Added new sop expression, "xyzdist". This finds the distance to a piece of geometry giving x,y, and z coords. It is just like the pointdist, except you don't need a point. Try it out in the isosurface SOP!

Both pointdist and xyzdist are now documented to take "-1" as their primitive number, in which case they will find the closest primitive in the entire SOP rather than a specific one. A new type parameter (3) now allows these functions to return the primitive id of the closest primitive.

Added checkmarks and a new "Hide" entry to the context-sensitive geometry menu in the SOP viewer (ie the menu accessed with the right mouse button)

Fixed the interactive geometry reselection for all sops whose selectors are not tied to a specific input group, such as Merge, Switch, Blend, LOD, Attribute.

The VEX function texture3dBox() returned incorrect information if the bounding box of the 3D texture file was not a cube.

Added Parm toolboxes and the Handle list to the COP Viewer.

Added the Shape COP, for creating common shapes quickly.

Various tweaks and fixes to the display options.

• display current state name in the top left corner of a viewport.Can toggle display on/off.
• moved the viewport name to the top right corner.
• ability to turn off the grid display in the orthographicviewports.
• changing the current viewport will now update the grid parameterswith those of the current viewport.
• when switching a viewport between the various orthographicviewports, it will remember the grid spacings instead ofsimply resetting them to the default.

Added selectors and handles to the Attribute, AttribCreate, and LOD sops.

Polyknit SOP and interactive state for filling in holes between polygonal models. Almost totally manual at this point.

A button for the default, or root, state is now at the right of the op toolbar in the viewers. LMB on this button enters the root state and RMB changes the root state. The root state for each network type is now saved to $HOME/houdini.

Polysplit now has an option for splitting consecutive edges using a constant bias. This is turned on from the state menu.

The Curve state now handles both relative points and referenced geometry interactively. Relative points are turned on from the state menu and have higher priority than references. References to points and breakpoints are used if both snapping and snap consolidate are turned on (see snap dialog). The state will connect or disconnect the appropriate inputs. Note that handles will only use references if they are dragged by the pivot (when dragged by an axis their movement is restricted).

The bone Joint handle now resides (as it should) in the Bone Create state.

The Textport has new ctrl codes, Ctrl A and Ctrl E, to move to the start and end of the line.

The Edit Comment, Edit Delete Script, and Edit Alias Function, all use a new multiline edit window. This means you can stop putting \ns in all your comments!

More SOPs are now usable interactively thanks to new selectors, new handles, and new input groups:

• Align
• Creep
• Particle
• Sweep
• Rails
• Ray
• Spring

The Edit SOP is now fully functional. Transforms, Soft Transforms, Peaks, and Soft Peaks are possible. Undos and Redos are supported. The Edit Handle is now very fast and flexible; use the e,r,t,y keys to alternate between the different handles and toggle them on and off. Performance has improved for complex geometry. Fixed the hip file loading problem on NT and Irix. Try working with secure selection off for a feel similar to the Select & Transform State in Houdini 4.

Soft scaling is supported in the Soft Transform and Edit SOPs.

The Transform, Soft Transform, Peak, Soft Peak, and Edit SOPs now recompute normals by default.

More SOP connections will now be dotted because many SOP inputs are "reference inputs", ie only contribute as references to the SOP they help cook. Most 2nd and tertiary inputs are now defined as references. This change has helped us properly footprint SOPs that should remain visible when a new SOP is automatically created during interactive modeling.

Persistent PIs are now stored in the hip file. There are new commands for creating, modifying, and grouping persistent PIs. There is also a new pane type that provides a UI for modifying persistent PIs.

The IK end affector handle now has the pivot handle at the end of the bone for doing IK, plus it draws a second handle that looks like a bone. Grabbing this handle does FK on the chosen bone. The Move Single Bone option has been removed from this handle. As well, Shift-clicking on a handle will toggle the Locked state of that joint. Finally, for a given IK end affector PI, only a single handle is "current". The current handle has the full pivot handle drawn. Non-current handles just show the small box from the center of the pivot. For locked joints, the box is drawn shaded. For unlocked joints, the box is drawn in wireframe.

The Joint handle for bones can now also delete joints. The handle will now always clean up the transforms of modified objects.

Miscellaneous fixes to illuminance() loops in VEX fog shaders when ray-tracing. Doing illuminance() loops in fog shaders should produce correct results when ray-tracing now.

When there were many objects being rendered in vmantra (typically in the thousands -- usually due to particle instancing), vmantra would waste a large amount of time in object setup. This setup time has been significantly reduced. In a sample case of 4550 particle instances, render times went from 4:15 to 0:49.

New hotkeys have been added for the object/sop viewport layouts. In 4.0, they were 1,2,3,etc. They are now Ctrl+1,Ctrl+2,Ctrl+3,etc.

The Object Copy and Mirror States both now have options to specify the destination CHOP network to place copied InverseKin CHOPs.

The Bone Create State now cleans the transform of all its created objects. New options here include:

• Specifying the name of the CHOP network to place InverseKin CHOPs
• Ability to create twist affector objects for IK bone chains
• Option to automatically set the Keep Position when Parenting flagon created affectors and chain roots
• Options to coloir chain roots and affectors the same as their bone

FK End affectors are now also created with an orientation that matches their bones.

Split viewports should now refresh properly when display options are changed with "Apply Changes to All Split Views" toggled on.

Bone and Object Mirror States have been collapsed into a single Object Mirror State. The Bone Mirror State has been renamed to be the Object Mirror State. The Mirror State now provides a preview of where the mirrored objects will appear. Hotkeys have been added to the Mirror State to switch between the mirror planes. Mirroring now works with object subnetworks. Twist affector objects (used by InverseKin CHOPs) are now also copied or mirrored. The option to not copy end affectors have been removed. Fixed mirroring bug when end affectors were already in the same hiearchy as the bone to be mirrored. The Mirror State no longer creates mirror Null objects (it uses the pre-transform instead).

The bone twist handle now only shows its front part to the viewer so that it is easier for the user to determine its orientation.

Fixed bug that caused Houdini to crash when trying to convert old bone objects that have no channels via the boneconvert command.

In the Bone Create State, to go back one bone while drawing, it is now the delete key, not the backspace key. When drawing new bone chains, the first bone's local y axis is now always aligned to be perpendicular to the construction plane.

The Bone Joint handle now works with any type of bone chain as opposed to only No Kinematics bone chains.

Cameras and the IK Handle CHOP now work with cleaned transform objects.

Ambient lighting bugs have been fixed when only happened to show up with bone objects.

mplay now starts up on NT without crashing.

Fixed crash that happened if you tried to load a hip file with a desktop that did not exist.

Implemented network navigation commands (like in the modeller) for traversing the COP network in the viewport.