What’s New in PXTAC 10.5 ?
A lot of Bug Fixes,Improvements & Performance Boosts all around.
Massive Playback Improvements.
New 10gig speed file import system.
New Performances Profiling tools
PXTA UIs are now way more 4K friendly
Improved project loading time
3D Scene
**Added output and display resolutions to the ident card. **Output resolution is taken directly from the Settings window.
**Soft silhouettes in order to help mitigate light bleed between objects. **This functionality replaces the previous "Smooth Silhouette", which was controlled by the config singleton "Silhouette Soft-edge (V-WIP)" (sic!). It is now referred to as "Soft Silhouettes" throughout, and consists in a new algorithm which automatically creates alpha blended fins around the model. There are interior fins, which follow the model's surface, and exterior fins, which extend beyond the model's geometry (akin to billboards)
Added calibration priors that let the user exclude specific Copernic IDs from cameras.
**X-Ray Wireframe - Hidden line removal rendering option **Displaying Wireframe is very useful for calibration validation. However complex meshes can be hard to read visually when there are multiple layers of wireframe from a given POV. This new option Adds the ability to only see the first visible layer of wireframe.
Timeline
New Keyboard shortcut to move clips up and down inside a sub-sequence
[SHIFT + Up arrow] Move selected clips one layer up until they reach the top of the sub-sequence.
[SHIFT + Down arrow] Move selected clips one layer down. If clips hit the bottom, a new layer is added skipping rename.
**Adding frame number to the media properties. **The media properties now display the index of the current frame being displayed. For file sequences, the sequence start number is taken into consideration in the "FS" mode (the default), but can be ignored if we prefer to display frames starting at 0 ("F0" mode).
**New Create VCI Cache option **"create vci cache" in the contextual menu of timeline sequence tab to allow smoother transitions when entering or exiting video clips (works for uncompressed vci too).
**Drag and drop EDL files to create new timeline layer. **You can drag a previously imported EDL file from the File Manager to the timeline to create a new timeline layer. Each media file corresponds to an EDL event from the dropped EDL. The media file in and out point are obtained from the EDL event. The location in the layer is also obtained directly from the EDL. A new layer is always added with the edl clips. The new layer is named after the EDL file's TITLE statement. Only Cut events are currently supported (no dissolves, nor wipes).
Preview Window
New Lock Screen view option Added a new combo box and lock icon when in Preview 2D or Layer mode. This combo allows to override the Screen/layer displayed, which usually corresponds to the Timeline's current selection. Done by replacing the current sub_sequence (for Preview 2D mode) or layer (for Layer mode) early inside
FXs
**NEW bilateral filter FX. **Bilateral filtering allows smoothing of regions while preserving high frequency details. Iterating multiple bilateral filter passes allows stylized results.
**New Kuwahara filter FX. **The Kuwahara filter is a non-linear filter which reduces noise while preserving edges. It is a form of stylized smoothing filter.
New Ocean FX Replacement of Seascape FX. Should be faster, gives control over sky color with the help a sun, and point of view is now controlled by a camera in the 3D scene.
NEW Nexus FX Added a Graph blob rendering FX node, render rounds around blobs and interconnect blobs with lines. Lines blob tracking and persistence using blob IDs. Works with both normalized and world-coordinate blobs.
**NVIDIA Background removal AI fx **
The effect generates an alpha mask with the option to apply the texture source color on the mask. According to Nvidia documentation: the effect achieves its best results on videos that are recorded by one person sitting in front of a camera. The feature will not perform well on full-body videos, multiple persons in the scene, or camera angles that deviate too much from a front-facing camera. The Nvidia Video Effect SDK needs to be installed. Download the SDK https://developer.nvidia.com/maxine-getting-started, unzip it in the root of PHOTON install directory (VYV/photon).
New time sources options for time code FX Additional options for time sources in the time code FX allow flexibility in what time is displayed by the effect. The new options are available in the Time source combo and are
No source : well , there is nothing.
Clip : use the clip's internal time
Freerun : use the freerun counter
Timeline : use the timeline time
Auto : use whatever is used for the show time (this is the previous behavior of the 'Timeline' mode)
FX GRAPH
New "Re-emit Particles" option in the "Emitter" graph node.
New FX Graph profiling tool You can now visualize (CPU & GPU) performances taken by each Graphs and nodes in the FX Graph
Graph Primitive Ref Node - new output slot for the primitive world position The slot outputs the primitive's position containing all transformations (parent, pose transform, freeze etc.)
**Blob Filter added modulo and modulo ID filtering params + **Graph Blob Filtering - added modulo ID and offset ID parameters. Filters in blobs that matches ID % modulo_ID == offset_ID.
Voxelizer added skip-rendering option
added "skip rendering" parameter to improve performance when only blob tracking is required.
**Graph Mapper Node - Improved usability **Value slider to control the mapped value - Add the output value slot - Min and Max rescale values exposed are now linked to the mapping manager value - Mapping manager UI fixes to display and update the dynamic data from the mapper node
**FX Graph: Expose/Unexpose all parameters **Introducing two new buttons in the contextual menu of a graph node. - Expose all : Expose all auto-parameters at the same time. No longer need to select each of them individually. - Unexpose all : Unexpose all auto-parameters. Users may choose to keep connected slots through a pop-up window.
Added random jitter for the Texture Locator node and the Primitive Locator node based on RGB.
**FX Graph Removed irrelevant medias/playlists in Sprite Renderer combo drop-down lists **"Plugin", "Data, "3D Object", "Not converted" and "Audio" are removed from the Sprite renderer playlists - Only converted ".vci" files can be assigned to a sprite.
Added multi-input blobs for the graph nodes "Point Locator" and "Vortex Force".
It is now easier to select a slot in the graph
New Blobs Average Position Graph Node
New "Time Since Last Message" output to the "Network Monitor" graph node.
Cues are now ordered by ID in the Graph "Cue" module
**Added new math graph nodes for remainder and modulo operations **
Added a "Residual" output to the "Virtual Camera (Ref)" graph module.
A lot of Optimization and new features for the Voxelizer Node
Settings
**NVIDIA driver profile and triple buffering are now automatically set when starting the application. **When starting up, the "Dynamic Streaming" profile is automatically activated, and triple buffering is enabled (these are documented required settings).
Color Management
New support for adobe RGB, P3 and Rec 2020 color spaces.
16 bits HDR timeline setting will follow choice or context in 'Settings'
File Manager
New Sorting options for Playlists sort your playlist alphabetically or chronologically, in an ascending or a descending order. You will Still be able to keep an arbitrary order by disabling toggles, or by reordering playlists manually.
**Massive speed improvement for local and network import. **Local single file import is 3-4 times faster. Transfer times for file sequences are much improved (about twice as fast), for import on a single server (no network transfer) is about 4 times faster.
**Native image sequence playback in File Manager preview. **It is now possible to preview File Sequences natively in the File Manager Preview window (just like any other supported media format).
**Support for disjoint file sequences. **It is now possible to import sequences that have discontinuities. For example in a directory containing files [Patate-0000-Patate-0099].exe and [Patate-0900-Patate-0999].exr , that is 2 spans of 100 files The files will be imported as a single sequence of 1000 frames, with 800 frames missing. The missing frames will be displayed as Full Frame Color Bars.
**Display frame ranges & extension of underlying files of file sequences. **In the File Manager window, file sequences will now display the frame range as well as the extension of the files that make up the file sequence. For example sequence.seq [0010-0100] - EXR Is a sequence of 90 files named sequence-0010.exr to sequence-0100.exr.
**New Frame Rate override on conversion option **In Auto mode File sequences will have their frame rate set to project frame rate or to the value of 'override' that can be set in the conversion options. Override will be applied to all video files.
Imported single images now correctly report duration of 1 frame.
Added progress percentage to the "Delete" operation in File Manager
**PXT now supports EDL with truncated file names through versionning **
**Media Versioning has now customizable pattern string **Added customizable string pattern for the media versioning system (default pattern is "_v"). Modifying this string allows the versioning system to conform to other file naming conventions.
LED Processors now supports Splitting on Conversion
**New option to discard Alpha on Conversion. **Added option to discard alpha during media conversion.
ProRes conversion optimization - should be 25% faster.
**Add support for importing '.edl' files. **Edit Decision Lists can be imported. The extension to use for now is '.edl'. The files are imported in a new project sub-folder ('data') and is accessible with a new filter in the File Manager.
UI
Search in drop-down Menus New feature that applies to all combos. Allows to type in a searching bar to reduce the number of combo items when drop-down is activated.
**"Hide window in focus" keyboard shortcut and changed existing "Hide all windows" **"Hide all windows" is now ALT+SHIFT+W for consistency. ALT+W to hide the current module in focus.
**Added ability to quit rapidly. **Added the ability to quit without saving using Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Q".
Added a separate button for Albion Monitoring
Improved readability of some system error messages.
**Introducing new font rendering system, allowing for clean anti-aliased font at any scale **
Licenses
New feedback on why software won't start when license is inadequate or expired. When a product did not start because of a bad license (unsupported product, or expired support plan) it would previously simply crash: a Message Box is now displayed informing the user of the problem, providing an address where help might be available and pointing to the log files for additional info.
Shadows
Add the option to offset the start and end point (similar to video in out)
Shadow recording Update
DMX now saves the initial universe data state at beginning of the recording.
New option to disable the project save at recording when mouse and keyboard recording option is disabled.
At session playback in the shadow module, the saved project will be loaded only if the mouse and keyboard playback option is enabled.
I/O
DMX
New parameter "Time to Live" (TTL) for multicast packet in sACN
DMX Control - Add virtual projector selection control
add support for multiple unicast destination in sACN
**Start auto-fade of a moving light from the current Dimmer value **fade in to 100% and fade out from current value.
**External DMX Media Control and DMX Patch UI Refactor **All shared clip properties and media specific properties can be controlled through a DMX fixture with specific control types (similar to Albion DMX Control). The IO-DMX-Patch with all the fixtures has been redesigned with a better readability and improved performance. There are new features such as search with keywords and multiple selection.
DMX Control Fx parameter extend from 2 to 16 controls
DMX Control - Add FX Graph numeric source type New DMX Control in media family, FX Graph numeric source in graph clip can now be controlled with Fx parameter 01 to FX parameter 16
PHOTON now supports Livox SDK 2.3.0
**Depth Sensor Update **Manipulation tools for depth sensor primitive is now functional - Visibility primitives of depth sensor in the calibration tool window now supports the blocker mode. Visible primitives will includes point inside the bounding box and blocker primitives will exclude points from the bounding box. - Shadow playback now works with visibility/blockers primitives
PSN
New TTL option in the PSN config to specify a Time To Live parameter for the multicast packets.
(The default value for TTL for PSN is now 8; this is different from Windows default of 1.)
Projector Control
**Add authentication support to our PJLink implementation. **Talking PJLink with a projector that has a non-empty user password. The 'Add projector' panel has been modified to allow setting password. Note that for PJLink the username is not required and is ignored. Note also that even if you set a password when adding the projector it has no effect if the projector has authentication disabled.
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