Hi All,

3D Canvas 6.6.0.2 is now available:

Download 3D Canvas 6.6.0.2

This release fixes an installation problem that could result in error 429 occuring when running 3D Canvas.

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.

o) This release will not run on some conigurations of Windows. An error "Run-Time error '32811' Application-defined or object-defined error" occurs.


Plug-ins created for 6.6.0.1 will work with this release.

In general I recommend that all users continue to use version 6.5.0.7 for the time being unless you really feel you need one of the new features or version 6.5.0.7 does not work properly on your computer.

Richard

The Amabilis created plug-ins for version 6.6.0.1/6.6.0.2 are now available for download:

Merge Faces

Create Triangle

Add Triangle To Edge

In addition Deanville's Piper Plug-in is now available:

Piper

Paul Gausden's plugins and operations for 6.6.0.1/6.6.0.2 are now available at

http://www31.brinkster.com/decapod

Richard

A small note - the Engineer 3.0 plugin for 6.6 is "broken" - I am working on a fix.

If you still have 6.5 installed use that to start the model, the other 6.6 plugins are OK

I recovered my lost source code, so now MSTS Engineer 3 for 6.6.0.1+ should work as before.

Download as above...

Richard,

Just a note. After all the problems I had with error messages when installing all the most recent versions of 3D Canvas this past year, I took the plunge and upgraded my system to the latest Pentium 4, Windows XP, 2G of memory, a 256M Video Card and now all versions 6.5.0.3 and 6.6.0.2 work in an unbelievable manner. I never would have believed I could rotate and manipulate 3D scenes so rapidly with a Visual Basic based program until I saw it. I have to be careful with the scene controls as the response is so fast. Along with Paul Gausden's TrainZ Exporter, 3D Canvas is now such a pleasure to work with that I have given up on Gmax. I can hardly wait for what Version 7 will bring.

Thank you.

Charles