What's New in Cycles 4D

Cycles 4D Release March 2020

New features in this version are marked with this image in the text. In this build the following changes and improvements have been made:

Light Kits

• Three new pre-built light kits have been added to Cycles 4D

Lights Manager

• There is a new lights manager to make control of lighting easier

Node Editor

• Several new keyboard shortcuts added to speed workflow
• Objects such as lights, hair, polygon objects, selection tags and the X-Particles emitter can be dragged into the node editor and nodes created automatically
• Nodes can be added directly into a node tree by right-clicking an output port and selecting the node from the context menu; a link between the output port to the new node will be created automatically
• Non-compatible node ports can no longer be connected accidentally
• A new 'commander' style function added to the node editor
• Grouping selected nodes will now maintain any existing connections the grouped nodes had to nodes outside the group
• The node editor grid colours can be set in the Cycles 4D preferences
• There is a new option to remove all unconnected nodes with one click
• The icon bar in the node editor can be hidden to increase the editor window space and the icon bar functions can be accessed from the node editor menu
• Nodes can be dragged into a frame to add the node to the frame directly
• When dragging a connection out of the node editor area, the editor will pan automatically to follow the dragged connection

Nodes

The following new nodes have been added:

• New AOV (Arbitrary Output Variable) node added
• New Replicator and ID Packer nodes added to enable scattering of images over an object
• New colour Layer node to layer multiple colour inputs
• Clamp and Map Range converter nodes added
• White Noise texture node added

These nodes have received updates (a major upgrade in the case of the Voronoi texture node):

• Brick texture node additional feature
• Geometry node additional feature
• Musgrave nodeadditional features
• Noise nodeadditional features
• Object Info node additional feature
• Point Density node takes the name automatically from the colour source
• Vector Mapping node updated
• Vector Math and Math nodes have many more possible operations
• Voronoi texture node major upgrade

Real-Time Preview

• Pick Focus now works correctly in the RTP
• The render region in the RTP can now be drawn directly into the RTP window instead of having to resize it with drag handles
• If the render region is used, any existing render outside the render region is preserved to allow comparison with the render region (e.g. after some other setting is changed)
• New 'Stop on Render' option
• New Display Buffers menu

Environment Object

The cyEnvironment object has additional controls over HDR images without having to use nodes.

Attribute Tag

• The Attribute tag now supports user data which can then be used in an Attribute node

Light Tag

• The cyLight tag has new settings for the Area light and Sun light

Object Tag

• The cyObject tag has a new option for vector motion blur

Materials

• Cycles 4D materials now have their own menu entry in Cinema's material manager

Rendering

• The cyCamera tag can now use velocity maps from the OpenVDB mesher in X-Particles, so that motion blur can be generated from the OpenVDB mesh
• DOF and motion blur switches added to the cyCamera tag to allow these features to be enabled or disabled for individual cameras
• New exposure setting added to the cyCamera tag
• Support for Intel's Embree ray tracing
• Support for nVidia RTX and OptiX ray tracing (for graphics cards and drivers with these capabilities)

Viewport

• Bitmaps and shaders used in an Image Texture node are now visible in the viewport as in the Cinema 4D standard renderer