Gaffer 1.0.3.0

[johnhaddon]

This release introduces support for the open source Cycles renderer. This is introduced as an opt-in feature preview intended for early testing and feedback as breaking changes can be expected while we continue to improve Cycles integration in future releases. As such, the use of Cycles is disabled by default but can be enabled via an environment variable. Additionally we've added support for viewing parameter history in the Light Editor, automatic render-time translation of UsdPreviewSurface shaders and UsdLuxLights for Arnold and made the usual small fixes and improvements.

Note :

The Cycles feature preview can be enabled by setting the GAFFERCYCLES_FEATURE_PREVIEW environment variable to 1.

Features

• Cycles : Added initial support for the Cycles renderer.
• Light Editor : Added a non-modal dialog to view the history of a parameter. It can be accessed by right-clicking a parameter in the Light Editor and selecting Show History.... Within the dialogue :
  • Double clicking a node name will open a Node Editor popup.
  • Dragging a node name into the Graph Editor will zoom to the node.
  • Double clicking, pressing Return or Enter on a parameter value or operation will open a plug popup to edit the value.

Improvements

• USD :
  • Added automatic render-time translation of UsdPreviewSurface shaders and UsdLuxLights for Arnold.
  • The SceneReader now loads all UsdLuxLights into the defaultLights set so that they are linked by default.
• SceneReader :
  • Added support for Alembic visibility attributes.
  • Added loading of treatAsPoint and treatAsLine parameters from UsdLux lights.
• SceneWriter : Added support for Alembic visibility attributes.
• ColorPlugValueWidget : Hid the color chooser button (sliders) for output plugs.
• Arnold : Added metadata for new standard_volume shader parameters introduced in Arnold 7.1.3.0.
• VectorDataWidget : Added a color swatch column for Color3f and Color4f elements. These are currently included in the RandomChoice node when choices is set to a list of colors, and for color primitive variables in the Primitive Inspector.
• NameWidget : Added a check to prevent users from setting a node or plug name to a value starting with a double underscore.
• ShaderTweaks : Added Create and Remove tweak modes.

Fixes

• Qt : Added missing QtUiTools module.
• SceneReader : Fixed shader type for UsdLux lights. It was surface and is now light.
• Fixed a bug in SceneAlgo::attributeHistory that would return a branching history from a ShaderTweaks node with inherit enabled.
• Arnold : Fixed errors when making interactive render edits to lights with component-level connections between OSL shaders.
• PathListingWidget :
  • Fixed bug where one more rows at the bottom of the list could not be selected.
  • Fixed error when dragging from shader browser name columns, shader browser input columns and Catalogue columns.
• PathFilter : Improved positioning of PathFilters created by dropping paths onto a node.
• GraphEditor :
  • Improved handling of Backdrops when laying out nodes. Individual nodes are no longer pushed outside backdrops, and backdrops themselves are positioned as a group containing all their child nodes.
  • Improved positioning of pasted nodes, so that they are less likely to overlap with any node they are automatically connected to.

API

• StandardLightVisualiser :
  • Added support for parameters specifying the width and height of quad lights, and the length of cylinder lights.
  • The coneAngleParameter metadata is now supported for all light types.

Documentation

• Improved "Controls and Shortcuts" and added link in help menu.

Build

• Cortex : Updated to 10.4.1.0.

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This discussion was created from the release Gaffer 1.0.3.0.