Pending Riptide Pro update...

Hi guys,

After somewhat of an abnormally long hiatus, I'm now closing in on the next update/release of Riptide Pro. So far, the new release will consist of a few bug fixes, a few new features and some (relatively massive) optimizations when Importing .obj files with huge numbers of nGons (and some other situations).

Here's my current not-yet-refined change-list:

• optimized Import speed in general - but particularly when there are large numbers of nGons (from 16+ MINUTES down to 14 SECONDS in my test-case file with 283,525 total polygons, 33,054 nGons and 350 groups, with the "Split by Group" option set)
• additional optimizations for large numbers of groups
• improved 'status' messages during Import - far more informative during long imports
• fixed a bug with exporting .mdd files, where 'scale' was not accounted for
• fixed a bug with group (or material or region) names longer than 255 characters.
• now parses "bump strength" values in .mtl files (import only, currently)
• added code to correctly handle more D|S (Daz Studio) incorrect .mtl file info (map_D vs map_d)
• added code to correctly handle other case-sensitive .mtl file errors (Daz Studio is notorious for not following the .mtl file spec)
• changed Diffuse (Color) channel to always be enabled if not explicitly disabled on Import options (will use default color if none loaded).
• New Feature: added code to (currently always) export Splines as .obj file 'lines' (which can be imported as Splines)
• New Feature: all mesh-splitting options (including not splitting) now preserve vertex-ordering
• New Feature: all mesh-splitting options now cull out any unused vertices - this can also fix a problem when importing splines, where the spline points are being duplicated in the mesh (when not splitting, given that the appropriate (new) options are set on the Mesh Splitting tab).
• New Feature: unused vertices are added to scene as a separate point-only mesh object (given that the appropriate (new) options are set on the Mesh Splitting tab)

I still have some tidying up to do (and documentation and various platform compiles), but I also wanted to check with my users to see if there's anything else that I should (and have time to) address in this release...

• Are there any other bugs I may not be aware of?
• Does anyone have example problem files they can send me? (typhoon [at] jetbroadband [dot] com)
  • I'm pretty sure that I can now handle any massive nGon/Material/Group related files now, but if you have one you'd like me to test, feel free to send it (or a link to it) to me.
  • I'd also be interested in any .c4d files that you're having problems exporting.
• "wishlist" features?

Thanks for your time,

Keith

That's good!

Now you can scale the MDD files, this is going to greatly simplify things.

Please, when the update will be available?

Cheers
Diego

sounds good Keith!

thx
stefan

+1 on good news about update for this plugin,,, Do you have a estimate on time before you expect to release update?

aj

I have a compatibility question for you, I suppose you could call it a wish list too.

I only recently discovered that if I export a polypainted obj from ZBrush, all of that color information is available without uvmaps and can be projected in XNormal onto a retopo'd geometry. Vertex color information, I forget.

My question is, is it possible via Riptide to import that color information into C4D? Transferring it to a Ptex material or similar.

I do not yet have a firm release date... "Real Soon Now" is the infamous programmer response .

Some recent additional testing has led to some additional tweeking. My problem is that I'm a better programmer than I am Cinema 4D 'user' (or 'animator', etc.) and I can't always predict how users are going to set up their scenes/animations.

I'd really love to have some more (simple or complex) sample 'animation' files to test the .mdd stuff with (for example), so if anyone has .c4d files that they are having trouble with exporting currently, I'd be happy to test them.

The .obj file format does not have any provision for "vertex color" - the closest it can get would be a "per-polygon color"... and in fact, I have seen an example of that in the past, which resulted in (hundreds of) thousands of "materials". It was the reason behind the recent "Special" sub-tab on the Materials tab of the Import dialog, where you can have the number of "color only" materials reduced, using some RGB sliders.

Then again, I may be misunderstanding the question - as always, if you have any sample files (.obj + .mtl, in this case) that you could send me, it would help.

We recently purchased a new Laptop running windows 8 and the 11.5 version on your site doesn't even showup in the personalization dialog or plugins menu. My wife needs it, so could you look into that? Thanks Keith!

Some info:

Cinema4D is installed to her "D" drive
It doesn't matter if the plugin is placed into the main plugins dir, the prefs plugins dir, or even a custom dir using the C4D_PLUGINS_DIR with Environment variable set.

Very odd... Unfortunately, I don't have Windows 8 here to check with - my only/original thought was that it might have something to do with "permissions", but it sounds like you've already investigated that.

So...

• I assume that she's runnig Cinema 4D R11.5? (11.5 version of plugins won't work with later versions of Cinema 4D at all)
• You're not getting a dialog pop-up or anything?
• Have you also looked for potential error messages in the "Console" window?

Yes running 11.5 absolutely no popup dialogs or reg prompts at all. Also no errors in the console.

I'm stumped at the moment... the only other thing I can think of (for now) might be to try the R11 version of the plugin. It should still work fine with R11.5, but I don't yet know what might be the problem with Windows 8 (no one else has reported any problem yet - of course nor have they confirmed that it does work, either).

Ill give that a shot and report back

Edit, ok I tried the R11.027 version of Riptide Pro in R11.5 and it works fine, so I guess there's a problem with the 11.5 version of Riptide Pro on WIN 8. We'll purchase it anyway, the free version is on its last legs and its way past due for an upgrade.

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