Designer r21 Release Notes

RenderStream has been used on some of the largest shows on the planet, which has led to a host of stability and performance improvements and to help push its capabilities further.

Notes Tool

We have created a notepad tool within Designer. These notes can be stickied to specific parts of the project - for example, a note in the feed view to tell the operator to check specific things, or a warning note to not do something.

New Keyboard Shortcuts

A new shortcut to bring up the layer library to import Superlayers: CTRL + SHIFT + L.
The ‘esc’ key is now used to close the current active/focused widget, and SHIFT + ESC closes all.
A new shortcut lets you quit all machines in the session without asking for a confirmation: SHIFT + ESC + ENTER.
Layers can now be cut and pasted into another section of a track.
A new shortcut to rename selected layers: CTRL + R.
A new Search Function is now available in the keyboard shortcut widget (F1)

UI improvements

UI Transparency settings have been relocated to d3State->Project Settings options.
A new ‘Autosaving’ indicator with a 5 second countdown has been added in the bottom right hand corner above the timeline.
Improved Network Status widget indicators give a broader indication of machine status as well as allowing you to monitor the Genlock status while in stage view

Colour workflow improvements

ACES 1.3 Implementation

A new dropdown named “Utility” has been added to the ACES transform widgets for input transforms and output transforms.
Spatial maps are now assignable within the AnimateObjectPreset layer.
Colour decision list (CDL) files - a format developed by the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) - can now be imported and exported
Expanded LUT file support including ID Luts
Linear Exposure and Gamma Controls available on a layer in ACES mode
Colour Dropper Tool has been added to the Colour Picker in Stage->Ambient Colour

xR Workflow improvements

A new ClusterAssigner type that automatically generates multiple default ClusterAssigners based on the most common use cases.
Overscan in xR is used to compensate for both lens distortion and image reprojection and in r21 has been separated to improve performance

RenderStream Workflow improvements

Remotely install or update Unreal Engine on all rx machines in a cluster from a single PC over a network, ensuring that updates can be completed much easier
The pre-compiled ShaderCache has been moved into the project folder so that it is available on all machines in the session.

Feed Scene improvements

New tooltips for the feed rectangle buttons, visible when hovering the mouse over the button.
A new EDID Emulation method: ‘Always’.
The current output chroma subsampling information is now visible in the feed scene, which previously were only available in the GPU settings.
Warp points can now be added to the output so that users can see exactly which part of the output is being manipulated.

Quality of Life (QoL) improvements

The last opened project is now clearly indicated within the d3 manager (Current).
For sequencing, we have created a new mode called OnChange in the VideoTrigger layer.
Screenshots can now export images to EXR.
Export lossless images from:
- Video inputs - 8 or 10 bit images (16-bit if a layer stack is applied)
- The compositor - 16-bit floating point images using EXR (before ACES transforms)
- The feed output - 8 or 10-bit images (after ACES transforms)
Gradient Layer and Gradient Texture have an additional interpolation method called ‘Smoothstep’.