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The Productivity Release:

more: what's new?
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What's new in 3.6 ?


Summary:
  • Dual monitor support (!)
  • improved animation brush keyframer with motion tracking (!) , keyboard shortcuts, speed enhancements, and other enhancements
  • awesome new Art filters
  • Powerful Browser enhancements - now you can really browse!
  • MRUD list (Most Recently Used Documents)
  • Memory Management during Animation Creation
  • updated Lua scripts!


:: To probe further...



Dual-Monitors (aka dual-screens)

  • There's now improved support for dual monitor systems. Dual-screens are often used by professionals animators.
Graphics cards have become so cheap and in many cases support two VGA or DVI outputs (or a mix of VGA and DVI), allowing a second monitor to be used for additional pixel real-estate. You could for example have a number  of user interface windows on one screen and the working artwork in front of you on the other. Or, run other apps on one screen while editing textures and background images in Dogwaffle on the other.



New Artistic Filters

  • Added "Graphics pen" plugin to the artistic filters menu.
  • Added "Oilify" filter to artistic filters menu.
new art filters: oilify and GraphicPenlearn more >       


         






the Browser: all new and improved!

  • The browser now saves its last used folder.
  • You can now manually enter a wildcard pattern.
  • There's now a detail mode with sorting of name/date/size (and it still shows a small icon with it!
  • There's now rename and delete functions. Use with care!
  • There's now an option to open another browser instance.
  • Drag and Drop is now implemented.  You can drop files to any folder in the explorer, or drop them to PD for opening.
  • Speed and interactivity is improved.
  • There's now a favorites list.
  • you can resize the explorer part of the browser panel so as to make more room for deeply nested folders and their subfolders.




the list mode shows a small
thumbnail along with the
size and date

The Improved Brush Keyframer!



and now for something
completely different...

do you like to
'mo' ?

roll with the mo
then
 
Roll with the Mo!
(speakers!)

and now back to
motion tracking
 See how
the
animations
below were
done:
click here

tinitial still image:


timeline animation:
scale and rotate


motion tracked and
after rendering of brush
along the path:

additional rendering of different brush on same path:



  • Motion tracking: You can now automatically track a point to make a motion path. Then you can use that to render a brush (including animated brushes i.e. a complete movie or a 3D rendering for instance) along that path so as to match a position in the moving image's space. During the motion tracking, PDPro uses a small block and a larger search area. The small block contains the pixels it's looking for. The larger search area should contain the pixels of the small block in the next frame as the movie advances.  If the motion is too fast and the block has moved out of sight you may loose track and need to increase the search area's dimensions. Tracking can of course also be lost if there are significant changes in the pixel/color/contract levels inside the small block. However, while this method may not work for all scenarios (such as when the tracked block is moving out of sight or isn't in sight at the start of the clip), there are a great many cases where it wioll help in automating the tracking of a moving item on which you'd like to place a brush containing a different image. For example, the large bloom of a nova/light fx or lensflare to add such visual fx over a crisp and simple bright light like the sun or headlight of an approaching bullet train. Of course, you can also manually keyframe the motion path - that's what the Brush Keyframer is there fore in the first place.

  • There are now keyboard shortcuts for setting and deleting keyframes.

  • The arrow keys can be used to scrub (like in the main animation toolbar)
  • You can now scrub through the animation with the right mouse button so you don't have to move the mouse down to the scrollbar. This dramatically speeds up an animation when you need to make many keyframes: the combination of this with the keyboard shortcuts should make it much faster and easier to set a number of keyframes.

  • A decorative horizontal bar with a resize handle on its right side has been added to the bottom of the Brush Keyframer window, to make it clearer that the window can be resized, for example to approximate the aspect ratio of the original animation or to make it larger for fine positioning controls. Even if you're working on a small video clip, you'll be able to preview and keyframe the path at large size! (and of course also the other way around - if you work on HD material, using a 1024x768 or other low-res configuration)

  • You can now use blending modes: Opaque, Additive, Multiplicative, Subtractive, XOR, Divide,...etc This is great for visual fx like dark smoke trails, bright fiery lights of  burning meteors and explosions and much more. Can also be important when you're rendering a pointing arrow cursor that moves over a background animation of changing brightness and color and you don't wnat to loose sight of it. (use XOR in that case)




track a point with the motion tracker of the brush keyframer




motion tracking through a video clip to add a custom brush along the path of an object


:: Tutorials...


the brush keyframer tutorial (from version 2.1)
the first implementation of the brush keyframer was with v2.1














resize handle in lower right corner
render modes in the brush keyframer

New LUA scripts
LUA
scripts



    
     We've collected a whole bunch of them. They're free to use also if you don't have version 3, since DogLua scripting is available for all versions of Dogwaffle including the free version 1.2.

     Of particular interest is the new Multicolor script, that performs similar fucntions to the new color correction feature in 3.6, but has a color swatch based interface, different options, and the ability to apply to an entire animation.







Also: Miscellaneous improvements
most recently used documents - MRUDs
MRUD's:
a dynamic  list of Recent Documents



test layers - the plugin for developers
a tool for developers:
the TestLayers plugin



  • Fixed a typo on the categorized list of keyboard shortcuts.
     (Keyboard_Catagorized.rtf)animation toolbar in filmstrip mode: keyboard shortcuts in the frame editing menu5
  • Animation: Added keyboard shortcuts for copy/paste frames.


  • Animation>Create: when creating an animation, PD Pro will show you much memory it will need and how much free Ram your system has available. If you want to avoid 'going virtual' by swapping through virtual memory (swap file) on your disk (which is much slower than if it fits all in RAM), then you might want to use memory tweaking tools such as RAMIdle from TweakNow.com or other RAM management tools like rambooster (for Windows 98) or similar tools that can free up memory, or simply buy more RAM if you can. [example]
  • Added plugin support for layers (!). If you use layers, you can make use of filters - they work on the current layer.

  • Added a TestLayers plugin for developers to see how the system works.



cleaning up
the automatic blue removal tool


advanced tab of color adjustments for midtones and shadows
advanced options in the
'Adjust Color' filter for
basic color
correction.









Download and Installation



Users of PD Pro 3.x (3.0 through 3.5): If you have a legitimately obtained copy (purchased from an authorized reseller or us directly) or an NFR copy you received as a reviewer or for other consideration from us, you are invited to download and install this free updater.

> to the download :  to the patches page!





If you don't have PD Pro 3.5
 buy it now and get the
free music player for
mod/med files:  
ModDog

mod player for dogwaffle
powered by MedSoundStudio