What's New in v2.21 and v2.2? |
We have included the v2.2 information for those of you who like to lurk until Maintenance releases are available. Information is listed chronologically with the most recent additions first. If there are apparent contradictions, go by the first listing of the information.
Jump to New GUI Functions
Jump to New Documentation
Nothing Real is happy to announce the arrival of third party plugins. These plugins are either available now or will be shortly. Unlike Primatte and Keylight, they are sold and supported by their developers. We encourage you to check them out:
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CakeS: This is a media asset tracking system for television and film post production. Key features are:- electronic bar codes for physical media, automated proxy generation for disk and video tape images, browser based interface, tape library and a facility scheduler. More joy can be found on the Unique ID website.
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The Foundry Plugins. A suite of tools including things like lens flare, defocus effects, warps, radial blurs, starfields - the list goes on. Check out the Foundry's website. Note: Keylight from CFC is directly integrated in Shake, and is not part of the Foundry's tool set.
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Ultimatte Keying, from Ultimatte Corporation. Another industry standard keyer, with additional tools to remove grain from screens and do composites to finely integrate the edges of the foreground with the background.
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Cache file size settings. We have made the command
to limit the size of files that get cached a little more explicit. It used
to be xRes*yRes*(channels*bytes). The channels and bytes are now separated
into two different fields, so you have xRes*yRes*channels*bytes:
diskCache.cacheMaxFileSize = 2048*2048*4*2;
SpillSuppress - green mode works.
We know, this should be on a bug fix list, but we are just so tickled its
fixed. We recommend SpillSuppress when doing a Primatte key
by plugging it into the third input, as in the following tree:
GUI Lightweight Mode code change. The code to turn on lightweight
graphics mode for 02s has been changed. It now goes into any startup .h
file, not the nrui.h file. Additionally, it has been changed to:
sys.hardwareType = 1;
Ignore any node. You can now ignore any node by either loading its parameters and hitting the ignore button at the top of the Parameter View, or select the node and hit I. Hit I again to set it back.
Field Rendering. You can now turn on field rendering in the globals with the fieldRendering parameter. 0 means it is off, 1 means odd is the first field (from the top), 2 means the even field is the first field.
Tracker Curves now have averaging and smoothing. Once you have done a track, you can hit the right mouse on the track name and choose to smooth it. If you have also done additional tracks, you can choose to average your picked track with an additional track.
Script only - IRetime. This function appears in the script, and is invisible in the GUI. It only takes effect when you adjust a clip in the Time View, where you control its parameters to control a clip's start and end frames, offset, and repeat behavior.
Layer - LayerMacro: The Layer macro has had all of the IMath functions rolled into it, and IMath has been removed, and been renamed LayerMacro. This is in preparation of the real layering node that we will be writing for a future release. It also has the Background as the first input and the Foreground as the second input. This allows you to properly use a mask on the side input.
Color - LookupFile now accepts an arbitrary number of inputs. The first line of the lookup file can list out how many lines are in the file. The function then normalizes the values.
-node for command-line branch selection. This command-line function will render only the node or nodes you list out. For example, if you have two FileOuts in a script, you can choose -node to render only one of them.
ChromaKey ease-of-use. Due to the new Color Picker attached to ChromaKey, you can pull a key much more easily.
dpx image format can now be read (but not written). DPX reader by Michael Jonas, Das Werk Gmbh. Thanks, Michael.
<UserDirectory>/nreal/fonts directory is scanned for fonts. You also have $NR_FONT_PATH to point to arbitrary directories.
Color - ColorSpace node. This node allows you to convert to and from any colorspace (CMY, HLS, HSV, RGB, YIQ, YUV). In the GUI, it replaces 10 dedicated functions, but these are still available for command-line and compatibility reasons.
Other - Append node. This node appends to clips together at a specific frame, similar to the old Sequence2.
Tracking improvements
New Color Picker Controls. There is new ui.h file code
to assing a color picker to retriever the current, the average, the min,
or the max color, and to retrieve the color from either the Viewer color
(possibly causing a feedback loop) or the Source color (avoiding the feedback
loop). More info in Customize
Shake.
Templates. This feature is not detailed in the main documentation.
You can create a template file that will automatically load information
every time you execute Shake. Place .h file in an include/startup/ui/templates
directory with the information. For example, to create a toggle switch as
a Global variable and an on/off button for it, you would put these lines
in a file with a .h extension:
curve int myToggle = 1;
nuxDefExprToggle("myToggle");
Slider granularity changes. We have fixed bugs regarding the slider granularity, and removed the notch size parameter. The Customize Shake page reflects these changes.
Trackers can have non-uniform search regions. If you grab an edge of a tracker (not the corner) you can drag it without modifying the other parallel edge.
File Browser has the File Name textfield immediately active. This means you don't have to click in it, just type in a file name immediately.
Update Hot Key. You can now hit U to update the image when in Manual mode.
Infinite Slider. There is a new slider type
for values that don't have a slider limit, like start- and endFrames
of a clip, for example. The sliders will always stay in one place.
Time Snap in Curve Editor. With the right-mouse menu, you can toggle on Time Snap so that keys snap to frames.
Macro open/close. Opening and closing of a macro is now done with B/Alt+B. B for "body", by the way.
MatchMove - adjust foreground. You can now adjust the foreground area that gets matched by toggling the BG/FG button in the Viewer. When in FG mode, you get four corners that you can adjust. Position these where you want the four corners to be for the 4-corner MatchMove.
Improved Node Group visualization. To group nodes, hit G. To un-group them, hit G again. If you hit B, you can open a sub-window to view the nodes. Hit B again to hide the sub-window. You can view and tweak these nodes, but you can't re-wire them. You can also now get the output knots.
File Browser Additions - Now supports environment variables, and
has a "Full Path Name toggle".
Tabs as Menus. If you shrink the Tab View down to a minimal height,
the mouse behavior switches so that the left button can access the pop-up
behavior normally reserved for the right button. In this way, the tabs will
behave like menus.
New Caching behavior. Shake now has a notion of transient caching. This means that nodes you view and return to will probably be cached, speeding up your interactive work flow.
On-screen control Color Picker. You can now change the color of the on-screen controls with a Color Picker on the Viewer.
Clip adjustments. You can now change in/out points for clips, as well as first and last frames. For example, if you have a clip of frames 1 to 50, you can extend the clip to repeat the last frame up to frame 100, and then turn black. You can also decide to only view frames 1 to 25 out of the 50 frame clip and have that repeat.
Macro slider ranges can be set in MacroMaker.
UI settings saved and read. Shake will now try to read settings automatically saved in <UserDirectory>/settings/ui.h. You can also explicitly save and load settings with functions from the Edit menu. The File Browser also has a toggle switch to have a script over-ride current settings or not.
autoSave scripts stored in <UserDirectory>/autosave.
Global Time Range displayed in Time Bar. The Global timeRange will be highlighted in the Time Bar.
Tab Menus support Control Keys. You can now use the modifier keys when you select a function from a tab name. For example, create any node. Hold down Ctrl, click and hold the right mouse on the Color Tab. Scroll up and select Brightness. The node you created before is now replaced with the Brightness node. Shift+click is create new branch, and Ctrl+Shift+click is create new tree.
Curve Editor - Import Curves button. A new button at the bottom of the Curve Editor imports all curves into the Editor and makes them visible. If you right-click on the button, you have a menu option of importing them and making them hidden.
Time Bar - Play Forward/Backward. This will play the animation as fast as it can up to the fps rate when pressed. For faster play, use Aggressive caching.
Render Menu - Cpus option for rendering. When hitting the right mouse on the Viewer Flipbook button, you can set the amount of cpus to use when background rendering.
Pop up Error Window when Script Save Fails.
Delete Local Variable in Parameter View Right Mouse Menu.
xCenter/yCenter on-screen control for Scale node
All Multi-input nodes have their inputs renamed to Foreground/Background.
Delete Key in Viewer. You can now delete one key or all keys with the right-mouse menu over a Viewer. You still have the button at the bottom of the viewer as well.
More Color Picker assignments. Look for them in Grad, Ramp, etc
X/Y lock for On-Screen Transforms. By hitting ,
you can lock Y movement:
or X movement:
,
or you can also grab the new triangles at the edge of the transform tool
inside the Viewer.
Linking Parameters with Drag and Drop. You can drag a parameter from one field to another by clicking the left mouse on the parameter name and dragging it to the parameter name you want. This will copy from A to B. You can create a link from B to A by hitting Shift when you do this - Shift click on parameter name A and drag to B - B will be linked to A. If you drag a collapsed parameter containing sub-parameters, all sub-parameters will be dragged as well.
Opening Macros in the Node View. You can (once again) open macros in the node view. Select a macro (Other-Tile is an example) and hit B. You will probably have to hit Home to frame the nodes and hit L to lay them out. To close the macro, select it, and hit Alt+B outside of the macro. Opening a macro is a read-only type of thing - no re-connecting nodes inside of it.
New File Browser. The browser has been completely rewritten. Lots of swell things, as well as better-looking, faster-acting performance.
A Deflicker macro to reduce color flickering of a sequence is in the Cookbook.
GUI Manual Updates. All appropriate sections on the GUI documentation have been updated.
About Aspect Ratio . This contains information on working with video elements and anamorphic film elements.
About Video . All about field rendering.
About Tracking is finally written.
Advanced GUI Tracking Tutorial is finally written. It also has information on the new 2.2 Time Bar, and using QuickShape.
The Time View page is finally written.
The Resolution page has been improved.
Primatte sample images in doc/pix/primatte. We found some bugs in Photron's library, and we finally found out what Decolor All does, so we decided to add a few more images to play with.
Obsolete functions: A new page lists out obsolete functions.