Art of Illusion

The second early access release of AoI 2.8 is now available:

http://www.artofillusion.org/ArtOfIllusion28ea2-Mac.dmg
http://www.artofillusion.org/ArtOfIllusion28ea2-Linux.zip
http://www.artofillusion.org/ArtOfIllusion28ea2-Windows.exe
http://www.artofillusion.org/aoi28ea2.zip
http://www.artofillusion.org/aoisrc28ea2.zip

Here's what has changed since ea1:

I've done more work on the depth of field filter that was introduced in ea1. It now does a much better job of accurately reproducing the appearance of raytraced depth of field. The filter also now gives you the option of using different values for depth of field and focal distance than those on the camera itself, which means they can be changed even after an image has been rendered.

Note that the representation of this filter in files has changed since ea1. So if you have any files you created with ea1, be sure to remove any depth of field filters before trying to open them in ea2. Otherwise, the camera won't load correctly.

The compound move/scale/rotate tool is now available in the main scene window. You can double-click the icon to set various options for it, and there's an application preference for whether you want it to be the default tool.

I've also combined the two "create curve" tools into a single tool. It didn't really make sense for these to be separate tools, and wasn't consistent with how other tools like "create spline mesh" and "create polygon" work. You can double-click the icon to select whether the curves you create should be interpolating or approximating.

Finally, when you edit a camera, there is now a checkbox for whether it should use a perspective or parallel projection. Yes, after years of people requesting it, AoI finally has true parallel rendering!

Actually, that's only half the feature. What's possibly more important is that each SceneCamera object now is responsible for defining its projection matrix. This means that plugins can now implement all sorts of other projections. Simply write a subclass of SceneCamera, override getScreenTransform() and getRayFromCamera(), and then create instances of your subclass.

Enjoy!

Peter

Any joy with that non-displaying mesh that I sent you? That one is really killing me.

Vik :v)

Very nice, thanks for your work on this!

Impressions:
-Compound manipulator is a little harder to work with than expected, mostly because you can't drag within the object's red-boxes boundaries to move it; you have to be right in the center of the manipulator. I think a change in this behavior would make the tool quite a bit more convenient.

-DoF filter is really cool and the results are great. As camera filters get more important to work with, it would be nice to be able to temporarily disable them rather than deleting and then having to re-enter all the values later when you want them back again.

-You said that camera filter DoF "can be changed even after an image has been rendered." How?

-It was incredibly cool to see DoF rendered in a non-perspective camera view. :-)

Hi,

it's great to see the compound tool in the main window. :)

I noticed some glitches:

- Undo doesn't work for Rotate and Move
- Shift + Scale doesn't scale all axes
- Ctrl + W (to close a window) accidentally switches the manipulators mode like a regular "W" would do
- No "free" moving/rotating when working in non-camera-views. That is: Front/left/top/... views are always "locked" as if Shift is pressed, but in a camera view you can freely move/rotate an object. However, this happens with the old manipulators, too, so I don't really know if it's a "bug".
- Something I can't explain in words. :) I hope you can play this (ogg/theora): http://www.uninformativ.de/tmp/AoI-28ea2-Compound.ogv

Is there a way to rotate an object around its local axes? I saw that the third mode of the manipulator (the one with O, N, P) already shows local axes but it rotates still around global axes.

Once more, I'd like to thank you for your work!

Greetings,
TroY

Great work on the DoF Filter Peter!
Just slight improvements around some objects would be fine:
http://freenet-homepage.de/vidiot/AOI/DOF_Test_280EA2.jpg

It looks like the mask (if you use something similar?) doesn´t fit pixel-perfekt.

Q: Is that filter animatable somehow? I didn´t find something like that in the animation dialogs.

The manipulator ist nice to see - maybe the precise input options from PME would add?
(CTRL + MMB on the diamonds or the axis symbols)

How do I scale all axis?

One thing about the manipulator in the trimesh editor:
When scaling with "Shift" the selection or the whole mesh scales exponentially.
It went to large or to small and reacts slow even with small meshes (<100 verts).
So I guess there is something wrong - maybe since a long time.

The curve tool(s) in one is good - leaves some more spaces for other tools ;)

The parallel projection rendering does appeal game designers and others (architects and many more I guess).

I think AoI 2.8 will be a big thing!

Thanks for this long lasting adventure Peter!

Harald

> Compound manipulator is a little harder to work with than expected, mostly because you can't
> drag within the object's red-boxes boundaries to move it

Good point. That should be easy to fix.

> You said that camera filter DoF "can be changed even after an image has been rendered." How?

The same way you change any other filter: click the "Filter" button in the rendering window.

> I noticed some glitches:

Thanks, I'll look into those.

> Is there a way to rotate an object around its local axes? I saw that the third mode of the
> manipulator (the one with O, N, P) already shows local axes but it rotates still around global
> axes.

Yes: by fixing the bug that causes that mode not to work correctly. :)

> Q: Is that filter animatable somehow? I didn´t find something like that in the animation dialogs.

All filters can be animated. Add a Pose track to the camera, and you'll see it has a subtrack for each filter.

Peter

>All filters can be animated. Add a Pose track to the camera, and you'll see it has a subtrack for each filter.

I should have referred to this (well I translated it all - where did my brain gone since then?) ;)

http://www.housepixels.com/aoimanual/animation.html#camerafilteranim

To show I´ve understand that: http://freenet-homepage.de/vidiot/AOI/DoF_ani2.avi

Greetings Harald

Very nice video Harald. That feature is cool.

> No "free" moving/rotating when working > in non-camera-views. That is: > Front/left/top/... views are always > "locked" as if Shift is pressed, but > in a camera view you can freely > move/rotate an object. However, this > happens with the old manipulators, > too, so I don't really know if it's a > "bug".

Could you explain exactly what you mean by that? Free motion seems to work fine for me in all views, but maybe I'm not understanding what you mean.

Peter

Ah, I'm sorry, it was my own fault. "Snap to grid" was enabled and I simply forgot about it. :( You're right, it works just fine. False alarm. :)

Greetings,<br/> TroY

The camera should not suffer from grid setting (I would not expect this, but I know it is that way right now)

Regarding the manipulator and grid: When in "non-grid mode" shift + manipulator work in steps. Why not override grid-mode setting also with pressing shift-key? (Catia does that - I´m slowly getting used to it) Just because it feels irritation that the manipulator "jumps" when rotation in grid mode. A grid setting for rotational steps might be nice, too. And a grid in 3 directions with different settings available, too. (...behind Harald Queen is on air with "Don´t stop me now...")

;)