099 2018.40000 Experimental Release

2018.41570 is posted and we are excited to tell you all about our new Experimental release!

First though - the experimental builds warning…
It has been a while since we’ve posted an experimental build, so for those new to it here’s what you need to know.

Experimental builds are where new features and developments go first to allow early adopters a chance them out while they are still in testing. As such, they may contain bugs, be unstable, or change in non-backward compatible ways going forward.

  • Not recommended for delivering projects or mission critical scenarios where stability is important.
  • For stable production ready builds, please use 099 Official Builds.

So What’s New?
Now for the fun! There is so much new stuff, please refer to the Release Notes for a full list.
Here’s a preview of the highlights:
Unicode Support - all languages, everywhere.
Physics - Rigid-body simulations via Bullet Physics engine
FBX and USD Support - Amazing new COMP workflows for FBX and Pixar’s new USD format
Custom OPs API - Create your own built-in OPs with C++, have them show up in the OP Create Dialog. Now available in Non-Commercial (C++ OP as well) so everybody can join the party.
C++ DAT - All the OP families can have custom OPs.
Line MAT - New material for rendering lines, points, and vectors.
NDI - Audio NDI CHOP for audio support and a new NDI DAT with callbacks for a number of NDI events.
ZED Camera Support - A TOP, CHOP , and SOP to work with Stereolabs ZED cameras.
Parameter DAT - To get those string based parameters or just show parameters in a table format.

And more…
Support for multiple NICs on all network operators
Stop-Frame Movies and .gif support from the Movie File Out TOP
GPU Direct for Blackmagic cards, further support for AJA devices.
UV unwrapping mode in the Render TOP
Preprocess Directives for GLSL TOP and GLSL MAT
Displace Vertices option in the Phong MAT and PBR MAT when using a height map.
Per Sample option for Speed, Spring, and Slope CHOPs
CSV file support in CHOPs and DATs

That’s just the beginning, with much more info in the Release Notes.
Furthermore, additional features are still to come in this branch that we are very excited to announce soon.

Leave us a comment below to let us know what you like and are excited about!

Get Experimental

congrats on this release - can’t wait to try it out :slight_smile:

:astonished:

OMG, this will be the biggest game changer since python optimization! :laughing:

Can’t wait!

Excellent new features! Thank you!

PSA on installing multiple versions of TouchDesigner:

Thanks David, great tip.

Also for those looking for documentation on new features, please notice there is a new “Experimental” tab in the wiki for experimental builds. Use the tabs for the appropriate builds.

Known Issues can now be found at the bottom of the Release Notes.

the UV unwrap thing is great… but if you set the render node to the output resolution, there will always be like a 5px inset border between the unwrap and the render bounds… any way to get it to extend / fill the whole resolution of whatever your render output is?

I think what you are seeing is outside the bounds of the render. i.e, the rendered texture not fitting in the node viewer perfectly, so those are pixels outside the render. There is also a 5px grey border inside of of node viewers. If you make the camera background color red, do you see red pixels in the pixels you think are the border?
If you press the + button to make the viewer active, that border goes away.

Let me know if I’m misunderstanding

Displace Verticies, per sample speed, Line MAT, More robust control over network stuff and then the Process COMP especially will be awesome. Oh and Physics of course.

I’m weirdly intrigued by the Widget COMP, any hints as to what it’s purpose will be? Something to get really excited about or just regular excited?