What´s New - VRED 2020.1 Design & Professional

[seiferp]

Dear VRED Users,

We´d like to inform you that VRED 2020.1 Design & Professional has just been released. It is ready for installation through the Autodesk Desktop App and is available in your Autodesk Account. Here is a quick overview of what´s new and has changed:

VRED Assets Installer

We have separated the Asset Manager content from the main VRED software installation to make the installer more lightweight while offering this extra content in a download that can be installed separately if needed. The Autodesk VRED Assets installer can be found as a new executable in your Autodesk Account as well as in the Autodesk Desktop App, making the installation of Assets with every new VRED release optional.

Asset Content – Renderpeople

We are pleased to announce that Autodesk and Renderpeople partnered to deliver 6x ready to use, textured, rigged & skinned 3D characters within our VRED Assets installer. This set of Renderpeople´s 3D characters contain 2x business & 4x casual characters that can be simply dragged from the Asset Manager into the scenes. More scanned and animated 3D characters can be downloaded at www.renderpeople.com

Asset Content – Maground HDR´s & Backplates

We are more than happy to let you know that Autodesk and Maground joined forces as well to deliver 3x high-resolution 360° HDR Dome Environments plus the associated Backplates with the new VRED Assets Installer. These assets can be simply dragged from the Asset Manager into the scene.

Asset Content – HTML5 Menu

We have added a simple animated HTML5 car configurator menu example to the VRED Assets installer. This menu will load the Genesis example scene and allows toggling through different variant sets of the model.

Maground Web Shop

With VRED 2020.1 we introduce Maground as a new entry in our Web Shop system. Directly access, download, and use 5x 360° HDR´s and Backplates from www.cgiplaygrounds.com that are free to use. Once downloaded, the 360° HDR is automatically converted into a VRED Environment Material. The same applies for Backplate images that are downloaded via the Web Shop. VRED converts them automatically into Sceneplate Backplates. Users that have an account can purchase more content from www.cgiplaygrounds.com using our Web Shop system. This makes the usage of Maground 360° HDR´s and Backplate inside VRED much faster and more intuitive than ever before.

VR Collaboration - Improvements

We have added many new improvements to our out-of-the-box VR Feature Set in VRED 2020.1. For example, it is now possible to hide variants sets from the VR menu to simplify presentation of complex models in VR. Variant Set´s and Groups can be disabled from being shown in the Variant Set Module UI. Also, the synchronization of Variant Sets for all participants can now be controlled per Variant Set or Group. The small target sphere at the end of the VR laser pointer now appears green when hovering over a Touch Sensor to indicate interaction possibilities. The teleportation rotation arrow now fades out when teleporting to very short distances to not distract the users view. When participating in a VR collaboration session, users can now see other participants in the VR Menu represented by a colored HMD icon and their name. In addition, the number of desktop spectators following a VR user are shown in the VR menu and collaboration module UI. Also, the system time and the current open file is shown in the VR menu. Last but not least, Annotations that are modified from a desktop user during a VR collaboration session are now synchronized for all VR participants.

VR Collaboration – Python API

With requests for customizing VRED´s out-of-the-box VR features and combine them with user created custom tools, we have added many new Python Services and Classes to our Python v2 API. This allows users to work more  creatively and flexible than ever before, customizing the VR experience to their own needs.

VR Collaboration – Scripts & Examples

With the introduction of the new VR Python API we have added also some example VR tools written in Python to the VR menu. Show/hide avatars, a flashlight, gather users and a measurement tool were added in VRED 2020.1 which of course can be disabled in the main menu if not needed. To explain better how the new API can be used we have added more python scripts to the example folder. From here users can start to learn & explore these new possibilities.

Substance & AXF Material Improvements

In VRED 2020.1 it is now possible to toggle Substance Presets and AXF Sub- Materials in the Variant Set Module. Simply drag your Substance or AXF Material into the Variant Set Material Tab and choose the desired Preset or Sub- Material from the dropdown. In addition, it is now also possible to store image attributes Presets. For example, when using Substance Materials with the possibility to load custom images from disc, the file path´s to that image are now stored in the Presets.

Substance HDR Panorama Support

In VRED 2020.1 it is now possible to use Substance Panorama HDR´s created with Substance Designer on Environment Domes to illuminate your 3D scene. Therefore, we introduced a new Substance Panorama Environment Material in the Material Editor that allows the usage of HDR. SBSAR files that have 32 float values and an aspect ratio of 2:1. Users can create “Presets” for different light setups and combine them with viewpoints and other Variants within the Variant Sets. This allows users to have multiple light setups driven from one environment source that can be adjusted at any time.

HDR Light Studio – Area Light Support

HDR Light Studio supports 3D area lights and allows us to sync these to rectangular lights in the VRED scene. This is supported for HDR Light Studio Tungsten release. Of course, older HDR Light Studio versions are still supported, but without area lights. As usual, you first need to connect your VRED environment to HDR Light Studio. Select the environment material in the Material Editor, and select "Edit & Load Settings" in the "HDR Light Studio" tab. Now enable the "Area Light" option for a light node in HDR Light Studio, to promote this light to an area light. VRED automatically creates a rectangular area light that can be controlled from within HDR Light Studio.

HDR10 Display Support

It is now possible to output to High Dynamic Range (HDR) displays taking advantage of features such as higher contrast and wider color gamut! View > Display > HDR10 Display automatically turns on HDR rendering in Windows, if it is not already enabled, and disables VRED's internal color management, so Windows can take over full color management control.

Additionally, there is a preference option and display cluster option for HDR Reference White that controls the behavior for mapping LDR Sceneplates or HTML5 User Interfaces and for controlling the non-hdr-aware tonemapper (which are all except for the physical camera when set to ACES mode). The Reference White maps a white value of 1.0 to the given nits-Value assuming everything is calibrated correctly for a HDR10 device.

Python API v2

We have added several NEW Python Services and Classes to the VRED 2020.1 Python API. Most of them are related to the CAD File Import, Scene Setting and VR Interaction behavior.

General Improvements

• It is now possible to set an environment variable for the file path location of URL´s to store HTML5 content relative to the VRED .vpb file when using a Web Engine in the Sceneplate Editor.
• We have added a new parent constraint object to our vrConstraintService in the New Python API.
• The GPU Denoiser was updated with NVIDIA OptiX 6.0 which includes performance and quality improvements, and now supports alpha channels.
• We have improved our Python Documentation and it is now more obvious to differentiate between the old and new decoupled Python API. In addition, all python example scenes we deliver with the software installation can be found under File > Examples are now documented and are linked in the official Python Documentation.

Sincerely,

Your Autodesk VRED Team