Fixed some bugs in the handling of twist on FK bones. Added an option to the IK End Affector Handle to specify whether or not the handle should maintain joint locks when the current time changes. Previously this capability was always on.

Fixed core dumper when a collision pop (without the "Add Hit Diffuse Color Attribute" or the "Add Hit Texture UV Attribute" option toggled on) cooks in a simulation which already has these attributes added by another collision pop.

NOTE: A collision pop will fill out these two attributes if they exist in the simulation, just like it does all such hit attributes. It does not need to have the add option for the attribute toggled on.

The new Houdini .pic format images can now be gzipped and read successfully by Houdini apps. When creating PRISMS .pic.Z files, gzip compression will now be used instead of using "compress" which uses a patented compression algorithm. Old .pic.Z files can still be read correctly.

There is now an environment variable which can be used to set the default color for missing texture maps: % setenv HOUDINI_TEXTURE_DEFAULT_COLOR "red green blue alpha" will cause missing texture maps to return the color specified when accessed in VEX.

The commands for creating the default scene in 123.cmd has been split into its own file, defaultscene.cmd. The file 123.cmd is loaded whenever Houdini starts up and from within 123.cmd, defaultscene.cmd is sourced.

Old change that should have been noted back in Houdini 4.9.337:

There is an option to specify the maximum memory usage for the undo manager under the "Preferences..." menu option. It is set to 1000 Kb by default in Houdini 4.9. In Houdini 4.1, it was fixed at a size of 100 Kb.

Miscellaneous fixes to 3d texture code:

• Fix to shadow integration artifacting
• Fixes to generation of files
• Addition of anti-aliasing of maps during generation
• Addition of forpoints() loop in image3d VEX context
• isbound() works properly (as best it can) in image3d
• Default shaders distributed for:

a) Fog context (including adaptive step integration) b) Surface context (ditto) c) Image3d context.

• Access to image3d context shaders via SHOPs is implemented
• There is an output driver which will generate texture mapsby calling i3dgen for the user.
• etc.

The Bones State's joint handle can now be switched to a rotate handle via the 'r' key or the right-click menu of the handle. This gives full control over the orientation of the bone.

Similarly, the default bone object handle has been updated to use the new bone rotate handle.

The orientation of the translate handle in the Bones State no longer loses its orientation when you tumble.

FK end affectors in the Bones State now align themselves to their associated bones when you move the position of a joint via the joint handles.

Tolerance sliders in SOPs, such as those for project, cookie, etc, are now logarithmic. This means that if you slide it one unit to the right, the number becomes ten times larger, and if you slide it one unit to the left, the number ten times smaller. This is more in line with the sort of changes one wants to make with tolerance values.

The Cookie SOP now supports the Crease Option. This allows you to generate the polygons that result from intersecting polygonal geomtry. This can be useful for birthing paritcles, etc.

You can now type the name of a "Generic" state, like the view state or the posing state, after hitting TAB. Until now, only generators and modifiers were accessible this way.

Fixed a bug in vmantra that caused some points not to be rendered in "points only" mode.

Replaced the 'p' hotkey for the display options dialog with 'd'. 'p' is now used for the OP parm dialog within the viewport. It's a minor change, yet bound to frustrate the unsuspecting user.

All the handles based on the pivot handle have a new menu option to project them onto the construction plane. If the handle is detached from the geometry, only the handle will be translated; otherwise, it will also displace the geometry.

The manipulator list UI has been improved. Manipulators display an icon which specifies the type of the manipulator. Clicking on the icon pops up a text display of the manipulator type. Each manipulator also has a button displaying the number of OPs attached to that manipulator. Clicking on this display shows the names of the attached ops. Similarly, manipulator groups have a button showing the number of manipulators in the group. Clicking on this button shows the names of the manipulators in the group.

Manipulators and manipulator group names are now allowed to have arbitrary characters in their names (including spaces and punctuation).

Also, persistent manipulators have buttons displayed on the left of the viewport for turning them on and off in each viewer. These buttons look similar to the manipulator buttons specific to a particular state, but are drawn with a blue background.

IK End affector handles now allow twisting of FK and NoK chains. Individual bones can also be rotated. For FK bones, this is accomplished by setting the IK Twist parameter of the controlling CHOP.

The IK End Affector handles for doing FK are now drawn as the geometry of the bone object itself. This geometry is drawn in ghost mode when doing shaded rendering, and not at all in wireframe mode (since it matches the bone wireframe appearance exactly). This also means that bones with this handle can be seen ghosted through a character's skin rendered in shaded mode.

The Join SOP now has a "Only Connected" toggle. This causes it to only join curves and polygons which share a point. All such possible curves will be joined.

Fixed bug with output of a custom colour to IGES, the output wasn't formatted correctly.

Added "Connect Points" feature to EdgeDivide. It connects the points created by the divisions in the order in which the edges were specified. Also changed the parmater name of "Number of Divisions" to just "Divisions", and bound the step ladder handle to it.

The VEX texture3d() function which performs integration of the map should be more correct now. There was a bug which showed up in some circumstances which caused minor errors in the integration. These showed up as horizontal/vertial artifacts in volume renders.

Fixed a bug with reading in IGES files that had whitespace instead of a string field. This was causing a problem when reading in IGES files produced by Rhino.

giges can now read in the IGES Entity #106 (Copious Data). Copious Data is essentially an ordered list of points that we treat as a vertices for a polygon. Giges also no longer ignores the transformation matrix associated with any of the entities we read in. Copious Data items are not supported as profile curves in our current implementation.

giges can now output IGES 5.3 files from our geo files. We output NURBS curves and surfaces, Bezier curves and surfaces (as NURBS since IGES doesn't support Bezier), Polygons (as Copious Data Entity #106, Form #12), trim curves and profile curves. Polygon trim curves are output as degree 1 NURBS. We output groups, where only the first 8 characters of the group names are preserved. We can also, optionally, output the primitive colour attribute.

The handles now push their own cursors when active. This helps differentiate them from the state, and indicates the fact that the operation is currently controlled by the handle.

The handle menu now allows removal of keyframes.

The cursor now changes when selecting geometry to better indicate the fact that we're in selection mode.