What's new in TNGViewer 1.5.1.673
Oct 1, 2010
- Fixed bug where QuickTime images and movies were sometimes exported with the wrong colors (especially by the DirectX renderer).
- Upgraded to the latest Autodesk FBX SDK (2011.3.1).
- Upgraded to the Open Asset Import Library version 1.1 (r822).
New in TNGViewer 1.5.1.670 (Sep 25, 2010)
- Significantly improved cache performance:
- TNGViewer now offers an option to compress or leave untouched (the default) texture images stored in the cache. Using uncompressed images significantly improves performance, both when generating and accessing a cached scene.
- Upgraded to the Open Asset Import Library version 1.1 (r815) -- support for COLLADA and Blender files has been improved.
New in TNGViewer 1.5.0.659 (Aug 7, 2010)
- Greatly enhanced user interface and file format support.
- TNGViewer now offers an Anim menu, containing all available animation takes in the currently opened file. Besides slowing down or speeding up the animation, it is possible to turn on or off all animation takes at once, or to select a specific take. This is very useful for e.g. Autodesk FBX files.
- The 'Top Scenes' feature in TNGViewer now offers several sorting options, improving user experience. Furthermore, the contents of the 'Top Scenes' cache are emptied when a new application version is run for the first time.
- Unicode path and object names are now supported on both Windows and Mac OS X; appropriate system fonts are required on both platforms.
- Google Earth files are now supported with both .kml and .kmz extensions.
- Textured meshes imported via the Autodesk FBX SDK and LightWave SDK can now be assigned default materials as for Assimp meshes, via options in the Preferences dialog (default off).
- Fixed several issues during import (especially for COLLADA and LightWave files), during rendering, and in the user interface: whenever an import option is modified, the current cache contents are emptied and relevant files are reloaded automatically.
- On Windows, the fallback Direct3D 9 renderer now has feature parity with the OpenGL renderer.
- On Mac OS X, support for PowerPC machines has been removed (for reasons outside of our control).
- On both Windows and Mac OS X, TNGPlayer has much better support for the latest Web browsers; however, currently Opera on Mac OS X (version 10.6) fails to provide the plugin with an accelerated graphics port.
- Upgraded to the Autodesk FBX SDK version 7.1 (2011.3).
- Upgraded to the Open Asset Import Library version 1.1 (r788).
- Applied the latest patch file to the Lua 5.1.4 subsystem.
New in TNGViewer 1.4.0.600 (May 20, 2010)
- Greatly improved keyframe and bone/skinning animation support.
- TNGViewer now imports keyframe and skinning animation data from Autodesk FBX models and scenes, as well as standard bone animation data from LightWave LWS scene files. Keyframe animation data in LWS files can now be baked or imported raw for better performance. Furthermore, support for keyframe and bone/skinning animation data in the Open Asset Import Library has been considerably improved; light and camera objects can now be imported too.
- The fallback DirectD 9 renderer on Windows has been improved with the addition of dynamic shading support (e.g. reflections, shadows.)
- Fixed issue where the Open Recent submenu was not being updated properly when many items were present.
- Upgraded to the Open Asset Import Library version 1.1 (r726).
- Upgraded to the FreeType Library version 2.3.12.
New in TNGViewer 1.3.0.563 (Apr 9, 2010)
- Vastly expanded file format support.
- TNGViewer now uses the Open Asset Import Library in order to open more than 30 different 3D file formats; this library also greatly improves Collada .dae support, as well as 3D Studio .3ds, Alias|Wavefront .obj, and AutoCAD .dxf support. The list of file formats is available in the About window, as well as in the user documentation. File formats that contain keyframe and skinning animation display animated objects by default. The Preferences dialog contains several options to configure the import process; furthermore, the Top Scenes tab now shows the amount of disk space used by the thumbnail and scene caches.
- Fixed several interface, navigation and display issues in the applications and plugins.
New in TNGViewer 1.2.3.528 (Mar 15, 2010)
- Fixed several issues in the applications and plugins.
- Fixed bug where some spatial events might be dispatched to an already-destroyed scene when loading a new one.
- Fixed bug where certain path names, especially relating to texture files, might not be converted properly during import.
- Fixed bug where some presentation scripts might not be compiled properly when re-opening a demo.
- The Time, FPS and Grids display areas in viewer windows are now drawn with contrasted text, for improved readability.
New in TNGViewer 1.2.2.509 (Mar 3, 2010)
- Fixed several display and performance issues.
- A nasty bug was fixed where opening in a row several content directories (or archive files) that referenced some (relatively) equal path names would sometimes fail, resulting in application crashes or early termination. Viewer windows now purge the system directory entries related to the current content directory at the time of opening a different content directory (or archive file). Furthermore, several issues were fixed in viewer windows where the virtual machine was being reset repeatedly at the wrong time(s). This should ensure slightly smoother scene opening.
- Multimedia timers appear to behave differently on Windows Vista and later: it is necessary to keep track of which timers are still valid, and only to dispatch valid events.
- Fixed bug where archive content directories would not be re-inserted in the system path list as necessary, after an archive had already been added to the archive map.
- Fixed bug where legacy mipmaps would be enabled by default even on ATi Radeon cards, where they do not work as expected in conjunction with NPOT textures.
New in TNGViewer 1.2.1.500 (Feb 18, 2010)
- Improved system compatibility and fixed several issues.
- Texture mipmaps can be generated automatically via two different methods; the default one now uses the traditional way for improved compatibility. This option is available in the Preferences->General tab.
- Clicking with the right mouse button in a Top Scenes thumbnail now zooms to item-specific cameras, for better close-up inspection; clicking again on the same thumbnail goes back to Top Scenes. Furthermore, thumbnails are now colored in red whenever their cache is not up-to-date.
- File modification times are now updated when displaying Top Scenes as well as when trying to access any entry in the Open Recent list.
- Fixed issue where Top Scenes was not updating its cache correctly in certain cases.
- Fixed several system and rendering issues on Windows 7, where applications and plugins were failing to start properly on some machines.
- Dialog windows, such as the Open URL and Preferences ones in TNGViewer, were not being created properly on Mac OS X Tiger, forcing the application to abort.
New in TNGViewer 1.2.0.495 (Feb 9, 2010)
- Extended Top Scenes features, interface and preferences.
- The Top Scenes option now inspects file modification times when managing the 'Open Recent' submenu: cache images are generated automatically whenever an entry is more recent than its cache. Note that this is always the case with remote files, as obtaining file modification times over the network would be too expensive.
- TNGViewer now maintains a real-time cache of any non-native (e.g. Autodesk, LightWave) content that becomes part of the 'Open Recent' submenu. The cache can be turned on or off via the Preferences->General tab: it can be emptied via the Preferences->Top Scenes tab. Opening cached content on average requires an order of magnitude less than non-cached content; it is therefore enabled by default. Note that remote files are not cached for obvious reasons.
- Top Scenes is now unlimited (by default): the mouse wheel scrolls through the entire 'Open Recent' list, ordered by visits as usual. The unlimited scrolling option and its speed are available in the Preferences->Top Scenes tab.
- Viewer windows can now display a large mouse cursor, via an option in the View menu. This is mainly useful during movie export: this way the mouse is always visible, and it gets colored (in red) when clicked for further visual feedback.
- The Help menu now contains a 'Contact Support...' option, which will create a new email to technical support at Immaginaria Ltd. with a subject line containing the current system and application version.
- Finally, the Preferences->General tab now contains an option to use a separate thread when exporting QuickTime movies (default on).
- Fixed bug where enabling multipass encoding for QuickTime movie export would create a single-frame movie; now the export operation proceeds correctly, but multipass encoding is not actually used since it cannot be applied to real-time exporting.
New in TNGViewer 1.1.1.485 (Jan 25, 2010)
- Added support for QuickTime export in a separate thread.
- Exporting QuickTime movies in multithreaded builds is now performed via a dedicated thread. The main thread prepares frames and sends them to the export thread, where they are encoded at few milliseconds intervals. This results in improved movie export performance and user navigation.
- Fixed bug where the ESC key would not exit fullscreen mode in viewer windows.
- Fixed regression where TNGPlayer on Windows might fail to request draw events to the underlying Web browser, resulting in loss of or garbled display.
New in TNGViewer 1.1.0.478 (Jan 11, 2010)
- Fixed several issues with Intel chipsets.
- Fixed bug where Intel boards not supporting antialiasing might fail under certain circumstances.
- Fixed bug where shadows on Intel boards would lead to crashes in some cases.
- Fixed bug where shadows would be used even on boards (from any vendor) not supporting them entirely.
New in TNGViewer 1.0.1.470 (Dec 1, 2009)
- Added support for multiple independent windows in TNGViewer.
- The File menu in TNGViewer now contains a 'New' option, which creates another window slightly to the right and below the current one. Multiple windows are completely independent, and they feature entirely separate states. Currently, they always open in "no action" mode: only the first application window respects the preferences. Resources are shared among available windows as needed; for instance, opening multiple models that refer to the same images will only use one texture per image.
- The initial antialias level and frame rate are now modifiable via the 'General' tab of the TNGViewer preferences dialog.
New in TNGViewer 1.0.1.461 (Nov 18, 2009)
- Added support for cards without rectangle textures.
- Older graphics cards, lacking rectangular texture features, are now supported: these include integrated chipsets such as the Intel 915 and similar families. Please note that support for vertex shading is still required.
- A nasty issue was fixed which prevented the Autodesk importer from creating valid texture references, whenever the imported model/scene did not belong to a proper content directory, and the referenced images were contained in a subdirectory. This solves many texturing issues in several popular models, including the free 3D resources from NASA.
New in TNGViewer 1.0.0.456 (Oct 28, 2009)
- Added preferences window in TNGViewer.
- TNGViewer now features a preferences option (available either in the Apple or Help menus), which displays a tabbed modal dialog providing access to all user-configurable settings. The General tab contains a new option, which specifies the action to be taken at startup (none, Top Scenes, open file, open URL); the tab also contains an option for the quantity of items in Top Scenes (small, medium, large). The Autodesk and LightWave tabs contain import options for the relevant model/scene importers.
New in TNGViewer 1.0.0.450 (Sep 19, 2009)
- Fixed launch failure on machines with unsupported audio hardware.
- A serious issue was fixed on systems where OpenAL could not establish a connection to the underlying audio hardware, causing a startup failure. The applications and plugins should now run fine on said machines, but obviously no sound output shall be produced.
- The software update dialog in TNGViewer now supports a 'Version History' button, which points to the relevant page on the Web site.
- The Media subsystem now displays an error alert when an unsupported model or scene is loaded.
- Fixed bug where opening an unsupported model or scene would leave the TNGViewer window in an inconsistent state.
New in TNGViewer 1.0.0.448 (Sep 8, 2009)
- Extended texturing support and fixed two issues in the applications and plugins.
- Added support for independent texture wrapping on the U and V coordinates.
- The FBX and LightWave object importers both use fully independent wrapping.
- Added support for inverting texture colors. The LightWave object importer supports inversion via the corresponding Texture Editor settings. Furthermore, the "Edge" repeat setting in LightWave is now represented as clamp-to-edge instead of clamp-to-border.
- Fixed bug where TNGViewer and TNGPlayer might not locate the texture image for certain meshes, which use full path names instead of relative ones.
- Fixed bug where viewer windows were not updating the navigation area when changing navigators, resulting in unvisible navigation bars in certain situations.