https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYPrj9lQcFM

You can now animate materials! Make objects change colors, radiate, or become semi-transparent over time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgvNwE8JmlA

Scale objects with a new scale slider.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl4ifm2gzZM

Scrub the timeline by holding the Play button and moving the controllers left and right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Kq3BSxRns

In Pro. Export video sequences.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBFVZ2rz8IU

Connect any object to the viewer's head. For example, you can set up a field of view bounds of an AR headset to understand how much will be visible in an AR experience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFan4Vi1IiA

In Pro. See information on a camera and the timeline screen with the current camera's parameters, such as the field of view, screen size, and the current frame.


Go to the documentation site by pressing "Learn" on the 2D screen.


- Export texts as SDF textures in FBX
- More convenient log out from Poly
- Not including the sun mesh in exported FBX
- Fixed bugs with sounds on the timeline
- Fixed text label for the sound icon on the shelf
- Fixed wrong positions of knees in duplicated puppet
- Fixed the bug preventing correct export of videos if the timeline was playing upon requesting the export
- Fixed exceptions on importing of skinned meshes with odd metadata
- Fixed materials naming on exported FBX files
- Fixed disappearing of objects from the Transit and characters on the Shelf after throwing the shelf away and undoing
- Fixed wrong materials of objects from the Transit if it was set a default material in the materializer
- Fixed visual glitches on duplicated sound player
- Return DOF control to the camera in Tvori Basic.
- Fixed the Materializer's volume palette exception when record mode is on
- Fixed the problem with colorizing multi-part meshes when inserting the picker inside objects
- Fixed incorrect animation timing in FBX
- Improved rotational Gizmos control in skinned meshes
- Export models to subfolders named after the current scene
- Improved removing by the trash bin of grouped groups or with links to other groups
- Disabled getting the material pen when the hand has another tool. For example, the locker.

In this update, we smashed a lot of bugs, improved tools, visuals, and optimized some aspects of Tvori. Tvori works a bit faster, looks better, and is more reliable now.

We are also updating our documentation—improving descriptions and adding videos. We want to eventually cover all of the functionality and make it approachable.

Here's what we improved in July and August:

Better OBJ & FBX Import
- More stable import of OBJ & FBX files
- Optimizations for skinned meshes

Better FBX Export
Now exports cameras to FBX with the following properties:
- Field of view (animation support)
- Position/Rotation. (animation support)

Exports the light bulb and the projector to FBX with the following properties:
- Type of light (spot/point/directional)
- Color
- Intensity (animation support)
- Spot angle (animation support)
- Position/Rotation/Scale (animation support)

- Now always exports scenes with the directional light (the sun) with color, rotation, and intensity
- General improvements of animation exporting to FBX format

General Improvements
- Launch natively on Oculus when using Tvori on Steam. Opposed to launching with SteamVR
- Added the brush to the main menu
- Added the brush's context menu when pressing the menu button with the brush in hand
- Now possible to drop the brush by clicking on the context button and from the brush's context menu
- Improved visualization of animation curves
- Improved visualization of links
- Improved visualization of bones in the puppet and skinned meshes
- Hovering over a camera on the timeline shows a connection with the camera on a scene
- Sliders show rulers with values' steps
- Allow breaking links for all children from the context menu
- Disallow throwing out joint holders from skinned meshes
- Make it possible to rearrange cameras and viewers on the timeline from the context menu
- Now possible to set "Free move" for last bones in skinned meshes from the context menu
- Hide context menu on the shelf for the text tool
- Added "Reset pose" for bones in skinned meshes from the context menu
- Added undo & redo support for parameters in skinned meshes
- If the chosen project folder doesn't exist — Tvori will use the default project folder in documents
- Showing the version of Tvori on the 2D screen
- Improved visuals for the light bulb and light projector on white scenes
- Turn off bloom from the viewer
- Updated a visual for the viewer
- Added a new blue noise algorithm for shaders with transparency
- Improved the logic for the last color slot
- Showing the current project name in the menu
- Added undo & redo for selection of objects
- Improved positioning of the context menu
- Added close button for all workspace tools
- Added undo & redo for context actions in brushes
- Disable linking to workspace tools, such as the timeline and the materializer
- Change animation controls on the puppet and skinned meshes to red in the record mode
- Added haptic feedback on duplication with the gizmos
- Now possible to spawn locators at the center of a scene
- Now possible to ungroup linked groups
- Now possible to scale the microphone
- Added a new FX—the bullet trail
- Activated support of the opacity for imported models from Poly
- Added support of opacity for the unlit material

Optimizations
- Optimizations of importing cubemaps (now they're in DXT1 format, converted to RGBA32)
- Set DXT1 format for imported textures from stuff folder
- Optimized updating skinned meshes' bounds
- Optimized generating joint holders for skinned meshes
- Optimized the x-ray shader on UIs
- Optimized highlighting

Fixes
- Fixed bug with "Make Free" on bones in skinned meshes
- Fixed the gizmos' move for bones in skinned meshes
- Fixed black dots on vertices of imported models
- Fixed problems with applying materials to multi-part models with LODs
- Fixed hiding of tracks with keys if there are more than 10 of them
- Fixed wrong near plane on the camera after bringing it back from the trash
- Fixed problems with skinned meshes on duplication
- Fixed selection of bones in skinned meshes
- Fixed appearance of video player buttons on cameras
- Fixed the problem with the size of skinned meshes linked to animated puppets
- Fixed grabbing images from the shelf when the material pen is in a hand
- Fixed problems of getting the material pen on Vive
- Fixed incorrect FOV value in the first frame on exported videos
- Fixed puppet's twitches in first frames on exported videos

With this update we release Materializer. It's a new tool that allows to customize materials and apply them to objects.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucZHtSadgX0
You can switch between 3 types of materials and change their properties. By using the material panel, you can go from a matt, dark material to a shiny, bright one, to a shadowless, solid colored material in seconds.

From the right side of the material panel, you can apply the material (excluding a color) to all objects on a scene or set it as a default material for all new objects that you get from Shelf.

We replaced the old painting case (Paint & Color) with Materializer. So the drawing tools now live in Materializer.

Check a new scene in Tvori that showcases materials made with Materializer.



When you press on the color palette, color slots or a material orb you get a material pen in your hand that can apply a given material and its color to objects on a scene. If you press on a button with a pipette icon on the controller, the pen empties and it becomes possible to pick material properties from objects instead of applying them. You can switch between several modes of the material pen to work only with a color, or all material properties excluding the color. It's handy for when you want to colorize objects without changing all of their material properties and vice versa.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F069mI2L3gE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJznk06D2VE
When you take the pen from the color palette or color slots, it works in "colors only" mode, so when you apply the pen to objects—it applies only the color.

Added a Materializer tool that allows creating and setup custom materials; apply a material to all objects on a scene; set material as default for new objects from object Shelf.

Added Material Pen to pick and apply materials.

Camera Tool. When post effects are off—boom also turns off.

Object Shelf. Added a handle under the shelf.

Point lights and projectors visualize as spheres when they are small enough.

Fixed inability to import new objects from a project folder after taking a photo while Shelf was open and in some cases after adding new files to the project.

Fixed occasional appearance of "Create new project" when trying to switch to an existing project from the 2D menu.

Made Locker ignore the grid at the floor level, making locking & unlocking of objects more reliable.

Made it possible to move in space while holding an object.

With this update, we are introducing advanced Puppet customization. It is now possible to change body proportions and create unique characters. You can find inspiration from 5 new customized puppet's on our Shelf and get an idea for what kind of characters you can create.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3Mk0Uw04Oo

This video shows how to change the proportions and work with brand new Puppet's Control Panel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqtB54IjB0w

Also, with the current update, you can export not only animation, 360 or 2D videos but also your complete VR experience! This is our very first version of the future Tvori Player!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYq7vMmnWWw

We updated the logic for locators. You can now use locator as additional control points for your puppet animation when a puppet is in the animation mode (Locked).
This should help a lot for facial animation, like eyes/eyebrows, animation of wings, fingers, etc. You are linking a locator to the required bone, Lock puppet for animation, and animate it as you used to do with existent control points.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p8HhptXbxQ



Puppet

• The functionality to change body proportions of puppets. Make elves, gnomes, and Slender men
  
• A control panel for puppets with a bunch of buttons that help to customize
  
• Optional controls for knees that you can enable from the control panel
  
• Locators in a puppet are always active now even when the puppet is locked for changes. It will be easier to make custom controls for facial animation and other features on puppets
  
• An ability to set a puppet in the T-pose with a single button click
  
• The IK system is more optimized now. You can have more puppets on a scene
  
• 5 customized puppets on the shelf to give you an idea what kind of characters you can make

VR Player

• Functionality to export scenes as dedicated VR experiences that exist in separate executable programs that you can run independently of Tvori
  
• Options to make a VR Player run in VR (Steam, Oculus) and in 2D

Tutorial

• The interactive tutorial now has more videos inside that should make it easier to understand how to do certain things that tutorial asks to do
  
• Tutorial has less internal errors that were interrupting people or making it not possible to complete the tutorial

Presentation in Play Views

• A switch between cameras and play views with left and right arrow keys
  
• When playing from a play view, pressing the left and right key switches you between other play views on a scene. Makes it possible to guide people in a presentation or a story

General improvements

• When you're in a play or record mode connections between objects are hidden
  
• Gizmos are faster now when selecting groups objects
  
• Link visualizations are more optimized now. When there's a lot of objects with lots of links Tvori should run faster than before

Play View
We significantly improved what was previously known as Play Area. Play View allows you to get immersed at an exact point and scale on a scene during play. It works in three modes now: Point, Standing Point, and Area.

— Point immerses you in the position and scale of the avatar figure.
— Standing Point does the same as Point but places your virtual head above the virtual floor at the distance of your real floor.
— Area positions you relative to the actual tracking area of your VR setup, where the center of your tracking area is the center inside the area of Play View.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=108&v=ZKG5nLgDFAg

Keyboard
We updated the keyboard, it's now possible to switch between upper and lower case, navigate the caret, and type in symbols aside from numbers and letters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1I_ImQx__I

Rename Saves
It's possible to rename saves while in Tvori now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmEdQqF21yQ

Texts on Scenes
It's possible to put texts on scenes and edit them via a keyboard now!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whMp7W-JbBU

Tutorials
We made 2 interactive tutorials. The first tutorial will start once for every new user. The purpose is to teach people the basics of Tvori—how to interact with objects, how to animate, how to move on a scene, how to load scenes, and how to use some tools.

Transparent Materials
You can make objects semi-transparent through the color palette now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk1fZQuED4w

Semi-transparent Images (PNGs)
Import semi-transparent PNGs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPSnYNvTEfs



Fog
Set the fog material to any objects through the context menu. You can also change the color of the fog.

Snapping grid
When the snapping is on, a grid of dots visualizes the distance between snapping points.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyB1-gYYX_w

All improvements and fixes with technical details
— Fixed when sometimes project doesn't load correctly after switching the projects from 2D menu
— Changed from 4096 to 8192 max import resolution
— Fixed problem with duplicating strokes (exception)
— Fixed visibility on the 360 image container other 360 image
— Play View. Switch between three modes: Point, Standing Point, and Area
— Save state of play targets (mode, UI)
— Add the 360-degree camera to the tools shelf
— 360 Photos. Inject Metadata (using exiftool)
— 360 Photos. Visualize 360 photos on the scenes
— 360 Photos. Visualize 360 photos on Shelf
— 360 Photos. Made loading faster and more reliable. Fixed situations when a 360 photo would turn black.
— Play View. Spawn 360 cameras through a context menu
— Enable Timeline->Export->Photo for play areas
— Improved Keyboard: upper/lower-case switch, new symbols, caret navigation
— Interactive tutorials—teaching the basics and working with the puppet
— Disallow throwing away the frozen/locked objects by trash bin
— Snapping grid visualization
— Improved the color palette
— Added a new fog material
— Added visualization of the snapping grid
— Made it possible to import PNGs with semi-transparency
— Created interactive tutorials

We are happy to invite everyone to participate in #Tvori360Time contest!
Create your story in VR and share as 360-degree video or create your atmospheric scene and share a panoramic 360 photo. Demonstrate the beauty of spacial views.

#Tvori360Time starts TODAY, February 14th 2019, and the submission deadline is March 14th 2019. Learn more about the contest.

https://youtu.be/l-rmurOZdLE

With this update, we focused on improving 360 output. We added a new 360 camera to Shelf that allows making 360 photos and videos. It's now more convenient to make 360 videos and possible to view 360 photos on scenes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFWWnJCyq-0

All the improvements and fixes:
— Camera. Made it possible to capture 360 photos
— Saving state of play targets (mode, UI)
— 360 Photos. Injects Metadata (using ExifTool) so the photo is getting recognized as panoramic 360 by viewers and websites such as Facebook
— 360 Photos. Visualizes 360 photos on scenes. See details in the note
— Possible to switch from a regular to 360 camera through a tab on Timeline
— Improved the precision of Locker
— Fixed the problem when it was possible to unlink/re-link some body parts of the body even if the puppet was locked
— Fixed random exceptions when colorizing objects
— Switches off LODs on Shelf
— Fixed the problem when projects were created with "low" quality settings
— Fixed detection of some models as form Poly, that wasn't from Poly
— Made it possible to save the One Hand Rotation mode to the settings when you switch to that mode in VR
— Made it possible to rename scenes
— Improved the layout of Menu

Duplication of animations
With the new update, you can animate a puppet, duplicate it and the duplicated puppet will have all the animations intact. This also includes duplication of an object that has other objects linked with animations—animations in those objects will be duplicated with the objects as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-mLUeBhH6I

Level of Detail
The following feature might be useful for those who have scenes with a large amount of high-poly models and want to improve the performance in those scenes. It would also require a basic knowledge of 3D editing software.


Now you can import models with a level of detail. Level of detail or LOD involves decreasing the complexity of a 3D model representation as it moves away from the viewer. In short, it makes real-time rendering more performant and will help you to make high-fidelity, optimized scenes in Tvori. For example, you can sculpt something in Medium or Masterpiece, set up LOD for that sculpt and then import it to Tvori—up close that sculpt will be quite detailed but won't affect the performance as much. Learn how to set up LODs.

This is the first iteration of the feature. Ideally, in the further iterations, this kind of optimization should be performed automatically.

Starting & Loading Screen
We updated the starting screen and the loading indicator. Now, when a scene is loading or you're exporting something it will be clearly indicated in VR and on the desktop screen. We fixed visual glitches and screen freezes when going from one scene to another.

Switching Between Projects
The 2D menu now will be storing the paths to the last 5 opened projects making it faster to switch between the projects.

Quality Settings
The 2D menu now also allows switching between quality levels, so if you feel like the performance isn't good you can switch to the lowest quality that disables shadows and decreases detalization of models with LODs.

All Improvements & Fixes of the Update
Duplication of Animations
Support of LODs in Tvori
New starting screen
Improved loading Indication
Showing the list the last 5 opened projects in 2D menu
Exporting rotation of the sun in FBX & Alembic when exporting the whole scene
Photo spawned from the camera on a scene is undoable
Improve scaling controls on the fog
Fixed switching back pages on Poly shelf
Renamed "up to button" from "root" to "Stuff" (on the import shelf)
Renamed some assets from the shelf
Added a sphere with inverted faces to the shelf in Primitive pack. For example, it`s might be useful for cartoon eyes.
Now an exported Alembic file will contain transforms of light sources

It's now possible to create and switch projects! By a project we mean a folder in your system that contains scenes and imported resources. You can choose a project through the 2D Menu that you can find at the top left corner of Tvori on the desktop. A default project that you start with is located in .../Documents/Tvori.



As requested, you can now turn off tunnel vision when navigating (scaling, rotating, moving on a scene), video tips, disable Ambient Occlusion, and more. Change settings through the 2D Menu at the top left corner of Tvori on the desktop.

Keep in mind that the current 2D menu is temporary and at some point we will turn it into a VR-first user interface.

If a serious problem arises we will show you a special icon. Pressing on that icon will lead to a form for sending us special files (logs) that contain information about that problem. Sending the logs will help us to track and fix it.



When you want to record or stream your screen we recommend to turn on "Stream Mode" by pressing the button on the bottom right corner on the desktop. In "Stream Mode" we smooth out head movements, so it's more comfortable to watch what you do from the first person view by others.



Saved 360 videos now will contain special information inserted that would allow Youtube, Facebook, and other services to identify those videos as spherical 360 videos and render them accordingly.

We published our roadmap. Take a look at what is going to be our focus on for the next half of the year.

— Added 2D Settings Menu
— Improved Locker accuracy
— Place imported models from Shelf to zero coordinates by using the context menu
— Made it possible to take photos from the share button on Timeline
— Added 360 metadata to exported 360 videos (for support Youtube, Facebook automatic uploading)
— Supported Undo/Redo for the color palette on the lights
— Supported Undo/Redo for FOV (field of view) slider on the camera and spot size on Projector
— Made objects throwing work correctly when a user is small
— Made auto lock threshold for Puppet more comfortable. Hide the "Lock" icon when Puppet is too small
— Added "Stream Mode" button to turn on the smoothing of head movements

We made a user guide that you can reference when you're not sure how to do something in Tvori. It's still in the process of refining, so feel free to suggest what we could add or improve or point out on errors.

You can find a snow effect in the latest update! You can make your scenes to snow. Find Snow in Effects pack on Shelf. And the wind controller (also on the shelf) will affect the snow, fire and magic sparks.

We fixed several problems, including the one where if a puppet is linked to another object it becomes unusable.

Improvements & Fixes:
— Made a user guide
— Added a snow effect. Find it on Shelf under Effects pack
— Added a wind controller. Find it on Shelf under Effects pack
— Fixed incorrect linking of the puppet to other objects
— Fixed the project path string in the settings.ini
— A subtle optimization for Linker when playing an animation on the puppet
— Fixed objects freeze when they're linked to the camera or light tools
— Disallow hotkeys when in the process of exporting videos
— Fixed inability to undo sun rotation right after grabbing it from Menu