Itoo Software Forum

Information (read-only) => Announcements => Topic started by: iToo on December 09, 2010, 10:37:03 PM

Title: Forest Pack Lite/Pro 3.4
Post by: iToo on December 09, 2010, 10:37:03 PM
Note 1: Forest Pro 3.4 requires to re-activate the license. If you use a Stand-alone license, the reactivation is done automatically in the installation process. For Network licenses, be sure to upgrade the License Server software to version 1.10 or greater. From this version, if the computer have not changed, you can reactivate the licenses an unlimited number of times, without wasting activations.

Note 2: Because the changes introduced in this release, the scenes created with previous versions may look slightly different, specifically distributions of items, randomness and collisions.

Display

- New display mode, Points Cloud:

     * This ultra-fast mode enables you to see a 3D preview of the plants.
     * Adjustable density of points.
     * Color by ID or from Material.
     * See Random Tint in real-time.

- "Display Simplification" Level for viewport is replaced by a "Max. Items" parameter.
- Improved scattering speed when using Camera clipping.
- New proxy models: Thin Box and Plant. Adjustable opacity and wireframe mode.

Points-cloud view mode (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y4_uvGccKM#ws)

Surfaces

- Multiple surfaces support.
- In absence of area splines, the surfaces are used as scattering areas.
- Density and scale falloff curves by altitude. The curve is applied in the range defined by the Top and Bottom parameters (X=0 is Bottom, X=1 is Top).
- Altitude for limits and falloff is computed in Forest local coordinates, instead Surface coords. This mode is more suitable for multiple surfaces use.
- Overlapping of items at different heights is allowed in Generate mode (using multiple surfaces only).
- All "Get UVW form Surface" parameters have been removed. To disable UVW mapping from surface, set map channel to 0.
- All items that don't intersect with a surface are discarded.

(http://www.itoosoft.com/img/forest/rel_multiple_surfaces.png)

Other

- VRay 2.0 support.
- Rotate and Scale maps.
- Random translation on Z axis.
- Boundary checking with Area splines can work in two modes: 'Point', checking only the item's position, or 'Size', using the item's width and its collision radius.
- Nesting level is considered when evaluating the area splines. Nested include splines are used as exclusion zones and viceversa.
- Presets can be exported and imported to external files. Presets list allows to use longer descriptions.
- A special version of Forest 2.4 has been included for compatibility with old scenes (Only Forest Pro). You can select it as optional module in the setup program.
- Exclude and Following splines has been enabled in Forest Lite.

Fixes

- Transform rotation works properly using a fixed angle in mix/max range.
- The current distribution is preserved when changing to Custom Edit mode.
- The "Prevent Self-Shadow" feature was not working well in Mental Ray. This could potentially create flickering shadow issues as well.
- The Surface->Auto feature now works properly with animated surfaces.
- Fixed crashing bug when loading scenes with XRef objects.
- Empty meshes were triggering an error when used with Collisions.
- Collision info in Forest Stats window shows correct results.

Licensing

- The software is now less intrusive if there is no active license, allowing you to work with the scene, but not edit or render Forest objects.
- License errors don't longer clear the items in Custom Edit mode.