YafaRay v3.5.1 (2020-07-13) for Blender 2.79:

---------------------------------------------
* MacOS: found/fixed root cause of Blender python segfault 11 and ruby SketchUp Make 2017 "incompatible version" problems  `[Core]`
* MacOS: fixed Qt5 menus. Toolbar not fixed yet, hiding it for now.  `[Core]`
* XML parser: fix build broken when XMLImport and XML Loader are disabled (and no dependencies on LibXML2/ZLib)  `[Core]`
* Build info: made it less verbose (it was getting too long in some platforms) and added dash between platform and compiler when there is a platform (like MinGW)  `[Core]`
* Logging: fixed HTML log display of jpg and png images  `[Core]`
* Ruby Qt bindings: change name to avoid collisions in linux python "import yafqt" between yafqt.py and yafqt.so  `[Core]`

YafaRay v3.5.0 (2020-07-10) for Blender 2.79:

---------------------------------------------
* IMPORTANT: Removal of *all* Boost dependencies. I've implemented new Unicode File management and new ImageFilm/PhotonMap saving/loading system.  `[Core]`
   - All functionality depending on Boost has been rewritten from scratch to be able to remove Boost altogether.  `[Core]`
   - Implemented Unicode UTF8/UTF16 conversions for strings in POSIX and Windows systems  `[Core]`
   - Implemented Unicode UTF8/UTF16 file handling classes for Unicode paths in POSIX and Windows systems  `[Core]`
   - In the process of that implementation I fixed some issues that were pending for a long time:
        - Now almost all files (including logs) are handled with the new file_t interface, so all works when using Unicode paths (logs were not correctly saved sometimes in Windows)  `[Core]`
        - No longer need for temporary files when using OpenEXR files with Unicode paths.  `[Core]`
   - Implemented new system to save / load ImageFilm and Photon Maps. The files generated with previous versions of YafaRay are *no longer valid* for this new method.  `[Core]`
        - I think the new system is faster and generates smaller files (still big, depending on the amount of info)  `[Core]`
        - Only drawback for now, when loading photon maps it has to regenerate the photon search KD tree, which is no longer saved in the photon map file.  `[Core]`
        - No longer need to have a separate binary/text format for portability. In principle it should work the same in Linux/Windows, etc.   `[Blender Exporter + Core]`
        - Endianness could be an issue for non-Intel/AMD platforms like ARM, to be investigated in the future, but that's a problem for another day.  `[Core]`
   - Removed all SysInfo Boost code and replaced it by a "CMake-building" generation. Renamed sysinfo classes as build_info.  `[Core]`

* IMPORTANT: CMake: made LibXML2 / ZLib optional. New CMake flag "WITH_XMLImport" to enable LibXML2. Now all the dependencies are finally optional and pure YafaRay library can be built without any dependencies.  `[Core]`
* IMPORTANT: general header files de-coupling and cleanup, some old unused and broken code deleted  `[Core]`
* Changing documentation extension to Markdown *.md  `[Blender Exporter + Core]`
* Bidirectional integrator: adding integrator information to log and badge  `[Core]`
* Bidirectional integrator: fixed transparent shadows, as requested in https://github.com/YafaRay/Blender-Exporter/issues/38  `[Core]`
* SPPM: fixed memory corruption when using startx, starty not zero, as requested in https://github.com/YafaRay/Blender-Exporter/issues/41 and https://github.com/YafaRay/Blender-Exporter/issues/40  `[Core]`
* XML Parser: added XML SAX parsing error diagnostic messages, as requested in https://github.com/YafaRay/Core/issues/121  `[Core]`
* Added back -pthread flag for gcc/g++ compilation to fix FreeBSD builds To fix FreeBSD build as requested in https://github.com/YafaRay/Core/issues/113  `[Core]`
* Removed some warnings for GCC. Also removed some Clang warnings as requested by https://github.com/YafaRay/Core/issues/110  `[Core]`
* Fixed some source file comments license boilerplate to remove wrongly encoded characters that were confusing some IDEs  `[Core]`
* CMake: unifying all cmake-generated headers, simplifying code. Threads: moved runtime detection to dedicated class  `[Core]`
* OpenCV Denoise: better encapsulation and code reuse, at the expense of slower processing  `[Core]`
* Renamed yafsystem/sharedlibrary_t by a (clearer) dynamic_library/dynamicLoadedLibrary_t  `[Core]`
* Git: added .gitignore to ignore all "hidden" files starting with "." (i.e. IDE generated files)  `[Core]`
* Swig Ruby: avoid -Wsign-compare warning.  `[Core]`

YafaRay v3.4.4 (2020-05-09) for Blender 2.79:

EDIT 2020-05-13: Fixed Windows builds - previous builds were causing issues with threads due to a problem with one dependency. The Windows builds with "FIXED 2020-05-13" in the file name should work fine.

---

• Angular camera: modified to add several types of angular projections and to fix new ortographic calculations. [Blender Exporter + Core]

YafaRay v3.4.3 (2020-05-09) for Blender 2.79:

---------------------------------------------
* Angular camera: added "Ortographic" projection.  `[Blender Exporter + Core]`

YafaRay v3.4.2 (2020-05-04) for Blender 2.79:

---------------------------------------------
* Added Equirectangular camera.  `[Blender Exporter + Core]`

YafaRay v3.4.1a (2020-04-09) for Blender 2.79:

YafaRay v3.4.1a (2020-04-09) for Blender 2.79:

• A few documentation changes to clarify bug reporting and Blender v2.79 release download [Blender Exporter]

YafaRay v3.4.1 (2020-04-08) for Blender 2.79:

• Changed documentation to state that any bug reporting and resolution will solely be done in the GitHub Project "Issues" tab. Bugs in the old yafaray.org bugtracker will not be processed anymore. [Blender Exporter + Core]
• Added note about Blender-Exporter only working for Blender v2.7x versions. [Blender Exporter + Core]

YafaRay v3.4.0 (2020-03-22) for Blender 2.79:

Note: don't mind the release date, the project has been mostly inactive for a long time, so only a few (although significant) changes since v3.3.0, but it was about time to give the last changes a proper release version number.

Feature changes/additions:

• Basic support for Image Sequences. [Blender Exporter]
• New per-material transparency bias for Shiny Diffuse. When there are objects with many transparent surfaces stacked close together (such as leaves in a tree) sometimes black artifacts appear if the ray reaches the maximum depth. This can be solved by increasing the maximum ray depth, but the render times increase. I've added two new parameters for the Shiny Diffuse material to try to achieve a "trick", which is not realistic and may cause other artifacts but that should prevent the black areas without having to increase the maximum ray depth so much. [Blender Exporter + Core]

Dependencies changes:

• IMPORTANT: Migration from Qt4 to Qt5 as Qt4 reached End of Life [Core]
• Dependency on meganz/mingw-std-threads made optional, because it's needed for old MinGW compilers but it causes conflicts with new MinGW compilers, so better to have it as an option in CMake (disabled by default) [Core]
• Compatibility fix for Python 3.8 [Core]

Bug fixes:

• VERY IMPORTANT: Fixed the infamous bug "DAG zero... not allowed to happen!" that caused all objects in Blender to be deleted. I want to thank the user "pouar" for finding the problem and the solution for this! :-) More information: http://www.yafaray.org/node/819#comment-1921 [Blender Exporter]
• Fixed Multiview rendering, that had been broken due to a Blender 2.79 API change [Blender Exporter]
• Mesh management: changes to make it compatible again with Blender versions prior to 2.78 [Blender Exporter]
• RenderPasses rendering: changes to make it compatible again with Blender versions prior to 2.74.4 [Blender Exporter]
• Minor fix for a warning "rna_uiItemR: property not found: Camera.show_title_safe" that happened sometimes. [Blender Exporter]
• Fix - Min bounces, Russian Roulette minimum bounces jump in. Now saved into render settings. [Blender Exporter]

YafaRay v3.4.1 (2020-04-08) for Blender 2.79:

---------------------------------------------
* Changed documentation to state that any bug reporting and resolution will solely be done in the GitHub Project "Issues" tab. Bugs in the old yafaray.org bugtracker will not be processed anymore. `[Blender Exporter + Core]`
* Added note about Blender-Exporter only working for Blender v2.7x versions. `[Blender Exporter + Core]`

YafaRay v3.4.0 (2020-03-22)

---------------------------
Note: don't mind the release date, the project has been mostly inactive for a long time, so only a few (although significant) changes since v3.3.0, but it was about time to give the last changes a proper release version number.

Feature changes/additions:
--------------------------
* Basic support for Image Sequences. `[Blender Exporter]`
* New per-material transparency bias for Shiny Diffuse. When there are objects with many transparent surfaces stacked close together (such as leaves in a tree) sometimes black artifacts appear if the ray reaches the maximum depth. This can be solved by increasing the maximum ray depth, but the render times increase. I've added two new parameters for the Shiny Diffuse material to try to achieve a "trick", which is not realistic and may cause other artifacts but that should prevent the black areas without having to increase the maximum ray depth so much. `[Blender Exporter + Core]`

Dependencies changes:
---------------------
* IMPORTANT: Migration from Qt4 to Qt5 as Qt4 reached End of Life  `[Core]`
* Dependency on meganz/mingw-std-threads made optional, because it's needed for old MinGW compilers but it causes conflicts with new MinGW compilers, so better to have it as an option in CMake (disabled by default)  `[Core]`
* Compatibility fix for Python 3.8  `[Core]`

Bug fixes:
----------
* VERY IMPORTANT: Fixed the infamous bug "DAG zero... not allowed to happen!" that caused all objects in Blender to be deleted. I want to thank the user "pouar" for finding the problem and the solution for this! :-) More information: http://www.yafaray.org/node/819#comment-1921  `[Blender Exporter]`
* Fixed Multiview rendering, that had been broken due to a Blender 2.79 API change  `[Blender Exporter]`
* Mesh management: changes to make it compatible again with Blender versions prior to 2.78  `[Blender Exporter]`
* RenderPasses rendering: changes to make it compatible again with Blender versions prior to 2.74.4  `[Blender Exporter]`
* Minor fix for a warning "rna_uiItemR: property not found: Camera.show_title_safe" that happened sometimes.  `[Blender Exporter]`
* Fix - Min bounces, Russian Roulette minimum bounces jump in. Now saved into render settings.  `[Blender Exporter]`

YafaRay v3.3.0 (2017-08-22)

---------------------------

Feature changes/additions:
--------------------------
* "Flat Material" option added to Shiny Diffuse, requested by a certain user. Flat Material is a special non-photorealistic material that does not multiply the surface color by the cosine of the angle with the light, as happens in real life. Also, if receive_shadows is disabled, this flat material does no longer self-shadow. For special applications only. `[Blender Exporter + Core]`

Bug fixes:
----------
* Bidirectional: fixed transparent background not working, was causing the entire render to have transparent alpha. See: http://www.yafaray.org/community/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5236  `[Core]`
* Bidirectional: fixes (horrible hacks in fact, but...) for unitialized values causing incorrect illumination in scenes  `[Core]`
* SPPM: fixed SPPM AA panel where the AA filter type and pixel width were incorrectly disabled  `[Blender Exporter]`
* Fixed hang in Windows 7 when YafaRay is built using Visual Studio 2013.  `[Core]`
* Some building fixes  `[Core]`

YafaRay v3.2.0 (2017-03-21) for Blender 2.78c

Feature changes/additions in v3.2.0:
------------------------------------
* IMPORTANT: Support for Texture Mipmaps / Ray Differentials, see: http://yafaray.org/node/695 `[Blender Exporter + Core]`
    - Modifier all ImageHandlers to standardise access and make them more flexible. BIG changes to ImageHandlers.
    - Added new Grayscale internal buffers (optional)
    - Reorganized all Interpolation and GetColor code
    - Added MipMap capability to ImageHandlers
    - Added Trilinear MipMap interpolation based on Ray Differentials.
    - Added EWA MipMap interpolation based on Ray Differentials
    - Heavily modified IBL blur function, to use mipmaps with manually calculated mipmap level instead of the previous dedicated "IBL blur" process

* Path Tracing integrator: added new Russian Roulette parameter to speed up path tracing, see: http://www.yafaray.org/node/775 `[Blender Exporter + Core]`
    The relevant parameter will be "russian_roulette_min_bounces".
    - If this parameter is set to 0, russian roulette will be enabled.
    - If set to the same value specified in depth (max bounces), russian roulette will be disabled
    - If set to a value between 0 and max bounces, then russian roulette will only start be applied after this number of bounces, so we can get decent sampling in dark areas for example and get a good speedup with less noise.
    - Lower values of this parameter will result in faster (but somewhat noisier) renders.

* yafaray-xml: better autodetection of plugins path, but in some cases "-pp" may still be needed `[Core]`

* Building system: many changes to make the building process easier and more integrated with Git `[Blender Exporter + Core]`

* Building system: standalone builds generated again `[Core]`

* Building system: added building instructions and test scenes `[Blender Exporter + Core]`

* QT4 support reintroduced and updated for YafaRay v3, but still in a basic state, many features not available yet for the Qt interface `[Blender Exporter + Core]`

* Re-added ability to generate Sketchup plugins again  `[Core]`

* Texture mapping: allow MirrorX,MirrorY even when Repeat = 1 `[Blender Exporter + Core]`

Bug fixes in v3.2.0:
--------------------
* IMPORTANT: Path/Photon OneDirectLight - attempt to sample lights more uniformly, see: http://www.yafaray.org/node/803  `[Core]`
This has been a significant bug, that went unnoticed for a very long time and was causing severe artifacts in Photon Mapping and Path Tracing when lights were not uniformly lighting the scene. Now with this fix, renders should be much more correct and hopefully more realistic!

* IMPORTANT: all integrators, SPPM and path roulette: Fixing non-randomness repetitive patterns, see: http://www.yafaray.org/node/792 `[Core]`
Another important bug that went unnoticed for a very long time. A lack of randomness caused severe patterns in BiDirectional integrator and probably some artifacts (in less extent) in the others. We hope this change helps to achieve more correct and realistic results now.

* IMPORTANT: big changes to textures interpolation and colorspace processing, see: http://yafaray.org/node/787 `[Core]`
    - I found out that YafaRay was doing the texture interpolation *after* decoding the texels color space. This was causing significant differences in color between standard bilinear/bicubic and when using trilinear or EWA mipmaps.

    - The Core code has been modified so from v3.2.0 onwards all internal image buffers will be converted to "linear RGB" during the texture loading process. That will allow a correct color interpolation process, and probably slightly faster than before. Hopefully this should improve color fidelity respect to the original texture images used for the scene.

    - Also, all textures will be "optimized" by default. I think it's clear by now that optimized textures greatly improve memory usage and apparently don't cause slowdowns (might even make it slightly faster due to reduced RAM access?). To accomodate the extra color information necessary to store "linear RGB" values in the optimized buffers, their size will be around 20-25% bigger respect to v3.1.1, therefore a RAM usage increase will happen now compared with previous versions.

    - For optimal results, from now on the user will be responsible for selecting correct ColorSpaces for all textures, including bump map, normal map, etc. For example for Non-RGB / Stencil / Bump / Normal maps, etc, textures are typically already linear and the user should select "linearRGB" in the texture properties, but if the user (by mistake) keeps the default sRGB for them, YafaRay will (incorrectly) apply the sRGB->LinearRGB conversion causing the values to be incorrect. However, I've added a "fail safe" so for any "float" textures, bump maps, normal maps, etc, when getting colors after interpolatio YafaRay will to a "inverse" color conversion to the original Color Space. This way, even a mistake in user's color space selection in bump maps, normal maps, etc, will not cause any significant problems in the image as they will be converted back to their original color space. However, in this case rendering will be slower and potential artifacts can appear due to interpolation taking place in the wrong color space. For optimal results, the user must select correctly the color space for all textures.

* Bidirectional integrator changes  `[Blender Exporter + Core]`
    - Will be supported again, although will be considered "unstable" until the (many) issues it has are completely fixed.
    - Fixed issue with excessive brightness that happened after render finished.

* Fix for SPPM sudden brightness change when reaching approx 4,300 million photons. See: http://www.yafaray.org/node/772 `[Core]`

* Fixed bug that caused many extra render passes to be generated in some cases `[Core]`

* Fixed crash when using Blender Exporter and Core with Ruby bindings support enabled `[Blender Exporter + Core]`

* Image Texture Interpolation fixes, see: http://www.yafaray.org/node/783 `[Core]`

* Angular camera: fixed wrong renders due to incorrect default clipping, see: http://yafaray.org/node/779 `[Core]`

* Fixed EXR MultiLayer image file saving `[Core]`

* Fixed uninitialized values generated by Ambient Occlusion sampling `[Core]`

* AA user interface: fixed disabled filter type and pixel width when passes=1 `[Blender Exporter]`

* Show the Physics tab in Blender, see: http://yafaray.org/node/797 `[Blender Exporter]`

* Several other fixes and improvements, especially for the building system and tools for developers.