Version 9.12

Fixes

- 3ds Max plugins does not update objects after optimization, if they belong to a hierarchy.
- Checking / unchecking optimization checkboxes (selection panel) can lead to a crash.
- Checking / unchecking optimization checkboxes (selection panel) can make object disapear.
- Frozen faces display is incorrect in the viewer.
- Toolbar button state is not always updated.

Version 9.11

Polygon Cruncher

- 3ds Max 2012 support.
- Lightwave 10 support.
- Polygon Cruncher is now available as a stand alone application.
- Memory optimization and memory bottle neck suppress. It's now possible to optimize bigger meshes.
- The multiresolution mesh generation step is now faster.
- Optimization is now performed on the selected object, when you open Polygon Cruncher from a 3D viewer.
- Fix: the lock point setting is sometime reset.

Version 9.0

Polygon Cruncher's 9.0 core has been rewritten with the following additions and changes. It's both optimized and improved dramatically. Optimization results are better than ever.

Polygon Cruncher

- Normal inversion is now extremely rare and polygons are better equilibrated. Planar surface optimization is no longer problematic.
- Optimization is more than 2 times faster.
- Optimization requires less memory (approximately 25% less).
- UV coordinates are now interpolated. Texture optimization no longer requires the locking of points.
- Normal interpolation gives smooth results when optimizing normals.
- It's now possible to lock point position in the advanced panel.

3D

- Viewer now displays anti-aliased lines (wireframe display, for example).
- Viewer now supports transparent materials.
- Improved 3D preferences (PBuffer)

Version 8.03

Polygon Cruncher

- Optimization improved for x32 bits version.
- Optimization improved for x64 bits version.
- Optimization quality are now the same between x32 and x64 bits versions.
- 3ds Max 2010 plugin support (x32 / x64 bits)

Corrections

- On particular meshes, the x64 bits optimization creates flipped faces and lead to a bad vertex distribution over the optimized mesh.
- Lightwave 5.x import sometime crashed.

Improvements in release 8.0

Polygon Cruncher

- Memory management improved: this is now possible to optimize very large meshes.
- Adding normal optimization.
- Improving the batch module (merge faces and vertex settings simplified, log files, normal support...)
- 3ds Max version updates more cleverly the modifier stack when the option Apply Modifier is unchecked.

3D

- New PLY binary export.
- Wavefront / STL / 3ds Max / Maya user normal support.

Others

- The title bar now gives information on the version and the license status.

Fixes

- Lightwave import crashes frequently when reading UVs. A crash might occurs on particular lightwave 5.x format. UV/VC are correctly saved when a same material is shared by several meshes.
- 3ds import is slow when the scene has a lot of meshes.
- Vrml fix (last face might be invalid and this can lead to an application crash).

Improvements in release 7.8

Polygon Cruncher

- Geometrical optimisation quality improved.
- UV optimisation greatly improved when textures breaks exists. Now Freeze UV discontinuities setting can't be let unactivated in most of case, which gives better optimization ratio. This setting is not anymore automatically activated when keeping UVs is selected.
- Symmetry has been improved (symmetry criteria is now based on topology, not only geometry).
- Last settings are kept for a better ergonomy.

3D

- Merge Coplanar Faces now handles correctly UVs.
- Wavefront I/O now reads several UVs for a given vertices.
- STL import now welds confused vertices.

Fixes

- Sometime normals are incorrect after optimization.
- Print scene: Printer Paper names are not correct.
- Correction 3D I/O : C4D, COB, DXF, VRML

Improvements in release 7.63

New features

• Polygon Cruncher x64 bits, including plugins for 3DS Max 9 x64 and Lightwave 9 x64.
• Polygon Cruncher for 3DS Max 2008 (x32 and x64), 2009 (x32/x64 bits).
• Maya 8.5 x64 bits file format support.
• Unicode name support.

Fixes

• Fix: now reading files 3DS files which contains object with no points.
• Fix: entering the face number modifies the point of view.

Improvements in release 7.51

3D viewer

New features

• Maya 8.5 file support (read / write).

Improvements in release 7.5

3D viewer

New features

• Tools > Merge coplanar faces: this new command merges coplanar faces. You can also define a limit angle to merge faces which are nearly coplanar.
• Merge faces option in Polygon Cruncher batch dialog.

Fixes

• Improvement: add an entry to Polygon Cruncher forum in Help menu.
• Fix: clicking on the browse button in batch optimization dialog sometime leads to an infinite loop.
• Fix: the \ character is not correctly handled when reading obj files.
• Fix: DirectX export fails when it is selected as default export format in the batch optimization module.
• Fix: DirectX import fails when face indexes are stored on 32 bit values.
• Fix: thumbnails are sometime incorrectly displayed on Windows Vista.

Improvements in release 7.24

3D viewer

Improvements

• Preferences > Display: it's now possible to select an alternative OpenGL mode, which can solve problems on specific graphic cards (ie ATI Radeon).
• Tools > Update Thumbnails now takes care of the current scene zoom factor.

Fixes

• Fix: LightWave reader improvement. A problem relative to layer hierachy has been corrected. This problems randomly crashed the application. Reading bad files has been also improved.
• Fix: Improvement on HDR file support.
• Fix: DirectX fails to initialize on some computers.
• Fix: scene is not always correctly displayed when we zoom too close to the objects.
• Fix: under particular circumstances, topologic and geometric cleaning might crash the application (Merge points feature, export polygon cruncher optimization).
• Fix: merge points feature sometime gives incorrect result when using 0 as merging factor.

Others

• A validation period of 15 days now allows to use the software after entering a valid serial number.
• Compatibility improvement for Windows Vista.
• Automatic checking online for new upgrade.
• Preferences > Others: Check online regularly for an upgrade

Fixes

• Fix: the software handles incorrectly large files (> 90 Mb)

Improvements in release 7.23

New features

• Tools > Merge points command in Polygon Cruncher viewer.
• Command File > Open command which allows to import any kind of supported file formats in Polygon Cruncher viewer.
• Merge points option in Polygon Cruncher batch dialog.
• Import scene command in Lightwave and 3DS Max Polygon Cruncher panel. This feature allows to take advantage of Polygon Cruncher importation modules.
• STL file format support (reading ASCII and binary file formats. Supporting VisCam, SolidView, Materialise Magics variants).
• Maya file supports (Maya must be setup on the computer).

3D viewer

• Display performances improved.
• Scene importation speed improved from Lightwave to Polygon Cruncher.

Fixes

• Fix / Batch Polygon Cruncher, File > Save As: exportation options are not taken into account.
• Fix: text translation for product activation / deactivation.
• Lightwave 5.x is not any more supported.
• Fix V7.23: the software need to be reactivated when the internet connection is off.
• Fix V7.23: 3D file formats are not supported if DirectX 9 is not setup on the computer.
• Fix V7.23: Lightwave files with textures might be incorrectly readed.

Improvements in release 7.1

New features

• Polygon Cruncher for 3DS Max 9
• Polygon Cruncher for Lightwave 9

3D viewer

• An option allows displaying a conversion report when saving file to a different format.
• Searching for Lightwave object file has been improved when reading Lightwave scene (including the possibility to include relative path in Lightwave object preference dialog).
• It's now possible to define relative paths in the texture preference dialog.
• OBJ file import has been improved (now supporting faces with a large number of vertices).
• 3DS file import improved (null object are now taken into account).
• Preferences dialog has been improved. It's now possible to define custom settings for OpenGL display.

Fixes

• Fix / Batch Polygon Cruncher: exclude borders mode cannot be selected.
• Fix / Batch Polygon Cruncher: optimized file is not saved when the target directory does not exist.
• Fix / Batch Polygon Cruncher: UV and VC tolerance are not correctly taken into account.
• Fix / Batch Polygon Cruncher: Lightwave crashes when the optimized scene has no faces or points.
• Fix: LightWave export fails when an object has faces which material does not exist in the scene (i.e. default material).
• Fix: Truespace exports too many materials.
• Fix: the current directory is lost when checking Show only common extensions in the save dialog box.
• Fix: save dialog box does not display any file when All files is selected.

Improvements in release 7.01

New features

• Polygon Cruncher displays textures on object which have planar, spherical (...) projection

Others

• Fix: Polygon Cruncher crashes when an object contains particular invalid faces, which make reference several time to a same point

Improvements in release 7.0

• Polygon Cruncher can be opened from the main window

Improvements in release 6.7

Others

• Polygon Cruncher is 40% faster and need less memory
• Less Light / More Light commands
• New view menu organization
• Fix: some objects might be invisibles on some graphics cards
• Fix: VRML import improved. Transformations are now handled
• Fix: 3DS import improved. Pivots are now handled
• Fix: 3DS is incorrectly exported when hidding objects in the scene
• Fix: Truespace import improved. Transformation matrix are better handled

Improvements in release 6.63

Others

• Fix: sometime plugin fails to load in 3DS Max

Improvements in release 6.61

Others

• Fix: bad menu initialization which can makes the host application crashes (3DS Max / Lightwave)

Improvements in release 6.6

New features

• 3DS Max release: 3DS Max 7.0 is now supported
• 3DS Max release: "Optimize selection button"
• Lightwave release: update now use Lightwave 8.0 SDK
• Lightwave release: maps update has been improved
• Upgrade Polygon Cruncher command

Others

• Fix: bad triangulation occurs on face with holes
• Fix: the application window sometime freezes
• Fix: face orientation corrected for Lightwave and 3DS Max, which allows to use single face display (now the default)
• Fix: selection and wireframe color are now correctly displayed

Improvements in release 6.5

New features

• Lightwave and 3DS Max release: optimization is precomputed (cf. Improvements in release 6.0)
• Improved UV textures optimization, which allows to increase optimization ratio.
• UV textures optimization does not involve to use the Keep materials discontinuities option.
• Optimization matches more closely the entered faces or points number.
• Multiple UV channel optimization
• Multiple vertex colors channel optimization
• New exportation formats through the Save As... command

Lightwave version

• It's now possible to optimize a single or all layers.
• All UV and vertexs colors are now imported and optimized in Polygon Cruncher.

3DS Max version

• All UV and vertexs colors channels are now imported and optimized in Polygon Cruncher.
• Improved stability when replacing objects by optimized objects in 3DS Max scene.

Viewer

• Low resolution textures setting allows to specify the maximum image size to use.
• Enable vertexs colors is now more accessible and has been included in the toolbar. It's also possible to display simultaneously textures and vertexs colors.

Others

• Fix: vertexs are now correctly frozen when optimizing UV using 0.0 as tolerance value.
• Fix: vertexs are now correctly frozen when they belong to a material which is excluded from the optimization

Improvements in release 6.01

• Fix: sometimes there can be a long delay between the moment when the optimization computation is done and the moment when the optimization slider is displayed.

Improvements in release 6.0:

Improvements in release 5.11:

• Fix: Polygon Cruncher for 3D Photo Browser crashes when scene has an hierarchy or patches
• Fix: 3D viewer might crashes on some graphics cards in wireframe mode

Improvements in release 5.1:

• Polygon Cruncher for 3D Photo Browser
• Polygon Cruncher for 3DS Max 5.x
• Save as, print commands
• Setup bug correction (wrong path for the help file)

Improvements in release 5.0:

• Better optimization quality:
  • Optimization allows to keep object symmetry.
  • Advanced parameters that offer control on face compactness and normals inversions.
  • Improvement in the order faces are optimized.
    
    
• Better OpenGL viewer

  • New viewer interface
  • New commands access menus
  • New commands shortcuts
  • Fit on screen command
  • Save as... features
    
  • New textures files formats support

  
  
• New setup software
• Help improvement, due to the addition of a lot of concretes examples.

Improvements in release 4.0 of Polygon Cruncher:

• Better optimization
  • Optimization quality has been really increase (Optimized polygons are more compacts).
  • Better optimization on plane surfaces.
• New feature : points sharing two (or more) differents materials can be froozen.
• It's now possible to freeze a point selection for each objects.
  
• It's now possible to exclude optimization of one or more materials for each object.
  
• Better optimization of vertex colors (It's now possible to freeze points depending on a color threshold).
  

• Improved OpenGL viewer
  • Textures are now displayed in the OpenGL viewer.
  • New icons for combinated modes (smooth+wireframe, flat shading+wireframe).
  • Complete OpenGL preferences (textures directories, lighting...).
    
  • New camera interface.
  • Faster OpenGl display.
    

• A new interface
  • New user interface to simplify use of Polygon Cruncher
  • New visualization toolbar.
    
  • New display for optimization statistics.
  • New optimization progress bar.

Improvements in release 3.0 of Polygon Cruncher:

Texture coordinates and vertex colors are kepted.
• Texture discontinuity preservation depending on a choosen tolerance value.
• Optimization specifying a wished number of points or faces.
• Detailed information on object optimization.
• Better optimization on coplanar faces.
• 3DS Max version:
  • optimization on a selected face set or on an invert selected face set.
• Improved OpenGL viewer:
  • New controler in rotation mode.
  • Visualization of faces that are excluded of optimization.
  • OpenGL preferences (wireframe color, semi-transparent mode...)
  • Improved performances.

Improvements in release 2.0 of Polygon Cruncher:

• New OpenGl viewer
  • Smooth shader
  • User defined smooth angle.
  • Wireframe & smooth shader, wireframe & flat shader : this allow you to see the optimization and the final object appearance.
  • Moving tools icons.
• New optimization features :
  • Materials optimization : you can now optimize one or several materials. Materials frontiers are perfectly kepted.
  • Object optimization : you can now optimize one or several object.
• New triangulation algorithm for preparing objects before optimization. Concaves faces are now perfectly optimised under Lightwave.
• Better use interface.