Hand-thesia - Fingertips on their keys, smooth playback - v26.1.21

• Every finger holding a key now has its fingertip on it: when a finger can't reach, the whole hand shifts to put it there, and what still can't be reached is noted in the log with its time in the MIDI file.
• One finger can play neighbouring keys together: a white key and the black beside it, two neighbouring white keys, or white-black-white (two neighbouring black keys with the thumb). A smudged note - a quiet or short neighbour caught along with the intended one - is played by that note's finger, which slides over to touch both, instead of getting a finger of its own.
• Held keys stay down while the hand moves on toward the next chord; keys it can't hold together with the next chord are let go just before it, and rolled chords keep their pace and finish in time.
• Tremolos and repeated figures are played with a still hand only when it can really reach every key; otherwise the hand rocks or sways to each note instead of leaving a finger short.
• Much smoother playback: no more hitches every so often in long pieces, the hands are ready sooner after opening a song, and drawing the hands takes less time each frame.
• Scrubbing along the progress bar (in the player and the editor) is smooth, the hands following at once; after a jump the music waits a moment while the hands' motion is worked out, so they move naturally from the start. Opening a song no longer freezes on its first frame.
• Developed and checked against the MAESTRO dataset of piano performances: every performance played through the hands and the player, checking that fingertips reach their keys and that frames come on time. The checking tools are in the tools folder.

Hand-thesia - More hand fixes, video export - v26.1.20

• Export a performance to an .mp4 from the button under the player's progress bar: choose whether the progress
  bar, pedals and pianist badge are in it; it's rendered at the window's size and 60 fps with its sound (the
  soundfont, or the synced recording), behind a progress screen with Cancel. (From source it needs the
  imageio-ffmpeg package; the .exe has everything.)
• Hands playing on top of each other: the one playing further into the keys lies on top, it's chosen before the
  hands meet, and the hands never swap places or flicker while they overlap.
• Fingers look more natural: no more pointing up into the air, rearing knuckles, or bending out sideways for a
  frame; lifted fingers stay curved.
• Chords are rolled only when the hand really can't hold them, so fingertips no longer land between black keys
  and ordinary chords are no longer rolled.
• Pianist overview: point at a finger or the thumb and scroll to curl it in or out (Natural curve / Stretched out
  resets the hand).

Hand-thesia - Settings, soundfonts, bigger hands - v26.1.19

• New Settings screen: drag the keyboard up or down, keyboard type, frame rate cap (24-240 fps or uncapped), performance overlay, soundfont and interface font.
• Soundfonts (.sf2 / .sf3) play through a built-in player: nothing extra to install, smooth even with large soundfonts and dense music.
• A Recent list on the main menu reopens your last five setups (with their soundfont or synced recording).
• Player: the progress bar holds only the name and time, so scrubbing works anywhere on it; speed, view, sound and volume sit beneath it, with an arrow-keys button listing the key controls. Volume control in the editor too, and tooltips on the player's controls.
• Bigger finger numbers with a drop shadow; one bundled typeface that looks the same on every computer.
• Equal keys are exact to the pixel: every lane, key and gap the same width.
• Pianists: bones up to 250% of the default, and a wrist width setting (75-200%).
• Fingering: the thumb lies straight across two black keys; fewer thumb or little-finger doubles; comfort follows the pianist's hand size; one hand's notes stay out of the other hand's chord.
• The fingering editor's export puts each hand on its own MIDI channel.
• Fixed: a crash when syncing a recording with a soundfont.

Hand-thesia - Linked fingers, trills in one hand - v26.1.18

• The middle, ring and little fingers are linked like real tendons: when the middle finger curves down the ring finger goes some way with it (and the other way round), and the little finger takes both with it - unless they're reaching for keys of their own. How tightly is a new setting in each pianist's Motion page, "Linked fingers (3, 4, 5)".
• Trills are played by one hand from start to finish: the other hand no longer takes a note or two of them.
• Quick alternating chords too wide for one hand are shared between the hands even when the MIDI file puts them all in one hand's track.
• Notes in chords are no longer mistaken for trills, and trills in thirds are still recognised.
• "What's new" now lights up only when there's a new entry here.

Hand-thesia - Audio now plays fully - v26.1.17

• With a synced recording, playback no longer stops when the MIDI ends: the recording plays on to its own end (the last chord's ring, the applause), and the time in the top bar counts to it.

Hand-thesia - Pedals now drawn - v26.1.16

• Piano Animator is now called Hand-thesia. In the .exe your pianists and settings move along by themselves (from AppData\Roaming\Piano Animator to AppData\Roaming\Hand-thesia), and the program is Hand-thesia.exe.
• The pedals are drawn in the bottom-left corner: soft, sostenuto and sustain, each lighting up while the music holds it down.
• Fixed: some MIDI files couldn't be opened - those with a wide chord where the thumb plays two keys at once (Scriabin's Fantasy Op. 28 from the MAESTRO collection, for one).

Hand-thesia - Improved scales - v26.1.15

• New "Open pianists folder" button in Pianists & hands: it opens the folder where your pianists and settings are kept, and shows its full path. In the .exe that's AppData\Roaming\Piano Animator\pianists (not AppData\Local, which only holds the program itself).
• Chromatic scales: the index and middle fingers no longer twitch (stop, hop on or step back) on the way to their next key. A finger now waits beside a neighbour that's still on a key in its way, then goes.
• The thumb passing under the hand no longer shows between the fingers - it's hidden under the hand, its shadow too, in every skin.
• Chromatic scales: fingers no longer step back as they let go of a key next to their neighbour's and then spring forward, and a finger no longer hovers and then jumps when its neighbour holds a key too long.
• Chromatic octaves (and other runs in octaves or double notes) now glide like scales: the hand no longer turns back and forth for every octave, and the wrist moves steadily instead of zig-zagging.
• The hand turns less in fast runs overall.

Hand-thesia - First .exe release - v26.1.11

First .exe release, so no Python needed. Generated pianists are in %APPDATA%\Piano Animator\pianists.