Brazil v2.1 final - build 1644 now available

[RichardAnnema]

Hello all,

Brazil v2.1 final is now available in the form of Build 1644.

This effectively merges much of the features from the v2.1 Pro-Beta into the Pro-Stable edition and begins the work on v2.2 Pro-Beta.
At this point, Pro-Stable and Pro-Beta are functionally the same, but will diverge once more as time goes on.

There have been many enhancements, bugfixes and overall changes, so please read through the lists below

New Features and Ehancements

• re-worked the displacement modifier code.
  • displacement now handles meshes much better, supporting shadows, reflections, refractions, SubSurface Scattering, 3d motion blur, etc.
• added support for 3ds Max 2010
• added multi-thread support for kd-tree building.
• kDTree accelerator is improved. It should be producing more efficient acceleration structures now; providing better render-time performance and smaller footprint.
• Increased CPU/core limit to 32 ( was 8 )
• Optimized highlight calculations in the chrome and glass materials, resulting in considerable speedups in scenes where shadow computation is expensive (point lights with area shadows for example). Advanced material blinn and phong highlights were also optimized but the speedup will be minimal there if the base shader evaluates illumination.
• Added a new Ray Count framebuffer channel to the pro-beta builds.
  • This is enabled in the Renderer"s System Options rollout, Miscellaneous group (where flat z-buffer, etc. are located). When enabled, this will allow viewing of the total number of ray casts per pixel in the VFB via the channel drop down list. The display is a false color image, ranging from black->blue->green->red based on increasing numbers of rays (note the scale is somewhat non-linear). It also adds the ray count per pixel to the right click VFB info probe. This provides a rapid diagnostic tool for which areas of the image could possible use optimizing.
• The Brazil2 Reflect/Refract map Ray Depth Overrides now allowing locally setting the color and/or map for the max ray depth handler.
• Utility material GI override shading is optimized now. The result should be identical to previous versions but should be slightly faster.
• VFB render time display now shows in milliseconds for sub 1-second renders, and the standard format now display 100ths of a second instead of rounding to 10ths.
• Added an "average rays per pixel" statistic to the render end stats in the console.
• Added support to the Fresnel texmap to allow it to work in the Scanline renderer.

Bug Fixes

• Many, many mesh displacement errors fixed.
• Fixed the Ray Depth auto-cutoff feature in the Ray Server. If the next ray or set of rays (in the case of glossy effects) will contribute less than the specified percentage to the image sample, then the ray casting effect will be skipped (max ray depth controls for the effect in question will be triggered). This auto-cutoff is only applied after primary (view) rays have reflected or refracted once. This fix results in considerable speedups in scenes with recursive ray tracing, especially when using things like fresnel falloff. Scenes containing lots of glass may be several times faster.
  • Files saved previous to this build will have their auto-cutoff set to 0.0 so they will render the same as they did prior to auto-cutoff being fixed..
  • Note: This change is likely to affect your existing scenes and you should not mix-and-match with existing output using different values.
• Bug 2130 - infinite bzplane, crop rendering, missing buckets
• Bug 2281 - Dark Buckets When Using a Filtering Map in Skylight with Transparent Shadows off and rendering multithreaded
• Bug 2074 - Render reagion leaves mis-colored edge
• Fixed a crash that would occur when closing Max if a b2 camera was in the scene.
• fixed a bug where SSS calculation was incorrect when the SSS ray hits a transparent object.
• fixed a bug which was causing the ray server to reinitialize on every frame even if no objects were moving.

Miscellaneous

• Changed the default Ray Server auto-cutoff sensitivity to 0.05
• Many improvements to the Analytic plane primitive displacements.
• significant overhaul of material parsing internals to support new upcoming features.\
• Removed Brazil Global Fog pending overhaul

Install
The installer has been reworked, leading to several changes in both operation and placement of files. The following information is mostly for (network) administrators.

• The installer will now, by default, install the main files and plugin files to the Plugins sub-folder of your 3ds Max folder. Use a Custom installation type to specify any other subfolder, such as "Brazil2" to mimic the old installer's behavior in case your setup depends on this.
• Older versions of Brazil 2 before this version will be removed forcefully. If you have placed any of your own files in the old location, you should back these up first.
• The installer will now uninstall previous installations before proceding with installation. Only files installed will be removed.
• The instaler now features only a single main page for every setting. This allows you to quickly change the settings when using a Custom installation type, as well as review current settings.
• Each setting is checked on-the-fly, identifying any issues with your settings immediately and visually.
• The installer will now set up the license manager at all time and allows you to test license manager settings to help ensure that a fresh installation won't have license manager connection issues.
• The installer no longer supports a command-line installation. Instead, an installation directives file can be used to perform unattended installations (the Dump Files remains for those using internal synching tools). A directives file is written out after standard installation as "install.ini". See this file for more information.
• Installer file name format has changed - if you use any synching tools that rely on a specific format, please take note.

[RichardAnnema]

A slightly updated version of Brazil v2 Build 1644 is now available from your Accounts and to the general public through the Brazil Rio downloads.

Changes include:

Installer

• The uninstaller left the script pack behind on some systems that reported full filename paths when queried for a relative path. This has been fixed. Old script packs will be deleted on installation to prevent any problems stemming from this error.

Script Pack

• targeted max camera -> b2 camera conversion lost position/rotation/scale animation due to a regression in a previous fix to restore the camera-to-target viewport line. This has been fixed.
• Sashimi segmented network rendering tool has gained a 32bit vs 64bit manager connection toggle for submitting to e.g. 32bit renderfarms from a 64bit version of 3ds Max.
• script loading will now check for Brazil plugins and only load Brazil-specific scripts if Brazil has been detected as available. In the past this situation could only exist due to manually moving files but a change in 3ds Max 2010 forced the script pack to a location outside of the Brazil plugin folders in order to load correctly, potentially leading to the situation where a manual uninstallation (or broken uninstallation as per the above Installer update) would miss the script pack, potentially causing issues when working with 3ds Max.

This update also includes the earlier v2.45.4 script pack update.

This update does not affect the plugin functionality, therefore the Build number remains 1644.
The updated version can be identified through the installer executable name ending in "_su1", and through the 3ds Max Listener. The SplutterFish Scripting Core version should be reported as v2.45.5 .