Release Notes

v3.5.1211.1975

Fixed:

  • SketchUp 2023: A protection added for potential plugin freeze on initialization when other plugins using new Overlay functionality are present

v3.5.1210.1975

Changed:

  • Substantially improved synchronization speed for complex models
  • (License Setup) Proper message displayed when a password is expired

Fixed:

  • (Mac) Fix for significant slowdown on larger models on Apple Silicon
  • (Mac) IR Overlay fixed on macOS Ventura
  • Fix for Presto UV being lost in case of complex model hierarchy
  • Fix for no EXR multilayered output when denoiser is enabled
  • Fix for plugin language selection not being applied

v3.5.1208.1974

Added:

  • SketchUp 2023 support with Thea Overlay showing camera frame and rule of thirds also when other tools like Orbit/Pan are active
  • (Mac) M1 native is natively supported now. There is a known issue that will be addressed in a future update:
    • Interactive Rendering Overlay in SketchUp window does not work on Apple Silicon Machines and in macOS Ventura in general
  • (Mac) Thea Browser - sorts folders alphabetically

Changed:

  • Increased maximum precision to most of numeric values to 0.0001
  • Numeric values preserves minimal decimal value digits that given value requires - i.e f-number
  • Filmic set as default Tonemapping
  • Thea Tools and toolbar use vector icons now
  • Material Editor preview is generated faster now. It uses all available CPU cores and has option to set Pass and Time limits
  • Material Editor: Fixed Phase in Medium not being set correctly

Fixed:

  • Fix for multi-bitmap material in Presto which could lead to number of unexpected results in rendering
  • Fix for wrong rendering of section plane by CPU engines when multiple planes are present in a model
  • Fix for a freeze of animation rendering after a first frame when there is a material with an active displacement with missing texture
  • Display settings are saved after running Auto Exposure

v3.5.1201.1973

Changed

  • Storing the default beveling radius and angle for other objects and between SketchUp sessions has been added
  • Licensing: Removed time zone restriction. It will work regardless of a time zone now
  • Jpeg + Thea Image output added both for manual and batch save
  • Material Editor: Color Picker uses Saturation and Value in a range of 0..100
  • Fog, when enabled, is no longer exported inside .mod.thea
  • Material Editor: Allowed dropping Substance to an empty material editor for quick conversions
  • Bitmap Based Preset uses Coating as the top metallic layer now (same as Substance 3D Preset)
  • Mac: Thea Browser sorts files alphabetically same as on Windows

Fixed

  • Material Editor: Displacement parameters modification is applied correctly in Interactive Rendering
  • IR/Live update: Fix for original grouped faces not being deleted when creating a group inside another group
  • Fix for Batch Render crash when mixing Scenes with and without Sections
  • Fix for Unicode characters not being set correctly for Animation filenames
  • Thea Browser: Fix for new texture paths in Thea Materials coming from other plugins not being replaced by External Dependencies search

v3.5.1197.1972

Added

  • Thea Browser/Material Editor: drag & drop of Substance 3D materials added
  • Added multiple bitmap selection for texture randomization

Changed

  • Preventing resetting material editor after a new export when the currently edited material still exists
  • Substance 3D: Using Coating as the top layer for the metallic maps - improved speed and appearance
  • Various improvements to Texture Properties positioning/scaling
  • Texture Tonemapping and Coordinates get a scrollbar when necessary
  • Mac Installer: Proper Legacy Optix 5.0.1 version included
  • Mac: Installer is signed now
  • Unbiased preview got better texture mapping

Fixed

  • Fix for a subsequent animation rendering leading to a crash
  • Fix for Relight for wrong relight groups in Presto
  • Fix of a proxy creation crash when Thea was not yet opened
  • Thea Browser: Fix for Substance previews miss-match when one of them has lower resolution than 150x150
  • Substance 3D: Fix for a wrong selection of Choice parameters in some materials
  • Substance 3D: Fix for IR not updating textures when loading a new sbsar into an existing Preset
  • Fix of a regression bug for Camera Container being lost on Rendering start
  • Material Editor: Fix for empty texture properties being displayed when changing just a value of empty texture

v3.5.1192.1970

Added

  • SketchUp 2022 support
  • UV Randomizer
    Removes the repetition and randomizes the material for all instances sharing the same one
  • Bitmap Randomizer
    Assign multiple bitmaps to a channel which will then be applied randomly to all instances sharing the same material
  • Random Glints
    Create glittery surfaces containing small mirror-like flakes that react to the light
  • Substance 3D Materials support
    Direct Substance 3D materials support with all the parameters available in the material editor
  • Global Coordinates
    Removes the hassle of going through each one of the bitmaps of a materials and allows one to change them all at once
  • Smart Coordinates Synchronization
    Helps with adjusting coordinates only in textures sharing same values in whole material
  • Point Light Intersection
    Makes point lights visible when Soft Radius is enabled and speeds up caustics from highly reflective materials
  • Added the option to save the material preview. Streamlined for Substance 3D files which saves the preview next to the .sbsar file
  • Added natural sorting for material names
  • Thea Browser: Introduced "Substance 3D" folder with a number of ready to use Substance files created by AmbientCG and shared under CC0 license

Changed

  • Intel Open Image Denoiser updated to v1.4.1
  • Changes to the Normal Maps resulting in better results
  • Bump appearance is independent from the texture resolution
  • Improved "Live Update" handling group updates inside nested faces
  • Sun is animated for all scenes (not just for the first two)
  • Global section visibility is applied on export
  • Control Panel can be collapsed into Tools Panel. When collapsed, it occupies less space
  • Texture coordinates are an integral part of the Material Editor, not a floating window
  • Thea Browser: Restored support for Thea lights inside proxies
  • Online Repository: Each category is displayed as a whole and allows sorting by name, recent, downloads and rating
  • Online Repository: Previews are cache now and speeds up subsequent category browsing

Fixed

  • Fixed geometry smoothing issues at small angles between surfaces
  • Fixed stability issues for Relight
  • Fixed a red image tint with Glare and the Intel denoiser
  • Fixed Reinhard artifacts
  • Fix for "Batch Render" crash when a section plane is present in a model

v3.0.1167.1959

Changed

  • Ensured the Relight Tab is populated correctly when a rendering takes less than 2 seconds
  • UI: Relight correctly enabled when switching engine from Presto IR to TR1/2

Fixed

  • Fix for a crash in SketchUp 2017 on Mac when exporting models containing more than few components
  • Fix for an erratic crash during plugin initialization on some Macs
  • Fixed Emitter Visibility not applied correctly when a face is painted direct

v3.0.1165.1959

Changed

  • Animation: Heavily improved animation rendering performance in case of moving objects in models with complex hierarchy
  • About/Check for updates: it doesn't close immediately after first check now. The new version link points to download location correctly

Fixed

  • Animation: Fixed fps not being applied
  • Fixed memory leak in model export function affecting especially large models when exporting multiple times
  • Skatter: Components with sub-components not inserted into a model are exported correctly
  • Fix of a crash happening when IR starts while darkroom image is being denoised
  • Network Rendering: Fix for sending a project to Node twice delaying node commits/causing malfunction
  • Fix for proxy editing crash when changing selection/enabling proxy editing while SketchUp being in transition between Scenes
  • Fix for a crash on Scene change when only Thea Browser is opened
  • Proxy Creation: Fix for wrong Component exported as .mod.thea without using selection after subsequent export in the same SketchUp model
  • Mac: Fixed Thea SKM materials crash due to insufficient folder permission
  • Mac: Fixed a crash after dragging a texture from Texture Properties panel to a material layer
  • IR/Live Update: Fixed wrong UVs/model projection scaling when painting a group with a material
  • IR/Live Update: Fixed group update inside component instances. Previously just the current group's geometry was modified
  • IR/Live Update: Fixed issue when changing location in hierarchy with double-click or Outliner resulting in no geometry updates afterwards
  • Thea Browser: Fix for deleting current active folder in Folders Tree when deleting Custom Folder without its prior selection

v3.0.1161.1959

Added

  • Two new channels added: Normals (Denoising) & RawDiffuseColor (Denoising). Please use them instead of standard ones. They are enabled automatically when you enable a denoiser
  • LUT 'Blend with Original' option added
  • Thea False Color LUT added that helps identifying under/over-exposed areas in a rendering
  • Added a protection against Samples Limit changing value in UI when using region
  • Added Error Log to License Setup

Changed

  • Intel denoiser updated to 1.3.0
  • LUT is no longer enabled when its name has been selected from a drop down
  • Proxy Creation: original SketchUp component rotation/scaling is considered when creating .mod.thea. All internal geometry is referenced from the component origin.
  • When Bucket Render is used with Region, then there is an option either discard the full image and render region only or disable bucket
  • Watermark updated with new Thea logo
  • Material Editor > Presets: Value Reduction is applied to native SketchUp Color in all Diffuse components in presets (speeds up rendering especially at large tracing depths)
  • Material Editor > Presets: Prevented reduced RGB color value to be feedback to UI causing constant change on the color
  • Material Editor: Made sure that no texture properties are shown when switching to empty Layers tab form other Tab (Emitter,etc)
  • IR/Live Update: Geometry modification in instances is applied interactively without re-exporting whole model
  • IR/Live Update: Section cuts position/addition/deletion
  • IR/Live Update: Painting objects works more reliably now
  • Interactive Rendering: When camera is locked, and active scene is changed, IR is not refreshed any more. Scene settings are ignored

Fixed

  • Fix for just first light being exported when included inside a component/group
  • Duplicated LUT (.cube) files listing fixed
  • Fix for a subsequent export crash when using Skattred proxies and regular proxies of the same object
  • Fixed broken Production image refresh after changing denoiser type/blending without denoiser being enabled
  • Sub-Proxies in Skattered components are positioned correctly now
  • Proxies are correctly found in path containing native/Unicode characters
  • Projector images are correctly found in path containing native/Unicode characters
  • Fix for rare case when a Face received from SketchUp has not triangles
  • Fixed transparency/clipping appearance when switching between Glass/Thin Glass presets in IR
  • Fix for Relight not being refreshed with Intel denoiser enabled
  • Fix for a crash when closing SU while IR still running
  • Mac: very rare crash fix in plugin initialization
  • IR/Live Update: Fix for movement of Lights and Proxies with/inside complex hierarchies
  • IR/Live Update: Lights and Proxies are correctly moved/added/removed with objects containing them
  • Interactive Rendering: Fix for Thick Glass when changing from Thin Glass preset
  • Interactive Rendering: Fix for Adaptive Tracing settings not being applied when modified
  • Interactive Rendering: Fix for denoiser errors when samples limit reached
  • UI on Mac: Fix for Control Panel buttons displaying undesired focus outlines
  • UI on Mac: Fix for wrong minimal Control Panel size after a manual resizing
  • UI on Mac: Fix for Rendering and Exposure hamburger menu not appearing when displayed on a different screen than Rendering Window
  • UI on Mac: Fix for color picker used for Procedural Textures

v3.0.1145.1951

Added

  • Added IR/Live updates for images

Changed

  • Presto Clamp Level is not used anymore when Adaptive Tracing is on (helps with Caustics)
  • Random Texture is monochrome by default

Fixed

  • Fix for issues with adding/editing new lights in IR
  • Fix for editing materials in IR in Thea window
  • Fix for infinite plane missing in CPU engine rendering
  • Fix for shadow catcher being dark on areas not lighten by spot lights (Presto)
  • Fixed dropped image export
  • IR/Live Update: Objects are no longer deleted in "instances" of a group
  • GPU crash fix for Presto in the presence of scenes with a lot of clipping or glasses and very high tracing depth
  • Fix for OptiX IR denoising with super-sampling > None
  • Material Editor: Advanced Mode fixes for Metal and SSS layer
  • Mac: SU2017 faces smoothing export fixed
  • Mac: Fix for a freeze after closing a Relight or Random Texture color picker
  • Mac: Thea Browser: Fix for a crash in BigSur
  • Mac: Thea Browser: Fix for status bar not displaying text
  • Mac: Thea Browser: Fix for 'Open in Finder'
  • Mac: Fixed for Skatter instances of SU model components not rendering at all

v3.0.1134.1945

Added

  • Support for Intel® Open Image Denoiser – denoise with the CPU
  • Interactive Denoising with both Intel and NVIDIA AI denoisers
  • Nvidia Ampere cards support
  • Adaptive Tracing
  • Relight Editor
  • Random Color Texture
  • Support for Skatter™ v2 including random materials
  • Out-of-core Rendering

Changed

  • Local Proxy Material Editing
  • Improved Refresh for Production Renders
  • OptiX denoiser takes much less memory now, which allows to apply to resolutions that were not possible in the same conditions before
  • OptiX output quality has been considerably improved for CPU engines
  • Optimized and GPU-Accelerated Glare
  • Faster Interactive Scene Updates for large models
  • Live Update
  • Multi-threaded Export
  • HDR Region Render
  • Enhanced Channels
  • Improved Interactiveness
  • Batch Render is a new tab now and has been redesigned to allow easier settings modifications
  • IR: Devices properties are displayed only when Devices accordion is expanded in Render Settings Tab
  • IR: Samples limit is also applied
  • UI has been improved and many less important features are conveniently enclosed in accordions. Scrollbar and associated issues have been fixed