Whats New - Version 4.5.4

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• Testing RGB with Shake
• Find/Replace - previous entries
• Resizeable Line Editor
• Additional (prebaked) Template Ribs
• Houdini - compiling a VOP

Testing RGB with Shake
Figure 1 shows an RSL "if" statement being executed (control+e or alt+e or apple+e) via Shake. Since Shake is not launching its GUI it appears that a licence from Apple Computers is not required! The "if" statement does not have to be part of an RSL document. It is shown here only for purposes of illustration. The Shake script that runs as a result of the user executing an "if" statement was written by Royal Meservy, a student of The Savannah College of Art and Design. The script can be found in the templates menu - figure 2.

figure 2

figure 1

Find/Replace - previous entries
The text fields of the find/replace tool now display upto 16 previous entries - figure 3. The popup menu of entries is activated by control+clicking (MacOSX), right-mouse clicking (WIN). New entries are automatically added to a text field. Using the shift-key when activating the popup of entries enables all entries to be deleted - figure 4.

figure 3

figure 4

Resizeable Line Editor
Some text fields within the Cutter GUI implement a popup "line editor". The line editor is activated by double clicking on the text field. Figure 5 shows a line editor for the regular expression text field in the Find/Replace tool. Unlike a regular text window, resizing a line editor window causes its text to be scaled.

Ordinarily, a popup line editor operates as a modal window - it deactivates the background windows. In the case of the input text fields of the Find/Replace tool the "Find" button remains active. This a handy when using Cutter in a group teaching situtation. It enables, for example, a regular expression to be clearly seen and applied without the necessity of closing the line editor window.

figure 5

Additional (prebaked) Template Ribs
Because of the issues related to using quadric surfaces in a RIB file, several prebaked ribs are available in the Templates menu. For example, instead of using the RIB statement,

    Sphere 1 -1 1 360 # Quadric surface

either of these two statements can be used

    ReadArchive "poly_sphere.rib"
    # or
    ReadArchive "nurbs_sphere.rib"

Single Frame Ribs - figure 6 include an extra searchpath for archives ie.

figure 6

    Option "searchpath" "shader" "@:../shaders"
    Option "searchpath" "texture" "../textures"
    Option "searchpath" "archive" "Cutter_Help/templates/Rib:custom_templates/Rib"
		

Houdini - compiling a VOP
Cutter can now use the appropriate flag with the Side Effects vcc compiler to compile a VFL surface shader as a vop. If Cutter detects the word "vop" or "vops" (figure 7) anywhere in the first commented block of code it will compile the source code using this directive to vcc,

    vcc -m PATH_TO_OTL_FILE PATH_TO_VFL_FILE

otherwise, it invokes the compiler with,

    vcc -g 8 -L PATH_TO_OTL_FILE PATH_TO_VFL_FILE

The PATH_TO_OTL_FILE is determined by Preferences (figure 8).

    Languages->VFL->Output VEX to OTL

figure 8

figure 7