This app update has been released to the Mac App Store by Apple.

Changes for Version 3.2.0 (Video Animator)

This primarily bug fix release emphasizes getting perfect quality fractals from GPU rendering.

• It fixed the noisy images and ghosting seen on certain fractals (those that used strictly linear variations) when rendered on the GPU.
• It provides a way to work with fractals that do not render properly because they require higher fuse iterations than an average fractal.
• It provides workarounds for specific GPU type’s specific OpenCL bugs.
• Apophysis and Flam3’s Supersampling and Spatial Filtering is now supported.
• Video Rendering has been improved and render performance has been doubled for renders that use motion blur

Render Quality Improvements =====

1) Render noise produced by GPU renders is now comparable to CPU renders

2) Fixed ghosting observed with some pure linear variation fractals

3) Adjustable Fuse Iterations – no longer a hard-coded fixed number of fused iterations

Experimentation with Fuse requirements found that:

a) GPU requires a longer fuse than CPU renders.

b) Fractals that used final transforms need a longer fuse.

c)  The ideal number of fuse iterations for a CPU is different from a GPU.  Fractals having final transforms need a longer fuse.

d)  Too long of a fuse iterations setting can cause fractals to not render at all.

e)  Too short of a fuse iteration setting causes rendering artifacts.

f) There is an ideal fuse setting for each fractal that depends on the render device type and whether the fractal has a final transform.

g)  A good architecture uses an adjustable fuse settings preferences and allows individual fractals to declare their own specific fuse settings.

h) Most fractals can use the user’s fuse preferences, not many need to override these default settings.

Preferences Dialog now has a Fuse setting tab with the Fuse settings in it

New Fuse Preferences for Base Fuse Iterations, GPU Multiplier, Final Xform Multiplier

New flame file parameters cpufuse and gpufuse which is the fuse iteration count for that fractal for the CPU and GPU respectively

These are optional parameters intended for the handful of fractals that need extra fuse iterations. Most fractals dont need custom fuse settings.

Their default values are calculated from the Base Fuse Iterations, Gpu Fuse Multiplier, and Final Xform Fuse Multiplier preferences

New Render Engine Features for Better Compatibility with Apophysis & Flam3 =====

   SuperSampling Anti-Aliasing & Spatial Filter

Supersampling valid range is between 1 and 4 inclusive – only integral values

Supersampling is the Flam3 technique for anti-aliasing – can be used along with the Flam4 Supersample Width Jitter parameter (using them together is recommended)

Supersampling works on both CPU and GPU

Resampling (image size reduction) uses a Spatial Filter: Typically you choose a spatial filter type (Lanczos3 is a good default) and a Spatial filter strength. (typically between 1 and 2)

Spatial filter can be applied to non-supersampled renders, but in that case it adds some blur – not a useful feature.

So normally you turn off spatial filtering with a Filter setting of 0, when the render does not use supersampling.

   Highlight Clipping

Added Highlight Clipping as an On/off alternative to Highlight power

Highlight Clipping parameter is a simplified Highlight Power alternative that is either On or Off. It affect the pixel color seen for pixels whose colors become over-saturated.

New changes to Render to File, Batch Render, and Video Render dialogs:

Spatial Filter weight

Spatial filter shape

Supersampling

Post Process again section of Render State document window:

Highlight Clipping

Major Bug Fixes ====================

1)    Fixed possible hang when saving the Stash

2)    Fixed intermittent CPU crash due to array out of bounds indexing

3)    Put all Intel GPUs into quarantine because of excessive compile times leading to crash – using Intel CPUs for rendering is unaffected by this

4)    Fixed crash if no render devices were selected by the user

Minor Bug Fixes =======

1. Opening a saved render state did not show the file name in the window title after opening
2. Render state is now preserved after all render batches are done – no contamination from Density estimation
3. Devices that are unavailable were still showing in the Select a Render Device on Mavericks 10.9.2
4. Gamma threshold changes made in Triangle Editor were not being saved
5. Slow compile warning window now always shows
6. Canceling render at File picker step now recovers button state properly for File Renderer dialog
7. Render to File dialog – now works correctly if you cancel at the file selection step
8. Fixed Histogram window titles
9. Changing thumbnail quality in Preferences dialog changed 3 different things
10. OptionsController now always renders again regardless of quality setting  – it used to not re-render if the quality setting was unchanged
11. Changing variation weights using Quick Spin on Final Transform variations  would change one of the standard Transform’s variations instead
12. For gamma threshold not being saved if entered in the Flame Params section of Triangle Editor
13. You can now cancel from a Make Video Frames or Make Movie after rendering for awhile – old behavior was that image rendering would stop forcing you to restart the app
    • Note: It will still finish rendering the current frame and the output video will still appear (but it will only have the video frames that have already been rendered before the Cancel)
14. You can now modify the Fan Blades setting on Direct Video Render dialog without it complaining about invalid setting
15. Quicklook window’s tendency to be huge has been fixed
16. No longer rendering twice the required number of motion blur blades which screwed up all reported render times
17. For Mac Pro, Render to Video is now done on the main render loop thread so that GPU acceleration by AVFoundation library related to the addition of video frames to the output video will not collide with the app’s GPU usage

Improvements ==== 

1. Triangle Editor view now supports key up, down, left, and right as an alternative to mouse dragging – it uses the last mouse position to figure out what to modify
2. Added Random Camera checkbox to the Make New settings – has a Preference for it too
3. Variants window no longer has Camera variants set automatically
4. Preferences Dialog now has Re-render All Previews buttons on OpenCL Settings and Fuse settings tabs
5. Preview windows now uses the Render to File default colorspace so the preview colors will be the same as those made when rendering to a file
6. Selected keyframe loop/morph animation parameters are preserved after closing the animation panel and not reset to default values
7. Many improvements in Direct Video Rendering including:
   • Can open Select Render Device preferences from all of the Render dialogs
   • Some of its settings are now sticky
   • It auto-picks  a better initial movie filename now
   • Now reports the total time for rendering including Render Batches and Density Estimation and Post Processing – better time left estimates
   • Render to Video does not have a memory leak and can be used safely to render large videos – though possibility of crash makes this risky as all output would be lost
   • Render to Frames first is safer and allows you to create several output videos (each optimized for a different use i.e. Web, DVD, Blue Ray) – but it takes a lot more disk space to hold the intermediate frame images
   • Added last frame render time and overall performance indicator (Iterations per second) to Render to Batch and Direct Video Render dialog
   • Render dialogs no longer auto hide on deactivate
   • Doubled the rendering performance for videos with motion blur