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Cutouts |
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One of the most popular
features of Piranesi is its ability to place cutouts
(elements of scenery, such as people or vegetation) into a
scene with perspective and masking taken care of
automatically. Piranesi 3 introduced support for RPC cutouts
from Archvision, which can be viewed from any angle. With
Piranesi 4, we've gone one step further and allowed any
model in 3DS, SketchUp, MicroGDS, and DXF format to be
inserted into the scene. Such models are readily available,
and many are free on the internet - for example from
furniture manufacturers. New options allow you to choose how
colours and materials are assigned to 3D cutouts, and
whether smoothing is applied to curved surfaces.
Support for Archvision RPC content libraries has also been
upgraded to give access to their latest 3D and 3D+ models
including 3D cars.
New 'tweak' operations allow 3D models to be be moved and
rotated into position, as well as adding new functionality
for 2D cutouts. For example you can tweak a cutout to place
it relative to an existing surface - perhaps to place a
table against a wall, or a given distance away from it.
You can select many cutouts and move, resize, or rotate them
all together.
Cutouts can be clipped or sheared, so you can take sections
through your 3D cutouts.
Text cutouts can now be offset and/or thickened. Support for
Unicode text has been added, making it easier to include
characters from different languages.
Floating cutouts are now stored in the Epix file, so when
you re-open the Epix file the cutouts are automatically
restored exactly as they were. You can also import cutouts
from one Epix file into another.
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Tweaking a 3D model of a chair
3D text |
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User interface |
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If you've used Piranesi
before, the first thing you'll notice in Piranesi 4 is the
new tool manager. The tool manager helps you to quickly find
the controls you want, whilst maximising the area of the
screen available for painting work. It does this by
organising windows into three palettes which can be
scrolled, and individually expanded and collapsed.
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The Information
palette has four tabs which report Pixel, Colour,
and Material data; and provide a Navigation window
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The Settings palette
displays a tab for each tool that is active in the
Toolbox
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The Cutout Manager
palette controls cutouts in the scene
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There's a new Information bar,
providing continuous feedback about the pixel underneath the
mouse pointer. The pixel material is also shown on the
status bar, together with the view scale.
The Toolbox buttons are larger and better laid out, and the
Toolbox can be reset to eliminate any unwanted settings.
Tooltips are more widely available. You'll notice user
interface improvements throughout Piranesi 4 - see the Brush
and Painter settings, for example.
Power users particularly like the new keyboard shortcuts.
We've provided keyboard shortcuts for most commands; you can
use these or customise Piranesi to use your own preferred
shortcut keys.
You can use the up and down arrows, and the shift key, to
change values in the Settings palette.
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Tools Manager
Information bar |
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New fades |
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Piranesi is often used for
indoor or night time scenes, and new illumination fades
allow spot or strip lighting to be easily mimicked.
New radial fades fade outwards from a 2D or 3D line - for
example to mimic metal tubes.
Illumination and radial fades can now be 'tweaked' after
application, making it easier to experiment until the
desired effect is obtained.
You can choose between 'fade to transparent' or 'fade to
colour', and you can insert new cutouts with fade
automatically applied.
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Using the new Cone Illumination fade |
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New
filters (Windows version only) |
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There are seven new filters to
refine an image:
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Sharpen - accentuates
edges
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Majority - smoothes
colour boundaries and reduce noise
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Reduce colours -
reduces number of colours or HLS levels
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Classify - 'Flattens'
the scene by grouping adjacent pixels with similar
properties
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Brightness - Adjusts
contrast and brightness
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Hue - Adjusts
saturation and hue. With 'Brightness', replaces the
old 'Adjust' filter
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Smooth edges - smooths
pixels on horizontal and vertical edges
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In addition the Blur filter
now has a new 'preserve edges' option, and a new option to
control the size of the smoothing.
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Before Sharpen filter
After Sharpen filter
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Brush and painter effects |
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There's a new bristle brush.
You can choose how many bristles the brush has.
The brush and painter applicators have new dynamic
capabilities, which cause the painting effect to vary along
the stroke:
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Mark spread controls
the area within which the random effect occurs
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Angular spread
controls the variation in the angle of the mark
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Colour Spread controls
the variation in colour
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Fade controls whether
the stroke fades in at its start or fades out at its
finish
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Brush sizes and Painter mark
lengths can now be defined as a percentage of the document
width, which can be useful when setting up styles which work
at different resolutions. The new shortcuts to decrease and
increase brush size are also very useful. 3D brushes have a
new 'Vertical' option.
The Painter effect also has a new Depth Scale setting, and
the ability to set a 'strict lock' which ensures the edges
of the locked area stay sharp.
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Bristle brush with three different bristle levels
Examples of low (left) and high (right) values for Colour
Spread |
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Multiple fills |
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Multiple fills allow you to
automate the application of several successive effects. Many
such sequences begin by re-rendering, to copy the image into
the Restore channels. You can now incorporate the re-render
action into your multiple fill sequence.
It is also common to do a number of fills, then use a brush,
pen or painter applicator to hand-finish the effect. You can
now arrange for the multi-fill sequence to set the right
applicator ready for hand finishing.
There's a new option 'Suspend drawing until completed' which
makes lengthy multiple fill sequences run more quickly.
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Viewing and printing |
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Views can be zoomed by any
factor (not just integer zoom factors as in Piranesi 3).
This makes it much easier to manage your screen and paper
layouts.
Double clicking the Hand tool will now fit the image to the
window, whilst double clicking the Zoom tool sets the scale
to 1:1.
The Navigate window has a new toolbar, giving quick access
to viewing commands.
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Plus much more... |
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Piranesi 4 is packed with
improvements in response to user requests. Here are just a
few more of the new features:
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New Auto-Contrast
command which 'stretches' the lightness range of the
pixels to a best fit
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You can now choose
whether the hook point of a raster grain is fixed
relative to the stroke start, or to the image
corner. The former will give an overlapping grain on
successive strokes
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New 'smudge' render
action which mixes and smears a colour with one of
the RGB channel colours. You can control the
distance over which the smudge appears, and the
pigment and wetness of the paint
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Construct tool now
gives you more control over how materials are
assigned to your newly constructed surface. It also
allows you to choose whether the depth, material, or
both channels are affected by your Construct action
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You can detect and
render edges between areas of differing colour or
brightness (as well as the material and depth edge
detection in Piranesi 3). When rendering edges, you
can choose the desired line width
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New command to set the
model units
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Smudge render |
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Tutorials and libraries |
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We've added more written and
movie tutorials, especially the new Quick Start tutorial.
There's also a new Quick reference card to see at a glance
Piranesi's controls and shortcuts.
Over 300 new cutout and texture images have been added to
the thousands already available in Piranesi's library. There
are new photorealistic and sketched 2D cutouts for people
and vegetation. Sample 3D models created by Archvision,
SketchUp, and MicroGDS are also provided, representing
common indoor and outdoor objects and basic shapes. Also
provided are new sky textures and 'sponge' brushes.
All the tutorials, walkthroughs and the demo version
provided on this website have been replaced with Piranesi 4
versions.
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Some of the new library cutouts |
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Availability |
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Piranesi 4 for Windows® is
available now.
Piranesi 4 for Mac OS X is
not yet available and will be announced here at a later
date. |
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