The following are some of the new features and changes that are completed in TerreSculptor as of 2011-12-05 and will be available in the next build release (this late Dec or early Jan).
- The World Extents wireframe cube now supports segments to give a 3D grid cage look.
- Performance optimizations to some of the 3D objects.
- File Import and Export performance has been dramatically improved, with additional status information displayed.
- The Options dialog section for file AutoSave has been changed to an AutoBackup system instead, similar to how Max and other applications manage automatic timed project backups. This feature is for when the Editor World Stack system is functional in a few months.
- The New and Resample dialog's Power-of-Two and Power-of-Two+1 resolution values were changed to include an "Intermediate" values setting in the Options. This allows for user selection of just the specific resolutions that are supported by their pipeline and engine displayed in the New and Resample dialogs.
- A bug was fixed in the Preview control that prevented heightmaps smaller than 256 from being displayed as meshes. This affected all Modify and Transform dialogs that supported a preview 3D mesh.
- Numerous bug fixes, code optimizations, improved error handling.
- Some areas of older code were refactored and improved to fit better into the current application design direction.
- New "Size to Terrain" and "Size to World" toolbar buttons on the Editor's Home Grid tab, Designer tab, and Water tab, gives one-click automatic resizing of those objects to the current terrain or the world extents.
- The New and Resample dialogs have a UDK button which brings up a new UDK Landscape Sizes dialog that allows choosing from any valid UDK Landscape width and length resolution.
- The Options dialog has a new Colors tab where all application and object colors can now be adjusted and saved. All future objects will also have their color settings in this centralized location.
A note about an upcoming feature:
A heightmap and mask export to Normalmap file function was planned for a future build. This feature will be expanded into a complete full-featured Normalmap Creator, with plenty of options and functions, a WYSIWYG 3D preview, and the ability to open any of the supported heightmap, mask and image file formats and convert them to a Normalmap. So for those people who cannot afford PhotoShop to use the NV Normalmap plugin, or any other high-priced Normalmap converter software, TerreSculptor will be including this functionality at its low price.
- eol