Note 1: Beta versions include new features and fixes, but a beta version is NOT the final version of the product and therefore we don't guarantee there won't be errors that may disrupt the computer's operation and/or result in data loss. Always use it at your own risk.
Note 2: If you use Forest Pro beta, please be sure to install the latest update as well. Forest and RailClone share several library files, which must be in the same version.
RailClone 7.0.0 betaNew Features- Added a new category - Spline operators. 6 new nodes are included :
- Basic Ops: This is a multi-purpose node that collects together several useful spline operations, including:
- Combine: Combine two or more Splines as sub splines. This is useful for linking together multiple splines into a single object without needing to affect the original edit spline objects in Max.
- Transform: Allows you to Translate and Rotate splines, or reverse them and edit their curve steps.
- Fillet: Allows you to procedurally fillet the vertices of the type Corner or Bezier-Corner
- Chamfer: Allows you to procedurally chamfer the vertices of the type Corner or Bezier-Corner
- Filter ID: Allows you to exclude or include splines and spline sections based on Material IDs.
- Change Mat.ID: Allows you to change the material ID to a fixed value, or to create sequences based on segments or sub-splines.
- Divide Evenly: Allows you to divide the spline by adding vertices at regular intervals. The parameters are similar to the ones found in the A2S and L1S generators.
- Divide Markers: Allows you to divide the spline based on markers. Can be useful when used with the Connect operator (see below).
- Boolean: A simple boolean node that allows you to input a Subject spline and combine it with a Clip spline using one of 4 different operations.
- Intersection: retains only those regions that are covered by both Subject and Clip polygons
- Union: Retains regions that are covered by the Subject OR the clip splines, or both.
- Difference: Retains those regions covered by the subject but NOT the clip splines,
- Xor: Retains regions covered by subject or clip splines. but not both
- Offset: The offset node creates multiple clones of splines with the option to incrementally increase or decrease offset, translation, and rotation. It is similar to our SplineOffset modifier, but now available directly inside the RailClone Style Editor for greater flexibility.
- Number of Parallels: Specifies the number of times the input spline is duplicated.
- Spacing: Controls the incremental offset of the cloned splines using two parameters
- Transform: Incrementally translate or rotates splines with separate controls for the X, Y, and Z axes.
- Mode: This is actually two operators in one because there are two algorithms for performing offset and healing operations: 2D Mode and 3D Mode.
- 2D Mode: The 2D algorithm provides the most robust healing solution and has two additional options to define how the parallels are created by setting their Bevel Type and End Type. It also has the ability to auto-heal splines that are being generated by different sub-splines Though more featured, 2D mode will always flatten all splines on the Z axis before performing any further translation rotation or offset operations.
- 3D Mode: 3D mode lacks the Bevel Type and End Type features of 2D mode and has a less robust auto-healing algorithm, but it will retain the spline's position and orientation and attempt to make appropriate clones.
- New Vertices: Allows you to choose which type of vertices are generated by the algorithm.
- Keep Original Spline: Provides an option to either discard or retain the original spline.
- Apply Backwards: When enabled, translation and rotation operations are performed backwards,
- Double Sided: When enabled, splines are created inside and outside of the source spline. When disabled, splines are only on one side of the source spline.
- Heal Intersections: When enabled intersecting parallels from different sub-splines are auto-healed.
- Catenary: This node can be used to generate catenary curves by interpolating between existing corner vertices on splines. It is particularly useful for modelling hanging cables, chains, or other structures that naturally form a catenary shape between fixed points. Parameters include:
- Absolute: Specifies the vertical distance that the curve "drops" below its endpoints in absolute units. It directly determines how deep the catenary curve hangs regardless of the length of the spline segment.
- Relative: Defines the drop as a percentage of the length of the spline segment. For example, a relative drop of 10% on a 10-meter segment would result in a vertical drop of 1 meter. It adjusts the depth proportionally to the segment length, making the curve scalable and adaptable to varying spline lengths.
- Randomness: Introduces variations in the catenary curve’s shape to break uniformity, simulating natural irregularities to make the curve appears more organic and less mathematically perfect.
- Connect: generates straight lines connecting two splines. Lines are spaced using existing spline divisions such as vertices or markers. By default this will use the existing vertices on a spline, but it can be used in combination with the Basic Ops→Divide Evenly and Divide Markers operators to control the number of connections.
- Projection mode; Defines how lines are projected, options include Perpendicular to spline A, Forced Vertical or using a Position equivalent between the two splines.
- Filter ID: Only connects vertices with the material ID specified.
- Roofing: A dedicated operator that can generate splines from a 2d perimter of mesh that is suitable for roofs. It automatically creating lines that trace the outlines of a shape while forming internal edges that represent roof ridges, valleys, or connections between sections. This operator works by calculating paths that evenly distribute from the edges inward, ensuring all resulting splines maintain consistent topology for roofing patterns. It is ideal for generating base structures for tiled roofs or panels.
- From: Two modes are available. In Contour mode only a 2D outline spline of the roof is necessary, the operator will generate all of the roof planes automatically. In Roof Planes mode, the operator uses a mesh with clean planar surfaces modelled for each of the roof planes. These are extracted automatically and converted to splines.
- Roof Angle (contour only): Sets the angle of the roof in Contour mode.
- Hierarchy Checking: This options determines the way that RailClone processes multiple or stacked splines. Complete means that stacked splines alternatively include/exclude geometry, whereas None treats each spline as unique, overlapping or stacking splines has no effect.
- Filter ID: Only creates roof splines from the segments with the material ID specified.
- Splines are separated by Mat.ID as follows 1: Gutter, 2: Roof planes, 3: Hips, 4: Valleys, 5: Ridges.
- Note that roofing algorithm is very complex, and it would not solve all cases, depending of the input's topology.
Note: some spline operations (as 'Divide by') require to convert the spline to linear segments. This may cause unexpected behaviours on curved splines, as extra vertices added.
- Added Display->Draw Splines which is very helpful when working with the new spline nodes. When enabled, it shows the result of Spline operators in the viewports
- RCSlice output can be selected from Transform nodes.
* Allows you to use a single Segment node for RCSlice, and split it in different pieces using Transform operators. Ideal for use in Macros where you can have a single Segment input which divides inside the macro to several different inputs in a generator.
- Macros are now much more flexible with the ability to have multiple outputs. This makes Macros much more flexible with a single macro capable of outputting several segment, numeric, or spline properties.
- A Label type has been added to the Numeric node that doesn't provide any value. Instead it is designed for use to create separators or categories in the Max Parameters list.
- Added support for ITOOSOFT Portable format. Both for Import/Export (.rail files) and Library operations. This allows you to save RailClone objects in a format that is independent of the 3DS Max version. This feature is very experimental, and it’s mainly intended for the ITOOSOFT built-in libraries.
Improvements- New Display->Point-cloud mode, more optimized for recent 3DS Max versions and modern GPUs (only Max 2017 and above).
- In classic point-cloud mode, density of points was proportional to the distance of each RailClone item to the camera. This approach required a full redraw with each change on the viewport, triggering multiple updates to the GPU.
- With the new mode, the density of points is fixed (all RC items has same number of points), and GPU is updated only when RC object is modified. In this way, the point-cloud is cached most of time in GPU, and doesn't require to be updated. This is much more faster and efficient.
- By default each RC object is drawn using 250k points. As before, the density can be changed using Display->Global/Local Density.
- We included several editable parameters available in the registry (HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Itoo Software\RailClone Pro) for fine tuning:
* cloudPointsByObject (default: 250000): number of points of each RC object. Setting it to 0, reverts to the classic Point-cloud mode.
* cloudHitTestMaxPoints (default: 10000): maximum number of points used for hit-testing (to select items on viewport). You can reduce it, to improve hit-testing performance.
- Added Y Corner input to A2S generator so you can now add rows in an array by adding vertices to the Y Spline.
- Array Generator->Auto Align'->X->XY now checks than Z is always up. This will save time where users had to reverse splines to make roof splines face in the correct direction.
- V-Ray proxies no longer require full mesh mode to be rendered in V-Ray GPU and Vantage.
Style Editor- The width of panels (Properties, Items, etc) is now saved between sessions.
- A filter option has been added to the Macro Library.
- Protected Macros can be loaded without setting the password. It's now only requested when a macro is edited.
Other changes and fixes- Fixed: User macros loaded from library do not respect default selector choice.
- Fixed: Occasionally RailClone Lite can exceed the limit of allowed Segments.
Registered users can download the upgrade from the
User Panel->Beta versions. For any question about this release, please use the
RailClone beta forum.
Topic: RailClone Pro 7.0.0 beta (Read 2351 times)
