Changelog

• Improvement to 3Delight's geometric displacement algorithm. This important enhancement removes cracks due to difficult topology.

• Better license management. 3Delight now communicates less often with the license server. 

  Because of critical changes to the licensing system, we advise all users to test the package thoroughly before putting into production.

3Delight for Maya

• Improved presentation of 3Delight for Maya shading nodes in the Node Editor
• Further refinements to the UI of some of 3Delight for Maya shading nodes.

• Fixe many cases of cracks in displacements. This mostly affects cracks visible near screen edges (#7256).

3Delight Display

• The "=" key  now maps to the Zoom to Fit functionality.

3Delight for Maya

• Fixed issue where the Attribute Editor would show wrong attribute values after selecting a new node in some cases.
• Refined the UI of some of 3Delight for Maya shading nodes.

• PTEX is now supported on non quad-polygons. This completes the support of PTEX in 3Delight.
  
• Fixed 3Delight Cloud renders that could sometimes hand for very short renders.
  

3Delight Display

• A new column "Account" in the Cloud tab.
• Fix the minute usage shown in the Cloud tab. It was underestimating the total usage.
• The "rendering" state in the cloud tab was sometimes overridden by "parsing". Fixed.
• Allowed the contents of the sidebar to be scrolled up and down.
• Avoid showing the "Cancel" button for jobs that are already over.

3Delight for Katana

• Fix ROI. 

• Fix PTEX for clockwise winding meshes (currently affects KATANA only).
• Added PTEX support of quad polygonal meshes.
• Preserve user's 3delight.config file when re-installing the software on macOS packages.
• Fixed hard edged shadows appearing on polygonal surfaces.
• Automated texture optimization is now handled directly by 3Delight (see Handling of Textures) and offers better error reporting.
• UDIMs render about 8% faster.
• Fixed a performance issue in OpenVDB rendering. Scene with relatively large amount of textures (hundreds of megabytes) will have an acceleration between x2 and x3.

3Delight Cloud

• 30% faster syncing (upload) for models and shaders when using 3Delight Cloud.
• 30% faster startup (time to first pixel) when using 3Delight Cloud.
• Fixed rendering of VDB volumes on 3Delight Cloud when renders are started from a Windows platform.
• Fixed 3Delight Cloud issues when rendering high resolution images (eg. 4K) with several AOVs. The problem was sudden "jamming" of the application during rendering.

3Delight Display

• When using the Loupe tool, a single click on the image freeze the Loupe view for a couple of seconds.
•  Improved reliability of the progress indicator for Syncing stage when using 3Delight Cloud.

3Delight for Maya

• Fixed a limitation with the Free 3Delight^NSI preventing simultaneous renders in different Maya views.

OSL Shaders

• Lambert shaders now uses the same default values as Maya. 
• Added a "Open GL" normal map orientation option to 3Delight Principled material.
• Transparency has been replaced by single-channel Opacity in 3Delight Principled.

• Fixed timing statistics in relation to the "other" category.
• Fixed non-deterministic renders. Using different number of threads was not producing exactly the same image.
• Fixed visible intersection artefacts when using subdivision surfaces and sub surface.
• Introduced partial PTEX support.
• Fixed an issue in the rendering core affecting instances organised in hierarchies (#7212). This issue caused objects to be clipped.
• Faster render stops during the synchronisation phase of 3Delight Cloud renders.
• Corrected renderdl -h output.
• Improved accuracy of ray intersection to remove various "bias"  problems. (Issues #7179 and #7216).
• Removed various legacy include files from package.
• Fix rendering of OpenVDB volumes with 3Delight Cloud.
• User friendly error messages for 3Delight Cloud error conditions.
• Fixed minor memory leak. 

3Delight Display

• Improved status reporting in the Cloud Rendering Activity dialog. Also, sequences are now listed as un-foldable items.
• More consistant alignment of values with using the picker (using the "P" key). 
• Better presentation of the cross in the Loupe tool. It is now precisely centered.
• Fixed support of .3DL color space file format. 
• Cloud renders now receive progress and statistics exactly as local renders.
• Added a progress indicator for 3Delight Cloud scene synchronisation.
• 3Delight Display has a new application icon and an updated About dialogue.
• Fixed various issues with the loupe tool, including the zoom factor to be consistent across screens of varying DPI (including Retina displays).
• The sign in condition is remembered upon exit and start of 3Delight Display.
  
• Added Sign In tab in 3Delight Display's sidebar. This will work only for users registered for beta testing 3Delight Cloud.

3Delight for Maya

• Removed the texture directory workspace option as this is now handled directly by 3Delight (see Handling of Textures).
• The workspace UI has been removed as it is now empty.
• 3Delight Glass now show transparency in the VP2 viewport. 
• Added a Volume AOV.
• Fixed 3Delight Display on Retina displays when started from Maya. The issue was causing the doubling of pixels.
• Fixed Abort button behaviour for Cloud renders. It was non-responsive and sometimes resulted in the application to crash.
• Fixed Material Viewer. Viewing and editing of both shaders and environments are supported. 
• All 3Delight^NSI error messages are now shown in the Script Editor instead of the terminal. This is particularly important on macOS and Windows where the terminal is not always available, making error messages not shown at all.
• Improvements to the templates generated for auto-loaded OSL shaders.
• An NSI file export now has the same scene output as a batch render. This means frame buffer and overrides options are not exported in the NSI file.
• Fixed dlMetal presets (Presets menu in the Attribute Editor).
• Updated URLs for Help and updated About dialogue.
• Removed obsolete icons.

3Delight for Katana

• Removed the texture directory preference as this is now handled directly by 3Delight (see Handling of Textures).
• Added a volume AOV.

OLS Shaders

• Improved documentation for supported shaders.

• Added 3Delight Principled material. To become the standard material across all plug-ins.

• Added support for Volume AOV both in Atmosphere and OpenVDB shaders.
• Added 3Delight Car Paint and Random Material.
• Added Random Color utility shader.
• Added Flake 3D texture shader.
• Added a Facing Ratio utility shader.
• Added a Worley Noise and a Flake 3D Textures.

• OSL shaders can now declare a classification string. This is in preparation of an automated way to create Maya shading nodes directly from OSL shaders. This string has no effect in Katana.

  3Delight Material is being deprecated and replaced by 3Delight Principled. The later provides all the functionality provided by 3Delight Material, plus the ability to render metals, with less parameters and better usability (such as better parameter ranges, better naming, and better UI).

  The 3Delight Material is still part of the package for backward compatibility.

• 5% to 15% faster rendering, depending on the scene.
• Fixed a problem with refractions (GGX BRDF) causing noticeable darkening.
• Fixed an error on linux when using 3Delight from python.
• Update of the first passes of a live render are now much faster (up to x2 times faster).
• Faster time to first pixel for scenes with large emissive meshes. Scenes with millions of light sources could start as much as x10 times faster.
• Added support for rendering VDB velocity from three float grids instead of a vector grid.
• Fixed some live render crashes related to instances.
• Fixed VDB emission.
• Added new python binding to NSI.
• Fixed changes to camera shutter in live render.
• Improve performance of sky shader.
• Fix performance of displacement after a change in live render.
• 3Delight Display has a new Sidebar with a new Light Mixer UI and a new Loupe tool.

3Delight for Maya

• Improved VDB rendering speed in viewport.
• Add support for Maya's Light Editor. This includes ability to output a light group as a multi-light layer.
• Add Color Blend utility node. This node has a similar functionality to the Layer Shader.
• Better support of Light Linking. Light links to sets and shading groups are now supported.
• Fixed a problem with instanced objects when each instance has a different shader.
• Support Maya's built-in UDIM tag, including support for UDIM tiling on file node.
• Improved UI for all materials and shaders.

3Delight for Katana

• Instantaneous opening of VDB files, even large ones.
• Fixed a crash with some VDB files.
• Draw lights behind the selection too instead of in front (usability suggestion by Matthew Bennett).
• Multi-Threaded scene export and scene export optimization.
• Find OSL shaders without Katana Resources.
• Various fixes to XGen loading.
• Do not link with Katana's Python libraries anymore. Those are not needed.
• Implement automatic conversion of textures into TDLs (mip mapped tiff files).