CARBON GRAPHICS ANNOUNCES AVAILABILITY OF GEO 1.1 ALPHA RELEASE 1

PARK CITY, Utah, January 6, 2004 -- Carbon Graphics is pleased to announce the immediate availability of the first Alpha release of Geo Version 1.1. This release is almost 100% code complete for 1.1 (our definition of Beta) and is expected to further boost our rapid penetration in the market. This release introduces many cutting edge features as well as bug fixes & customer-requested improvements. The main highlights are...

• Added a new keyboard shortcut (n-key) for toggling Normals display on/off.  A modifier (Shift+n) displays large (10x) normals - this is useful when viewing larger models.
• Added a new geoDecalGroup. This Group is an alternative mechanism for dealing with coplanar geometry. Geo supports coplanar geometry by using subfaces (nesting polygons to other polygons) - This technique is similar but raised up to the Group level. In a geoDecalGroup - the first child (another Group type - so possibly an entire subtree) is treated as the "base". All subsequent groups are treated as "decals". For this to work all geometry should be coplanar and all decal geometry should be contained within the extents of the base geometry.
• Tidied up the Tree View display so that Nodes which are not visible (because they've been hidden or effected by visibility-controlling nodes such as LOD's or Switches) now have their icons drawn "grayed out" (in addition to the name, as previous). Also fixed a number of display-related bugs. The end-result is that it its much easier to see at a glance which nodes are active or invisible.
• Made the following changes to the Coryphaeus Software (Dwb) format import & export Plugins:
  • The DWB Exporter was incorrectly setting the Scale Link min/max values (applying an unnecessary unit conversion). This has now been fixed.
  • If-Then-Else mapping functions were not being converted to the Geo equivalent correctly. the result would be broken behavior and a message reporting a  nested mapping function conversion problem. Fixed.
  • The DWB loader was adding a spurious clamp to almost all visibility links even if not required. The clamp (when not actually required would set the clamp range between 0.0 & 0.0 - most likely causing problems with the visibility. This has been fixed.
• Made the following changes to the OpenFlight (flt) format import & export Plugins:
  • The Geo Header Node property panel  now correctly specifies the Up-Axis  as 'Z'.
  • Previously OpenFlight DOF nodes were converted to Geo Group nodes with a geoDCSAction associated with them. This has now changed. The geo flight loader plugin now creates individual Rotate, Translate & Scale actions - all driven by generated auto-updating variables (which define clamp ranges). This change has the effect of making the imported articulation easier to understand and makes them use the "standard" animation actions rather than the "just-for-flight"  DCS action. Articulation conversion to/from other formats will now be easier. The geoDCSAction should be considered a "deprecated" action as of this release (i.e. unsupported after 1.1).
  • Previously Geo would crash when encountering Morph Vertex Nodes in an imported OpenFlight file. This is no longer the case. Only the 100% vertex position is used within Geo.
• Invoking Get Material from the Appearance Tool Bar would crash Geo. This has been fixed.
• Loading files with multiple textured externals and then attempting to texture map some newly-created geometry would apparently not work! (the texture index assignment was not being made). This has been fixed.
• Selecting a Group Node that was a parent of an LOD node would not show the selection in the 3D view. This has been fixed.
• The Strip-Face Tool was broken. The Insert before, Insert After and Delete buttons never become enabled making it impossible to change the strip-face topology along its length after initial creation. This regression has now been fixed.
• Made some enhancements to the Extrude Tool. It now correctly extrudes concave polygons and provides a GUI option to cap the extruded geometry.
• Fixed a common bug found in the behavior Transform origin, Transform Plane, Transform Vector, Cone, LightPt String, Plane Mapper, Move Vertex & Proxy Replace Tools. All these tools would crash if the user clicked on a non vertex node in the Tree View while the tool was active.
• The Cone, Cube, Sphere & Cylinder Tools now respect the Header Node's Up-Axis flag & create geometry with the same orientation as the current model.
• Major enhancements & bug fixes to the Triangulate Tool. It now detects whether any decals are in the current selection list & prompts the user on whether they would like to include the decal superface in the triangulation (since that could conceivably brake the decaling). The triangulation also now works with any decals which are selected (previously no decals were triangulated).
• Fixed a bug in the reading of externals in the Geo format loader. Previously, the textures of the external would get messed up and reference textures in the master file's texture palette - this is no longer the case.
• Added a new Plugin tool type - GEO_TOOL_TYPE_SCENEGRAPH. This indicates that the plugin is a Scene-Graph operation tool & should be placed under the SceneGraph menu & in the SceneGraph Tool Bar.
• Fixed a crash bug in the Convert Externals capability. Previous changes to optimize texture handling with textured externals broke this feature. This has now been fixed & the functionality encased in a new SceneGraph tool Plugin. This tool has moved from the File menu to the SceneGraph menu & Toolbar.
• Geo now supports the ability to define multiple State-Machines for a model. State Machines are a conceptual definition of a discrete behavior system and are ideal for controlling/managing multiple inter-related behaviors - an example of this could be aircraft undercarriage. The main discrete states of the undercarriage state machine could be DOOR-OPENED, GEAR-UP, DOOR-CLOSED and GEAR-DOWN. The State Machine also contains a number of transitions which are the behaviors executed as the State-Machine Manager traverses from one state to another. State transitions can be instantaneous or occur over a set duration while accompanied by an animation behavior. In the undercarriage example there is a transition between DOOR-OPENED to GEAR-DOWN (since the doors need to be open before transitioning to the GEAR-DOWN state). The gear geometry will animate during the transition to the gear down state. There is also embedded logic to control the state transitions (i.e. hold on gear deployment until the door is open). In addition arbitrary behavior action lists can be executed when a particular state is active. To create the state machines there is a new graphical WYSIWYG State machine editor. This editor allows you to drag & drop states as well as interactively connect states via transitions. To map state machine driven behavior to particular nodes (such as the undercarriage geometry) there is a new geoStateMachineAction. This action provides "rules" that map onto the state machine and provide per-node control of what happens when a particular state or transition is active - this allows basic state machines to be reused by different nodes with different behavior properties (such as a left and right undercarriage which will have different undercarriage rotation properties).
• Made the following enhancements/additions to GeoScript...
  • Added geoTool:execute(string) where 'string' is the name of an arbitrary Geo Plugin. If found it will be executed. The name does not have to match exactly - only be part of the Plugin name. Case does not matter. For example to execute the new Convert Externals plugin you could type: geoTool:execute("convert") as well as the full qualifier:  geoTool:execute("Convert Externals")
  • Fixed a bug in the command-line parsing logic. This was causing command line loads (including GeoScript files & the OFFSCREEN token) to be ignored.
• Added a new Convert MultiTexShader tool. This tool converts all selected MultiTexShader Nodes into RenderGroups- in the process all Shader texture assignments are applied to all polygons previously children of the shader.
• Added a new Decompose Meshes tool. This tool decomposes & replaces mesh nodes with discrete (triangle) polygon Nodes. Useful for conversion to other formats that do not support meshed primitives.
• Made the following changes to the Aechelon (HIE) format import & export Plugins:
  • The exporter now automatically supports Flat Shaded polygons. These are separated into their own groups & now reference GeoState definitions with Lighting turned off.
  • The exporter & importer automatically deals with polygon-based subfacing by auto-converting polygon decals into new geoDecalGroups. Geo decal groups match one-for-one with Hie format GDECAL groups.
  • Added a file encoding & discrete pto count to the generated pto files. This avoids name clashes & file overwrites when similar-named groups are exported from Geo.
  • The Geo Header Node property panel now correctly specifies the Up-Axis  as 'Z'.
  • The triangulator built-into the Hie exporter now correctly tesselates concave polygons.
  • problems associated with decal export have been resolved.
  • Geo now correctly writes out the TEXGEN[0-4] statement in the GST (GeoState) file. This turns on multi-texturing in the Aechelon IG or Viewer.
  • Geo was not writing out the LIGHT, FXLIGHT, STROBE & HALO reference statements in the Hie file (the corresponding LUX file was being written correctly).
  • Added a new HiePolyLevelTexturingOnLoad user preference. This preference automatically converts geoMultiTexShader nodes created by the Hie importer into standard geoRenderGroups - with the shader's multi-texture properties being applied to its polygon/mesh children. This effectively converts  the loaded model from a group-based to polygon-based texture definition. This preference is on by default.
  • Added a new HieDecomposeMeshesOnLoad user preference. This preference automatically decomposes any mesh nodes created by the loader into their constituent polygons (triangles). This preference is ignored if the HieEmbedPtoFilesOnLoad is disabled. This preference is on by default.
  • Removed the GAIN OFF token in generated GeoState (GST) files.
  • Better handing for the setting of the TRANSPARENCY flag in the GeoState (GST) files. Now this will be OFF unless the material exhibits some less-than-100%  opacity or the texture requires blending. When activated the default  value is now HIGH_QUALITY.
  • In the material (MAT) file, the color material mode token is now COLOR_AMBIENT_AND_DIFFUSE.
  • Improved handling of SW (Switch) Nodes on Hie format import. Previously, all switch children would be "active" and displayed upon load - now only the first child is displayed.
  • The Aechelon importer & exporter now fully supports Aechelon ANALOG variable behaviors as well as State Machine driven behavior (which maps onto the new Geo State-Machine support). All Aechelon State-Machine driven behavior with the exception of Color & Texture are currently supported.
• Override mode when testing behavior would not work if the behavior Node was located under a geoClipRegion node in the Scene Graph. This was caused by the SDK function: geoScene::isAnimating(). It would always return false - causing the override processing to stop at the clip node. This has been fixed.
• Added a Variable Exercisor. This allows a quick and easy way to stimulate a behavior variable. Select "Exercise Var..." from the Behavior Menu or press the E-Key when behavior processing is active. A dialog pops up allowing you to pick the exercise variable & set its constraints. Users can then interactively drag the mouse across the screen to set the value. This is like an interactive Override and takes precedence over any override or auto-updating var.
• The Remove Empty Nodes optimization tool would crash Geo under certain circumstances. This has been fixed.
• Reintroduced the geoConditionalAction (removed in an early 1.0 Release Candidate). This action executes  a compound block if-then-else logic. Unlike the geoIfThenElseAction (which only sets a  single variable value based on the input variable condition test), the geoConditionalAction allows the user to set any number of nested actions on variable condition pass (the if section) or fail (the else section).
• Fixed some bugs and improved the Flip-Face tool (re-orients polygon direction). This now correctly flips polygons as well as tri-meshes, quad-meshes, fans and concave polygons.
• Geo now auto-corrects the orientation of simple geometry (polygons, meshes, rectangles, circles) on creation. This means that users do not need to worry about vertex order when building new geometry.
• Changed the Fit operation so that single point fits or fits that would bring the selection in front of the near clip plane (and out of sight) are no longer a problem.
• Changed the Fit nomenclature in the View menu to Fit On Selection.
• Added a new Fit On Point command under the View Menu. This command starts a tool which executes a fit command on the selected point. Tool input can be modified by holding down the SHIFT key to pick points on any underlying edge or polygon surface. This is a good way to reset the trackball manipulation center to a point which does not exists as a scene graph vertex.

About Carbon Graphics

Carbon Graphics LLC is an innovative company specializing in software products & services for the Visual Simulation market. Their flagship product is Geo - a 3D modeling and animation tool used for building, editing & animating dynamic real-time models and scenes. Visit the Carbon Graphics Web site at http://www.carbongraphics.com

For further in formation regarding this press release or Carbon Graphics, please contact:  

Alison Weckler, Director of Marketing
Carbon Graphics LLC
(435) 649-9874
alison@carbongraphics.com

Carbon Graphics and Geo are trademarks of Carbon Graphics LLC. Any other trademarks or trade names mentioned in this press release are the property of their respective owners.