Boxshot 5.8 beta
30 Jul 2024
This is a first beta version of 5.8 with many new features and improvements of the exiting ones. Boxshot gets better and faster, read on for more details.
Better Support of Large Scenes
Boxshot can handle scenes as small as a single box and as large as thousands of objects like shop planograms. This update tackles those large scenes and provides a number of fixes to improve loading, saving and rendering times for such scenes. You should expect many operations to work much faster after updating.
As for the really long operations, Boxshot tries to not hang up anymore. Instead, it shows a nice progress bar, so you know where you are. This applies to loading, saving, copying, pasting etc. Some operations may still hang up the interface, but we’ll try to keep their number low. Let us know if something hangs for too long without the explanation.
Lathe Shape Improvements
The update adds multiple segment selection to the lathe editor. Use the new toolbar buttons to change selection or to select multiple segments. The buttons have hotkeys (see the tooltips), so updating lathe materials is no longer a problem.
Besides the segments selection buttons, there is a “flip curve” button in the lathe editor, too. Now if the shape looks inverted, you can flip the curve instead of inverting the normals. Although the result is the same, this is a slightly better way to fix the inverted shape.
Finally, there is a button at the bottom of the lathe editor parameters panel that lets you make another lathe object, simulating the liquid in the main one. Give it a try, it is nice. Let us know if it doesn’t work as expected.
Note, that lathe shapes are now stored differently in projects, so you will not be able to load them with the old version of Boxshot after saving with the new one. Unfortunately, the old version will not warn you about that, so be careful and always do backups. The new version of Boxshot easily loads both old and new formats of lathe shapes.
Step and Repeat Improvements
You can now select multiple objects and do step and repeat to all of them at once. Boxshot will group the objects and do the job as usual. This also applies to circular step and repeat.
The user interface of the step and repeat tool has been re–worked to use less screen space. You will like it.
Instances Improvements
Instances is a good way to speed up complex scenes. By representing another object, instance takes less space on disk and in memory and overall improves the editing and rendering of the scene.
This update tries making instances more of a first–class citizen in Boxshot. You will notice the instance–related commands right in the context menu, and the new shortcut Ctrl/Command+Shift+C for easier instance creation.
You can now create instances of multiple objects at once. Simply select all what you want to copy as an instance and click “Create instance” in the context menu. Boxshot will do the job, taking in account everything, including groups and hierarchies.
Detaching instances also supports multiple selection. Say if you have 10 instances of an object and detach 5 of them at once, they will make another set of instances. That’s a nice way to change just a few shapes of many.
Finally, if you have a good old scene with many objects copied manually, you can quickly convert them to instances using the new “Convert To Instances” tool. It automatically detects similar shapes and lets you quickly convert some of them (or all) to instances.
New Shapes
Two new shapes this time. The first one is a simple cube shape, easily convertible to cuboid if needed.
The second one is “Dieline Box”, can be found in the “Boxes” section. Give it a try, it is very promising.
Other Changes and Fixes
Fit to View tool now lets you switch between the whole scene and just the selected objects.
The “Inner reflections of environment” option was moved from the scene settings to the materials parameters. You might need it if you render glass, so look for it in the materials now.
Copy Materials tool has been fixed to properly select and update the scene shapes when selection is changed in the list.
The right panel stays if nothing is selected, so preview does not jump right to left when you change selection. You can still hide the panel if you don’t need it, though.
There are some new options in settings related to export to OBJ format. Consider turning them off if your 3rd party application can’t load files exported by Boxshot.
The update fixes a number of visibility–related problems with instances. You should no longer see hidden objects if their instances are visible.
Selecting of grouped objects has been changed to act more natural. You can now select multiple groups of objects easier.
Decals are properly preserved when merging multiple embedded models.
That’s It
This update offers quite a lot of changes and due to that it may be a bit unstable. We tried our best to catch as many problems as possible, but still need your help with the rest. Please contact us if you have any issues with this update. And make backups. Always make backups.
That’s all for today :)