Surface3D 0.89 — Windows x64

`Surface3D 0.89

Free for individuals. Donation supported. Teams and studios need a Studio License.

This file lists everything new from 0.84 to 0.89, newest first.

Install: unzip and run Surface3D.exe. Settings from earlier versions are kept. The first start after an
update can take a moment while shaders are prepared.
Projects: 0.89 saves format 54 (anchor points), which older versions cannot open. Projects from any
earlier version open as before.

==================== 0.89 ====================

New in 0.89: find effects faster, and anchors that store a state

• One effect browser everywhere: "+ Material effect", "+ Mask generator", the Layers "Add effect" icon and the
  right-click Add effect. Groups are tabs on top (Main, Adjust, Filters, Grunge, Drivers, Anchors, Favourites);
  Main holds the 20 most used (Paint, Fill, Levels, Blur, Slope Blur, Sharpen, High pass, Curves...) with your
  recent ones and favourites. All grunge generators are in one tab with sub group chips (Surface, Wear,
  Deposits, Dirt, Patterns, Masonry...). Search covers every tab: names, descriptions and keywords.
• Effects are small node cards with the graph editor's icons and colours; generator previews show what drives
  them (cavity, edges, thickness, facing, height, pattern). Star a card to keep it in Favourites. Cards can be
  dragged onto a layer. The popup stays on screen and the panel grip no longer draws over it.
• Anchor points: Add effect > Anchors > "Add anchor point here" stores the layer's mask or material exactly as
  the effects below it leave it. A layer can hold several; drag them up or down like any effect, rename them with
  a right-click. Any layer above reads them from Anchors in the effect browser, from the Anchors row under a
  fill's Effects, or from the Anchors tab of a channel's source picker.
• Layer anchors read everything stacked up to and including that layer; "Anchor a layer below" makes one in a
  click. Anchors on any layer now work (before, anchors above the eighth layer could read the wrong layer).
• The channel source picker (the image icon) has icon tabs: Images, Noise, Grunge, Anchors, Nodes.
• Online materials: drag one from the library, pause on the mesh or a layer, and release on 1K, 2K or 4K. It
  downloads that size (or the next smaller one) and applies where you paused. The Textures tab lists the online
  CC0 sets under your own textures.
• In mask mode the Paint and Fill buttons add to the mask; new effects land above the selected one.
• Each layer and effect row shows its blend mode on the right (Norm, Mult, Ovly...) and its opacity below 100%.
• Long dropdowns open fully, so Triplanar shows without scrolling in Coordinates.
• UV mode no longer redraws the viewport every frame (lighter on the graphics card).

==================== 0.88 ====================

New in 0.88: a self-healing baker

• One click: pick the low mesh, the high mesh and the size, then Bake. Low and high parts are paired by where
  they overlap, so there is no _low/_high naming and no exploding. Every part gets its own cage that reaches
  its high and stops before its neighbours. Detail standing on flat faces is straightened (no skew), rays that
  missed are cast again with a locally grown cage, and seams that disagree are blended.
• When something still looks wrong, the Bake panel says "N spots need attention". Show colours them on the
  mesh (red missed, orange at the cage limit, blue back face, yellow skew, cyan seam) and lists them; click one
  to frame it. Fix all (or Fix on one spot) adjusts what that spot needs and rebakes only those spots.
• Advanced (collapsed): the automatic switches, one row per part (cage size, limit, skew; all Auto until you
  change them, saved per part), cage paint (Ctrl+drag pushes the cage out, Ctrl+right-drag pulls it in),
  samples, edge samples, padding, engine, view (cage, high mesh wire, wireframe), your own cage mesh and the
  bake log. One Bake panel: the older tabs are gone.
• Live updates: changing a part's cage or painting the cage rebakes only the texels it moves, as soon as you let
  go. Re-importing a low mesh that changed in places rebakes only the changed triangles.
• Very dense high meshes (hundreds of millions of triangles) load once into a cache (next to the file or in
  your user folder, whichever drive has more room) and bake without filling video memory. They need a graphics
  card with hardware ray tracing.

Cleaner maps

• Ambient occlusion, thickness, bent normal and curvature no longer show lines, triangle facets or banding:
  every texel now uses its own rotation of the ray pattern, and a light edge-preserving smoothing removes the
  remaining grain (Advanced > Quality > Smooth grain).
• The empty space between UV islands is filled from the nearest island (Fill gutters), so no dark rims appear
  at a distance.
• The bake repairs more by itself: rays that hit the back of a surface look past it, small unreachable slivers
  are filled from their island, and seams that still disagree are blended fully. Fix all now clears what is
  left in one go on our test scenes.
• Cage paint works: turn on Paint cage, then drag on the mesh to push the cage out, Shift+drag to pull it in
  (Alt+drag still turns the view). When you let go, the changed area fades into the new bake.
• Very dense FBX, glTF and other high meshes (not just PLY/OBJ) load through the dense-mesh cache.

Wireframe

• Rendering > Camera > Wireframe (also in Bake > Advanced > View) draws the mesh as lines in the viewport.

Faster

• The interface no longer slows down when the screen is busy (many overlay lines, large panels): on the
  default graphics backend a busy frame went from about 70 ms to 4 ms.
• The bake cage and high-mesh wire views draw only what faces you and stay smooth on dense meshes.
• Bakes on graphics cards with hardware ray tracing are about 4x faster (a 4K bake of the sample plane:
  9.5 s -> 2.5 s), with the same maps.
• Cards without hardware ray tracing bake about 15x faster than before (577 s -> 37 s on the same bake).

==================== 0.87 ====================

New in 0.87

• Merge layers: Shift- or Ctrl-click two or more layers, right-click > Merge (or Ctrl+E). They become one
  layer with a stacked picture and a "Merged · N" badge. A merged layer can be hidden, renamed, faded and given
  a blend mode in Properties, and it renders as one layer. The original layers stay inside it with all their
  settings: right-click > Unmerge (or Ctrl+E on the merged layer) brings them back exactly as they were.
  Folders have "Merge folder layers" in their right-click menu.
  Layers that use blend modes like Multiply now blend with each other first, so a merge can change their look
  slightly (layers using Normal look the same).
• Collapsed folders show their top layers as small fanned pictures, so you can tell folders apart without
  opening them.

Faster and lighter on video memory

• Merged layers keep only their combined result on the graphics card; the layers inside move to system memory.
  Ten merged layers cost about as much video memory as one.
• Hidden layers (and layers in hidden folders) leave video memory a moment after you hide them, and come back
  exactly when you show them again.
• Layers moved to system memory are packed: empty and flat areas take almost no space (a typical paint layer
  needs a fraction of its size).
• If video memory runs out, Surface3D first finishes moving layers out of it and tries again instead of failing,
  and the status bar warns you when the card is nearly full.

==================== 0.86 ====================

New in 0.86

• Layers show a small picture of each layer, so you can find layers by look, not only by name.
• Teach mask: selecting another layer ends teaching, and its mask overlay goes away. Your strokes are kept:
  "Teach more" (or "Start teaching" on weathering layers) continues where you left off.

Faster

• Painting stays smooth while a bake or a background render is running: background GPU work now runs beside
  painting instead of in the same queue (a paint dab under heavy background load: 33 ms -> under 1 ms).
• Reading results back from the GPU (export, save, node previews) is about 1.6x faster
  (4K: 107 ms -> 66 ms, 2K: 28 ms -> 17 ms).
• Freed video memory used for quick texture reuse is now released after a few seconds, or at once when video
  memory runs low.

==================== 0.85 ====================

New in 0.85: Vulkan graphics

• Surface3D now draws and computes with Vulkan by default. Painting, layers, nodes, bakes and the
  viewport give the same results as before, and the same graphics engine will run on Linux and macOS.
• Faster and steadier: the slowest paint dabs (95th percentile) are about 30-50% faster at 2K and 4K, the
  viewport renders up to 20% faster, and layer rebuilds are as fast or faster than before.
• Much faster first start after an update: shaders compile in seconds instead of minutes.
• Hardware ray-traced bakes (DXR) keep working.
• Preferences > Graphics card > Graphics API switches between Vulkan and Direct3D 11 (restart to apply).
  If a graphics driver cannot run Vulkan 1.2, Surface3D starts on Direct3D 11 automatically.
• Projects, materials and settings are unchanged and open in both.

Notes

• Vulkan needs an up-to-date graphics driver (NVIDIA, AMD or Intel from the last few years).
• Vulkan uses up to about 10% more video memory on very large projects (4K, many layers).
  If memory is tight, switch to Direct3D 11 in Preferences.

==================== 0.84 ====================

New in 0.84: a cleaner Properties panel

• Layer and Tool views: a switch at the top of Properties shows either the selected layer, mask or
  effect, or the active tool (paint material and brush). It follows what you clicked last:
  selecting a layer shows the layer, picking a tool shows the tool.
• Clear sections (Material, Coordinates, Effects, Brush) with a short summary on the right, so a
  closed section still tells you what is inside.
• Every material channel is one line. Only the selected channel opens its settings below the
  list, so the panel no longer turns into a long scroll.
• One texture button per channel opens the texture grid (images, gradient, generators).
• Material slot: pick a material from a searchable grid of thumbnails, or drop one from Assets.

Gradients and colour picking

• The colour picker has Solid / Gradient tabs. Switching to Gradient keeps the picker open with
  the full gradient editor inside (stops, type, angle, scale, offset, repeat).
• A gradient channel shows the gradient itself; click it to edit.
• Pickers and menus stay attached to the control that opened them.
• Eyedropper works anywhere on screen, in any app. In a gradient, hold and drag a line across
  anything on screen: its colours become the gradient. Esc or right-click cancels.

New free material library: ambientCG

• Assets > Materials has a Poly Haven / ambientCG switch. ambientCG adds about 2,000 CC0
  materials and decals.
• "Grunge & wear" gathers surface imperfections, leaks, fingerprints, rust and dirt; "Decals"
  lists the decal sets. Opacity maps are kept, so decals stay transparent.
• Pick 1k or 2k, JPG or PNG, then Import to Library. Everything is CC0 (free for any use).
• Drag any online material (Poly Haven or ambientCG) straight onto a layer or the model, even
  before downloading: it downloads (1k), goes into your Library and is applied where you dropped
  it. The status bar shows the progress.

Fixes

• Number sliders outside Properties (for example Camera and lighting) no longer show their value
  twice; that panel now uses the same label-left layout as Properties.

Texture sets

• Texture Sets > Maps in this set: remove maps a set does not need (for example Metallic on skin
  or cloth). Layers and the brush then show only the maps the set uses, and removed maps are not
  exported.
  `