Gaffer 1.5.0.0 alpha 1

Note : Gaffer 1.5 marks the end of provision of GCC 9 builds on Linux. Use Gaffer 1.4 if you require GCC 9 builds.

Features

• MergeMeshes, MergePoints, MergeCurves : Added nodes for merging various primitive types.

Improvements

• CameraTweaks : Added ignoreMissing plug to align behaviour with the other Tweaks nodes.
• AttributeTweaks : The {source} substitution for linkedLights now expands to defaultLights if the attribute doesn't exist yet. This makes tweaks such as ({source}) - unwantedLights reliable even if no light links have been authored yet.
• ImageReader : Non-standard "r", "g", "b" and "a" channel names are now automatically renamed to "R", "G", "B" and "A" on loading. As with other heuristics, this can be disabled by setting channelInterpretation to "EXR Specification".
• Metadata : Metadata registered to a node or plug targeting a descendant plug will now override metadata registered locally to the target.
• OptionTweaks, ContextVariableTweaks : Added Remove mode.
• Premultiply, Unpremultiply :
  • Added ignoreMissingAlpha plug.
  • Optimised the pass-through of the alpha channel.
• GraphGadget :
  • Improved highlighting of active nodes, with more accurate tracking of Loop node iterations.
  • Annotation {plug} substitutions are now evaluated in a context determined relative to the focus node.
  • The strike-through for disabled nodes is now evaluated in a context determined relative to the focus node.
  • Custom dot labels are now evaluated in a context determined relative to the focus node.
• LightEditor :
  • Improved formatting of column headers containing whitespace.
  • The "Double-click to toggle" tooltip is no longer displayed while hovering over non-editable cells, and a "Double-click to edit" tooltip is now displayed while hovering over other non-toggleable but editable cells.
• Spreadsheet : Added yellow underlining to the currently active row.
• PlugLayout : Summaries and activators are now evaluated in a context determined relative to the focus node.
• Editor : The node graph is now evaluated in a context determined relative to the focus node.
• LightEditor, RenderPassEditor : The "Disable Edit" right-click menu item and D shortcut now act as a toggle, where edits disabled in the current session via these actions can be reenabled with D or by selecting "Reenable Edit" from the right-click menu.
• EditScope : Setting a Viewer or Editor's target edit scope to "None" will now prevent edits from being made within any upstream edit scope. To make edits in an edit scope, it must be set as the target.
• FreezeTransform :
  • Improved performance for large meshes by using multithreading.
  • Improved UI responsiveness by supporting cancellation of long computes.

Fixes

• Editor : Fixed Internal C++ object already deleted errors when some editors were destroyed.
• UVInspector : Fixed Unable to find ScriptNode for UVView warnings.
• Scene Editors : Fixed update when ScenePlugs are added to or removed from the node being viewed.
• PrimitiveInspector : Fixed failure to update when the location being viewed ceases to exist, or is recreated.
• Shuffle, ShuffleAttributes, ShufflePrimitiveVariables : Fixed some special cases where shuffling a source to itself would fail to have the expected effect.
• GraphEditor :
  • Fixed dimming of labels for BoxIn and BoxOut nodes.
  • Fixed update of custom context-sensitive labels on Dot nodes.
• GafferCortexUI : Removed usage of legacy PlugValueWidget API.
• Dispatcher : Fixed crashes caused by a dispatcher's SetupPlugsFn attempting to access the TaskNode it was being called for. Dispatchers may now introspect the TaskNode and add different plugs based on type (#915).
• ArrayPlug :
  • Fixed error when resize() removed plugs with input connections.
  • Fixed error when resize() was used on an output plug.
• CreateViews : Fixed redundant serialisation of internal connections.
• LightEditor, RenderPassEditor : Removed ambiguous The selected cells cannot be edited in the current Edit Scope message when attempting to edit non-editable columns, such as the Name column.
• SetEditor : Fixed right-click to ensure the item under the cursor is selected before the menu is shown.
• PrimitiveInspector :
  • Fixed bug which prevented cancellation of long-running computes, making the UI unresponsive until they completed.
  • Fixed thread-safety bug.
• HierarchyView, SetEditor : Fixed thread-safety bugs.
• FreezeTransform : Constant primitive variables with point/vector interpretations are now also transformed.
• usdview : Added Windows support (#5599).
• ContextTracker : Removed unnecessary reference increment/decrement from isTracked(), context() and isEnabled().
• Menu : Fixed bug causing a menu item's tooltip to not hide when moving the cursor to another menu item without a tooltip.
• Python : Fixed startup failures caused by conflicting Python modules in the user site-packages directory.

API

• Editor :
  • Added settings() method, which returns a node hosting plugs specifying settings for the editor.
  • Added _updateFromSettings() method, which is called when a subclass should update to reflect changes to the settings.
• SceneEditor : Added new base class to simplify the creation of scene-specific editors.
• PlugValueWidget :
  • A DeprecationWarning is now emitted for any subclasses still implementing the legacy _updateFromPlug() or _updateFromPlugs() methods. Implement _updateFromValues(), _updateFromMetadata() and _updateFromEditable() instead.
  • A DeprecationWarning is now emitted by _plugConnections(). Use _blockedUpdateFromValues() instead.
  • Added scriptNode() convenience method.
• NodeGadget, ConnectionGadget : Added updateFromContextTracker() virtual methods.
• Path : Added inspectionContext() virtual method.
• PathColumn :
  • Added contextMenuSignal(), allowing the creation of custom context menus.
  • Added instanceCreatedSignal(), providing an opportunity to connect to the signals on any column, no matter how it is created.
  • Added keyPressSignal() and keyReleaseSignal(), allowing a PathColumn to handle key events.
• ArrayPlug :
  • It is now legal to construct an ArrayPlug with a minimum size of 0. Previously the minimum size was 1.
  • Added elementPrototype() method.
• View : Added scriptNode() method.
• VisibleSet : Added Python constructor with keyword arguments for expansions, inclusions and exclusions.
• ScriptNodeAlgo : Added new namespace with functions for managing shared UI state for GafferSceneUI.
• ContextAlgo : Deprecated. Use ScriptNodeAlgo instead.
• ContextTracker : Added support for plugs in Views and Editor.Settings nodes, which should use the tracked context for the node being viewed.

Breaking Changes

• CameraTweaks : Replace mode now errors if the input parameter does not exist. Use Create mode or the new ignoreMissing plug instead.
• TweakPlug : Remove deprecated MissingMode::IgnoreOrReplace.
• AttributeTweaks : Replace mode no longer errors if the linkedLights attribute doesn't exist.
• ImageReader : Changed handling of lower-cased "r", "g", "b" and "a" channels.
• Metadata : Path based registrations to a Node or Plug now override equivalent registrations on its descendants.
• TweakPlugValueWidget : Removed support for tweakPlugValueWidget:allowCreate and tweakPlugValueWidget:allowRemove metadata.
• Editor : Removed arguments from Settings constructor.
• Unpremultiply : Removed image:channelName from the context used to evaluate the alphaChannel plug.
• Shuffle, ShuffleAttributes, ShufflePrimitiveVariables : Changed behaviour when shuffling a source to itself.
• Editor, NodeToolbar, PlugLayout, PlugValueWidget :
  • Removed setContext() methods.
  • Deprecated getContext() methods. Use context() instead.
• Loop : Removed nextIterationContext() method.
• NodeGadget, ConnectionGadget : Removed activeForFocusNode() virtual methods. Override updateFromContextTracker() instead.
• ArrayPlug :
  • Renamed element constructor argument to elementPrototype.
  • Deprecated the passing of element = nullptr to the constructor.
• View :
  • Changed constructor arguments for View and all subclasses. A ScriptNode must now be passed.
  • Changed ViewCreator signature.
  • Removed contextChanged() and contextChangedConnection() methods.
  • Removed setContext() and getContext() methods. Use context() instead of getContext().
  • The contextChangedSignal() is now emitted for all changes to the context, whereas previously it was only emitted by setContext(). This simplifies context handling in Tools, which no longer need to connect to Context::changedSignal() as well.
• LightTool : Removed selection() and selectionChangedSignal().
• ArnoldRender, CyclesRender, DelightRender, OpenGLRender : Removed. Use the generic Render node instead.
• Render : Removed protected constructor for creating renderer-specific derived classes.
• Signal : The connect() and connectFront() methods now default to scoped = False. If a scoped connection is required, pass scoped = True.
• FreezeTransform : Constant primitive variables with point/vector interpretations are now also transformed (this is more correct, but it is a change in behaviour).
• ImageGadget : Remove non-const variant of getContext().
• LazyMethod : deferUntilPlaybackStops now requires that the Widget has a scriptNode() method rather than a context() method.
• Python : Gaffer now disables the user site-packages directory by setting PYTHONNOUSERSITE=1. To revert to the previous behaviour, set PYTHONNOUSERSITE=0 before launching Gaffer.

Build

• Cycles :
  • Updated to version 4.2.0.
  • Disabled CUDA binary generati...

Gaffer 1.4.13.0

Improvements

• NodeEditor, NameWidget : Invalid characters are automatically converted to _ when renaming a node or plug, and : is no longer treated as invalid.

Fixes

• SceneReader :
  • Fixed loading of facevarying normals skinned with UsdSkel.
  • Stopped loading USD lightLinks and shadowLinks collections as sets.
  • USD asset paths on Windows now use / as the path separator, instead of \. Set IECOREUSD_FORCE_ASSET_PATH_FORWARD_SLASH=0 to keep the previous behaviour.
• SceneWriter : Fixed crash when writing to a USD file that is already open elsewhere.
• Constraint : The target browser now shows locations from the targetScene if it has an input connection. Before it always showed locations from the main input.
• ImageInspector : Fixed broken UI caused by double-clicking in the Image tab.

API

• ScenePathPlugValueWidget : The scenePathPlugValueWidget:scene metadata now accepts a space-separated list of plugs, taking the first plug which has an input connection.
• VisibleSet : Added Python constructor with keyword arguments for expansions, inclusions and exclusions.
• ScriptNodeAlgo : Added new namespace with functions for managing shared UI state for GafferSceneUI.
• ContextAlgo : Deprecated. Use ScriptNodeAlgo instead.

Build

• Cortex : Updated to version 10.5.9.4.

Gaffer 1.4.12.0

Features

• Viewer : Added support for Cycles GPU rendering via a new Device option in the Cycles viewer settings.

Improvements

• UI Editor :
  • Added the ability to edit the scale of node icons.
  • Improved layout of Box node plug creator visibility toggles.
• ArnoldShader : Moved the toon shader's *_tonemap_hue_saturation parameters to appropriate sections in the UI.
• File Browser : The "Type" column can now be sorted. This sorts directories separately from files, which are sorted by their extension.

Fixes

• SceneWriter : Fixed handling of ':' characters in set names when writing to USD. These were previously converted to '_' but are now preserved.
• SceneReader : Fixed loading of animated ModelAPI extents from USD.
• ResamplePrimitiveVariables : Fixed handling of periodic curves.
• VectorDataWidget : Fixed bug causing paths to display as "..." after the last visible "/" when the widget wasn't wide enough to show the entire path.

API

• MetadataWidget : Added NumericMetadataWidget class.
• RenderPassWedge : Render adaptors may now be used to delete and/or disable render passes, by passing client = "RenderPassWedge" to SceneAlgo.registerRenderAdaptor().

Gaffer 1.3.16.8

Fixes

• VectorDataWidget : Fixed bug causing paths to display as "..." after the last visible "/" when the widget wasn't wide enough to show the entire path.

Gaffer 1.4.11.0

Improvements

• SetExpressions : Set Expressions containing only whitespace characters are now treated as empty rather than producing an error.
• ArnoldShader :
  • Added a UI layout for the new openpbr_surface shader.
  • Moved Arnold 7.3.3.0's new standard_volume.scatter_diffusion parameters to a "Scatter Diffusion" section of the UI.
• Viewer : Added diagnostic shading mode for visualising the values of the usd:purpose attribute as colours :
  • White : Default
  • Green : Render
  • Blue : Proxy
  • Red : Guide
• Catalogue : Added a handle for controlling the relative sizes of the listing and image property widgets.
• RenderPassEditor, LightEditor : Improved update performance for certain graph configurations, by optimising SceneAlgo::history() (#5199).

Fixes

• Arnold : Fixed bug preventing UI metadata for Imagers from being loaded for Arnold 7.3.
• WidgetAlgo : Fixed issue preventing grab() from capturing popup menus on Windows.
• ShowURL : Fixed opening of "file://" URLs on Windows (#5861).
• Shader : Fixed "Revert to Defaults" menu item in NodeEditor (#1862).
• Catalogue :
  • Fixed bug which allowed locked Catalogues to be edited.
  • Fixed NodeEditor update when the first image is added or the last image is removed.
• NameWidget : Fixed bug which allowed plugs on locked nodes to be renamed.
• ValuePlug : Fixed the plug passed to Monitor::forceMonitoring(). Previously Process::destinationPlug() was being passed instead of Process::plug().

API

• PathListingWidget : Added columnContextMenuSignal(), allowing multiple clients to collaborate on the creation of a column-specific context menu.
• HierarchyView : Added sceneListing() method, to allow the context menu to be customised.

Documentation

• Windows : Documentation is now included in Windows release packages.

Gaffer 1.4.10.0

Improvements

• LightEditor :
  • Values of inherited attributes are now displayed in the Light Editor. These are presented as dimmed "fallback" values. Values are inherited from an ancestor of the inspected location or from attributes created in the scene globals.
  • Default values are now displayed as dimmed "fallback" values for attributes that don't exist in the scene.
  • When a fallback value is displayed, the cell's tooltip includes a description of the source of the value.
• LightEditor, RenderPassEditor : Fallback values shown in the history window are displayed with the same dimmed text colour used for fallback values in editor columns.
• EditScope : Filtered the EditScope menu to show only nodes that are active in the relevant context.

Fixes

• ImageReader : Fixed crash caused by invalid OpenEXR multiView attributes.
• LightEditor, RenderPassEditor : Added missing icon representing use of the CreateIfMissing tweak mode in the history window.
• Slider : Fixed bug where two undo steps were needed to get back to the original value when dragging.

API

• ContextTracker : Added a new class that determines what contexts nodes are evaluated in relative to the focus node. This allows UI components to provide improved context-sensitive feedback to the user.
• Loop : Added previousIteration() method.

Gaffer 1.3.16.7

Fixes

• ImageReader : Fixed crash caused by invalid OpenEXR multiView attributes.
• LightEditor, RenderPassEditor : Added missing icon representing use of the CreateIfMissing tweak mode in the history window.
• Slider : Fixed bug where two undo steps were needed to get back to the original value when dragging.

Gaffer 1.4.9.0

Improvements

• Cryptomatte : Renamed __manifestScene plug to manifestScene so it is no longer considered to be private.
• EditScopePlugValueWidget : Width can now be configured via <layoutName>:width metadata. This enables customisation of the Edit Scope menu width by registering metadata in a startup file, such as Gaffer.Metadata.registerValue( GafferSceneUI.RenderPassEditor.Settings, "editScope", "layout:width", 450 ) to double the standard width of the Edit Scope menu in the Render Pass Editor.
• ArnoldShader :
  • The following parameters are now visible in the GraphEditor :
    • The aov_input parameter of the aov_write_int shader.
    • The data_input parameter of the color_jitter shader.
    • The input_int and seed parameters of the random shader.
    • The index parameters of the switch_rgba and switch_shader shaders.
    • The default parameter of the user_data_int shader.
  • The following parameters can now be made visible in the GraphEditor :
    • The flake_layers parameter of the car_paint shader.
    • The data_seed, proc_seed, obj_seed, and face_seed parameters of the color_jitter shader.
• EditScope : Added summaries of set membership edits in the NodeEditor.
• LightEditor : Mute and solo columns now accurately reflect the presence of the light:mute attribute (for the Mute column) and membership in the soloLights set (for the Solo column) for all scene locations, not just for lights.
• RenderPassEditor : The currently active render pass can now be unset by double clicking on its green dot in the "Active" column.
• HierarchyView, LightEditor, RenderPassEditor, SetEditor : Reduced potential UI stalls when first showing a scene.
• ShaderTweaks : Added support for wildcards in the shader name, in order to tweak multiple shaders at once.

Fixes

• HierarchyView, LightEditor, PrimitiveInspector, SceneInspector : Fixed bug which allowed scenes from private plugs to be displayed.
• PrimitiveInspector : Fixed bug which claimed "Location does not exist" for objects without any primitive variables.
• OpenColorIO : Fixed the display transform used to show colours in popups.
• SceneInspector : Fixed "Show History" menu items.
• ImageGadget : Fixed loading of non-8-bit images. Among other things, this fixes the display of 16 bit node icons in the GraphEditor.
• Arnold : Fixed rendering of VDB volumes without file_mem_bytes metadata.
• Cycles : Fixed bug preventing a background light from being added to a light group.
• LightEditor : Fixed regression (introduced in 1.4.8.0) causing the mute and solo icons to not show up for groups.
• Windows : Fixed conflicts with other software installations on PATH. The PXR_USD_WINDOWS_DLL_PATH environment variable is now set to an empty string if it is not already set, preventing USD from adding all entries from PATH to Python's DLL search paths.
• AnnotationsGadget : Fixed potential hang in annotationText() Python binding.
• FormatPlug : Fixed potential hang in acquireDefaultFormatPlug() Python binding.
• ImageReader : Fixed array metadata loading bugs, including the loading of ICCProfile metadata.

API

• PopupWindow : Added parent argument to popup() method. This allows popup windows to inherit the display transform from the main UI.

Build

• Cortex : Updated to version 10.5.9.1.

Gaffer 1.4.8.0

Improvements

• SceneReader : ModelAPI extentsHints are now considered when loading the bounding box for a location in Gaffer. This can significantly reduce the time taken to load bounds for large USD assemblies. If necessary, this behaviour can be disabled by setting the IECOREUSD_USE_MODELAPI_BOUNDS environment variable with a value of 0.
• ColorChooser :
  • Added channel names to identify sliders.
  • Setting the saturation to zero no longer resets the hue and setting the value to zero no longer resets the hue and saturation.
• RenderPassEditor : Added "Select Affected Objects" popup menu item.
• Annotations :
  • Added support for {plug} value substitutions in node annotations.
  • Added Ctrl + Enter keyboard shortcut to annotation dialogue. This applies the annotation and closes the dialogue.
• LightEditor : Added support for Arnold light blockers and barndoor, gobo and decay light filters.

Fixes

• Cycles : Fixed rendering to the Catalogue using the batch Render node (#5905). Note that rendering a mixture of Catalogue and file outputs is still not supported, and in this case any file outputs will be ignored.
• CodeWidget : Fixed bug that could prevent changes from being committed while the completion menu was visible.
• Loop : Fixed handling of empty indexVariable. This now disables the Loop instead of creating an unnamed context variable.
• ColorChooser : Fixed emission of colorChangedSignal() while the widget was in an inconsistent internal state.
• LazyMethod : Fixed errors caused by running idle callbacks without a valid Qt Widget.

API

• LightEditor : Added deregisterColumn() method for removing columns.
• ShaderUI : Added support for nodeGadget:color metadata registered against {shaderType}:{shaderName}, to specify per-shader colouring of nodes in the GraphEditor.
• ArnoldShaderUI : Added support for gaffer.nodeGadget.color RGB metadata in .mtd files, to specify per-shader colouring of nodes in the GraphEditor.
• Loop : Added nextIterationContext() method.
• AnnotationsGadget : Added annotationText() method.
• ParallelAlgoTest : Added UIThreadCallHandler.receive() method.
• LightEditor : Added registerShaderParameter() method for registering parameters for shader attributes that are not the same as the rendererKey.

Build

• Cortex : Updated to version 10.5.9.0.

Gaffer 1.3.16.6

Fixes

• LazyMethod : Fixed errors caused by running idle callbacks without a valid Qt Widget.