Gaffer 1.5.0.0

[johnhaddon]

Note : Gaffer 1.5 marks the end of provision of GCC 9 builds on Linux. Use Gaffer 1.4 if you require GCC 9 builds.

Features

• AttributeEditor : Added a new editor UI for inspecting and editing attributes. This can be found in the tab next to the RenderPassEditor in the Standard layouts.
• ColorChooser :
  • Added sliders for TMI (temperature, magenta, intensity) color space.
  • Added color field, a widget giving control of two channels of "RGB", "HSV" or "TMI" triplets. The third channel is held constant.
  • The color field and RGB, HSV and TMI slider groups can now be toggled on or off.
  • Default visibility of the UI elements can now be set at startup by setting colorChooser:inline: and colorChooser:dialogue: entries for the inline chooser and dialogue chooser respectively, with the following suffixes :
    • visibleComponents : A string where each character is a visible component slider. Optional components are rgbhsvtmi.
    • staticComponent : A single character string for the component to use as the static component for the color field. The other two components in the "RGB", "HSV" and "TMI" triplets will be controllable in the widget.
    • colorFieldVisible : A boolean indicating if the color field should be visible or not.
  • Added a menu item to the color chooser settings to save the UI configuration for the inline color chooser and the dialogue color chooser as a startup script to persist the configuration across Gaffer restarts.
  • Changed the indicator for the color field and color sliders to an unfilled circle so the chosen color is visible in the center.
• Cycles : Added support for OSL shading with Optix devices.
• LevelSetToMesh : Added destination plug, allowing multiple input level sets to be merged into a single mesh at an arbitrary location.
• MergeMeshes, MergePoints, MergeCurves : Added nodes for merging various primitive types.
• MeshToLevelSet : Added destination plug, allowing multiple input meshes to be merged into a single level set at an arbitrary location.
• MetadataOverlay : Added a new node for adding metadata overlays to images, with control over formatting, layout, font and drop shadow.
• PatternMatch : Added a new node for matching strings against wildcard patterns.
• UI : The entire UI is now "focus aware", meaning it uses the upstream contexts generated by the focus node. This greatly enhances useability for complex context-based workflows. Examples include :
  • The Viewer now views "pinned" nodes using the context in which they are evaluated by the focus node.
  • The NodeEditor correctly displays the results of expressions using context variables created by the focus node.
  • The GraphEditor shows when a node is disabled in the context in which it is evaluated by the focus node.

Improvements

• Arnold :
  • Added location names to warning messages.
  • A missing "P" primitive variable no longer aborts the render, but outputs a warning message instead.
• AttributeTweaks :
  • The {source} substitution for linkedLights now expands to defaultLights if the attribute doesn't exist yet. This makes tweaks such as ({source}) - unwantedLights reliable even if no light links have been authored yet.
  • AttributeTweaks : Added tooltips and presets for all attribute values.
• CameraTweaks : Added ignoreMissing plug to align behaviour with the other Tweaks nodes.
• Cycles :
  • Added is_sphere plug to spot and point lights. Disabling is_sphere is equivalent to enabling "Soft Falloff" in Blender, which reverts the light to the behaviour of Cycles 3.6 and earlier.
  • Changed sampling pattern to blue noise dithered sampling.
  • Spot, disk, quad and point light strength now better match Blender, Arnold and hdCycles. As a result these lights are now pi times brighter at the same intensity when compared with previous versions. If necessary, this adjustment can be disabled by setting the GAFFERCYCLES_USE_LEGACY_LIGHTS environment variable with a value of 1.
  • Simplified presentation of principled_bsdf, principled_hair_bsdf, and principled_volume shaders in the Graph Editor. A subset of parameter nodules are now visible by default, the remainder can be accessed by clicking on or connecting to the node's + icon and choosing the parameter to make visible.
• CyclesOptions : Added denoiseDevice plug for configuring the device used for denoising.
• Editor : The node graph is now evaluated in a context determined relative to the focus node.
• EditScope : Setting a Viewer or Editor's target edit scope to "None" will now prevent edits from being made within any upstream edit scope. To make edits in an edit scope, it must be set as the target.
• FreezeTransform :
  • Improved performance for large meshes by using multithreading.
  • Improved UI responsiveness by supporting cancellation of long computes.
• GraphEditor :
  • Improved highlighting of active nodes, with more accurate tracking of Loop node iterations.
  • Annotation {plug} substitutions are now evaluated in a context determined relative to the focus node.
  • The strike-through for disabled nodes is now evaluated in a context determined relative to the focus node.
  • Custom dot labels are now evaluated in a context determined relative to the focus node.
  • Added colour coding to the strike-throughs drawn for disabled nodes. Black indicates that the node is always disabled, and yellow indicates that its enabled plug has an input connection, and therefore might be context-sensitive.
• ImageReader : Non-standard "r", "g", "b" and "a" channel names are now automatically renamed to "R", "G", "B" and "A" on loading. As with other heuristics, this can be disabled by setting channelInterpretation to "EXR Specification".
• Instancer :
  • Improved Arnold raytracing performance for encapsulated instancers with many prototypes. All instances are now output in a single top-level procedural rather than a top-level procedural per prototype, resulting in more optimal BVH traversals in Arnold.
  • Reduced scene generation time for encapsulated instancers by around 20%.
• LightEditor :
  • Improved formatting of column headers containing whitespace.
  • The "Double-click to toggle" tooltip is no longer displayed while hovering over non-editable cells, and a "Double-click to edit" tooltip is now displayed while hovering over other non-toggleable but editable cells.
  • Added is_sphere column for Cycles lights.
• LightEditor, RenderPassEditor :
  • The "Disable Edit" right-click menu item and D shortcut now act as a toggle, where edits disabled in the current session via these actions can be reenabled with D or by selecting "Reenable Edit" from the right-click menu.
  • History windows now use a context determined relative to the current focus node.
• Metadata : Metadata registered to a node or plug targeting a descendant plug will now override metadata registered locally to the target.
• NodeEditor : Added Alt + middle-click action for showing context variable substitutions in strings.
• OptionTweaks, ContextVariableTweaks : Added Remove mode.
• PlugLayout : Summaries and activators are now evaluated in a context determined relative to the focus node.
• Premultiply, Unpremultiply :
  • Added ignoreMissingAlpha plug.
  • Optimised the pass-through of the alpha channel.
• PythonCommand : Added a framesMode plug which determines if the command is called once for each frame, once for each batch of frames, or once for each complete sequence.
• PythonEditor, PythonCommand, Expression, UIEditor, OSLCode : Added line numbers to code editors (Feature request: line numbers in Python Editor inputWidget #6091).
• SceneReader : Added loading of invisibleIds and inactiveIds primitive variables from UsdGeomPointInstancer.
• SceneWriter : Improved emulation of component-level shader connections when exporting Arnold and Cycles shaders to USD. Native adaptor shaders are now used instead of OSL shaders that may not be available in the destination DCC.
• Spreadsheet : Added yellow underlining to the currently active row.
• TweakPlug : Improved performance when dealing with large lists.
• Windows : Gaffer now uses the TBB memory allocator for significantly better performance.

Fixes

• Arnold : Fixed "Flush Cache" menu items to work with renders being performed by an InteractiveRender node (rather than an InteractiveArnoldRender node).
• ArrayPlug :
  • Fixed error when resize() removed plugs with input connections.
  • Fixed error when resize() was used on an output plug.
• ContextTracker : Removed unnecessary reference increment/decrement from isTracked(), context() and isEnabled().
• CreateViews : Fixed redundant serialisation of internal connections.
• Cycles :
  • Fixed rendering of shaders with connections to individual rgb components of a colour or xyz components of a vector (Failure to connect Float Out plugs to Color In plugs with Cycles shader nodes #5553).
  • Fixed issue where scaling unnormalized quad and disk lights would not affect their brightness.
• Dispatcher : Fixed crashes caused by a dispatcher's SetupPlugsFn attempting to access the TaskNode it was being called for. Dispatchers may now introspect the TaskNode and add different plugs based on type (Reconsider Dispatcher::setupPlugs() mechanism #915).
• Editor : Fixed Internal C++ object already deleted errors when some editors were destroyed.
• Expression, OSLCode : Fixed line numbers reported in OSL parse errors.
• FreezeTransform : Constant primitive variables with point/vector interpretations are now also transformed.
• GafferCortexUI : Removed usage of legacy PlugValueWidget API.
• GraphEditor :
  • Fixed dimming of labels for BoxIn and BoxOut nodes.
  • Fixed update of custom context-sensitive labels on Dot nodes.
  • Fixed lingering error badges (GraphEditor : Lingering error badges #3820).
  • Fixed D shortcut to respect read-only metadata on enabled plugs. Previously only metadata on the node itself was respected.
  • Fixed D shortcut to handle multiple selection with some nodes enabled and some disabled. This will now consistently disabled all nodes if at least one is enabled, rather than toggling each individually.
• HierarchyView, SetEditor : Fixed thread-safety bugs.
• LightEditor, RenderPassEditor : Removed ambiguous The selected cells cannot be edited in the current Edit Scope message when attempting to edit non-editable columns, such as the Name column.
• ListContainer : Adding a child widget with non-default alignment no longer causes the container to take up all available space.
• Menu : Fixed bug causing a menu item's tooltip to not hide when moving the cursor to another menu item without a tooltip.
• PathColumn : Fixed display of swatches for cells containing Color4fData.
• PrimitiveInspector :
  • Fixed failure to update when the location being viewed ceases to exist, or is recreated.
  • Fixed bug which prevented cancellation of long-running computes, making the UI unresponsive until they completed.
  • Fixed thread-safety bug.
• Python : Fixed startup failures caused by conflicting Python modules in the user site-packages directory.
• RenderPassEditor : Fixed history window to update on context changes, for example, when the current frame is changed.
• Scene Editors : Fixed update when ScenePlugs are added to or removed from the node being viewed.
• SetEditor : Fixed right-click to ensure the item under the cursor is selected before the menu is shown.
• Shuffle, ShuffleAttributes, ShufflePrimitiveVariables : Fixed some special cases where shuffling a source to itself would fail to have the expected effect.
• usdview : Added Windows support (Can't launch usdview on Windows #5599).
• UVInspector : Fixed Unable to find ScriptNode for UVView warnings.
• Viewer : Fixed BackgroundTask warning when deleting the node being viewed.

API

• ArrayPlug :
  • It is now legal to construct an ArrayPlug with a minimum size of 0. Previously the minimum size was 1.
  • Added elementPrototype() method.
• ContextAlgo : Deprecated. Use ScriptNodeAlgo instead.
• ContextTracker : Added support for plugs in Views and Editor.Settings nodes, which should use the tracked context for the node being viewed.
• Editor :
  • Added settings() method, which returns a node hosting plugs specifying settings for the editor.
  • Added _updateFromSettings() method, which is called when a subclass should update to reflect changes to the settings.
• GafferCycles :
  • Refactored bindings so they are no longer dependent on linking to Cycles.
  • The devices, nodes, shaders, lights, and passes Python attributes now contain IECore.CompoundData instead of Python dictionaries.
  • Added majorVersion, minorVersion, patchVersion, and version Python attributes containing the Cycles version.
• InteractiveRender : Added command() method to run a renderer command.
• MultiLineTextWidget, CodeWidget : Added the ability to show line numbers by passing lineNumbersVisible = True to the constructor.
• MultiLineTextWidget : Added setLineNumbersVisible() and getLineNumbersVisible()
• NodeGadget, ConnectionGadget : Added updateFromContextTracker() virtual methods.
• Path : Added inspectionContext() virtual method.
• PathColumn :
  • Added contextMenuSignal(), allowing the creation of custom context menus.
  • Added instanceCreatedSignal(), providing an opportunity to connect to the signals on any column, no matter how it is created.
  • Added keyPressSignal() and keyReleaseSignal(), allowing a PathColumn to handle key events.
• PathListingWidget : Added expandTo() method.
• PlugValueWidget :
  • A DeprecationWarning is now emitted for any subclasses still implementing the legacy _updateFromPlug() or _updateFromPlugs() methods. Implement _updateFromValues(), _updateFromMetadata() and _updateFromEditable() instead.
  • A DeprecationWarning is now emitted by _plugConnections(). Use _blockedUpdateFromValues() instead.
  • Added scriptNode() convenience method.
• SceneEditor : Added new base class to simplify the creation of scene-specific editors.
• ScriptNodeAlgo : Added new namespace with functions for managing shared UI state for GafferSceneUI.
• View : Added scriptNode() method.
• VisibleSet : Added Python constructor with keyword arguments for expansions, inclusions and exclusions.

Breaking Changes

• ArrayPlug :
  • Renamed element constructor argument to elementPrototype.
  • Deprecated the passing of element = nullptr to the constructor.
• ArnoldRender, CyclesRender, DelightRender, OpenGLRender : Removed. Use the generic Render node instead.
• AttributeTweaks : Replace mode no longer errors if the linkedLights attribute doesn't exist.
• CameraTweaks : Replace mode now errors if the input parameter does not exist. Use Create mode or the new ignoreMissing plug instead.
• Cycles : Removed custom handling of unnormalized lights. We now rely on Cycles' inbuilt behaviour which results in a brightness difference for unnormalized point, spot and disk lights.
• Editor : Removed arguments from Settings constructor.
• Editor, NodeToolbar, PlugLayout, PlugValueWidget :
  • Removed setContext() methods.
  • Deprecated getContext() methods. Use context() instead.
• FreezeTransform : Constant primitive variables with point/vector interpretations are now also transformed (this is more correct, but it is a change in behaviour).
• GafferCycles : The devices, nodes, shaders, lights, and passes Python attributes now contain IECore.CompoundData instead of Python dictionaries.
• GraphGadget : Moved D shortcut handling to GraphEditor.
• IECoreArnold : Added messageContext argument to NodeAlgo::Converter and NodeAlgo::MotionConverter.
• ImageGadget : Remove non-const variant of getContext().
• ImageReader : Changed handling of lower-cased "r", "g", "b" and "a" channels.
• Instancer : Renamed encapsulateInstanceGroups plug to encapsulate. Encapsulation now produces a single capsule at the .../instances location, instead of capsules at each .../instances/<prototypeName> location.
• InteractiveArnoldRender, InteractiveCyclesRender, InteractiveDelightRender : Removed. Use the generic InteractiveRender node instead.
• InteractiveRender : Removed protected constructor for creating renderer-specific derived classes.
• InteractiveRenderTest : Removed interactiveRenderNodeClass member and useNodeClass argument to _createInteractiveRender. All testing is now performed with the InteractiveRender node itself.
• LazyMethod : deferUntilPlaybackStops now requires that the Widget has a scriptNode() method rather than a context() method.
• LevelSetToMesh :
  • Objects which are not level sets are now converted to an empty mesh, instead of being left unchanged.
  • Removed the adjustBounds plug. In the rare case where it is important to recompute slightly tighter bounds, one workaround is to use ShufflePrimitiveVariables to shuffle from "P" to "P" with adjustBounds checked.
  • Removed support for grid types other than FloatGrid. If other types are required, please request them.
• LightTool : Removed selection() and selectionChangedSignal().
• Loop : Removed nextIterationContext() method.
• MeshToLevelSet : Objects which are not meshes are now converted to an empty VDB grid, instead of being left unchanged.
• Metadata : Path based registrations to a Node or Plug now override equivalent registrations on its descendants.
• NodeGadget, ConnectionGadget : Removed activeForFocusNode() virtual methods. Override updateFromContextTracker() instead.
• Python : Gaffer now disables the user site-packages directory by setting PYTHONNOUSERSITE=1. To revert to the previous behaviour, set PYTHONNOUSERSITE=0 before launching Gaffer.
• PythonCommand : Removed sequence plug. Settings from old files are remapped automatically to the new framesMode plug on loading.
• Render : Removed protected constructor for creating renderer-specific derived classes.
• Signal : The connect() and connectFront() methods now default to scoped = False. If a scoped connection is required, pass scoped = True.
• Shuffle, ShuffleAttributes, ShufflePrimitiveVariables : Changed behaviour when shuffling a source to itself.
• TweakPlug : Removed deprecated MissingMode::IgnoreOrReplace.
• TweakPlugValueWidget : Removed support for tweakPlugValueWidget:allowCreate and tweakPlugValueWidget:allowRemove metadata.
• Unpremultiply : Removed image:channelName from the context used to evaluate the alphaChannel plug.
• View :
  • Changed constructor arguments for View and all subclasses. A ScriptNode must now be passed.
  • Changed ViewCreator signature.
  • Removed contextChanged() and contextChangedConnection() methods.
  • Removed setContext() and getContext() methods. Use context() instead of getContext().
  • The contextChangedSignal() is now emitted for all changes to the context, whereas previously it was only emitted by setContext(). This simplifies context handling in Tools, which no longer need to connect to Context::changedSignal() as well.

Build

• Cortex : Updated to version 10.5.10.0.
• Cycles :
  • Updated to version 4.2.0.
  • Disabled CUDA binary generation for Kepler and Maxwell architecture GPUs.
• Embree : Updated to version 4.3.2.
• Imath : Updated to version 3.1.11.
• LibJPEG-Turbo : Updated to version 3.0.3.
• MaterialX : Updated to version 1.38.10.
• OpenImageIO : Updated to version 2.5.10.1.
• OpenPGL : Updated to version 0.6.0.
• OpenShadingLanguage :
  • Updated to version 1.13.11.0.
  • Enabled Optix support.
• PySide : Updated to version 5.15.14.
• Qt : Updated to version 5.15.14.
• USD : Updated to version 24.08.
• Zstandard : Added version 1.5.0.
• Windows : Updated compiler to Visual Studio 2022 / MSVC 17.8 / Runtime library 14.3.

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This discussion was created from the release Gaffer 1.5.0.0.