Here are links to the v15.0e installers

• Windows Installer (Web Activated Yearly Subscription) (18m)
• Windows Installer (CD Box version Update) volumename HASH (11m)
• Mac Installer (Web Activiated Yearly Subscription) (29.7m)
• Mac Installer (CD Box version Update) volumename HASH (22.1m)

Info on the new Fluids can be found in this thread.
Info on the new SurfaceBaking can be found in this thread.
Info on the new NLE Features can be found in this thread.

Fixes since last release:

• 0005298: [Hair] Feature Request...have Hair always default to OFF when render stops (john bigboote)
• 0005332: [Dynamics] Freeze property of second instance of newton explode object doesn't work (heyvern)
• 0005329: [_Other] "Apply"-Button for Renderingmenu (Fuchur)
• 0005320: [Particle Systems] hair has a different behavior , when a fluid system is used in the same chor (sgross)
• 0005319: [Particle Systems] different behavior in final rendering with multipass on (sgross)
• 0005288: [Bones/Rigging] bone name list too narrow in CP weight editor (robcat2075)
• 0005290: [Bones/Rigging] Fatal Crash when deleting a bone (hart)

Great. Thank-You Stefan for 0005298...that will really help in working with hair.

Martin mentioned that in the 'next release' A:M will cease the making of the '.sinfo' files we all have been deleting-did that happen as well?

(The links to the bugreports arent working...
To get them to work you have to put "http://www.hash.com/reports/" before the "view..."-part.

*Fuchur*

Anyone else having trouble with sprites in 15e I get nothing with sprite projects new or old


----sorry false alarm worked after a second install------not sure why a second install necessary though

There is a new menu iteam in the RMB-Menu in the Chor in this release!
"Bake Particle-Systems / Unbake Particle-Systems"...

Don't know exactly but if you click on it, it calculates the particlesystems and after that, A:M's playbackspeed is faster.
There is although an option in the material-settings for particlesystems...

And this release got the new mascot on it.
*Fuchur*

OH....thank-you-thank-you-thank-you-thank-you-thank-you-thank-you...

That should speed up the Hair process. Hair requires a lot of testing.

AND- from my ENDLESS experiments with hair... I found that when you render a test with hair, you then have to WAIT for a LONG time after you close down the render for hair systems (That you turned ON for render) to redraw, thus killing any spontanaiety. Stefan Gross has implemented a feature in the 'Settings' tab for 'Have hair default OFF' which will help MYSELF greatly- next time I commence hair testings.

THANK-YOU!

Yes that may help there... you should test it out...

*Fuchur*

Some words about "Baking Particels"

It works with all particle systems , except Shag and Flocks.
The idea behind is to speed up the workflow, when a particle system with many particles is used ,specifically fluid or hair.
Normally it takes some time to calculate preroll , stepping forward or back (in this case, it needs to recalculate all frames up to the wanted one, including preroll) ,after baking, a binary file holding the particle data is used , which is much faster .
It can be used in two way's
- starting with RMB on a selected chor , will bake ALL systems in this chor
or
- if You have "Show more than drivers" for the model with a system on , You can use the BoolProperty "Particle baked" to bake only THIS system .
Reverting this can be done with "Unbake" or set "Particle baked" to Off .
After doing this , the complete chortime range is simulated and the needed informations for the particles are written to a file , wich is used from this time now , to handle the systems.

This feature is working only in a chor ,not ina a action or the material self.

Two known problems yet .
If the system has no particles emitted at any frame , A:M will crash (it is solved , but not in this version. I'm sorry)
Depending on Your filesystem , it can give a problem, if the datafile would be growth greater than the filesize limit for this filesystem , not all frames /particles are stored than (I'm working on a fix for this)

If you guys have not tried it the Hash guys have fix the mirror mode lag. Nice job.

This has also eliminated a lot of extra steps and work arounds. Since you can leave it on for most of your work.

RMB menu?? Whazzat?

right mouse button

Got the 15 CD last week, but have trouble getting it installed on my old computer still with Win ME.
(Just want to use them for day and night-rendering )

When I try to install AM 15 CDversion from the web it quotes, that it is already installed under a different Reg-number.
That is the old number of my versions from 11 up to 14 that still reside on this computer
I dont want to loose these old versions, in order to be able to open old files.

So does anybody know a solution to get 15 CD version with the new reg-number installed?

Oh right, I knew that.

Oh by the way, I just downloaded and installed the Mac subscription version and the info box says v15.03. Just checking, is that correct?

I just finally got a chance to try this new 'Particle Baking' and it works really well. It also is a fix to a bug with Hair and multipass, I think... In the past, whenever I rendered dynamic hair I would always leave multipass out of the process because it seemed to kill all the dynamic-ness of the hair. Now, If I bake the hair first, I can render in mulipass, COOL! Now I can try-out that 'jitter' feature.

AND--- I see there is a 'Bake' parameter in the Hair's property window, I'll play with it... but if you have a chance Stefan, can you fill us in on how THAT works?

"Bake Particle Systems" works global , means all particle systems in the chor are baked.
The "Particle baked" option is similar the same ,with the difference , that only this particle system is baked/unbaked (works only in the chor , use Show more drivers to access it).

I just took an evening and played around with HAIR in 15.0E and I gotta say WOW! The improvements are working GREAT! The overall fluidity of the workflow process is much smoother, the ability to BAKE the hair and then MULTIPASS render with JITTER and MUHAIR specularity---it's all coming together!

I noticed that I needed to reduce the choreography's 'reduction error tolerance' to zero before baking, that has an effect-right?

I'll try to post a movie with the results in the morning after it finishes rendering while I zzzzzzzz. GREAT WORK STEFAN!

HERE's that quick test I was working on... see the potential? It's enough to make Vern lose his continence! I'll upload the project as well if anyone wants to see the settings OR slap my Hair.mat onto one of their characters scalps...(simple: make a group of the scalp or area you want to grow hair from... drop this material onto it and turn on hair (shift8) put your character in a chor to let the preroll work...)

STEFAN- I see you added the 'Particles/Hair always off' toggle on the Tools/Options/Global menu... but I am not getting it to work the way we discussed. When I toggle it to ON it should turn Hair OFF by itself after a render finishes. The hair is still redrawing after a render finishes, which is very time-consuming... many of my renders are 'tests' and when I see it is not working the way I want it to I abort the render with a list of alterations to tweek in mind- while waiting for A:M to redraw the pre-roll and hair I often forget the changes I want to make... and the first thing I do anyways is turn hair OFF so I can work swiftly.

If you download this project (and flip the toggle)and start a render and abort it you will see what I mean... I can A:MReport it if you want. OTHER THAN THAT, as I said above, these new features are really KICKIN!!!

ANYONE who has been considering using dynamic hair on their characters should really upgrade to get your hands on V15.0E or better.


BY THE BY::: This animation was done 'at speed'...meaning I set A:M in'play' mode and grabbed the head roll-handle and moved it back and forth while A:M recorded my actions... TOO COOL! I plan to use this a LOT more in the future...what a GREAT program!

Very nice results Matt.



I've played with that with a measure of success too.
The primary usage thus far is in time out sequences of an action or dialogue as a means to gauge how long the sequence needed to be.

I need to experiment with ways to slow the playback down (assuming we can do such a thing). This would be handy for running through on a second or subsequent pass where realtime is not as important as accuracy in setting keyframes.

Regardless, I agree with your assessment. Realtime keyframing is one very cool feature!

Maybe we doing something different , but in my mind it works as expectet .
Have a look at this screencap movie
You can see , that hair is disabled after aborting and also finished rendering .

A tip for reducing the preroll time .
Close all windows, except the chorwindow.
Preroll is calculated seperatly for all open windows (even they are not visible,including modelling and material), where a model have a particle system assigned.
Thtaswhy you can see in the screencap , that preroll is calculated two times at the first Shift-8 .

I think I'm getting the hang of it...

I am really pleased to see that auto-off button for hair/particles. That gets rid of what would often be a very long and frustrating wait. Well done, Steffen!

I think I may be getting 2 of the new features all messed around in my head:

- The new 'Turn particles OFF' feature
- The new 'Use Camera settings'

I need to re-orient myself.