Changelog for version up to (including) 3.3.1

Changelog
1

3.3.1

Released 22. January 2020.

This is an intermediary release fixing some issues and bugs and introducing a smaller number of new features

LightAct

  • LightAct can now export projector data to Unreal Engine
  • Video reader node allows you to choose audio device to which the sound will be send to.
  • Pressing up and down keys on Object gizmo will transform this object (translate, rotate or scale)
  • You can move the play head by clicking on the timeline using clicking with mouse

LightAct-UE4 plugin

  • Projector widget and corresponding Python script allows you to read LightAct project file and adjust locations, rotations and FOVs of SceneCapture components according to the Projectors in LightAct.

3.3.0

Released 20. December 2019.

LightAct

  • LightAct can now play Notch blocks.
  • LightAct works with Unity now.
  • LightAct can now import Dome projection warp & blend data.
  • Additional projector controls making it easier to work with multiple projectors.
  • Spout and NDI writers and readers have texture previews.
  • Bool to Integer and Integer to Bool nodes.
  • 3DCal have better color schemes and additional controls.
  • In 3DCal you can now see Reprojection error.
  • Polygon softedges have anti-aliasing now.
  • Node connections can be automatically replaced with new ones.
  • Image processing nodes now work with Color to Texture node.
  • Node properties are better organized.
  • Layer Layouts pan and zoom information is now saved.
  • Content overrides are now available on right click menu.
  • Additional right click commands have been added to node pins: Show/Hide texture thumbnails, Enable watch, Disconnect and Disconnect all

WebUIs

New Widgets

  • Image widget
  • Horizontal separator widget
  • Checkbox widget
  • DateTime picker widget

Other improvements

  • Command and variable editing in Builder is now possible.
  • You can create variables from Edit widget dialog window now.
  • Hiding a textblock is now possible.
  • Duplicating of widgets and rows is now possible.
  • You have an option to make Builder sidebars scroll down with page.

3.2.3

Released 29. October 2019.

Projection Mapping

  • Projector AutoAlign: automatic projector alignment
  • Texture softedge: Texture softedge node allows you to create polygonal soft edge masks
  • Projector Preview: you can see the preview of projector output in Visualizer
  • Projector layout now includes Texture softedge, Texture warp and Texture channel multiply nodes by default. All are in pass-through mode initially.

Nodes

  • Set & Get Location & Rotation nodes: you can now get & set location & rotation of any object in the Visualizer from the Layouts by using nodes such as Set location
  • Get Canvas Texture: this node outputs the texture of selected canvas.
  • Duplicate Variable
  • Print to Console node: allows you to set the color and the duration of every new console entry.
  • Insert on Enter: if you type something in the search bar and press Enter, the top most node in the menu is going to be inserted automatically.

Visualizer

  • Console now appears in the Visualizer itself.
  • ‘F’ shortcut focuses on object

WebUIs

  • Command Scheduler: you can schedule WebUI commands in advance
  • Variable Scheduler: you can also schedule the values of any WebUI variable you have created.
  • Copy/Paste WebUIs: you can now copy & paste WebUIs

3.2.2

Released 26. July 2019.

General

  • Open Lightact projects by dropping .la project file on Lightact window.
  • Double clicking on .la project files opens them in Lightact.
  • Import assets by dropping them on Lightact window.
  • Layer templates.
  • Copy & Paste layers.
  • Console (similar to logs, but it doesn’t get written into a file – useful for debugging).
  • Instead of seconds, Sequencer and objects within can now use H:M:S time format.
  • LightNet & LightSync total overhaul and upgrade.

Visualizer

  • Bloom (glow on glowing objects) is implemented
  • Primitive objects (sphere, cube, cylinder and plane)
  • Markers (objects suitable for marking locations of other objects)
  • Imported and primitive objects now have unshaded shading type which elimites shadows and makes them suitable for projection mapping.
  • Imported and primitive objects can grab textures directly from image assets.
  • New Visualizer menu allowing you to adjust visualizer settings in the Visualizer itself and not in Preferences window like before.
  • Objects can now display labels showing their names.
  • Holding shift while scaling objects by scale gizmo makes them scale proportionally.
  • There is an additional Keep aspect ratio checkbox in Throwers and Video screens freezing aspect ratio.
  • Projector range setting adjust the target’s location while maintaining the orientation of the projector.
  • Double clicking an object in the Visualizer tab, animates the camera to the object’s location in the Visualizer.

Nodes

  • CvMat Temporal Median: calculates median cvMat from a sequence (buffer) of cvMat images. Useful for eliminating noise from cvMats (such as depth images)
  • Quit application: this node quits Lightact, which is useful if you want to schedule a restart of the application. You need Lightact Manager for that.
  • Texture size: returns the size of a texture
  • Print to console: prints a text to the console
  • KNN background subtraction: performs KNN background subtraction

v3.2.1

Released 8. May 2019.

General
  • hours:minutes:seconds time format : you can now display times of Sequences and Layers in hours:minutes:seconds format instead of just seconds.
  • 24-hour Sequences : now you can create 24 hour long Sequences and zoom out of the Sequencer to see the whole Sequence in its entirety.
  • Unlimited fixture pixel counts : you can create Art-Net fixtures with unlimited number of fixture columns and/or rows
  • many other minor improvements
Nodes
  • Array length nodes : we’ve included nodes for getting the length of all variable arrays. Example include: Integer Array Length, Float Array Length node and so on.
  • Play Audio FX node : this node allows you to play an audio file regardless of the timeline and also to have several concurrent playing instances for it.
  • Texture warp & blend: Texture warp and blend node supersedes Texture warp node. It adds better warping tools, soft edge and color correction.

v3.2.0

Released 26. March 2019.

General
  • Pro Software Licenses : we are now offering Pro Software Licenses which unlock all Lightact’s features. Unlimited power for limited budgets.
  • StereoView implementation
  • Device nodes which output textures or cvMats have now its own texture preview and the ability to save screenshots. Examples include IP camera node, StereoView node etc.
  • String switch case node
  • Several additional smaller fixes and improvements.

With this Lightact release, we are also including Lightact WebUIs, Lightact Manager and a demonstration of Lightact Cloud.

v3.1.4

Released 26. February 2019.

Visualisation
  • Virtual Reality : Lightact now allows you to preview your project in VR. You can use either Oculus Rift or HTC Vive and you can move around your scene using their respective controllers.
General
  • Playback performance of HAP files has been massively improved. We’ll publish detailed benchmarks in the following weeks
  • Art-Net mapping performance : we’ve improved art-net mapping performance as well by roughly 30-40% depending on the size of your buffer.
  • Network Interface : you can choose which network interface you’ll use for your Art-Net nodes or listeners as well as your OSC, TUIO, UDP or TCP messages.
Lightact Manager
  • Lightact Manager can now manage other applications as well. This means it can automatically start an Unreal Engine project or any other application or script you want it to, and it monitors its correct operation via a shared memory handle.

v3.1.3

Released 23. January 2019.

eDMX (Art-Net) Fixtures
  • Overrides : In the Devices window, you can now, for every Art-Net node , adjust overrides. These override the content that is currently being sent to them. There are 2 types of overrides: Preset and Channel . Preset overrides allow you to turn the whole universe to full or off, whereas Channel overrides allow you to set the value of individual channels from Layer Layouts.
  • Art-Net Listener : Art-Net listener node has been improved so that it is possible to get a range of incoming Art-Net channels. You can then, for example, send them to Unreal Engine or do whatever you want with them.
Layer Layouts
  • Shared Memory Sender node can now convert and write an Array of Integers (useful for passing an array of DMX channels) and an Array of Floats (results of FFT analysis).
  • CV Canvas node has been improved to allow re-ordering of connected cvMats.
  • TUIO Listener node can pass TUIO values in an Array of Vec3 .
  • Art-Net Channel Setter node works together with Channel Overrides in the Devices window and sets the value of an individual Art-Net channel.
  • Color to CVMat node creates a cvMat of a specified color.
  • Get Integer Array Item node gets an integer from an array of integers at a specified index.
  • Get Float Array Item node gets a float from an array of floats at a specified index.
  • Integer Array Sum node sums up the elements in the array at a specified range.
  • Float Array Sum node sums up the elements in the array at a specified range.
Devices
  • TUIO protocol is now supported. TUIO is an OSC based protocol that’s used to transfer multi-touch events.

v3.1.2

Released 7. January 2019.

General
  • Welcome Screen: Welcome screen has received a big upgrade. Sample Project section has been expanded to include project descriptions and thumbnails and there is an additional News section, which shows excerpts from our blog.
  • Performance Window : If you click on FPS and drawtime [ms] label on the top right corner, a new Performance window will pop up. It shows the FPS, drawtime and, if you use an NVidia card, VRAM values for the last 5 seconds.
  • Remove Sequence and Duplicate Sequence menu entries have been added.
eDMX (Art-Net) Fixtures
  • Copy Fixtures : in the File top menu, there is a new entry called Copy Fixtures . If you click on it, Lightact will copy the fixture files of all the fixtures in the current project to assets/fixtures folder. This allows you to more easily transfer projects between computers.
Layer Layouts
  • CV Canvas node allows you to warp and combine several cvMats into one. This is useful when you perform computer vision on several cvMat inputs at once.
  • Lua Function Call node is created from individual exposed functions in imported Lua scripts.
  • OSC Sender and Reader nodes have an increased maximum number of allowed characters in its Address field. The maximum allowed number is 256 now.
  • String to Texture node converts an input string to a texture. You can choose the Font, Font size, Background and Foreground color.
  • Integer to String and Float to String nodes have been added. They convert integer and float, respectively, to string.
  • Nerian stereo camera listener node allows you to grab a cvMat from Nerian SceneScan stereo cam processor.
Devices
  • Nerian Stereo Cameras are now supported. Nerian provides stereo camera technology through their SceneScan product range. This expands the range of supported depth mapping technologies.

v3.1.1

Released 20. November 2018.

General
  • BugSplat: we’ve included a crash report feature which should, in the event of a crash, create a pop-up window through which you can report the details of the crash and your contact details so we can reach out if we need more information.
  • Code signing : we’ve included a code signing certificate, so you shouldn’t be getting that annoying Unknown publisher warning when you install Lightact.
eDMX (Art-Net) Fixtures
  • Much improved Fixture placement rendering : Fixture placement rendering has been re-built from the ground up and its efficiency increased by an order of magnitude. Now you can easily render tens of thousands of pixels with no significant FPS drop.
  • Fixture placement with obj: You can create a Fixture placement with obj file where you can filter the objects in the file according their attributes such as vertices number, coplanarity and surface area. You can also automatically rotate the fixtures as per the rotations of the objects in the file.
  • Fixture placement with csv: You can create a Fixture placement with a csv file where in the csv file you insert locations, rotations, fixture type and DMX address and Lightact will create a Fixture placement based on this data.
  • 1st pixel red: This functionality colors the first pixel of the fixture in red. This allows you to inspect the orientation of the fixtures in the Fixture placement.
  • GUI improvements: we’ve added a number of gui and ease-of-use improvements such as display of last DMX channel of a fixture in the Visualizer , better fixture dimension setting in Fixture editor window and so on.
Layer Layouts
  • Find contours node finds and outputs OpenCV contours from an incoming cvMat input.
  • Find circles node finds and outputs minimum enclosing circle from an incoming cvMat input.
  • Shared memory sender node has been upgraded so that you can pass Contours to Unreal Engine.
  • Set texture channel node allows you to override one or several channels of an incoming Texture with a set value.
  • Video reader node has been fixed so that it doesn’t show the last frame upon entering 2nd and above loop.
  • Node descriptions now appear on a tooltip when you hover above the node.
Devices
  • IP cameras are now easier to set up.

v3.1.0

Released 23. September 2018.

General
  • Watermarks: in Free license, all video outputs are watermarked. This includes physical video outputs, Spout and NDI.
  • Visualizer gizmos have been added. Now it is possible to move rotate and scale objects in the visualizer with the gizmos.
Layer Layouts
  • Custom Shader node allows you to write custom GLSL programs and use them in Lightact.
  • Write texture to file node writes a Lightact texture into a jpg file on the disk.
  • Write string to file node writes a Lightact string to a txt file on the disk.
  • Read string from file node reads a text file and converts it into a string.
  • Sunset and sunrise node has been introduced. Based on latitude, longitude and UTC offset it calculates local sunset and sunrise times.

v3.0.6

Released 7. September 2018.

Projection mapping
  • Content source of a projector can be assigned directly to a Canvas in the same way as for the video screens.
  • Canvas setup window has been completely reworked. Now you can warp, softedge and color correct the content directly from this window.
Layer Layouts
  • Video reader, Hap video reader and Image reader nodes have a new Filepath string input. This allows playback of videos and images without having to import them as an asset.
  • Filepaths from folder node has been introduced. It outputs an array of strings of all files in a folder. Subfolder search and filtering by file extensions are possible.
  • Video playlist reader and Hap playlist reader nodes were introduced. Together with Filepaths from folder node, they can play all the videos in a folder.
  • Image slideshow reader node has been introduced. It works in conjunction with Filepaths from folder node and creates a slideshow out of all the images in the Filepaths input. Fading between images and zooming in or out is possible.
  • JSON parser and JSON packager nodes were introduced. JSON parser converts an incoming JSON stream into Lightact values. JSON packager, packages Lightact values into a JSON stream.
  • Node search function in the right-click menu has been improved.
  • New string processing nodes: String substring (finds the position of a substring), String length (outputs string length), String lowercase , String uppercase , String add (concatenates 2 or more strings).
Devices
  • MIDI reader: a new reader node in Devices window together with MIDI listener node in Layouts, allows you to control Lightact with an incoming MIDI signal.
  • Intel RealSense reader : a new reader node, together with RealSense listener node in Layouts, allows you to receive RGB and depth streams from Intel RealSense cameras.
  • Spout reader : in Spout reader, we fixed a bug that caused a sporadic flickering of incoming texture.

v3.0.5

General
  • LightNet allows you to find other Lightact devices on the network. It’s useful for LightSync and for future upgrades regarding multi-server situations.
  • LightSync is a messaging system allowing for multi-server syncing.
  • New asset management system : Lightact now makes a local copy of all imported assets in the project folder. This will make it easier for future project syncing along multiple servers connected through LightNet.
  • New welcome screen : it features new sample projects and What’s new section giving you updates on new content on Lightact Support website.
Layer Layouts
  • Video file reader node now has several new inputs: Volume, Start at and End at and Ignore pause ; and outputs: Frame number, Position, Duration and isPlaying . These new features allow you to create much more flexible video playback action flows.
  • Render to canvas node now has Opacity input.
  • Fade in & out nodes : there are several new Fade in and out nodes based on layer time or sequence time. These allow you to more quickly create content that fades in and out based on show parameters.
  • Interpolation nodes : we’ve added 4 new interpolation nodes for floats, vec2, vec3 and color values.
  • Optical flow node now has a Min val parameter, which helps eliminate noise with low movement feeds.

v3.0.4

Devices
  • NDI Server & Client: you can now send and receive textures using NewTek NDI.
  • Spout status is now visible in Devices window
Video playback
  • HAP codec: Lightact can now play Hap, HapA and HapQ encoded videos in .AVI containers.
  • Video looping: all video player nodes have now a Loop boolean input. If checked, the video will automatically start from the beginning when the end is reached.
Revamped particle system
  • 3D Particle System has been completely revamped. You can use texture emitters, 2 types of noise, adjust color and size over life and much more.
Texture processing
  • All texture processing nodes have a Passthrough option, which allows you to quickly enable/disable the node without having to (dis/re)connect it.
  • Color grading: Color grading texture processing node performs real-time color grading based on look-up tables (LUTs).
  • Chroma key: Chroma key texture processing node performs real-time chroma key removal. Also known as green-screen removal.
  • Glitch, vignette & scanlines: we’ve added 2 texture processing nodes (RGB shift glitch & Old TV look) which give you various options to introduce glitch, scanlines and vignette effect.
  • altogether there are 15 new texture processing nodes added: halftone, dithering, stippling and more can be found.
Texture generators
  • We’ve added a number of new texture generator nodes. They allow you to create new visuals on the fly. Examples include voronoi noise, bands, wavelets, color sine, checkerboard etc.

v3.0.3

Devices
  • Art-Net DMX and Timecode inputs
  • Video capture inputs

v3.0.2

Real-time rendering
  • Unreal Engine Integration (requires Spout and Lightact Unreal Engine plugins available from Lightact Github page).
Devices
  • Spout Client and Server
  • JSON shared memory

v3.0.1

Real-time rendering
  • Sphere emitter
  • Cylinder emitter
  • Bug fixes and usability improvements
Devices
  • TCP Client and Server
  • UDP Client and Server
  • OSC Client and Server
  • Bug fixes and usability improvements
eDMX
  • Custom fixture placements
Audio
  • Audio file import
  • Audio input import (for example a microphone or audio input)
  • Audio player
  • Fast Fourier Transform
WebUIs
  • Faster database interaction times.
Lightact Cloud
  • E-mail notifications for Errors, Warnings and User Actions