moved/rotated/modified.

The main reason 6.6 works so poorly with your model is that you are using a TGA texture for non-translucent objects. If for instance your seats were textured using a BMP texture they would be visible from outside. When you use a TGA texture you are telling 3DC that the object is translucent and that means sorting (and sorting errors).

coder0xff,

The online help mentions this (easy to miss) but the main point light of the scene is used for cartoon rendering shading. I don't think it is possible to use multiple lights. I think that is just he nature of cartoon rendering. But... I could be wrong.

The reason the shadow gets darker is to allow for "soft shadows". I actually did a bunch of work to get it to work this way. As an enhancement it would be nice if the area that is in full shadow not change in intensity and the areas in partial shadow become lighter as more lights are added. It certainly is possible (as you guessed) but I'll have to think about it. And yes... I could indeed set the shadow to be any color.

At this point all shadows are rendered as though they are being created by an infinite light. So yes, that results in "parallel shadows". It isn't that much slower to create "non-parallel shadows". It just would have taken me more work and in this first release of the new renderer they seemed adequate.

As for the "light behind shadow bug". This is a known issue with this type of shadows (stenciled shadow volumes). When the shadow volume intersects the near clipping plane the shadow is visible even though it shouldn't be. I have read about a solution (or partial solution) to this that was found relatively recently. Unfortunately I had to go with something that "mostly works" in order to get the release out.

Richard

Richard,

Thanks for the reply and for looking into this problem.

Cheers, Chris

There is a beta version of 6.6.0.1 available: www.3d-canvas.com/downloads/3DCanvas6601.zip

It fixes a couple of small bugs and considerably improves the rendering of translucent objects. It also adds new diagnostics to help track down a problem a couple of people are having.

Richard

Thanks for the reply Richard... not many people are willing to listen to my rambling, let alone respond to it.