This is issue #176 of the Dogwaffler of the Moment (DOTM), our sporadic newsletter about Project Dogwaffle.
March/April 2021 ---
Easter'21
This edition and other issues of the newsletter can be found here with more content:
https://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/newsletter
What's new?
Be safe, be healthy, be creative!
We have build 110 now out and shipping. If you're already using Howler 14 (aka 2021), you will in coming days receive email notification with new download links from BMTmicro's server or from Dan Ritchie's dropbox delivery system.
If you use the Steam edition, give us a few weeks to release it there too.)
What's New since last release 85? Check the Captain's Log, here: https://www.thebest3d.com/2021/#new
Here are a few new features SINCE BUILD 85, bug fixes and improvements:
- Build 109 pulled due to a critical bug found. Fixed bug in histogram calculation that would lead to a crash in portrait oriented images. Fixed in build 110
- the threshold tool now takes an initial guess at the threshold level by using the image mean, ie, averaging all the pixel levels, which usually gives a pleasing binary image result
- The Color/Value panel now use some more modern Histogram generation code
- Since histogram outliers are handled automatically now, the ability to select the histogram scale manually is now removed
- The panel is also organized vertically instead of horizontally
- The Color/Levels panel now uses some more modern Histogram generation code
- Initial api support for hamming distance used in image hashing
- The brush stamp tool really needs the natural media brush tool selected in order to function properly, so selecting the stamp tool now also selects the natural media brush tool on the tool panel
- The brush stamp tool now supports the 4 corner perspective mode - learn about it here: https://youtu.be/sR3iwfnnQ38
- There's a small change on the brush options fx tab. Shadow size can now go up to 64, and there's a shadow color option
- fixed incorrect reporting of unknown file extension when loading an image if file path contained periods/full stop
- Overhauled the Noise/Bilateral filter
- Bilateral filter is an edge preserving noise removal and cartoonizing filter
- Now on GPU
- Simplification of formerly counter intuitive controls
- Reworked the controls on the Noise/Bilateral filter to be more intuitive...
- Fixed "Map to current gradient" filter when applied to animation so it now works properly.
- Opening the brush timeline crashed if no brush of any kind was defined.
- The foreground pen on the histogram on the sidebar is now a little more muted.
- Added a Luminance channel option to CLAHE (contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization) filter. See it here: https://youtu.be/dgXUoQR6vb4
- Added CLAHE (contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization) filter - learn about here: https://youtu.be/9uCBFa_CCXw
- New Sharpen/High Pass Sharpen filter
- Fixed memory overflow in Convolve/Highpass filter
- uch faster Highpass filter
- Histogram Equalize now has a level parameter, by popular request
- Added a new Histogram Equalization filter
- Red yellow and blue ranges panel had extreamly slow screen refresh, fixed.
- some tweaks on the red yellow and blue wheel and range panels
- further internal maintainance to remove drfilter.dll
- There may be some performance deltas, but mostly on obscure functions
- Retired some assembler code and continued to migrate functions from the depracated drfilter.dll
- Found a nice last-minute optimize for the new median filter, which may now be as much as 60% faster than the last build, in theory.
- Fixed a memory corruption in Sharpen/Art Sharpen filter
- Fixed a memory curruption in Artistic/Oilify (symmetrical nearest neighbor)
- Reimplemented Filter/Convolve/Minimum and Maximum filters.
- Settled on a sliding window histotram median method on the CPU instead of the more brute force GPU approach.
- Todays build has a brand new Filters/Convolve/Adjustable Median... filter
- Stylize/Make Normal Map has been overhaulded to allow input smoothing. The result is you can extract more, or less, relief at the cost of some detail.
- Displace by swap has been overhauled again to allow input smoothing and bilinear interpolation of the input channel for much better quality results for certain types of images.
- Jitter displace now has a border handling parameter and runs faster.
- Normal displace has a border handling parameter and runs faster.
- fixed broken file loading if temp folder path had any spaces in it.
- Pool displace now has border handling dropdown with clamp, tile, and mirror options.
- The Bokeh Blur filter now has a parameter to rotate the iris.
- fixed a slight darkening around the edges in the bokeh filter.
- Color twirl displacement filter is quite a bit faster
- Working toward a long term goal of removing/retiring drfilter.dll (in favor of drfilter2.dd) due to drfilter.dll not compiling in modern compilers like every other dll we maintain. Probably due to inline assembler, and also because the C modulus (%) operator changed in how it handles negative numbers, and we need to handle this on a per function basis.
- May result in better performance due to newer compiler technology, for the functions in question, and that old compiler didn't support threading or auto-vectorizing.
- Having an internal discussion on the baseline hardware requirements for future versions.
- It is maybe time to move to sse4 (there's a nice dot_product intrinsic, and also sse blend)
- Time to require a modern GPU. Removing CPU fallbacks would free up a lot of resources, and I am no longer developing fallbacks. I am developing direct to GPU when it makes sense to do so.
- Windows 10 only. Windows 10 has a nice compression facility. Plus, I can't really support Windows 7 or 8 anymore, practically.
- 1080p as the very minimum display size
- Reimplemented a convolution function used a lot internally. It effects convolve/gray and color emboss, edge detect, sharpen, simple blur, unsharp mask, deinterlace, reduce flicker, force fields, and the timeline, among other things. Fixes some edge conditions with the function and improves threading.
- Vignette blur did not correctly support alpha channel
- Retired some old MMX code from the color adjustment filter
- File loading was exhibiting some
problems where you could load 2-3 images, and then program
would stop allowing files to load. We are looking into
this, and the changes in this build need further
examination.
https://www.thebest3d.com/2021/#news
We have a new build and release also for PD Artist. If you already own Artist '21, you will in coming days receive a notification by email.
The new build is 110.
To see what's new, refer to the info on PD Howler. If anything relates to animation, ignore that, since PD Artist doesn't do animations (with the exception of animated custom brushes).
https://www.thebest3d.com/2021/#new
Read the Captain's Log to follow the new builds as they come out.
Interested in more details? Learn more here:
https://www.thebest3d.com/pda
As always, if you already own a prior version of PD Artist or PD Howler, you can upgrade to the latest for 50% off. Contact us if you need your discount code resent to you.
If you're new to Project Dogwaffle, use this discount code for 30% off through April 15; Easter21
Order here: https://www.thebest3d.com/sales
The code can be used for PD Howler 2021 (v14) as well as for PD Artist 2021 (v14)
LEARN MORE HERE:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1498990/PD_Howler_21/
