This update extends the local (TCP) implementation of the MVR-xchange protocol to allow exchange of MVR files in a group of stations.
This release adds the ability of device editing while preserving DMX address, universe and/or the Fixture ID. Strobing is now really flashing and not blinking as before. When Cleaning project data, old BlenderDMX profiles are now being removed. MVR export/import has been improved.
Full Changelog: https://github.com/open-stage/blender-dmx/compare/v2.0.1...v2.0.2
Fixture channel-functions and channel-set processing now has an initial caching system to eliminate some of the the small penalty added by using the real-world physical properties for the fixture. Both the color picker and the pan/tilt fader handling has been improved to eliminate spontaneous value drifting on selecting/unselecting fixtures. BlenderDMX Addon provided GDTF profiles have been revised - several were updated and improved, some were removed (they remain in the GDTF Share should they be needed, along with many much better ones).
Full Changelog: https://github.com/open-stage/blender-dmx/compare/v2.0.0...v2.0.1
The data provided in the GDTF files includes not only 3D models, gobo images... or the necessary DMX control descriptions, but it additionally contains measurements of movement ranges, beam angles, rotation speeds, and other physical parameters. This release of BlenderDMX Addon adds initial support for utilizing these measurements on supported visualized device properties, transforming it from a "nice effects generator" into a lighting visualizer representing real lighting fixtures behavior.
Using the physical properties brings also further enhancement in visualization, for example when selecting colors on ColorWheels or gobos on GoboWheels now uses correct Wheel Slots. Strobing has been reworked to use Blender' "driver" feature, using the "frame" of the animation playback with correct strobing speed. Some behavior of the device can be conditionally affected by a value of multiple channels (for example Gobo Indexing and Gobo Rotation, Pan and PanRotation or Zoom ranges) and this is supported by utilizing the Mode dependency (Mode Masters) feature of GDTF.
Being able to represent lighting devices more correctly should enhance the usefulness of BlenderDMX Addon for the generation of high-quality renders, particularly with the Blender Cycles renderer and we hope that future developments in Blender's Eevee Next will improve the real-time visualization of many volumetric beams.
Speed up improvements should also be done in the Addon, as this initial support for utilization of the physical parameters in BlenderDMX Addon does introduce some rendering speed penalty, so future improvements and data caching will be useful.
After updating BlenderDMX and opening .blend files created in older versions, GDTF fixtures need to be re-edited in the Advanced mode: select fixture, go to Fixtures → Edit → Advanced edit, make sure a correct GDTF profile is selected, click OK.
Full Changelog: https://github.com/open-stage/blender-dmx/compare/v1.9.6...v2.0.0
There is a migration procedure to make sure older .blend files can be open, but you will have to use the Fixtures → Edit → Advanced Edit → OK, to have the fixtures' data to be re-generated.
Fixtures with multiple levels of sub geometries where control attributes of color mixing or dimmer are linked to a parent geometry can now be controlled even if the parent geometry is several layers up the chain.
With that, we also have improved getting correct default values for DMX channels (the pygdtf library still was using the GDTF 1.1 style of defaults).
Changelog:
Our last release added support for the non-local version of MVR-xchange. For that, not only was the MVR-xchange implemented into the BlenderDMX Addon, but a coordinating server had to be written from scratch. The plan was to eventually re-write the server, to clean up the code and make it more efficient and only during the re-write I have discovered that the implementation, based on the socket.io foundations is not the same as if done in pure websockets. So after the server has been re-written, this release (v1.9.1) of the BlenderDMX addon now contains a re-write of the non-local MVR-xchange to websockets. There is not difference on the user facing side, except that the address to the MVR-xchange server must start with a websockets scheme wss, rather then https.
For more details about the MVR-xchange Internet version and about the testing server, read the blog post for v1.9.0 on blenderdmx.eu or release notes on the Extensions site.
UPDATE: The testing server period had ended, the publicly available testing server has been removed.
Working on a lighting project and sharing data with other designers can be supercharged with the MVR-xchange protocol.
After implementing the local version of the MVR-xchange protocol, which is suitable for local networks, this release of the BlenderDMX Addon adds an initial implementation of the internet-wide MVR-xchange. It allows cooperation between parties in different locations. It requires a publicly accessible coordination server.
UPDATE: The testing server period had ended, the publicly available testing server has been removed.
UPDATE: The testing server period had ended, the publicly available testing server has been removed.
Many thanks to Lily Hopkins for the fix of SVG 2D symbol loading.
See the changelong for more information, or developers can look at git log for full details.
Numerous translations have been added. Many thanks to all contributors.
The pygdtf library has received several improvements.
Previously, only file receiving on MVR-xchange has been available. With the fixture export to MVR added this summer, the sending part of MVR-xchange has been implemented in this release. It has been tested and confirmed working between two Linux stations, but the implementation will need more work as file transfer between machines on Windows still does have some issues.
See the changelong for more information, or developers can look at git log for full details.