Release Notes for Colorway 4.1v1

Release Date:                       6th October 2020

Supported Operating Systems

Mac OS X:                        10.13 High Sierra, 10.14 Mojave, 10.15 Catalina

Windows:                        10 64-bit (SP-1), and above                 

Colorway Hardware Requirements

An internet connection is required for license installation.

	Minimum	Recommended
CPU	Dual-core processor	2.5+ Ghz quad-core processor
RAM	4GB	16GB
Hard drive space	4GB	16GB
GPU	2GB RAM, OpenGL 3.2	4GB RAM, OpenGL 3.2+

Colorway Kit for Modo Requirements

	Minimum	Recommended
Modo version	12.2v1	14.1+
CPU	Intel processor(s), Core i3 or higher	2.5+ Ghz quad-core processor
RAM	4GB	16GB
Hard drive space	10GB	250GB
GPU	1GB RAM, OpenGL 3.2	2GB RAM, OpenGL 4.4+

Warning:  Projects created or modified with Colorway 4.1v1 and Colorway Kit 4.1v1 are not compatible with older versions of Colorway. It is highly recommended that you make a backup copy of your older Colorway project files before opening any projects in this release.

Note:  .dci files created with Colorway Kit 4.0v3 and the IO tool are not compatible with Colorway versions older than 4.0v3.

Note:  You must have Modo 14.0 and later installed if you require the mPath path tracing renderer.

New Features

View Menu: Improved Set of Predefined Zoom Levels

Users can now zoom in on the canvas by pressing 1 to 7 number keys. Users can zoom out with Shift + 1 to Shift + 7.

SeeKeyboard Shortcuts.

Support for SVG Part Metadata, Part Merge, Part Visibility, and Part Reordering

Designers can now store .svg part settings and part metadata per variation. The visibility of .svg parts is stored in the .svg file and is shared with other applications (e.g. Illustrator). .svg parts can be reordered per variation but grouping and ungrouping is not supported for .svg parts this Colorway release.

See Working with Parts.

Simplified Colorway Project Structure

Documents, Assets, local LiveSources, and palettes are now stored within a project .cway file. Old projects opened in Colorway 4.1v1 are imported and converted to the new format on Save.

Warning:  Old Colorway versions cannot open projects that are in the new simplified format.

Note:  Large assets such as .dci, .svg, and .png images are still stored separately and consolidated in the Repositories or GeneratedFiles directory.

See Working with Projects.

Added Support for Displaying .dci and .cway File Thumbnails in Windows Explorer

Users can now see .dci and .cway thumbnails in the Windows explorer preview.

Material Library: Added Ability to Define the Real World Size of a Material

Users now have the ability to specify width, height, and unit of their material. The new columns in the library are Width, Height and SizeUnits. The supported units are: pt, in, cm, mm, m.

The option to use real world sizes of materials and texture layers has also been added for .dci and .svg files that have real world sizes defined.

.dci files rendered in Colorway Kit 4.1v1 have the real world size of the UV tiles stored in their metadata by the kit. The real world size of .svg images is read from the Width and Height attributes stored in the file's header.

Note:   Make sure the .svg width and height attributes are stored in real world units instead of pixels in the original application.

See Material Libraries.

Added support for multiple texture layers marked as DCI part transparency masks

Designers can apply multiple transparent decals onto their product designs by assigning each decal the Transparency Mask option in Effects. This means the designer can experiment with different design layouts, and add and remove multiple existing decals.

See Adding Textures and Decals to a Part.

Save or Export Palette Content to a Color Palette or Material Palette

Designers have two new actions in the Palette item context menu:

• Add to palettes - adds colors and materials shown by the Palette as a new palette to the list of project swatches or material palettes.
• Export… - allows user to export the above data to an external file.

See Working with Palettes.

Toggle the Original Colors of an SVG Asset

Designers can now enable or disable the display of original colors stored in the .svg file just as they can for .dci items. The option for both item types has been moved to the Variants properties panel.

See Viewing Original Materials of a Variant.

Show the Original Colors of a Variant in a Color Palette

Designers can show the original colors of their .dci or .svg assets in their color palettes. These colors remain hidden by default for older Colorway projects. The option is available in the Palette properties panel.

See Working with Palettes.

Enable or Disable the Visibility of .svg Parts

Designers can enable or disable the visibility of .svg parts and groups without relying on external .svg editors. Items Tree icons have been enhanced to ensure the user knows they are toggling visibility of the part on renders or just the visibility of the .svg part in the Dynamic Table.

See Working with Parts.

Import Original Colors of an .svg Asset as a New Variation

Now that users can enable rendering of the original .svg colors on their canvas, they are also presented with an option to import those color assignments as new stored variations. The command is available in the Variations menu when the item is selected. The name of the action has been renamed to Import Original Variations.

See Using the Variation Stack.

UI Scripting Capabilities

Users are now able to create Colorway plugins using newly exposed APIs. They can add and modify actions in the main menu, and create new left and right dockable panels and toolbars. It is recommended to write those plugins in the native QML and JavaScript language combinations. The user can also extend Colorway using HTML and JavaScript, or Python 3. Both approaches require a thin QML wrapper to embed the web browser or Python interpreter inside Colorway UI and expose the opened project to it.

See Colorway Plug-in Basics for more information.

Colorway and Python 3

Colorway Python API has been ported to Python 3 to enable Python 3 users to create plug-ins.

Add and Modify the Materials Library from inside Colorway

A new Material Library Editor is available from the LiveSources menu. Designers can add, edit, and remove materials from the Material Libraries configured in their Preferences.

See Material Libraries.

Drag Textures and Materials From One Part to Another

Designers can now reorder texture layers and materials and move the layers between parts by dragging them around in the Items Tree.

Select Same Material

Users can now select parts that share the same material assignment using the Select Same menu.

See Selecting Items.

Added a Drop-Down List For Multiple Material Libraries

Users can now limit their Material Library panel to display the selected material library from the list of all available from the folder configured in Colorway preferences.

See Material Libraries.

Add Bump and Normal Maps to Parts

Users can set their texture layers as normal or bump maps using the Effects property. The most realistic results can be obtained if all lights in the scene are tagged for export to Colorway in Modo.

See Adding Textures and Decals to a Part.

Part Selection Context Menu

When multiple parts overlap in an area, users are now presented with a context menu that allows them to select the part they wish to apply materials or colors to.

Callout Properties Panel Has Been Rearranged and Decluttered

Some of the Callout options were decluttered and made more visually appealing to help the designer decide which one should be selected.

Number Input Sliders Usability Improvements

Usability has been improved on UI sliders by making it easier to click drag the slider to pick specific values.

Remove All Labels From Visible Column at Once in the Dynamic Table Properties

Users can now add or remove all columns to and from the list of visible columns, using the context menu which is presented when right-clicking on the lists of available of visible columns.

See Dynamic Tables.

Apply Callouts to An Item By Clicking the Item in the Item List

Users can now create a new Callout item by clicking the Callout tool and clicking on one of the items in the Items Tree. Newly created callout items are automatically connected to that item. You can still assign callouts to an item on the canvas.

Move Automatic Callout Pin Anchor Points

Users can now adjust the position of the Callout Pin anchor using the manual callout edit mode. They can also do this for dynamic pins that are auto generated for the referenced item. All pins are reset to their default automatic position if the user switches to a different asset for this item.

Position of anchors can be also reset in the context menu or Callout properties panel by clicking Reset Dynamic Pins.

See Dynamic Callouts.

Move Callout Pin bubbles in Automatic Layout Mode

Users can now adjust the position of the selected Callout bubbles using the Manual Callout edit mode. This can also be done for callout bubbles that were positioned with the automatic distribution algorithm, such as the Linear or Circle / Oval shape options.

Note:  All bubbles are reset to their default automatic position if the user switches to a different Variant for this item.

Position of bubbles can also be also reset through the context menu or Callout properties panel by clicking Reset Dynamic Pins.

Moved the Store Position per Variation Option

The Store Position per Variation option has been moved from the Callout properties panel to the Display properties panel to be shown next to the Position, Rotation, and Scale properties.

Overflow options now function on Callouts

When adding manual callouts, designers can now move the pins outside of the Callout item bounding box. The pins are shown is the Overflow option is selected from the Display option in the Display properties panel. This enhancement also minimizes memory usage of the Callout items that are referencing the entire sheet.

Change Collapse to Merge

For clarity, we now refer to part groups that behave as a single part as Merged groups. Collapse Part Group has been renamed to Merge Part Group and Unmerge Part Group.

See Working with Parts.

Contact Sheet and Part Linked Items

Whenever a user links two items or parts placed on different sheets together, Colorway now ensures that those two sheets are linked too. This helps to avoid confusion caused by those two sheets previously not sharing the same set of Variations.

See Linking Items.

Rename Fields

Rename fields now automatically commit the modified value on focus loss. Press Esc if you don’t want to commit the change.

Export Working Variation of Sheets

Designers are asked if they want to export the working variation of the sheet during export if the sheet has no stored variations.

See Exporting Your Work.

Only Render Passes That Differ From the Primary View When Blending Two .dci Views Together

Rendering of .dci files with transparency and opaque passes have been modified to use less memory and to reuse render passes that are shared between the two versions of the .dci file.

See IO Tool.

Bug Fixes

• 433878 - Callouts: Users were unable to undo the creation of a new Callout pin while it was still in the pin rename mode.
• 429876 - I/O: Colorway did not set custom .dci and .cway file and Colorway project directory icons on Mac on each save.

Note:  Note that this is a Mac specific feature and the custom icons might be lost when transferring files between different machines (they will be regenerated on save).

• 441241 - Kit: Improved edge quality of transparent .dci parts rendered with latest Kit.
• 448681 - UI: The submenu of the part context menu was not functioning correctly.
• 449189 - Variations: Colorway was not properly loading variation states for parts with commas in their names.
• 449197 - Texture Layers: Fixed a rendering issue when normal map texture layer variants were set to None.
• 448845 - Callouts: Fixed a bug that created duplicate manual pins when the user created a variation, removed a pin, and performed an undo to remove the pin.
• 443529 - Callouts: Colorway was not properly scaling the Callout tool cursor on Windows monitors with screen scaling enabled.
• 445473 - UI: Fixed a crash that happened when the user was in the middle of a drag and drop when the dragged file has been removed from the view.
• 433000 - Callouts: Colorway was not updating Callout pin names immediately after renaming the referenced parts.
• 432218 - Gradients: Performance of Gradient tool when Live Update Assigned Color feature was enabled was slow.
• 434615 - Linked Items: Fixed a bug that removed colors from linked items if user tried to copy one of those linked items.
• 429005 - Kit: Fixed source of random error at the last stage of Colorway Kit rendering that led to no .dci file being created.
• IO Tool: Fixed --remove command.
• LiveSources: Fixed crash on conversion of local LiveSource repository to global repository.
• 431182 - Text: Fixed an issue where text Alignment was not saved in the text style.
• 432233 - Texture Layers: Fixed an issue where while moving a texture on a part there was no right-click context menu available when clicking within the green rectangle.
• 434605 - Callouts: Prevented the pin layout animation from being restarted when the sheet is being moved.
• 447727 - Sheets: Fixed loading sheet mask preference when sheet mask is set to a low opacity.
• 441107 - Linked Items: Fixed a crash when loading a project with linked contact sheets.
• 448481 - Variants: Fixed an issue where replacing item variants in the whole project.
• 448300 - Texture Layers: Fixed normal mapping applied to untagged lights or tagged groups of lights.
• 448505 - UI: Fixed reaction to focus changes now that addition of new keys is automatically committed on focus loss.
• 389606 - Texture Layers: Improved quality of texture mapping at the edges of .dci parts.
• 405336 - UI: Hint bubbles were appearing too often. We have decreased number of hint bubble reappearances from five times to once per panel.
• UI: Fixed a bug that reset various UI settings back to default if the user closed Colorway without opening any project.
• I/O: Fixed an issue where Save as would incorrectly save the current project first.
• Kit: Fixed issues where timed-out rendering would cause issues in Modo.
• Linked Items: Fixed crash on removal of linked items with multiple parts.
• I/O: Fixed a few issues with project consolidation and sheet duplication.
• 445502 - Material Libraries: Fixed an issue where material thumbnails were not being re-rendered when properties where changed in quick succession.
• 444486 - Resource Tree View: Fixed an issue where explicitly collapsed nodes were being implicitly expanded.
• 445517 - I/O: Increased resource reload timeouts to prevent reloading of .svg files when they haven't been fully saved by Illustrator yet.
• 438731 - UI: Colorway now triggers sheet overlap resolve when a given overlapping sheet is being unhidden.
• 446317 - Dynamic Tables: Fixed poor handling of hidden parts by Dynamic Tables.
• 447473 - Contact Sheets: Fixed Contact Sheet Crop mode for Groups of items and implemented support for this flag when the Contact Sheet references the entire sheet.

Note:  Cropping might not work as expected for items with masks applied to them.

• 438801 - UI: Improved layout of Display panel and Palette panel Layout section to avoid overlapping and cropping of UI when the right dock is very narrow.
• 440688 - LiveSources: Fixed styling of the LiveSource rename field.
• 429674 - Transform: Fixed an issue where transforms (such as rotate) were not applied to sheets when they were selected with other items. Also fixed the usability of transform handles of items within rotated or scaled groups.
• 432221 - Palettes: Improved speed of scrolling through large palettes when new swatch has been added at the end of the palette.
• 445261 - Texture Layers: Improved quality of texture mapping at the edges of .dci parts.

Note:  Requires re-render of assets with the latest Kit.

• 430505 - Variants: Fixed an issue where the size of variant selector on screens with high DPI did not look right, and fixed vertical positioning of its elements.
• 447464 - I/O: Improved logic of forced project reload by ensuring that the resources that were waiting for removal on project Save are recreated on project reopen.
• 444771 - Highlighter: Fixed incorrect movement of mouse cursor when using Highlighter tool.
• 445522 - SVG: Added support for referenced clipping paths in .svg files.
• Variants: Fixed an issue where it was not possible to export and duplicate item Variants.
• Items Tree: Fixed an issue where it was not possible to drop colors on a sheet layer.
• I/O: Fixed crash when project directory is removed while the project is still open.
• Linked Items: Improved performance in situations where linking parts in complex .svg images was slow.
• Dynamic Tables: Fixed an issue where table would display undefined in an empty material column instead of skipping missed columns.
• 431338 - Highlighter: Text styles could not be applied with the Highlighter tool in some situations.
• 432618 - Hihglighter: Switching to the Highlighter panel after saving a text style could cause a crash if the user applied a font on Windows that was not supported by Qt.
• 434780 - UI: Some popup windows like the text style rename dialog did not receive keyboard focus on macOS.
• 434902 - Items Tree: Colors displayed in the Items Tree sometimes appeared transparent for .svg parts with gradients applied.
• 435644 - Kit: Kit failed to render if you had a luminous material and used Light Path Expressions.
• 442306 - Callouts: After drawing a box with the Callout tool, it reset to the default size.
• 442760 - IO Tool: A .dci did not appear in the viewport after dumping and creating a new .dci with the IO tool on Windows.
• 442370 - Hardware: Fixed a crash on Colorway startup on machines with Intel Ice Lake processors (OpenSSL).

Known Issues

• 427752 - .svg files won’t sometimes load in Colorway when the .svg file is open in Illustrator.
• 428019 - Zooming out might cause .svg files to disappear.
• 405372 - Hidden sheets are not skipped when using the mouse wheel to change sheets.
• 386980 - There might be a minor difference in RGB and hex values when color swatch is added from color picker into a palette.
• 390699 - The correct swatch is not picked when using the macOS color picker in AdobeRGB colorspace.
• 391834 - There is a minor discrepancy in RGB value between colors applied to parts and the same color in the rest of the application.
• 431336 - Colorway can crash on closing of some projects.
• 431674 - Selecting a whole folder from the LiveSource browser might cause a crash.
• 396513, 371022 - Crash reporter is not appearing 100% of the time on Windows.
• 433176 - Camera overrides might cause some materials to be lost in the Colorway Kit.
• 440055 - Colorway Kit doesn't use the assigned diffuse color with Modo procedural textures.
• 414523, 427416 - .dci files can sometimes have Modo material colors burned into its textures

Note:  Cleaning Modo settings seems to resolve this issue.

• 105803 - Intensity above 1.0 for Luminous materials causes tint to be incorrect in the Colorway Kit.
• 401124, 393971 - When rendering multiple UVs from Modo into Colorway, any materials using specific UV maps will use the first UV map in the list instead.
• 394046 - When the user adds a new UV map to their Modo project, it won't appear in the kit's list of UV maps right away.
• 402893 - Return Roam will error if the internet is disconnected instead of displaying a warning.
• 390916 - Return Roam will fail if the internet is disconnected and reconnected.
• 396080 - A client using a server license will take too long to boot when disconnected from the VPN.
• 422711 - Booting on macOS with no license may cause Colorway to hang.
• 431250 - The size slider in grid view is not functioning.
• 396246 - Importing another user's preferences file does not update the source browser correctly.
• 432462 - Adding a sheet requires the user to press OK twice.
• 328951 - Sheet masking should not allow an item to span multiple sheets.
• 440699 - When setting 'textures' to display as 'images' in the Preferences, the selected visible column will not update.
• 442277 - Text alignment can cause the contents to become cropped.
• 430696 - When entering text, the cursor for the current position is hard to see.
• 432009 - Textures seen though transparency might be distorted, this effect increases with multiple layers of transparency.

Note:  Enabling use of mPath in the Kit solves this issue.

• 394303 - The texture widget behaves erratically when a non-uniform scale is applied at the part level.
• 445879 - Variations not updating correctly for some users.
• 448722 - Copying and pasting colors and images alters stored Variations.
• 435520 - It is impossible to get the right click context menu with a Wacom.