Howler 7 first look

[NewsMaker]

Forum: CG News
Posted By: doghat
Post Time: 11-14-2011 at 08:17 PM
Text:

PD Pro 7 is in the works and we've code named it "Galactic Raindrop". What's in it?

Hi all. I'd just like to remind everybody that I have a few copies of Howler at $59 (That's a huge savings!) and I really need to sell a copy or two today if possible to make it through the holiday and actually get this product finished. Your help would be much appreciated (and you'll get a fab paint program.) You can get one at http://www.wix.com/dan_ritchie/howlerpromotion

OK, on with what's new.

We're working hard on PD pro 7. There will be some nice improvements in it. We're not ready yet for a full feature list at this time but here are a few things we can talk about.
We spent a lot of time on our 3D api, and that's starting to show. We've overhauled the wireframe designer and it's now called the 3D designer. You can use any image as a hight map, and view it in realtime now. There's also the option to animate it, so anything you do with your underlying image can be turned into an animation. You could use the timeline to move a texture, and then make it look like flying through a 3-D terrain, for example. We've already done some Star Wars style trench flythroughs, just for old time sake. The imagination's the limit here.
We've got a few speed improvements as well. Zooming is much faster now. Also there's a new smooth scaling option to alleviate aliasing when zoomed in and out.
Fill tools have seen improvements in that they are now realtime so you can see exactly what you get as you draw them.
There's a new color picker dubbed by the beta team, the "Quicker Color Picker." It's activated by the space bar, so you can pic a color right where your mouse is.
There will of course be other new features as well. With this one, we're trying to do some things we've had to put on the back burner for a number of years. We want it to be something we really feel happy about. It should be a fun ride.

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