Beta
Build
21-Sept-2001
Build
27-Aug-2001
Build
9-Aug-2001
Build
18-July-2001
Build
25-Jun-2001
Build
18-Jun-2001
Build
30-May-2001
Build
18-May-2001
Build
25-Apr-2001
Build
16-Apr-2001
About the Flamingo Beta Process
Post your comments, report bugs, and feature requests on the Rhino support newsgroup. From the Help menu, click Technical Support.
During this year, a new beta will be posted every couple months with many new features and enhancements.
Each beta will expire after about three months.
Flamingo 1.0 Beta requires Rhino 2.0.
Also, be sure to look at what's not yet implemented.
What's New: 13-Nov-2001
New since last beta
New
Flamingo workspace
There is now a
Flamingo workspace with Flamingo commands and animation tools.
Animation
toolbar
There are new
animation tools included with the Flamingo workspace.
Flamingo
Getting Started
There is a
Flamingo Getting Started with a tutorial.
Radiosity
solution saved with the 3DM file
The Flamingo
Radiosity solution mesh can now be saved as part of the 3DM file. If
there is a radiosity solution present, you are prompted to save the
file when you exit Rhino.
FlamingoTransport
added to menu
The FlamingoTransport
command has been added to the Raytrace and Photometric menus.
FlamingoCheckInLicense
and FlamingoCheckOutLicense
The FlamingoCheckInLicense
and FlamingoCheckOutLicense commands have been added so
Flamingo can be used with the Zoo.
Bug Fixes
Low light
levels triggered default light
Some
situations with very low light levels caused a default light to turn on.
Invalid
image crash
Trying to use
an invalid image file caused Flamingo/Rhino to crash. You now get a
warning if Flamingo cannot read the file.
Several
crash bug fixed
Several out of
memory and crash bugs have been fixed.
Cloud
parameters not saved in environment file
The Cloud Offset
parameters are not correctly saved/restored when saving an
Environment file. This is fixed.
Cylindrical
decal double-sided setting
Double/single
sidedness was not working correctly for cylindrical decals. This is fixed.
Plants
caused crash
A rare error
was causing some plants to fail. This is fixed.
Zooming in
render window did not work properly
Zooming in the
render window could scroll off the top and bottom of the image. This
is fixed.
Tree sizes wrong
Some trees
appeared in the wrong size. This is fixed.
Invalid
bitmap caused crash
Using an
invalid bitmap file as a background or decal caused Flamingo to
crash. A warning message now informs the user that the file is not valid
Editing
light properties caused error message
Editing light
properties on lights of different types caused a "Please enter
an integer" error message. This is fixed.
Restoring
radiosity solution and materials
Restoring a
radiosity solution messed up the materials. This is fixed.
Menus
active when radiosity solution reached goal
When the
Radiosity solution has reached its goal (the Stop button grays), the
Photometric pull-down menu was incorrectly active. This is fixed.
What's New: 21-Sept-2001
New since last beta
New
FlamingoHelp and FlamingoAbout commands
The FlamingoHelp
command displays help topics. The FlamingoAbout command
displays about box including build version. These are also added to
the Raytrace and Photometric menus.
New
FlamingoMaterials command
The FlamingoMaterials
command opens the Material Editor dialog box. A Materials menu
item has been added to the Raytrace and Photometric menus.
Can no
longer tag an object as a plant
The option to
tag an object as a plant has been dropped.
FlamingoPullPlants
command dropped
The FlamingoPullPlants
legacy command removed plant information from ungrouped plant curves.
This has been dropped.
Ambient
Light controls
The Ambient
Light Color control for the Photometric render is
disabled. Flamingo gets the ambient color from the surrounding
environment in this case.
DirectionalLight
Intensity
A DirectionalLight
intensity control that is only valid in photometric mode has been
added. This fixes the problem with directional light intensity in
photometric mode.
New editor
for decal placement
The editing
controls for decal placement have been improved.
Bug fixes
Out of
memory message when rendering or calculating radiosity
"Out of
memory errors" have been fixed.
Clouds
dialog box crash
Canceling and
reentering the Environment dialog box with the Clouds
page active could a crash, particularly if 3D clouds are activated.
This is fixed.
Seam in
procedural bumps
Procedural
bump maps sometimes appeared to have a seam when applied to certain
geometry. The problem is particularly apparent with horizontally
oriented cylinders. This has been fixed.
Crash with
short, wide image maps
Short, wide
image maps caused a crash when used in decals or materials. This is fixed.
Edit
Material button did not work properly
If the Material
Editor was accessed through the Properties or Layer
Material Edit button, changes to the material were not saved.
This is fixed.
RenderPreview
did now work with ClearFinish materials
The RenderPreview
command did not work correctly with ClearFinish materials. This is fixed.
What's New: 27-Aug-2001
Flamingo
beta only works with the released
version of Rhino 2.0
This Flamingo
beta does not work with Rhino beta releases. It only works with the
released version of Rhino 2.0.
Radiosity
object properties added
The following
check boxes to the Properties/Radiosity tab: Non emitter, Non
receiver, No Shadows.
Rhino
bitmap previewer used in Flamingo Open operations
The Rhino
bitmap previewer is used for opening textures, decals, background
bitmaps, plant parts, etc. This gives a message about unsupported
file types.
Spherical
and cylindrical material mapping types
New spherical
and cylindrical material mapping types support material units and U
and V tiling. You can now set the number of tiles.
Scripting
options for radiosity calculation
The FlamingoRadiosity
command will automatically close the radiosity window and control
panel when done. It also defeats the warning messages and causes the
solution to recalculate if the scene has changed. If in script mode,
the radiosity calculation will report the calculation time just after
the window closes.
Three new scripting commands have been added: FlamingoStartTimer, FlamingoDisplayTimer and FlamingoEndTimer. These commands support timer ID's from 0 to 25. Start will cause Flamingo to store the current time, end will save the elapsed time and display it, display will display the elapsed time for a currently running timer or the elapsed time when end was called.
New
FlamingoTransport command
The FlamingoTransport
command exports the current drawing and all associated dependant
files to a specified folder. Dependant files include Rhino materials
containing texture or bump maps, Flamingo materials and associated
image maps, Flamingo decals and IES light files.
Photometric
Document Properties changes
In the Document
Properties dialog box, Photometric tab: Added Direct
light method, Raytrace and Radiosity radio buttons. The Exterior
check box is replaced with Interior and Exterior radio buttons and is
moved the out of the Radiosity group and into a Sky Light (when sun
is on) group. this group is only enabled when the sun is on.
Bug fixes
Ambient
setting not saved
Ambient
intensity always resets to 0 and does not remember the previous
setting. This is fixed.
Radiosity
solution view in parallel viewport incorrect
Calculating
the radiosity solution did not give the right view in a parallel
viewport. This is fixed.
DirectionalLights
not supported in radiosity
Directional
lights were not supported in radiosity. This is fixed.
Exploding
objects removed properties
Exploding
objects removed properties of individual surfaces and decals. This is fixed.
OpenGL
material definition used by RenderPreview did not display correctly
The FlamingoUpdateGLMaterials
command updates generic material definitions of Flamingo materials.
These generic definitions are used by render preview and Rhino render.
Use lights
that are off not exposed in Flamingo
Use lights on
layers that are off controls were not exposed in the Flamingo tab.
This is fixed.
Very small
viewport resolutions for rendering did not work
At very small
viewport resolutions, the render window was not displayed correctly.
This is fixed.
Saving to a
read-only material library failed silently without saving or warning
If you edit a
material in a read-only .MLIB, you are prompted to save. If you save
changes, or save to the same library under a different material name,
the interface seemed to allow it, but no change was made to the
library, and the user's changes are lost. This is fixed.
What's New: 9-Aug-2001
Bug fixes
Flamingo
doesn't load in Windows 95, NT4.0
In the
26-Jul-2001 beta, Flamingo failed to load in Windows 95, and failed
to properly add it's menus to Rhino's menus in Windows NT 4.0. Both
bugs have been fixed.
What's New: 26-July-2001
Changes since last beta
Scriptable
Ground Plane material
The FlamingoDocumentProperties
command specifies a material for the ground plane in addition to
on/off and height.
Render
Statistics dialog
A Render Statistics
dialog box has been added. From the Flamingo render window File
menu, select Statistics.
SetObjectMaterial
OpenGL definition update
When using SetObjectMaterial
to set a Flamingo material, the OpenGL definition of the material is
not updated. This meant that EMap and RenderPreview do not display correctly.
The FlamingoUpdateGLMaterial command will update generic OpenGL material definitions for all Flamingo materials in the current model. These generic definitions are used by RenderPreview and other OpenGL display.
RenderPreview
Highlight
An object with
a Flamingo material with very high specular (90+%) appears with a
nice highlight in FlamingoRaytrace. But in 15-June, that object
incorrectly has no glossiness at all in RenderPreview, it appears
just like an object with Basic set to Matte.
Search
paths enhanced
Flamingo will
search subfolders for material libraries and bitmaps.
Lock exposure
Controls to
lock the exposure setting have been added to the Exposure Control
dialog box so lighting changes don't change rendering.
Bug fixes
Flamingo/Rhino
stays minimized
If Flamingo
(and Rhino) is minimized while it is rendering, it could not be
maximized again until it was done. This is fixed.
The percentage complete displays on the minimized icon in the task bar.
What's New: 18-July-2001
Changes since last beta
FlamingoSaveRadiosity
command
The FlamingoSaveRadiosity
command saves an existing radiosity solution to an external file.
FlamingoRestoreRadiosity
command
The FlaminogRestoreRadiosity
command reads a radiosity solution from an external file.
FlamingoOptions
The FlamingoOptions
command has a new option to set ground plane height.
Render
window - Copy to Clipboard
A Copy
selection has been added to the Edit menu of the Flamingo Render Window.
UV Bump Mapping
Flamingo now
supports UV mapping of textures and bumps that are applied as basic
materials in Rhino.
Bug fixes
Pointlight
shadows in photometric mode
Pointlights do
not appear to cast shadows in Photometric mode. This is fixed.
Plant
height update
Changing the
plant height in the Properties dialog box and pressing Enter,
did not update the plant. This is fixed.
RenderPreview
display of ClearFinish materials
RenderPreview
for items with transparency less than 1/255 (ClearFinish creates such
OpenGL materials), the (nearly) opaque objects would not get properly
rendered. This is fixed.
Spotlights
show specular reflections
There was a
specular reflection from a spotlight, even when viewed from behind
the spotlight. This is fixed.
Win98
Startup crash
With the new
network checking/license manager setup, in a few situations, Rhino
crashed on startup on Win98. This is fixed.
Crash
editing multiple trees
Flamingo/Rhino
crashed when changing properties for multiple trees. This is fixed.
Lock up
with small display window
Flamingo
locked up with display window much smaller than viewport. This is fixed.
Black
rendering with radiosity
Some
situations caused black renderings after calculating a radiosity
solution. This is fixed.
What's New: 25-Jun-2001
Changes since last beta
Bump and
Texture maps in Basic Materials
If you assign
basic materials with bump and textures, they will render correctly in Rhino.
Bug fixes
Crash when
editing decals
Flamingo would
crash when editing decals. This is fixed.
Other crash
bugs fixed
Several
crashes and lockups have been fixed.
What's New: 18-Jun-2001
Changes since last beta
Tone
Operator controls
The Tone
Operator for adjusting the exposure of a raytraced photometric image
is working. In the Flaming Render window, on the View menu, click
Adjust Image.
Bug fixes
Flamingo loading
Flamingo did
not load properly on all operating systems. This is fixed.
Radiosity crash
Flamingo
crashed when calculating radiosity solution. This is fixed.
Specular
property not displayed in Render Preview
The Flamingo
specular color did not display correctly in RenderPreview. This is fixed.
What's New: 30-May-2001
Changes since last beta
Depth of
field calculator
A new depth of
field f-stop calculator is located on the Options Flamingo tab.
Values should be entered in current model units.
FlamingoOptions
command
The FlamingoOptions
command configures Flamingo environment at the command line.
RemoveFlamingoPlantData
command
The RemoveFlamingoPlantData
removes the plant designation from an object.
Render
window has minimize button
The Flamingo
render window now has a minimize button. If you minimize Flamingo
while rendering, Rhino also minimizes. If you minimize the Flamingo
render window, when the rendering is finished, only the render window minimizes.
Save image prompt
A new checkbox
on the Options Flamingo tab lets you turn the prompt for saving a
rendered image back on if you have turned it off.
Statistics
A Statistics
button has been added to the Flamingo Radiosity dialog box.
What's New: 18-May-2001
Changes since last beta
Soft shadow
controls hooked up
Soft shadow
jitter and sample controls for light properties are hooked up and
saved in raytrace mode.
UV mapping
enabled as a decal mapping type
The UV mapping
option has been removed from material mapping and added for decals.
Cone of
vision added to background image dialog
A cone of
vision indicator has been added to the cylindrical and spherical
Environment Background Image dialog box.
Workgroup
License Manager
Flamingo now
supports the Workgroup License Manager.
Bug fixes
Copying
spotlight caused original to turn off
If you copy a
spotlight, the original did not work any more Flamingo. This is fixed.
Incorrect
material path
A Flamingo
library had a texture map assigned to our local folder This is fixed.
CMYK bitmap
error message
If you try to
apply a CMYK image as a decal you get an error message "Invalid
image width or height"... The error message now reads
"Selected bitmap format is not supported."
Flamingo
paths in WindowsME
In WindowsME,
additional Flamingo directories were not recognized immediately. This
is fixed.
Spotlight
does not work when copied
If you copy a
spotlight, the original did not work in Flamingo. This is fixed.
What's New: 25-Apr-2001
Changes since last beta
Exclude
from radiosity setting
Exclude
from radiosity solution object property is now available.
Radiosity
background color
Radiosity
Background Color button has been added to the Photometric tab in
the Document Properties dialog box.
Display
Radiosity mesh
A check box
has been added to the Radiosity control panel to display/hide the
render mesh.
Bug fixes
Cloud color problem
Clouds were
not working properly if one of the three components of the cloud
color was set to 0. This is fixed.
Negative
number for radiosity residual
Recalculating
radiosity (100 steps) on some files gave a negative residual of -25%.
This is fixed.
Basic
colors ignored for radiosity
Radiosity
render did not recognize "basic" colors. This is fixed.
Inserting
plant did not repeat
Inserting a
plant from the menu did not repeat. This is fixed.
What's New: 16-Apr-2001
Changes since last beta
Photometric Renderer
Flamingo now
has two rendering modes: Raytrace and Photometric.
Photometric render mode uses real-world lighting values and allows
radiosity calculations.
Select the render mode from the Rhino Render menu.
New
radiosity interface
A new
interface for the radiosity solution places the radiosity solution in
your current Rhino viewport. All the normal Rhino view controls
(right mouse button pan, zoom, etc.) are available in the radiosity solution.
Bug fixes
Horizontal
scroll bar
The horizontal
scrollbar in render window scroll was backwards. This is fixed.
What's New: 26-Mar-2001
There are no changes since the 19-Mar-2001 build. Flamingo has been recompiled to work with the 26-Mar-2001 Rhino 2.0 Beta.
What's New: 19-Mar-2001
Bug fixes
Radiosity crash
Flamingo
crashed when the Recalculate button was selected during a raytracing.
This button has been disabled, so the crash is gone.
Depth of
field crash
Depth of field
periodically crashed when used with Radiosity. This has been fixed.
What's New: 13-Mar-2001
Changes since last beta
Radiosity
is now working
From the Render
menu, set the Current Renderer to Flamingo Radiosity.
Waves
are now working
You can now
add waves to your surfaces and polysurfaces. From the Properties
dialog box, click the Decals and Waves tab.
Tab name changes
The tab in the Document
Properties dialog box is now labeled Flamingo instead of Flamingo
Render.
The Flamingo Decals tab has been renamed Decals and Waves.
Antialiasing
Antialias
sampling is now in the Antialiasing section of the Document
Properties dialog box. The options are now labeled 4x (slow), 8x
(slower), and 16x (slowest).
Use lights
on off layers
A Use
lights on layers that are off check box has been added to the Document
Properties Render tab.
Edit box
controls have been added to all slider controls
All Flamingo
slider controls should now have a corresponding edit box.
Radiosity properties
A Radiosity
tab has been added to the Document Properties and Object Properties
dialogs. The file properties version is temporary and is currently
need to determine the best document defaults for different unit systems.
Bug fixes
Decal mask
color not saved correctly
Set the Mask
color of a Flamingo decal and save the model. When it opens, the mask
color is always black. This is fixed.
What's New: 23-Jan-2001
Changes since last beta
No changes. This release matches the 23-Jan-2001 Rhino beta.
What's New: 18-Jan-2001
New features
Depth of
Field for Flamingo rendering
The Depth
of Field setting is now functional in the File Properties
dialog box Flamingo Render tab.
Set
Flamingo material library search path
New interface
to modify Flamingo search path in the Options dialog box, Flamingo tab.
Changes since last beta
New tabs in
Options and File Properties
Rhino modeling
options and file properties are now in separate dialog boxes.
Flamingo-related information appears on Flamingo tabs in these dialog boxes.
Flamingo render
tab
Flamingo now
replaces the File Properties Render tab with a Flamingo
Render tab only when Flamingo is the current render plug-in.
FlamingoEditPlant
allows multiple selection
You can now
select multiple plants of the same type to change properties.
Ambient
light setting
Ambient light
setting removed from Flamingo dialog box. This is now a file property.
Decal
mapping and ortho
interaction
The way the
decal mapping interface uses ortho has changed. This fixed a problem
with selecting control points when ortho is on. The modified UI only
uses ortho when moving the center, since all other control points are
constrained to the mapping sphere/cylinder.
Bug fixes
Decal
change caused crash
Changing decal
or render settings now causes a prompt to save when closing a file.
Plant
editing does not update
Changing the
trunk diameter of a plant (Properties/FlamingoPlant) without visiting
any of the other tabs of Properties, did not show the changed size of
the plant. This is fixed.
Plants did
not render
Plants placed
after a render would not render the next time without forcing an
update. This is fixed.
Empty
material name caused crash
If the
material name was empty, but the library was defined, Rhino/Flamingo
crashed. This is fixed.
Moving the
decal up in list caused crash
Under certain
circumstances, moving at decal up in the list and rendering caused
Rhino to crash. This is fixed.
What's New: 20-Dec-2000
Additional
search paths for material libraries and bitmaps
Flamingo now
looks in the following places in this order:
1. Current
model's folder
2. Path
specified in the registry
3. Current
working folder
This search priority is used when looking for libraries or bitmaps that are specified without a complete path or when a complete path is provided but the bitmap is not found.
Plants
Flamingo
plants are now supported. Editing plants is accomplished through a
tab on the Rhino Object Properties dialog box.
Planar
decal interface
The placement
interface for planar decals has changed to allow more visual feedback
and control.
New Rhino commands for Flamingo
Flamingo
Opens the
Flamingo dialog box.
FlamingoEnv
Opens the
Flamingo Environment dialog box.
FlamingoSun
Opens the Sun
and Sky Settings dialog box.
FlamingoAmbient
Opens the
Document Ambient Properties dialog box.
FlamingoSettings
Opens the
Raytrace Settings dialog box.
FlamingoRenderWindow
Renders a
windowed area in a viewport.
FlamingoQuickRenderWindow
Renders a
windowed area in viewport with minimal settings.
FlamingoQuickRender
Render in
Flamingo window using viewport resolution and minimal settings.
FlamingoPlant
Adds a plant
as annotation dot or select existing object and turn it into a plant.
FlamingoGrowPlants
Displays plant
structure as series of polylines.
FlamingoPullPlants
Deletes all
plant structure polylines.
FlamingoRectangularLight
Creates a
rectangular light object.
FlamingoLinearLight
Creates a
linear light object.
Bug fixes
Background
color setting matches color picker
The background
color was not being set correctly. This is fixed.
What's New: 20-Oct-2000
New compile
The
20-Oct-2000 build has no new features, but is compiled to work with
the 20-Oct-2000 beta release of Rhino. You will not be able to run
16-Oct-2000 Flamingo Beta with Rhino 2.0 Beta 20-Oct-2000.
What's New: 16-Oct-2000
Material
hotspot control
You can now
control the sharpness, intensity, and color of a material hotspot
from the Material Editor.
Object properties
Object
properties now save and transform.
Self-luminance
color and intensity.
Decals
Progress
bar in render window
A progress bar
in the render window replaces the command history feedback.
Flamingo
when closing render window
Model would
crash if you closed render window during screen grid phase. This is fixed.
What's New: 22-Sep-2000
Object properties
Flamingo object properties are now supported:
Texture mapping: planar/cylindrical/spherical/UV
Mesh smoothing
Thick/Thin
Render window
Use the FlamingoRenderWindow command to preview rendering by selecting a window area on screen.
Render window scaling
The render window now scales so the image fits on the screen. There are zoom levels in the view menu.
