Latest G2 version is 1.75

Bug Fixes

  • A NewTek bug fix led to some massive slowdowns in render speed when using transparency and area Lights. Fixed by removing our workaround to the LightWave bug.
  • Fixed a problem with blurry reflections and transparency.

G2 version 1.71

New Features

  • G2 now follows Exclude Radiosity and Exclude Caustics toggles.
  • Now supports the beta Sentinel 64 bit dongle driver for Windows x64.

Bug Fixes

  • SSS area light intensity was not being respected when shown in FPrime. Fixed.
  • Double sided surfaces sometimes had black artifacts when shown in FPrime. Fixed.
  • Very rarely, some surfaces (especially ones using a refraction map) would not show properly in FPrime until you first did an F9 render first. [Found by Panikos!] Fixed.

Known LightWave Issues

  • LightWave can crash if an image is edited or changed while a plugin (like G2) is in the middle of querying it.
  • LightWave's shadow alpha buffer does not "see" G2 surfaces.

Known G2 Bugs

  • Loading an Art Mode image sometimes doesn't succeed (the image shows up blank). Trying again (or using LW's Image Editor to load) works.
  • Pasting surfaces in LightWave's Surface Editor or applying a preset to a surface, while a G2 preview window is open and in the middle of refreshing, can sometimes (luckily rarely) crash LightWave.
  • G2's own cut/paste buttons don't immediately force the G2 preview to refresh.
  • Mac-only, clicking on a G2 window from Finder does not activate G2's window. You must click LW's window first, then G2's windows are pickable. [Annoying!]

G2 version 1.70

New Features

  • FPrime connection.

G2 version 1.5

New Features

  • The G2 preview now spends extra time working on areas that are near the mouse cursor. This lets you point at important regions to get a clear view of that area faster. Just move the cursor to a region... there's no need to click or wiggle the mouse. This effect is useful when the preview is ultra-large, big enough that it takes a noticable time to update.
  • Light Groups are used so extensively at studios, sometimes even 8 were not enough. The master panel now allows 12 light groups. Note that the preview still only has special group switches for the first 8 groups (mostly because there's not enough room for the extra buttons when the preview is shrunk to minimum size.)
  • The per-surface light group boosts now support 12 groups. They are now arranged in pages for easier reading, and also print the light group names (not just numbers.)
  • The "Info" window showing the detailed breakdown of a pixel's colors now allows you to cycle through lights and light groups in pages. Previously you were stuck seeing only the first few lights, with no way to view later ones. You can also now resize the window wider to see longer light names if you need to.
  • LW's export of diffuse, luminous, specular, transparency, mirror and translucency attribute now work. (Using LW's Render Buffer Export tool)
  • Item picker buttons now show more information when multiple items (or items with very long names) are used.
  • Mac G2 panels now let you "F9" to start a new LightWave render. Previously you had to click on the main Layout window first, which was minor but consistently annoying. The PC has always allowed this.
  • Applied several speedups to general rendering, which speed up most scenes by 3-4%.
  • There's now a copy/paste button pair on the Master panel light group page. This lets you easily copy a set of objects to use with a different light group.
  • The light group "Label" string is renamed "Notes" to help show that it's an informal place for making your own names or notes. It's not used by G2. The "Label" name sounds a little too much like an important command.
  • There's now a "Set" button for master panel object groups, just like light groups. This lets you pick one or more items in Layout or the Scene Editor and make them into a G2 group without having to scroll through the item picker.
  • The object and light picker panels are now better sized. The previous ones were big to hold the possibility of bones, but those are uneeded for G2's object and lights. The listbox showing item names is wider, to help show very long names (especially with layer objects).

Bug Fixes

  • Renaming a light or object will now update the G2 interface with the new name immediately.
  • Deleting a light or object doesn't leave "ghost" items picked in G2 interfaces any longer.
  • Load-from-scene support is now much more robust.
  • Macintosh now has "proper" minisliders that act like the PC and don't stop at the edge of the screen.
  • In Screamernet rendering, Film Grain didn't work when used in "relative" mode. Our bug, fixed. Thanks to Jesus Pinal's report.
  • Sometimes, in scenes with high ray recursion, and with surfaces that had BOTH transparency and reflection, G2 scenes were painfully slow, sometimes 5 or even 10 times slower than LightWave. Most of this slowdown was our bug, now fixed.
  • A rare but possible corruption and even crash when using multithreading with G2 on the Mac (only) was found and fixed. Our bug, fixed.
  • Fixed a bug where removing G2 from a surface with an open preview showing many slow area lights might crash LightWave. Our bug, fixed.
  • When the entire scene was very small (all objects close together, and the "world" is about a centimeter or less across), transparency and reflection rendered by G2 could be slightly wrong, as if they had too much refraction. This was our bug, now fixed.
  • Light Group intensity boosts didn't apply themselves to SSS lighting effects. Fixed.
  • The Boost "Reset" button would reset per-surface light group boosts, even though those were on a different page of controls. Fixed.

Isolated LightWave bugs and ( some ) workarounds

  • On dual CPU machines, if a G2 preview was open, sometimes changing LightWave's light exclusions would cause LW's own light and object names to become corrupted. This is a LightWave bug we've reported. We've changed our code to use an alternative computation to eliminate the problem in practice.
  • PC G2 can now always reliably read scenes saved from Mac G2. This is from a LightWave bug that has been documented and reported to Newtek. We also applied a workaround to G2 itself so it now works.
  • Diagnosed a LightWave bug which caused inaccurate spotlight shadows in the G2 preview but not the render. Analyzed and sent a detailed bug report to Newtek.
  • Item picker buttons now update properly when Clear All Objects is used.(A LightWave bug, but we found a workaround.)
  • Diagnosed a LightWave bug which causes bad rendering when Matte Objects are used. Sent a bug report to Newtek.
  • Diagnosed a LightWave bug which caused speckles in SSS rendering.
    Sent a detailed bug report to Newtek.
  • Adaptive antialiasing can cause LightWave to skip pixels in processing other pixel filters, causing artifacts in pixel filters even when those filters inform LightWave not to. G2 has a new workaround to force LightWave to do the Right Thing.
  • Diagnosed a LightWave bug which caused a crash with shadowmap transparency mode. Sent a detailed bug report to Newtek

G2 version 1.0 GI

New Features

  • Renders and previews Sasquatch shadows! Requires Sasquatch 1.5-GI.
  • Tablet support for minisliders.
  • Support for LW 6.5 Modeler import and export. (LW 7 always worked).

Bug Fixes

  • All 4 reflection modes (environment, image map, with and without tracing) now render and preview properly.
  • Using more than 64 lights could cause weird colored shadows. Reported by Kuboi-san. Fixed!
  • Non-refractive transparency now shows the backdrop image, just like LW. Reported by James Jones. Fixed!
  • Linear falloff lights always acted like point lights. Reported by Erik Clemens. Fixed!
  • Transparency boosting to 0% was funky for previews only. Reported first by Jeremy Smedley. Fixed!
  • Deleting a light now removes it from the Info window's list, too.
  • The "Add/remove to objects" generic tools use LW 7's abilities. G2 now prints an error message in LW 6.
  • Volumetric Lights and Hypervoxels could cause a spurious "You don't need multiple G2 pixel panels" warning when loading the scene. Fixed.
  • Refraction now only happens when the Trace Refraction button is turned on..
  • Area lights now follow cast/receive/self-shadow options, if you turn on the "Area Lights Follow Flags" option in the Master G2 panel. [Off by default because it uses a slower rendering method.]
  • Hue shift (and bright/saturation boost) no longer affect the color of reflected or transmitted light unless you select.
  • Previews don't support adaptive sampling with motion blur or field rendering, this now gives a warning.
  • New feature, negative edge values make the edge effects appear flipped.
  • F10 sequence rendering wasn't freeing preview frames. Reported by Olly Reid. Fixed.
  • Modeler Hub updates no longer cause crashes when the G2 preview is open. Reported by Darren Thompson.
  • A spotlight with cone and edge width of 0 could crash G2. Fixed.