Pre-release Notes
Pre-release versions of cutter.jar are uploaded to this 
site as small, but critical, features are ammended or
added to Cutter. To check the build date of the version
of Cutter you are using look carefully at the lower left
hand corner of Cutter's desktop window. The build date
is shown in pale gray. If the "posted" date, shown 
below, is newer than the build date of your version of
Cutter it will be worthwhile downloading the a copy of
the pre-release version.

Malcolm Kesson (mkesson@acm.org)
    
PRE-RELEASE POSTED - April 7 2008 
     download 5.3.9

 
 
  
_______
April 7

RenderMan DSO shadeops & rslplugins
Cutter now recognizes 'C++' source code files that implement
rslplugins. As with the previous pre-release, Cutter generates 
its own Makefiles/bat files so that the user does not have to
write and maintain their own makefiles/bat files. This facility
extendes to all three operating systems. Windows user must have 
Visual Studio 8 installed. Refer to the following web page for 
more information. 
  
    ShadeOps & RslPlugins
   
   
Mental Images Shaders
I have finally got the bat file that can build a mental images
shader (DLL) on Windows working based on the instructions 
written by Bart Gawboy of the LA Mental Ray Users Group. His 
notes are available at,
    
   Compiling on Windows with MS VC Express 2008 and mr 3.6+
   
Cutter is now able to build mental images shaders written in the 
'C' programming language on all three platforms. For more 
information about Cutter and mental images technology refer to,
   
    Cutter: Integration with mental ray
  


_______
March 17

DSO Shadeops
Cutter detects and provides special handling of 'C' language
files that implement RenderMan DSO shadeops. Refer to the
following web page for more information.
  
    compiling dso shadeops
 
  
RSL
Added include flag to ensure the shading language compiler
points to the users "shaders" directory.

Houdini
Release 9 of Houdini introduced the use of a python script
named "slo2otl.py" to add/create shader information for a
a Houdini OTL file. Prior versions of Houdini used an executible
named "rmands". If a user has chosen to add compiled versions
of their RenderMan shaders to an OTL, refer to Houdini OTL,
Cutter will use either the python script or the executible
depending on the path specified in preferences ie.
 
   Languages->Vfl->Houdini bin

RfM Pro
Generating single or multiple ribs with Pixar's RenderMan
for Maya Pro (RfM Pro) is done with the mel command,
 
   rman genrib;

RfM Pro rib files can be rendered by Cutter even though paths 
within the rib file are specified relative to the maya project
directory in which they were generated. Cutter detects if the 
user is processing a RfM Pro rib file by examining its path.
It is the users responsibility to ensure that RfM Pro's RMSTREE 
environment variable has been set correctly.

Shadow Pass Bug
Corrected a bug that caused a shadow to be generated in the 
wrong direction for a shadowspot with the following parameters,
 
   "from" [0 0 -1] "to" [0 0 0]

GUI Favorite Directories
For users who have Maya and RenderMan Studio installed, Cutter
looks within their maya/projects directory in order to make a 
list of subdirecties beginning with the prefix,
 
   RMS_
 
Such directories are automatically added to the list of
"favorites" in the Open File dialog window.

Keyframing Bug
A bug in Cutter's Keyframing facility that caused relative
paths to be mishandled was fixed.

Python
Prior to saving a python script Cutter checks if a python 
document has sequences of four spaces within its text. Python 
scripts copied from a web page will not have "tabbed" indentations 
and as such will cause the python interpreter to raise 
"indentation" errors. A dialog window will ask if the user wishes 
to replace all runs of four spaces with tabs. The dialog will, 
however, only appear once per document per session.


_______
Jan 13
The rib file(s) generated by Rman Tools have been modified
so that they conform to the rib files written by RenderMan
Studio. 

The Rman Tools->Docs menu has been reorganized so that shader
source files are organized into two groups, "Traditional" and
"Class Based".


_______
Jan 9
Corrected a bug that caused tabs to be replaced by 4 white spaces
when saving python scripts.


_______
Jan 1
This version of Cutter is able to use Pixar's "shader" compiler
to compile class-based (shader object) source code. The  
tutorial,

RSL: Introduction to Class-Based Shaders

is the first of several fundza tutorials that addresses the 
object oriented programming extensions recently added by 
Pixar to the RenderMan Shading Language. The Rman Tool->Shaders 
menu adds compiled shader objects to its sub-menus (Surface, 
Displacement etc) based on the public methods implemented by 
a class-based shader. 

In the case of co-shaders they are added to a new sub-menu 
item labeled "Co-shader". If a co-shader is chosen from the
sub-menu the appropriate rib statement is pasted into the
active rib document. Unlike the way that other shaders are
handled by Cutter, a comment that lists the public methods
implemented by the co-shader is also added to a rib file.
For example,

    # Public methods: foo() boo() choo()
    Shader "myCoShader" "local_name"

When compiling a class-based shader that incorporates meta
data, Cutter automatically adds the -C flag to the compiler 
options when it invokes Pixar's "shader" compiler. This will 
enable a compiled shader to be querried by sloinfo ie.

    sloinfo --meta myCoShader

for the purposes of extracting the meta data. However,
Cutter does not make any use of a shaders meta data. If you
have a suggestion of how Cutter might use meta data please let
me know.