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2020.40290

First Experimental Build in 2020.40000 series. New camera controls, new drag-and-drop system, NotchLC encoding, wrnchAI CHOP, FreeD CHOP, JSON DAT, scalable GPU font rendering, and dozens of other new features.
Release Notes 
Note that experimental builds include new features still in development and ideas being tested, features are subject to change. For the stability and reliability required for performances and project deliveries, we recommend using the production ready Official Builds.
Check Known Issues and Backward Compatibility warnings below.
Jul 29, 2020
New Features
Major Feature Additions
  • 3D Viewer Camera Controls overhauled for pane Geometry Viewers and Object COMP and SOP node viewers.
    • 4 Camera Navigation Modes selectable from the right-click menu in the viewer.
    • For the first 3 modes the camera dolly now moves towards the cursor position rather then the center of the screen. Each of these modes differ in the the way they set a pivot to tumble around.
    • The last mode, Camera Mode, moves and pivots from the perspective of the camera and is more similar to the movement possible using a real-world camera (ie pan, tilt, dolly, track, crane).
    • Scroll wheel now also works for dolly in addition to the previous MMB-drag.
    • New outline shader for selected geometry, no longer colors the entire object solid green or yellow.
    • 3D Spacemouse supported in all 3D viewers https://www.3dconnexion.com/ (Windows only, macOS work in progress)
  • Drag-and-Drop overhaul - To create custom drag/drop systems for your controlpanels and UIs.
    • Use Python Drag/Drop Callbacks with all Panel Components for 'When Dragging This' or 'On Dropping Into' events.
    • When Dragging This callbacks include onDragStartGetItems(comp)  list of item dicts and onDragEnd(comp, accepted, dropResults)
    • On Dropping Into callbacks include onHoverStartGetAccept(comp, dragItems)  True if drag items are acceptable, onHoverEnd(comp, dragItems), and onDropGetResults(comp, dragItems)  Dict of results
    • For usage details and examples see this new documentation Experimental:Drag-and-Drop
New Operators
  • wrnchAI CHOP - New CHOP which supports wrnchAI skeleton tracking for any camera or video stream. (Windows only and required Nvidia GPU)
  • FreeD CHOP - New CHOP that creates channels from a stream of FreeD camera tracking data.
  • JSON DAT - New DAT for parsing JSON and filtering outputs, which eliminates having to code scripts to parse and manipulate JSON, and keeps the data flow procedural.
Other Noteworthy New Features
New Python

New Palette

  • Tools > camera is a new component like Palette:arcBallCamera but using the new camera control scheme introduced in TouchDesigner's built-in 3D geometry viewers.
Bug Fixes and Improvements
  • Text TOP, Text SOP - Fonts are now enumerated properly and return more fonts, giving access to the multiple font weights/styles embedded into one font file.
  • Circle SOP - Normals for the ZX orientation now point along the positive Y axis for consistency with other orientations and SOPs. See BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY notes below.
  • List COMP - Fixed crash ending a drag action with the List COMP.
  • Execute DAT - Fixed crashes when Execute DATs cause self deletion.
  • Line MAT - Fixed some viewport picking not working well with Line MAT rendered geometry.
  • Each textport now uses its own local variables, which are also separate from parameter expression space.
  • Added 'Node Language' column in List mode to more easily weed out Tscript nodes.
  • Fixed dragging and dropping of CHOP channels onto parameters that were already exported onto.
  • Fixed erratic layout dealing with uninitialized scroll bar areas.
  • Updated Operator Snippets examples (Version 900 Join CHOP and JSON DAT)
Backward Compatibility
  • BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY WARNING Circle SOP - Normals for the ZX orientation now point along the positive Y axis for consistency with other orientations and SOPs.
Known Issues
  • Font Size on Windows and Font Type on macOS are not the standard defaults in DAT viewers, Textport, parameter dialogs and other parts of the UI. Using stand-ins for now while waiting for a 3rd party library fix.
  • A short pause may occur when adding the first DAT to your project, this is font rendering initialization and we are working on a solution.
  • USD COMP not working.
  • ZED camera operators disabled, awaiting updates to CUDA.