Cheetah3D 4.3 Beta 1

[Martin]

Hi,
since I had very few time recently my release plans for 4.3 are quite delayed so here is at least a beta of 4.3.

4.3 adds the often requested texture or lightmap baking functionality to Cheetah3D. Including a second set of UV coords. It also important to know that the UV Tag was deprecated. It will be still there in old scenes to maintain backward compatibility but you can't create a UV tag in 4.3 anymore. So please use the UV Mapper tool for the tasks you formally used the the UV Tag.

To bake a texture the first thing you should do is to add the new "Bake texture" toolbar item to the toolbar. The rest is almost self explaining.

1. Select the polygon object you want to bake a texture.
2. Click on the bake texture toolbar icon. Now a "Bake Textur" tag will be added to the object. Here you can set some baking parameters. Or you can UV coords for the texture baking.
3. Click a second time on the Bake texture toolbar icon. Now the texture will be baked.

Working with FBX it is important to know that the second UV set will be only exported if a Baking tag is assigned.

-Added texture baking
-Added texture baking tag
-Added secondary UV set support to all UV tools
-Added export/import of secondary UV set to FBX loader
-Added weld vertices mode to optimize tool
-Added pos/scale/rot properties to UV Mapper tool
-Updated FBX SDK to (v2006.11_1)
-Deprecated UV Tag
-Maped "Save" to "Save As" for non .jas files
-Combine polygon selections when material drag & drop
-Fixed object browser drawing bug (names)
-Fixed material assignment bug
-Fixed .sia loading bug
-Fixed bug on beige G3 systems
-Fixed bug in ring cut tool
-Fixed bug in transform gadget
-Fixed bug on SpaceNavigator support
-Fixed crashing bug in irradiance cache
-Fixed FBX exort bug (object will be given unique names)
-Fixed various bugs in UV packing
-Fixed bug in edge rotate tool
-many other small things

Please be aware that this is beta software. So don't use it with important data.!!!

You can find the alpha at

http://cheetah3d.com/download/Cheetah3D4.3b2.zip

Please post your experiences with this beta in this forum thread.

Bye,
Martin

[hairball600]

Ah, my waiting has paid off. Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you very much for this great application.

Thank you,

Lincoln Green

[capnchunky]

Oh, excellent. Thanks much for the tool fixes, the Save As for non-.jas's (I know opinions varied on that, but I think that's a good way to handle it), and definitely the vertex welding -- already coming in handy!

[Dranix]

So no new material-system in 4.3? Damn, was hoping for that.

[DaVinci]

Thanks a lot!

[ROI]

THANK YOU, Martin - great feature.

... now I just have to figure out how it works!

[ROI]

OK, I've baked my first texture.

Now how to apply it to my mesh? I can save the baked texture from the render manager, then create a new material which uses the saved texture... am I on the right track here? or am I missing something?

[Targos]

Roi, have you got Unity? I think Martin may have invented this specifically for Unity integration..
AC

[podperson]

You can bake to UV1 and see the results in C3D.

[Dranix]

Originally Posted by Targos

Roi, have you got Unity? I think Martin may have invented this specifically for Unity integration..
AC

Ah this is a pure realtime-feature? No wonder I can't see the usefulness of it