Hi Everyone,

On the downloads page you will now find the version 2.6 update to L3DT Standard edition.

What are the changes?

Whilst the v2.6 update mostly adds new features to the Professional and L3DT for Torque editions, the Standard edition does get some nice new features, including:

• New brush tools for painting the texture and attributes maps, in both the 2D and 3D view (e.g., see here).
• New heightfield algorithms to play with, including four versions of 'Design/Inflate' to allow finer-grained control or greater automation, depending on your preference.
• A tabbed map view, for faster and easier navigation around your map project.
• A new mesh decimator for OBJ/X mesh exports, with an integrated 3D mesh preview display.
• Support for Windows Vista in user mode, and better support for Linux via WINE (see Linux guide).
• More scripting options, including a script editor and many examples (see here).
• A generally tweaked and improved user interface.
• The usual swathe of bug-fixes.

The full list of changes is available here.

How much does it cost?

L3DT Standard is free.

What about L3T Pro?!

The version 2.6 updates to L3DT Professional and L3DT for Torque editions should be available in about a week. In the mean-time, please feel free to make use of the latest beta-release of L3DT Pro, which you'll find on the Pro downloads page (consult your reg/sales e-mail for the link, or else contact me at aaron@bundysoft.com.) The beta release is almost indistinguishable from the final release.

Feedback / bugs / comments

If you find any bugs in the new release, please report them as soon as you can in the bug reports forum. Any and all bug reports will be greatly appreciated.

If you would like to make any other comments or suggestions regarding this update, please reply to this forum thread.

Best regards,
Aaron.

Hi Everyone,

You may now find the 5th beta release of L3DT version 2.6 on the downloads page, in Standard and Professional editions*. This beta release adds a few more performance/stability fixes for the multi-threading manager, and also revises the design/inflate algorithms so that the output of the 16x, 32x and 128x versions are more consistent with that of the default 64x version.

If you find any problems, please let me know. Unless any further bugs are found, I expect this beta release will be re-badged as the final release of version 2.6 in the first half of October.

Best regards,
Aaron.

* The beta-release for L3DT for Torque is available on request for TGEA users. If you're interested, please e-mail aaron@bundysoft.com to request download instructions.

Hi All,

I've now uploaded the second beta release of L3DT version 2.6. The new changes are:

• Fixed crash with 'Operations->Active map->Split map into mosaic'.
• Fixed crash when double left-clicking with some brush tools in 2D display.
• Includes 'high speed' multi-core mosaic lightmap and texture calculations, as blogged here and here.
• Several tweaks to default settings.

As far as I know, this version is now bug-free. However, I'd love for you to prove me wrong, so please download this beta-release, try to break it, and report any bugs that you may find. If no bugs are found, this version will be re-packaged as the 'stable release' of L3DT version 2.6 in about two week's time.

Best regards,
Aaron.

PS: Some users may have disabled multithreading in L3DT Professional due to ... how shall I say ... unsatisfactory performance with previous releases. If you have done this, please go to 'Settings->Multi-thread settings' in the menu, and re-enable multithreading. You'll be glad you did!

Hi Everyone,

In today's installment of the developer's weblog, I present some comparisons of the speed of texture generation in the current release (v2.5c) against the forthcoming release (v2.6).

The big news?

Version 2.6 is one thousand one hundred percent faster than version 2.5c at generating a mosaic texture map on quad-core computer. Read on for figures, explanations and test conditions.

Cheerio,
Aaron.


Update: I've just finished the benchmark numbers for the light map calculation, and the improvements there are even more dramatic. L3DT version 2.6 was two thousand four hundred percent faster at generating mosaic light maps than version 2.5c. See here for the lightmap benchmarks.

Hi Everyone,

The beta release of L3DT version 2.6 is now available for download. Please refer to the beta announcement in the dev log for a full description of the changes. The final release of L3DT version 2.6 is due in September.

As always, I would greatly appreciate it if you would download and try-out this version, and report any bugs that you find. I would also appreciate any feedback that you'd care to give, whether it be good or bad.

Best regards,
Aaron.