This is update has several new work flow features and several fixes. The list below attempts to cover all the ones that might be of interest to you, however there are a lot of new little fixes and minor changes and some of those might not have been included in this list because of puny human error.  

The general list of new shiny stuff in v4:

*AutoRig2 - a really flexible, fast, editable autorigger

*Point Animation - Use sculpting techniques to animate your characters right on top of your normal rig!

*Improved Dynamics & Softbody - So fast it's realtime in many scenes, the improved collision detection is great.

*Keyframe Productivity Tools - Improved animation workflow, quick breakdown slider and much more.

*Rig scene referencing - Automatically propagate all the rig changes, to your animator's scene files!

*Pose System - Store and load poses with the click of a button

*Cage Deformer - Positive mean value coordinates lattice.

*Lattice Deformer - Regular lattice deformation

*Weight Painting - For those of you who absolutely want to paint those weights.

*Particle Collision Dynamics - Bang them into eachother.

*Better, Faster, Cleaner Global Illumination - Really good, really fast, really clean, really global

*Translucency Scatter - Lovely scattering of global illumination in translucency.

*Ultra-Super Improved Hair - Hair dynamics. long hair, you name it.

*Stereoscopic viewport - Animate your 3d.... in 3D!

*New Licensing System - Licence it to your thumb drive, your dongle, your chewing gum.




New features small and large!

- Cage deformer.
- Lattice deformer.
- Point animation.
- AutoRig v2.
- Breakdown slider.
- Ripple keys.
- Weight Painting.
- Keyframe productivity tools.
- Long hair guides and dynamics for hair. Changed settings for hair to accomodate new features.
- Improved collision detection and calculation time for hair, soft body and other dynamics.
- Scat translucency mode.
- Smarter, more accurate noise reduction sampling for GI.
- Overlay region on previous render.
- Glint value control for caustics.  (Get rid of the crazy rainbows)
- Translucent Minimum setting for hair.  (Defines a "base" darkness level on hair strands to stop the random black ones)
- Caustics are now generated through the environment as well as directly from lights.
- Modo .lxo file support.
- New GUI theme called "Trek" to welcome modo users in a familiar environment.
- Fixed image sequences being able to show on objects in opengl
- Fixed rotated image(s) being able to show on objects in opengl
- Interface font selectable, and an added a config file entry called GUIFont
- Added display of the world object path in the world view (Used to only display the local motion path, now cycles through none,local,world. Press Shift + Esc to turn on. note: this system can not compute expressions, just parental relationships)
- Frame number and value viewable on graph editor via a mouse click
- Fixed object sequences now scrub properly when scrubbed with the time line
- Added Maya point cache (point cache is used for baking the mesh deformations for faster rendering)
- Added 'Sticky Projection' in 'Texture Map' node
- Added 'Merge with current scene' when opening a new scene on top of the existing scene
- Fixed editsphere oddities
- Added 'Replace(Keep Surfaces)' in 'Multiply items'
- Added 'Standard Stereo' under 'Camera Type'
- Particles now have self collision dynamics.
- Added Direct Distribute, BoneWeight = Map,  BoneWeight < Map,  BoneWeight >Map,  BoneWeight *Map,
Clamp( BoneWeight)*Map,  Distribute Map Leftovers under 'Factored Weights' in 'Bone_Deform' effect
- Added 'Metaball Blend Threshold' under 'Particles' (Threshold controls how close particles have to be for they blend and how blobby they blend. Smaller values makes the actually radius of the metaball smaller, but makes them blend at greater distance from each other)
- Added a new force 'Noise' under 'Particle force' (Noise is a force that adds random force to particles based on how far they are from the tool centre. Particles are repelled as they near the centre and attracted as they near the radius bound.)
- New bone weighting options. These are accessed from the bone deform effect and do what they say on the tin. These are designed to let you choose different ways of combining the bone power computation with the value of the weight map. They perform the calculation that is shown in the drop down menu and do eggsactly what it says on the tin. If you aren't concerned with the intrecacies of bone weights in messiah you should probably leave this on Factored Weights.


Expression functions:

int ParticleSetAttribute, ParticleGetAttribute(effect,particle_index_number,which_attribute) (attributes:
PARTICLE_BIRTH =1, PARTICLE_DEATH =2, PARTICLE_LIFESPAN =3' PARTICLE_RADIUS =4' PARTICLE_WEIGHT =5)
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int SetBoneType(object, object)

DESCRIPTION: Set type of bone to muscle and choose target. Bone, Target


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int AddGroupItem(object, string)

DESCRIPTION: Add an object to a group


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int IKSoft(object, object, object, object, double, double, int, int)

DESCRIPTION: IKSoft: Performs a softened IK on a chain to avoid IK pops. SoftGoal should be a child of the normal IK goal. Softening amount can be animated with SoftFader value, Stretchy value will autostretch the chain

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vecD3 EP_LocalPos(object, vecD3)

DESCRIPTION: Convert the world position to local coordinates relative to an object.


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vecD3 EP_PitchFlip(vecD3)

DESCRIPTION: Find an alternate HPB notation for a given HPB rotation.


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int EP_PitchFlipKey(object)

DESCRIPTION: Do a 'pitch flip' for a keyframe of an object.


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int EP_QuatBlend(object, object, object, double)

DESCRIPTION: Blends the world rotation of two objects and assigns this world rotation to a third object. The blending is done using spherical linear interpolation.


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int EP_Retarget(object, double, object, double, object)

DESCRIPTION: Retargets the rotation of one object to another.


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vecD3 EP_RotInvert(vecD3)

DESCRIPTION: Returns the inverse of a given HPB rotation.


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vecD3 EP_RotMult(vecD3, vecD3)

DESCRIPTION: Returns the rotation that results from a parent and a child HPB rotation.


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double EP_SmoothBank(double, double)

DESCRIPTION: Calculates the bank rotation for given heading/pitch rotations to create a smooth rotation.


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int EP_StretchIK(object, object, object, object, double)

DESCRIPTION: 'Stretches' the items in an IK chain with two items by changing the zpos values of the items.


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double EP_WrapPi(double)

DESCRIPTION: This expression wraps an angle into the range -PI ... +PI by adding the correct multiple of PI.

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int IKUseChannel(object, int, int, int, int)

DESCRIPTION: Switch IK channel and 'use limits' of that channel. Object, Channel, IK channel on/off, 'use limits' on/off, on/off switch. Channel should be in the range of 0 (xpos) to 5 (bank).


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
int IKMinMax(object, int, float, float, int)

DESCRIPTION: Set IK limits of a channel. Object, Channel, Min, Max, on/off switch. Channel should be in the range of 0 (xpos) to 5 (bank).


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int IKStrength(object, float, int, int)

DESCRIPTION: Set IK strength and direction of an object. Object, IK Strength, IK Direction, on/off switch. Positive Direction = 0, negative direction = 1.

 

SDK:
Several new API functions have been added including the api for brush functions from usefulAPI. You can use this to create new plugins using brush without doing all the heavy groundwork :)
until a new SDK can be compiled, please use the include .h files to browse for what you need.

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