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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 4 is the first Mac product to support Rich Photorealistic Content (RPC) from Archvision. These cutouts - built as multiple images or 3D models - can be viewed from any angle.
Furthermore any model in 3DS, SketchUp, MicroGDS, and DXF format can be inserted into the Piranesi 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.
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 thickened, or both.
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Tweaking a 3D model of a chair
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3D text
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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 |
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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
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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. It is 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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You can now create 'hotspots' in QuickTime panoramas, to jump to other panoramic views or link to related information
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Keyboard shortcuts are provided for most commands; you can use these or customise Piranesi to use your own preferred shortcut keys
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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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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 Mac OS X is available now. Contact your local distributor for pricing.
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