Dear VRED Users,
We´d like to inform you that VRED 2020.3 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:
Asset Content – X-Rite SpectraLight QC HDR
We have added an X-Rite SpectraLight QC Light Booth HDR environment to the Asset Manager, which represents the D65 daylight lighting behavior of the real world device. Therefore, we have measured the light source and side wall materials of the real light booth and created an HDR image from inside the original CAD model. This environment has a size of 950mm x 660mm x 595mm and is ideal for evaluating product designs and material examples under real lighting conditions. The original VRED scene and additional HDRs can be downloaded from the Autodesk Knowledge Network.
Logitech VR Ink Pilot
With VRED 2020.3, we now support the Logitech VR Ink Pilot with such default controller behaviors as teleport, laser pointer, VR Menu, and tooltips. The tip of the VR Ink Pilot is touch-capable and can be used to trigger touch sensors, the VR Menu, and user interfaces streamed by the Media Editor. The VR Ink Pilot can be combined with other controllers, using Open VR. When switching to controller hand mode in VR, the VR Ink Pilot is displayed with x-ray shading. More information about the Logitech VR Ink Pilot can be found on the official Logitech website and GitHub.
Oculus Rift S Controller
When using an Oculus Rift S HMD, the corresponding controllers are now display correctly in VR, using the default button behavior.
Variant Set Render
Use the Variant Set Render feature to configure and render combinations of variant sets within the Render Setting module. Simply drag and drop variant set groups from the Variant Set module into the Render Settings module’s Variant tab. It is also possible to add variant set groups from the Variant Set context menu to Render Settings. The order of variant groups in Render Settings defines the naming of files generated. Simply re-arrange the order to change the naming scheme used for your files. A preview of the naming scheme is shown in the module.
A variant set’s configuration is stored in the VPB file, but can be saved to and loaded from an XML file.
In addition, it is possible to add variant set renders as render jobs to the Render Queue. Do this to render different resolutions and render modes in one go.
Also, with the new Variant Set Render feature, we also added some statistics to the Render Setting and Render Queue modules. Users are now able to see how many single images or image sequences will be generated with the current configuration and when rendering animations. These statistics are now also reflected in the Render Queue module.
Render Setting Presets
With VRED 2020.3, we improved the Render Setting Presets handling to make the creation and editing of presets easier and more consistent with other modules in VRED.
Smart References - Revision Monitoring
In VRED 2020.3, users can now monitor and work with file revisions of their source data. This means, if multiple files (called revisions) of one part exist, a user can search for certain criteria in the file name, using regular expressions, and add those to the file monitoring of the Reference Editor. Users can now set up custom search filters, using regular expressions. This allows the creation of any kind of in- or exclude behavior, no matter the naming convention used for the revision. If file revisions match the search criteria for a file loaded in the current scene, users get notified and can replace these files with the latest or a specific revision. A dialog displays all files matching the regular expression and allows the selection of a specific revision to import. In addition, it is possible to replace all files with the !Latest or !First file revision.
When re-importing source references with VRED 2020.2 it is now possible to keep already assigned materials, touch sensors, transforms, transform variants, animation curves and render layer setting as long as the new imported geometry and structure does not differ from the current source reference.
Smart References Improvements
- New filters for Reference Editor for non-source/smart and unsaved files.
- Re-order reference list view. It is possible to re-order the columns in the Reference List View alphabetically.
- Unshare for clone references. Cloned references can now be unshared and saved as new smart references. This helps to break the original file structure for visualization purposes. For example, one screw is assembled through the whole project and needs a different material or vertex shadow map.
- None as a Reference Behavior was added to the import dialog for non-CAD file formats
- Remove Empty Groups (in the Optimize dialog) no longer removes empty reference nodes
- Import Sub-referenced Files is now respected when re-importing
- Improved the Import dialog and made it more consistent when re-importing a source
- There are no duplicated materials when reloading a CAD file with a clone in the scene
- VPB as converter output format. We have added a new combo box to the Preferences for converting data to VPB, instead of just OSB. Now, users can convert their data in a separate process and import the results as smart references.
- Creation of smart reference links from source references. Users who converted their CAD files into VPB, using the FileIO dialog with the “Keep files” option ticked, can now load the original assembly structure file and re-path the already converted OSBs into smart references.
General Improvements
-
We added a new Search bar to the Variant Set module for filtering by variant sets and group names or just group names.
-
We added new icons for 3rd-party material types (Substance, X-Rite, AXF, and OCS) in the Material Editor to make it easier to differentiate one from another.
-
The import of parts referenced by a PLMXML is now done in parallel and multiple ATF processes are started
-
Access to Python services from custom Python modules. The Python V2 interface was not directly accessible when trying to call it from a Python script plugin. This is now done automatically, so users can call all service functions from a script plugin, directly.
Sincerely,
Your Autodesk VRED Team
