What´s New - VRED 2019.1 Design & Professional

[Florian.Coenen]

Dear VRED Users,

We´d like to inform you that VRED 2019.1 Design & Professional was just released and is ready to install through Autodesk Desktop App and available in your Autodesk Account.

Here is a quick overview of "What´s new" and "What has changed":

VRHero & XTAL head-mounted display support

• VRED 2019 now supports VRgineers VRHero & XTAL VR headsets with 5K resolution.

Microstation . dgn file support

• Bentley´s Microstation native file format .dgn was added as a new import format.

Optional import of Referenced Files

• It´s is now possible to toggle the import of referenced files for Assembly Structures in the File Specific Import Dialog. This allows the user to load empty CAD structures and load for example the referenced assembly files afterwards using “Reload File” in the Scenegraph context menu.

Optimize Module: Remove empty Shell´s

• „Remove empty Shell´s“ Option was added to the Optimize Module to easily clean up the Scenegraph from Shells that do not contain any components.

GGX support for AxF Materials

• We have added GGX BRDF model support for X-Rite AxF materials which more closely mimics the look of real reflections on rough surfaces and allows high fidelity simulation of material reflection at both peek and shallow viewing angles.

Render Queue: Render Layer Visibility

• In VRED 2019.1 it is now possible to capture all states of the Renderlayers in the Render Queue.

New Sceneplate Module

• CGI Workflows require an effective way of handling video footage and imagery in the rendering tool as well as easy batch processes. Therefore, we introduce a NEW Sceneplate Editor that unifies the known Overlay Editor with the Backplate Feature. This new module simplifies the workflow with multiple Front- and Backplates in one scene and makes organizing different viewpoints or environments in combination with different plates much more intuitive in the Variant.
• It is now possible to use Backplates in combination with Animated Textures which allows an easy handling of movie footage in a VRED scene. In addition, a new Sceneplate Selection Mode was added to transform, scale and rotate plates directly in the 3D Viewport. Also, the Asset Manager has now a new Tab to store Front- and Backplates.

Sceneplates - Frontplates

• Frontplates formally known as Overlays are always rendered in front of your 3D Model and do support different
• Content Types like Text, Images, Image Sequences and HTML 5 content.
• Besides some smaller features we added for Text Plates like Transparency and Rotation, the Text is now rendered into an image to improve the real-time performance for animations. Therefore, the new Font Height field defines the quality for each line of text in pixels. Images with pre-multiplied alpha are now supported as well to avoid dodgy edges at a certain scale of the image.
• In addition, a Color Correction for Front- and Backplate Images was added for minor image adjustments. The Camera Color Correction can be applied in addition to Back- and Frontplates as well.
• It is also possible to use HTML 5 for Frontplates to realize dynamic Overlay UI´s on top of the 3D viewport.

Sceneplates - Backplates

• Multiple Backplates can be organized in Switch Nodes and Groups and triggered from the Variant Sets.
• Back- and Frontplates now support Image Sequences and a Curve is automatically created in the Curve Editor. Similar to the Material Editor, Image Sequences can be inlined in the .vpb file.
• A new Image Information Dialog in the context menu gives a much better overview of relevant information's about resolution, camera settings and lens types.

General Improvements

• Added 2 new Python Commands (“reloadAllAssetDirectories()“ and "reloadAssetDirectory(path)”) to reload directories in the asset manager without updating existing assets in the scene. This allows to refresh the Asset Manager library without checking if all Assets in the Scene are up-to-date which might take a while when having large models with many materials.
• Added Python Commands to apply Transform variants.
• Added getUnitScale Python function

Decoupled Python API for Sceneplates

• With the Sceneplates we introduce our first module that is built on the new decoupled API and partial, Image- and Node API. See: Help > Python Documentation > New Python API documentation)
• Every single UI element is now also accessible via Python

Sincerely,

Your Autodesk® VRED™ Team

[seiferp · Accepted solution]

@richardlevene finally we have implemented image sequences for backplates and introduce a whole new module to deal with it.