GIG reference manual

Release notes on GIG 3.0.1

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These release notes give an overview of the 3DGO 3.0.1 software release from GIG Technology. This document contains the following chapters:

2. Improvements and new features

3. HP specific release notes

4. Fixed Bugs

• The 3DGO 3.0.1 release will run on SGI (IRIX 5.2 and 5.3), HP (HP-UX 9.0.5 and up), Sun and AXIL (Solaris 5.4 and up).
• IRIX 4.0.5 is no longer actively supported. SGI machines with an R8000 CPU (i.e. IRIX 6.0 or higher) are not yet supported.

2.2 RenderManager

• The RenderManager is now capable of handling multi-processor machines (but not yet on HP).

2.3 TextureEditor

• The TextureEditor has been made more lenient towards erroneous input.
• It is now possible to stop rendering (by pressing '!') in the render window.

2.4 Organic

• Connected solids keep their original transformation when connected to a spline.
• Start & end parameters for skins can be animated to create e.g. animated wurms along a track.
• The start, end and size parameters of a connected solid can be animated. This makes it possible to use splines as animation tracks.
• The start & end points of a spline curve stay where they are when pressing 'reset spline': the middle points will reset themselves on the straight line in between.
• Splinepoints are now always drawn (i.e. not only for active splines).

2.5 Sculptor

• Using Sculptor primitives it is now possible to create cylinders and cubes with bevelled edges. There are three new Sculptor parameters : bevel radius, bevel width and bevel height.
• It is now possible to animate all Sculptor parameters.

2.6 Lights and Cameras

• Light radius (for softshadows) can be animated.
• Camera aperture and camera focus (for depth-of-field) can be animated.

2.7 Renderer

• Field rendering and motionblur have been implemented for mattes.
• On multi-processor machines that feature multi-threading (i.e. multi-processor Sun, SGI and AXIL machines) all CPUs can be used for interactive rendering.

2.8 Converter

• Buttons for the 'HP yuv' format have been added.

2.9 User Interface

• The behavior of the 'new' type of user interface (as implemented for Particles, Organic, ProjectManager, TextureEditor etc.) has been made more consistent with the traditional 3DGO interface. This includes input boxes, selection lists and use of mouse buttons.
• Because of this, the behaviour of the thumbwheels & scales in TextureEditor, Organic, Particles, etc. is now: left mouse button to select and confirm, middle mouse button to change, right mouse button to cancel.

3. HP specific release notes

3.1 Installation

• Installing 3DGO from CD-ROM requires a slightly different procedure, most notably typing ./HPGO;1 instead of ./go. Refer to the Installation Instructions for details.
• Sometimes, when working with Organic or Particles, the camera windows dissapear whenever you do 'get solid tag' or anything else. In this case: 1) Select the 'Style Manager' (with the painter stuff) from the bottom menu, 2) Select 'Window' from the Style Manager, 3) Turn 'Raise Window With Focus' off, 4) Keep the right mouse button pressed in an empty region of the screen and select 'Restart WorkSpace Manager' to apply the changes.

3.2 User Interface

• The 3.0.1 release for HP currently does not use flat-shaded mode.

4. Fixed bugs

• The RenderManager in some circumstances did not produce completed frames.
• RenderClient, invalid command "Invalid command name 'activatelastsel'". (reported bug #1156)
• RenderClient, GUI error "Object allready exists: .infoplace". (reported bug #1155)
• RenderClient: input lines for split size and timings accept no data. (reported bug #1129)
• RenderManager says: tkerror failed to handle background error. (reported bug #1072)
• The RenderManager in some cases used an image size in pixels instead of mm. (reported bug #1050)
• List files alphabetically. (reported bug #1037)

4.2 TextureEditor

• Put Tag Texture caused a double error message.
• All becomes black after pulling the ambient slider before having set an intensity value. (reported bug #1160)
• Parameter sliders did not update after Fix Event.
• Parameters cannot be animated after fix event. (reported bug #1046)
• Translation error in the trf3 map has been removed.
• Bug in visualising Sculptor objects has been solved.
• Plugging a new map on top of an old one results in a crash. (reported bug #1045)

4.3 Organic/Particles

• Some organic patches had holes in them when rendered.
• A memory leak has been removed from the connections code.
• The rowclosed parameter was not copied when copying a spline.
• Locked spline points were not always drawn with the correct color.
• Connected solids sometimes obtained a wrong transformation.
• On some SGI machines, an error in the wireframe flipbook prevented the Organic and Particles modules from coming up.
• In Organic and Particles many functions would not operate correctly if the model contained multiple objects with the same tag name.
• Active wireframes models were sometimes obscured by non-active models.
• Tree navigation with 'u', 'l', 'r' was not correct in Particles. (reported bug #1214)
• Organic: the handle icons in skeleton mode are not correct for local coordinates. (reported bug #1213)
• Organic: Cones are not connecting to a spline as e.g. a Ball does. (reported bug #1210)
• If working on a project without writing permission, cannot leave Particles neighter to Organic nor GIG. (reported bug #1176)
• Organic: Connections to 2 different splines sometimes give an 'error in transformations'. (reported bug #1173)
• Organic: raise camera control windows after reading in layout file. (reported bug #1161)
• Recorded timecurve in Particles: derivatives point the wrong way. (reported bug #1111)

4.4 Sculptor

• Overlays in combination with s-union caused a bug in the renderer.
• After choosing the export-active option from the edit-sculpt menu, the system would return to the general edit-menu.

4.5 Renderer

• Ray Sketched images were not always saved correctly.
• A bug has been removed from the rendering of the glass attribute.
• RaySketch starts in wrong window. (reported bug #1221)
• Glass attribute on polygons causes crash. (reported bug #1215)
• Looping filemap animations: when a filemap animation starts at high frame number it can take a very long time before rendering starts. (reported bug #1171)
• Mapping bug of textures on extrude objects. (reported bug #1164)
• Booted out of GIG after using the parametric raytracer. (reported bug #1150)
• Field rendering bug: camera switching caused a frame to be rendered without fields. (reported bug #1104)
• Render crash with Nurbs in a specific model. (reported bug #1102)
• Render Detail did not always start at the indicated position when the page size had been altered. (reported bug #1069)
• After switching off subwindow, the parametric raytracer would not correctly update the whole window. (reported bug #1055)
• Particles overlayed with a transparant object become black. (reported bug #1054)
• Objects overlayed with another object give no shadow if soft shadow is on. (reported bug #1053)

4.6 User Interface

• Keyboard input not working with the X version under IRIX 5.3.
• Colormaps on 8 bit graphics systems could produce wierd background colors or color flashing when changing windows.
• Sun, page size menu: crash on entering a small value. (reported bug #1202)
• View tree in the edit menu: active spline animations are not yellow. (reported bug #1169)
• Animation menu (SGI Onyx only): keyframe indicators appear at different places with the same number. (reported bug #1149)
• On a Sun ZX the gamma is not set (correctly). (reported bug #1130)
• Sun & HP: only 1 tag appears in some taglists. (reported bug #1118)
• Sun: 8 bit screen colormap problem. (reported bug #1117)
• Sun: wireframe flipbook does not work. (reported bug #1116)
• New style interface switching problems. (reported bug #1114)
• Cycling colors in the wireframe flipbook of old personal SGI's upgraded to 5.3. (reported bug #1098)
• Render menu, render still/animation interface: the word 'Stills' appears instead of the chosen filename. (reported bug #1084)
• Spotlight to track results in crash. (reported bug #1068)

4.7 Tools

• The get_obj channel now works under IRIX 5.3.
• Installation script: update existing GIG sometimes does not update everything. (reported bug #1123)
• Sun: add Nurbs 'get eps' button. (reported bug #1087)