Whats New in Version 8 

• Grooms
  • Box and unbox
    • Boxing of whole or partial stack
    • Unboxing a groom modifier to extract its constituent operators
  • Switched grooms from XML-based .oxgroom format to YAML-based format, better encompassing operators and their data
  • Groom modifier, containing multiple internal operators with ability to expose custom parameters
  • Graft grooms (easy point and click creation of complete grooms on any character model)
  • Importing new grooms can be done as: full-stack (recreate whole modifier stack), as a Groom modifier (encompassing procedural groom internally), or as a Baked Hair object (containing groom output result)
    • Mohawk Hair, Short Afro, Short Pixie graft grooms included
• General
  • Automatic change tracking of select operators (curling modifier, frizz modifier, groom modifier, strand multiplier modifier, normalize modifier)
  • Switched vertex tangents to use Texture Coordinate generation method by default
  • Operator baking now supports baking strand widths
  • Using geodesic distance by default to calculate strand group blending effect
• GUI
  • Replaced majority of Win32 operator GUI with Qt (quicker, scalable, fixes issues with ramp displayed separately)
  • Added "Collapse All" and "Collapse To" options to main Ornatrix menu, allowing to collapse modifier stack while maintaining render version of the hair
• Performance improvements
  • Switched to Embree 3, significantly improving performance in many places
  • Now using Embree in more places like Ground Strands modifier
  • Improved hair display performance
  • Using SIMD optimizations to further improve performance
• Alembic Export
  • Added MXS flag for exporting to UE for its groom import process.
• Surface Comb modifier
  • New per-sink parameter support:
    • Rotation adjustments
    • Flow
    • Slope ramp
  • Channel export
  • Added an option to export sink groups to channel data
  • Added an option to set sink data values based on an absolute length
  • Option to display sink lengths inside viewport
• Normalize modifier
  • "By group" option separating its application by strand groups
  • Added a ramp curve
• Curling modifier
  • Magnitude and Phase randomness for Curl
  • Add range values for Noise Scale parameter
• Filter modifier
  • Added Channel and Map parameters to control random fraction to Filter operator
• Edit Guides modifier
  • Allow to move only the roots of strands
  • Allow the Create brush to add strands per-vertex and per-polygon face
  • Interpolate planted guide between all selected strands instead of only the closest one
  • Exposed Rotate Strands Edit Guides mode to MaxScript
• Hair from Guides
  • Added "Hidden Guide Behavior" option for Hair from Guides (don't generate hair for hidden guides)
• Baked hair
  • Operator baking now supports baking strand widths
  • Implemented full-stack import with Baked Hair object
  • Added option to only load specific Alembic curves
• Guides from Guide Mesh modifier
  • Preserves strand rotations
• Alembic Importer
  • "Export Surface Positions" option for Alembic, allowing to export propagated strands like feathers
• Mesh from Strands modifier
  • Mesh from Strands Conform to Surface option smoothly blends the roots to surface
• Guides from Shape modifier
  • Added vertex color channels
• Clump modifier
  • Dynamic clumping, allowing animated clump count and changes to clump count on the fly
  • Added option to set strand groups based on clump ownership
  • "Ground Displaced Roots" option
• Ground Strands modifier
  • Mesh evaluation at specified time when grounding
• Strand Animation modifier
  • Added option to only load specific Alembic curves
• V-Ray support
  • V-Ray Standalone plugin uses new serialization, provides a much more complete implementation
  • V-Ray standalone plugin is available for Linux
  • V-Ray Standalone plugin updated to V-Ray 6.10

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