What's New

What's New in the Plugin SDK

This release of the SDK has a number of new features that were added since the last release. New features have been marked with the image next to the new features throughout the documentation.
Below is a short description of what is new.





Moray V3.5 (Build 9330)

General description

The main new features are geared to making the new features implemented in Moray V3.5 available through the Plugin Interface. These are the most important changes:

• Mesh Support - better support for retrieving and creating wireframes.
• POV-Ray 3.5 Support - functions to retrieve and set various settings for POV-Ray 3.5.
• Hotkey Support - Plugins can now define hotkeys.
• OpenGL Drawing Support - functions to draw in the view in the Scene interface
• Screen Real Estate - functions to request screen space have been added to the Scene interface
• Controller Interface - a new interface to allow custom manipulation of objects, including drawing things on the screen.

Detailed descriptions

For a definitive list of changes see the PluginRevision.txt file that comes with the SDK. These are the most important changes that were made since the last official release for Moray V3.3 (Build 7025).

• SetAttributes and GetAttributes were extended to handle new flags that objects now support, such as no_image, no_reflection, double_illumination and all the photon-related variables (target, collect, etc.). Note that the flags MRY_SCN_USE_HOLLOW, MRY_SCN_USE_NOSHADOW and MRY_SCN_USE_EXPORT have been moved to the nAttributes field of the MRY_OBJ_ATTRIBUTES struct. Please use the corresponding flags for the nAttributes member.
  
  
• MRY_WIREFRAME_BUILDING enhanced to handle triangles and quads as faces and to set an retrieve the subdivision related flags, too.
  
  
• DrawOpenGLView was added to the Scene interface to allow OpenGL rendering after Moray's normal rendering is done.
  
  
• RequestScreenSpace was added to the Scene interface to allow plugins to reserve a band of screen space along one of the four edges of the viewport.
  
  
• DecomposeMatrix was added to the Scene interface to allow the plugin to decompose a matrix into the 9 regular transformation components.
  
  
• MakeLegalPOVName was added to the Scene interface to allow the plugin to convert a variable it wants to export to POV-Ray to legal POV-Ray format. This allows the users to use spaces and other symbols in their variable names.
  
  
• ProgressFunction was added to the Scene interface to allow the plugin to create, step and destroy progress bars on the status bar.
  
  
• SelectTexture was added to the Scene interface to allow the plugin to make Moray popup the texture selection dialog.
  
  
• CProgressBar helper class to encapsulate the progress bar functionality for C++ users.
  
  
• SnapWorldCoord was added to the MRY_SCN_VIEWINFO struct to allow plugins to let Moray snap coordinates according to what the user has set in modelling environment.
  
  
• WriteString was added to the MRY_SCN_VIEWINFO struct to allow plugins to make Moray write a text string into an OpenGL view during refresh.
  
  
• Added hDialog variable to the Object Interface. It contains the HWND of the objects Modify dialog
  
  
• Added bOrient and bCircular to the area light union part of the MRY_OBJ_SPECIFIC struct.
  
  
• Added nSubdivisionLevelDisplay and nSubdivisionLevelExport to the mesh union part of the MRY_OBJ_SPECIFIC struct.
  
  
• Added nRenderMode variable to the MRY_SCN_VIEWINFO struct. It contains what rendering mode the view is currently in.
  
  
• Added bOutputAlpha variable to the MRY_RENDER_OPT structure. It can be used to read or write the Output Alpha flag of Moray's Render Options.
  
  
• Disabled the bitmap functions in the MRY_SCN_VIEWINFO struct. Their functionality should be implemented in DrawOpenGLView .
  
  
• The Menu interface was enhanced to allow the definition of hotkeys for the menu items. It's also possible to define a hotkey command only, with no menu item.
  
  
• A new Controller Interface was added to allow custom viewport manipulation of an plugin object. It is meant to function like an extended editor, but without an Edit Tab.
  
  
• ActivateController was added to the Scene interface to allow plugins to activate a Controller Interface.
  
  
• Support for image patterns and pigment patterns was added (see MRY_TEXTURE_DATA).
  
  

Moray V3.3 (Build 7015)

General description

The main new features are obviously geared to making the new features implemented in Moray V3.3 available through the Plugin Interface. These two are the most important changes:

• Layers - functions to retrieve layer information, add layers, assign layers to objects etc.
• OpenGL - functions to retrieve enhanced wireframe information and to build solid wireframes.

Detailed descriptions

• Plugin objects can now have the export, noshadow etc. flags but not the textures (MRY_ATTR_HAS_ELEM_PARAMS flag). See the lAttributes member.
  
  
• Redraws can be executed before returning from the RedrawScene function of the Scene interface by passing the MRY_SCN_DRW_REDRAW_IMMEDIATE flag.
  
  
• SetAttributes and GetAttributes were extended to handle the layer information of objects.
  
  
• SetSettings and GetSettings were extended to manipulate the layers in a scene.
  
  
• An additional flag (MRY_STAT_REINIT_PLUGIN_WIREFRAMES) was added as the return flag for the OnValueChanged() function (see ValueChanged).
  
  
• Added the ability for Plugin Objects to create polygon-based wireframes (see GetWireFrameInfo).
  
  
• Added a MRY_SCN_VIEW_USING_OPENGL flag to the view query flags (see MRY_SCN_VIEWINFO).
  
  
• Split the events and added new ones.
  There is a new function LoadSaveEvent which receives messages about what exactly is happening (pasting, merging, loading).
  Note: the event MRY_NTC_SCENE_LOADED is now no longer sent to the Event function but to the new LoadSaveEvent function. This will occur when you recompile the plugin. Plugins compiled with a previous SDK will still work correctly, since the event will still be sent to the Event() function for these plugins (it is decided by the version number of the interface).
  
  
• Added GetTransforms and SetTransforms functions to the Object interface. Functions are identical to the corresponding functions in the Scene interface.
  
  
• Added a PromptForFilename function to the Scene interface.
  
  
• Added a QualifyFilename function to the Scene interface.
  
  
• Added a RetrieveWireframeInfo function to retrieve wireframe data from an object to the Scene interface.
  
  
• Added the bInheritTransforms flag to the 'reference' union of the MRY_OBJ_SPECIFIC struct.
  
  
• Added a new built-in object based on meshes. See CreateObject and the mesh member of the MRY_OBJ_SPECIFIC struct.