2017

can cycle through selected Render Passes associated with a Render Layer (press 1 to navigate down the
list, or press 2 to navigate up the list).
See About Rendering Outputs from Action (page 480).
Other Action Improvements
■ You now have the option to enter the full Blur editor from the Media list. By using the X and Y Blur
fields, you perform a Gaussian blur. To perform other blur types, double-click the new Blur field to enter
the full Blur editor.
■ Lights now have a parametric falloff model that is easier and faster to use than the graphical model. See
Using the Light Bevel Curve (page 535).
■ A new parametric bevel option is available for 3D Text, added to the previous Bevel, Position, and Rotation
options. Parametric Bevel allows you to set the bevel using numeric fields, which is both easier and faster
than using the curve.
■ The Toggle Icons Draw Mode shortcut has been renamed to Cycle Icons Draw Modes and it now cycles
between the On, Off, and Selected Icons display modes.
■ Performance and quality have been improved for 3D Soft and 3D Hard Shadows.
■ Shadow Cast now supports 32-bit shadow maps, fixing the shadow precision problem with large shadow
maps.
■ The FBX SDK has been updated to version 2017.0.1.
Matchbox
■ Matchbox now supports the usage of its previous result buffer with the uniform adsk_accum_texture.
This is a regular sampler2D that automatically provides the previous frame result, and needs to be defined
in both the XML and glsl file. You can use the uniform adsk_accum_no_prev_frame (which is a bool) to
determine what happens if there are no previous results. There is an Accumulate example provided in
the EXAMPLES folder. A non-recursive accumulation mode allows Matchbox developers to use this feature
without the performance impact of the absolute recursive mode.
■ You can now host a texture in a Matchbox shader, by bundling an image file as a texture grid, in the
following formats: OpenEXR, DPX, JPEG, SGI, Targa, and TIFF. In the shader, you can define the content
of the image file using the uniform sampler2D adsk_texture_grid (needs to be defined in both the glsl
and xml files). There are three GridFetching examples in the EXAMPLES folder.
■ It is now possible set a fixed resolution for Matchbox intermediate passes that is different than the main
output resolution.
■ It is now possible to create presets in Matchbox, allowing shader developers to offer different sets of
starting values for a given shader, without having to modify the glsl code. The preset file is a sidecar xml
file in which you can declare as many sets of starting values as wanted, with a name to identify them.
In the UI, a popup button appears underneath the Change Shader button, listing all the different declared
presets. A button in the Node Prefs menu allows you to dump the current UI configuration to the shell,
allowing for easy copy/pasting to create presets.
■ Matchbox packaging has been upgraded to offer better browsing performance.
■ Matchbox menus can now use an unlimited amount of pages in ConnectFX, by changing the tabs with
a popup button when reaching more than five pages.
For more information on these new Matchbox features, as well as complete information of creating your
own shaders, see the Shader Builder API Guide:
http://www.autodesk.com/shader_builder_api_guide.
12 | Chapter 1 What's New