Kanova Patch Notes — August 3, 2018
Aggregated from Steam, cross-tracked with Battle.net coverage on GamePatchNote.
Kanova 1.0v1b5 is now live!
The big change in this version is a dockable UI for desktop. The tabs we had in previous versions are now all separately dockable panels (in fact some of them have been split into several dockable panels). The main advantage to this is that you can keep several of the panels visible at once so that you don't need to keep tabbing back and forth while sculpting. It gives you a lot of freedom to find a layout you're comfortable with; and however you arrange the panels, Kanova will remember the layout next time you start it up.
Besides that there's another big memory saving when loading files that were created in older versions of Kanova (b2 and earlier); and some improvements to do with vertex-colored models. There are also some bug fixes. The full release notes are below.
We're looking forward to hearing what you think!
New features
- Dockable widgets for the desktop!
- Each of our old tabs is now a separately dockable panel (in some cases, e.g. the Scene tab, it’s been split into several separate panels). The panels can be freely docked along any edge of the screen, popped up in a separate window, or - if you like - grouped together as tabs.
- For example you can have the sculpting tools, layers and material panes all visible at the same time so there’s no need to switch back and forth between them while sculpting.
- The View menu lists the panels and lets you toggle them on or off, so you can easily hide the things you don’t use regularly.
- The position, size and hidden/shown state of each panel is saved on exit, so they’ll come back exactly where you left them next time you launch Kanova.
- Each of our old tabs is now a separately dockable panel (in some cases, e.g. the Scene tab, it’s been split into several separate panels). The panels can be freely docked along any edge of the screen, popped up in a separate window, or - if you like - grouped together as tabs.
- Remove unnecessary data at load time
- Sculpts done with versions of Kanova prior to b3 could end up keeping a lot of data in memory (and on disk) for empty regions of space. We now detect and remove this unnecessary data at load time.
- For sculpts created in Kanova 1.0v1b2 and earlier, this can potentially give a very large memory saving (in one test model, it reduced the memory usage by 3 GB!!), however it won’t have any effect on sculpts created with Kanova 1.0v1b3 and later.
- Sculpts done with versions of Kanova prior to b3 could end up keeping a lot of data in memory (and on disk) for empty regions of space. We now detect and remove this unnecessary data at load time.
- Support for reference models with vertex colors
- Previously we only supported reference models with UVs and a single diffuse texture. Now we have per-vertex colors as an alternative to that.
- You can load OBJ files with vertex colors (the same format as we export).
- As a result you can now load an exported OBJ back in as a reference model, whether or not it has vertex colors.
- Reference model layers with vertex colors can be saved as part of your Kanova .dfm file too.
- Previously we only supported reference models with UVs and a single diffuse texture. Now we have per-vertex colors as an alternative to that.
- The OBJ exporter writes proper layer names to the file instead of auto-generated unique names.
- Progress bars for long running operations, including:
- Exporting to any of the supported file formats (STL and both OBJ variants).
- Loading a reference model.
- Exporting to any of the supported file formats (STL and both OBJ variants).
Bug fixes
- Autosaves use the latest version of the file format (currently v8) rather than an outdated version (v5).
- The “OBJ with vertex colors” exporter was not writing out vertex normals.
- Pressing Ctrl+Z on a new scene removed the default sphere.
Known bugs
- Drawing a stroke, undoing, then switching layers can sometimes cause a crash.
- This was present in b4 was well.
- This was present in b4 was well.
- "Cleanup Layer" only works when you have DF3DMesh selected as your meshing algorithm.