For those of you that are ready to upgrade your Mac to Tiger (OS X 10.4) Strata 3D CX 4.2 is a must. For others who just want the improved stability, new features and optimizations then 4.2 to is… a must!

For CX 4.0 and 4.1 users the updater to 4.2 is free. Before you download please read the Important Installation Info first. The link to download the updater can be found at the top and bottom of this page.

Tiger users should be aware that the older Strata 3D CX 4.0 and 4.1 will not launch in Tiger and so Strata 3D CX 4.2 is a required upgrade. If you removed your older copy of Strata 3D CX when you installed Tiger (for example, if you did a “clean install” of Tiger) you will need to reinstall the older version of CX before the updater will work.

In some circumstances installing CX 4.0 or 4.1 from CD to your Tiger machine will produce an error. However, if you look at the location where CX was to be installed you will find it there and ready to be updated (the error is a technical issue having to do with install tracking).

If the installer runs and you see the message "writing files" or "copying files" and then you get an error message stating that it didn't install properly, ignore the error message, everything did get installed correctly. The error comes from the installer not being able to write a receipt package to the /Library/Receipts folder but we don't use the receipts so this is not an issue. Now you will need to go to the Packages folder on the CX Installer CD. From there, run the PDF Import installer package and (if you're an owner of Vector) run the Strata 3D Vector installer package. Again, ignore the error messages everything is being installed the way it should.

If the installer “errors out” before copying or writing anything to your hard drive you need to go to the folder /Library/Receipts and delete the 3 files "PDF Import.pkg", "Strata 3D CX.pkg" and "Strata 3D Vector.pkg" (again, if you have it). Now run the installer again and follow the instructions above for installing the separate packages.

If you have Strata 3D Vector as a separate installer CD, install that before running the 4.2 updater.

Once you have successfully installed the older CX go ahead and run the downloaded CX 4.2 updater.

New Feature in the Polygon/SDS Editor:

Edge Bridging

Edge Bridging is currently meant for filling holes in the mesh.
Here are the rules for edge bridging:

1. You must have exactly two opposing edges selected.
2. Each edge must be connected to, at most, one face.

Texture Creation and Editing:

• Texture Flipping fixed.
• Added support for progress when loading PSD files. This fixes a situation where the palettes could become unresponsive.
• Fixed a bug that was forcing image maps to grayscale when edited.
• Enabled Undo on the "Remove Texture" function in the Object Properties Texture Tab.

OBJ:

• OBJ import crash demonstrated by Silo OBJ files fixed.

VRML2:

• Export - Enabled exporting of multiple textures.
• Import - cone and cylinder positioning fix.
• Import - cameras, point and spot lights position and orientation fix.

Bezier Reshape:

• Fixed the hit code when adding points to a Bezier region.
• Fixed Bezier hit calculation for bezier curves.
• Fixed delete point undos.
• Enabled undo for point add.
• Better handling of overlapping curves so that the top most curve gets hit.
• Fixed a bug where the cut point might not be placed at the right spot on overlapping curves.
• Enabled the mouse filter setting for editing a bezier object.
• Fixed a situation in which a newly added point could not be undone.
• Improved the selection hit area for perspective views.

Rendering:

• Various Raydiosity rendering optimizations.
• Various multiprocessor rendering optimizations
• Changes to save images using absolute frame numbers.
• Changes to avoid overwriting existing files and work a little better with files having existing numbering schemes.
• Fixed the rendering sounds menu to avoid displaying files having a leading period.
• Fixed a bug in the popup menu button labels on Windows, which affected the rendering sound menus.
• Several suspended rendering fixes.
• A minor performance boost for the wireframe mesh display and possibly a few other mesh uses.
• A change to the OpenGL renderer that may help to slightly speed up OpenGL renderings (redraw). This mostly benefits wire frame renderings.
• Suspend process has changed a little. Now you enter the name of the image/animation file and the .rdf file is created using that name. No more entering the name twice for the image/animation file and the .rdf.
• Suspend and Continue has changed some in how it works. It no longer prompts for the file name.
• Fixed a noise based solid shader disparity between the Mac and Windows versions. This affected several solid textures that have a noise setting, like wood, marble, stone, etc. These textures would render differently when created on one platform and rendered on another (i.e. Windows to Mac, visa versa.)

Crashing and Out Of Memory:

• A fix for a rare memory corruption and crashing bug in the Extrude Tool.
• A fix to stop a crashing bug when aborting complex Raydiosity or photon renderings on multiprocessor systems.
• Fixed several crashes with multiprocessor renderings.
• Fixed a rare crasher where the octree in a Boolean object on a dual processor rendering would crash during a subsequent rendering.
• Addressed a crashing situation when reading corrupt mesh UV entries from model files.
• Fixed a memory corruption bug involving deformation lattices.
• Made changes to handle a 10.3.6 OS change that resulted in an out of memory error when rendering high resolution images. Renderings may render in chunks if the OS imposed memory limit is encountered.
• Fixed a few potential bugs and memory issues
• Fixed the offset re-center undo crasher.
• Loading of OpenEXR or HDR images crash fixed.
• Exporting via SWF (bitmap image SWF wrapper) crasher fixed.
• Fix for a random crashing situation.
• Fixed a crasher that could occur from closing a rendering that is in progress.
• Fixed a crasher when doing a rendering while in the Double-click reshape window.
• A fix to stop Strata 3D CX from crashing with some printer drivers.

Polygon Editor/SDS:

• Polygon Editor Edge Bridging added (in Edge mode contextual menu) (See “New Feature” above).
• Disabled Fillet, Smooth, Thickness, BurnUV and Flip Faces, when in the reshape mode.
• Fixed the burning of UV's on an object that has a subdivision applied. Note: This burns the new UV's onto the cage not the subdivided mesh.

Miscellaneous:

• Fixed a problem with the User Grid orientation control.
• Enlarged the rotation arcs so they are easier to see.
• Fixed drag selection in PathExtrude, Extrude and Lathe.
• Enabled Displacement map animation.
• Improved performance of the navigation windows (i.e. the Open file dialog).
• Fixed some bogus checkmark's and selection problems in the Plus menus.
• The export dialog now remembers the last selected file type. (Mac Only)
• Fixed the bug where the extrude bevel object properties view would not go away.
• Disabled double-click reshape of objects via the project window if preferences disallow it.
• Resource palette "stuck in collapsed mode" fixed.
• Project Window Camera and Spotlight naming difficulty fixed.
• Fixed an issue with loading EXR and HDR files that contain TYPE and CREATOR resource info.
• Shape Window not displaying the name of the shape fixed.

Windows and Mac animation event-marker scaling modifier keys:

• Mac: control-option-click-drag
• Windows: Ctrl-right-click-drag

• Better rendering performance on all platforms, with specialized optimizations for PowerPC Macintoshes and Pentium 4 PCs.
• New controls for image based light gels.
• Better UV handling in polygon reshape.
• Fixed stereo renderings on Windows.
• Fixed the texture coverage lock issue.
• Several rendering issues have been resolved, mostly concerning systems with multiple processors.
• Support for opening older EPS compatible Illustrator (.ai) files.
• Improved the saving of models and shapes containing FBX objects.
• Improved rendering log file functionality.
• Fixed raster SWF JPEG output.
• VRML file format improvement.
• Numerous other improvements.

• Face Bridge command.
• Edge Connect command.
• Reorient faces.
• Filled face selections.
• Selection remains when using View manipulation tools.
• Edges are drawn on top of the object when in vertex mode and using smooth or flat shading.
• Hidden line mode no longer shows edges that are not visible.
• Nudge rotation now works in all modes and in increments of 10 degrees, unless you hold down the option/alt key which then rotates in 1 degree increments. Nudge moves will move a tenth of the nudge distance if you hold down the option/alt key. Nudge scaling scales by 10% or 1% if the option/alt key is down.
• Numerous other improvements.

• Direct support for cube primitives.
• Several rendering improvements in shading quality and speed.