Service Pack 1 for Realsoft 3D V.5

The Service Pack 1 for Realsoft 3D version 5 fixes most program errors, which have been reported to Realsoft after the initial release of version 5. It also introduces new features requested by the users. This readme file describes these new features briefly.


New Icons

All program icons have been updated to new anti-aliased true color style. An easy to use toolkit allows users to customize the icons to suit their own color preferences. The same toolkit makes it possible to use the true color icons on platforms, which do not support the alpha channel. You can define your own unique icon look for the whole icon set - nearly one thousand icons - in less than half an hour!


New 32 bit icons

It is possible to install several icon sets (you can find them in r3icon sub folder) and select the desired icon set by passing 


    -icon [folder]
startup option to the program. You may also select the desired icon set by using the StartOpts program.


New View Window Options


The View window has some new options, which are designed to make use of ray tracing preview windows more productive.


  • View camera can be locked to keep its orientation or the total camera setup. A carefully selected viewing angle does not get lost accidentally. This option is useful also for traditional triview modeling interfaces.

  • A new option is available for for starting ray trace rendering simply by clicking anywhere on the view. It could not be faster.

  • Automatic view drawing can be turned off. View will be redrawn only when its camera changes or the user requests drawing/rendering. When a view is configured this way, it does not consume system resources for real time drawing. Furthermore, it keeps the latest ray traced rendering visible as a reference.
A preview window docked under the select window


Automatic SDS Creases by Face Angles

The auto crease tool for subdivision surfaces examines the object geometry and sets sharp creases to all points and/or edges, where the angle between connected faces exceeds a given limit.

The tool can be applied to selected areas or to the whole object.


SDS edge and point creases set by a threshold angle



New Triset Object Features

The triset object has a similar tool as the automatic SDS crease tool described above. It sets the surface normals for sharp shading at edges, where the limit angle is exceeded. The tool is very useful when preparing imported polygonal meshes for rendering. Finding and setting sharp edges manually is a very laborious task when the geometry includes thousands of faces.

The triset object now has a tool for flipping surface normals. It is sometimes useful when editing face normals manually.

The property window of the triset object now includes a new shading correction control, which defines how rapidly illumination is faded towards the surface tangent. Normal interpolation of triset faces does not look smooth when ray traced illumination hits the surface at low angles, because the polygonal surface geometry starts casting shadows and blocking the illumination. By fading illumination at low angles, these shading errors can be made less visible.


The effect of shading correction to an imported, phong shaded polygon object


Parallel Curve Tool

The parallel curve tool creates a curve, which follows a selected NURBS curve at a user defined distance. For example, draw a profile curve for a vase, then define the inner surface using the parallel tool and connect the two curves.


Some parallel curve examples


Split Time Line Tool

The Choreography Window's choreography list has a new popup menu 'Split'. It splits the selected choreography into two separate choreographs. The time line is cut into two parts so that the actual motions remain unchanged.


A keyframe choreography split into two parts in the frame 40


Other Improvements

Default type for SDS texture evaluation (Single/Full) can be selected using the Class options of the Preferences window.

More input channels are available in the surface lighting shaders.

Batchren supports a new '-hosts' start-up parameter. It can be used for overriding the distributed rendering servers specified in the project's rendering settings.

Animation settings window has changed. Its layout is now divided into several tabs.

The Operation VSL object has one new formula, Sign. It assigns -1, 0 or 1 to the output depending on the sign of the parameter.

The SDS knife tool no longer has the freeform option set by default.