The Dogwaffler of the Moment newsletter - Issue #68 - Thankgsgiving promo, and a first peek at v9.1

Hello, here is another issue of our Dogwaffler of the Moment newsletter.

As usual, you can learn and see more at http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/newsletter

- Thanksgiving Promo
- A word from the developer
- A first peek: What's coming in v9.1?
- New video: Cloudy with a chance of Puppies

Important Reminder: The developer of Project Dogwaffle also shows new pictures in his blog: http://danritchiehowler.blogspot.com/

Thanksgiving Special - 50%, 60%, even 70% off!

The year is almost over, and Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away. It's time to give thanks to our supporters, our Dogwaffle users, our loyal and long time artists who have kept us going for over 10 years.

If you have a recent version of Dogwaffle, such as version 8 or 7, whether it is the Howler edition (with support for animations) or the Artist edition, you know that you can use a special discount coupon to order at 56% off (upgrading from v7) or even 66% off (upgrading from v8). Simply email us at admin@thebest3d.com to request your discount coupon if you lost it. But, read on, there's an even better discount waiting for you.

Users of earlier versions (v6, v5 etc... also have a discount coupon available. It can be 46% or 36% discount depending on the version you have.

Today, we're announcing a special promotion for anyone who has such an old version, or doesn't have any prior version at all: 50% off! This promotion is good through Thanksgiving and the following Black Friday and weekend. It ends Sunday December 1st.

If you have version 6 or earlier:

    Your discount coupon for 50% off:     TG13FIFTY

    You can use it towards the purchase of v9, Howler edition, or Artist edition available.
    You will get a full installer when ordering.

    Place your order here: http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/sales

If you have v7 or v8 already:

    Simply contact us here: http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/about

    If you have version 7, we'll send you a discount coupon for 60% off!
    If you have version 8, we'll send you a discount coupon for 70% off!

Alternatively, contact the developer Dan Ritchie directly. He will also treat you to a great discount.

As always, if you are a student, you can contact us to request a 70% discount.

A Word from the Developer, Dan Ritchie

It's time again for another update from the Howler 9 front.

With the release of Howler 9 in September, we introduced Puppy Ray, adding ray-tracing with global illumination to complement our prior 3D rendering capabilities found in 3D Designer. Puppy Ray adds much more realistic 3D imaging and animating to Howler, with soft shadows, infinitely repeating landscapes, and lighting that simulates real-world illumination. What's more, it is fully animatable, so you can fly through your imaginary landscapes.

In an upcoming update, we're calling it Howler 9.1, we are picking up where we left off, and adding a new GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) accelerated version of Puppy Ray. The GPU on your video card or integrated with your CPU (Central Processing Unit), happens to have an amazingly fast computing capability, but until recently, these co-processors have been too difficult to program for complex algorithms like ray-tracing. Over the last few years however, using a GPU as a processing device has been increasingly possible. The GPU simply outpacing the conventional CPU in your computer by orders of magnitude for many types of workloads. (Note: you will not see GPU support on Windows XP. In other words: it may well be time to upgrade to Windows 7 or 8 if you have an old PC. Also, Microsoft is soon discontinuing the support of Windows XP).

In previous versions of Howler, we used the GPU to accelerate 3D lighting, blur effects, and even Mandelbrot calculations for improvements averaging 300 to 400 percent. Lately, we've been seeing results as high as 900 percent and up on certain equipment. Now we have moved our Puppy Ray ray-tracer entirely onto the GPU. The result has been nothing short of breathtaking. We've seen entire scenes calculated fast enough to interact with it nearly in real-time, and that's just on a laptops integrated GPU. Imagine what this thing is going to do on high-end gamer desktop graphics cards.

That's not to say we are aiming for a real-time ray-tracer at this point. Puppy Ray GPU should support a much larger preview image, and rendering that takes place in seconds instead of minutes. After we've completed development on 9.1, we can evaluate where we want to go from there. There's such a wide range of hardware out there, we'll need time to optimize for the lowest common denominator first.

Also coming to Howler 9.1 are some much needed interface improvements. We've got a new light-on-dark render style, in addition to an improved fill settings panel. The fill settings panel has remained largely unchanged since version 1 and was ready for some re-thinking. The new version features a real-time preview of your fill settings in a thumbnail image, as well as larger, more readable text.

The gradient dropdown list now opens much faster. It's those little details that make a positive difference sometimes, significantly improving your workflow. Icons have also undergone a gentle re-design, to be easier to look at and work with more color schemes. Color presets have been re-thought, and there's also a more uniform usage of colors in the user interface.

So, as you see, Howler 9.1 continues where we left off with version 9. We hope that the new features and options help make Howler better and faster than ever, and more enjoyable yet. Happy Howling, and Happy Thanksgiving!

Dan R.

What's coming in v9.1?

Here is a short list of what's coming soon with 9.1, as it stands (subject to further change):

new options on alpha strip with Alpha tools

improved fill tool

new color scheme

newly designed icons

New options in Plasma

GPU-accelerated raytracing in Puppy Ray (when available)

evised and more unified color schemes.

New light on dark GUI style.

updated icons

speed improvements. Certain brush types are accelerated, and GPU rendering may be improved upwards of 10%, and other improvements.

Animating the Wave Transform filter manifested a bug in the blue channel. (fixed)

Overhauled fill settings panel with preview of fill settings.

The gradient list opens faster.

A number of gradient files were originally created in the .net framework version of the gradient editor, which is slightly incompatible. They have been fixed.

Various bug fixes.

Integrated print plugin

added a "-NoGPU" command line argument to bypass initialization of the GPU on startup. If a command line parameter doesn't start with a "-" then it is interpreted as a filename to load. At this point, you can specify a set of command line parameters separated by spaces, or you can specify a filename to load, but not both at the same time.

Plasma options now supports combine modes like difference and complement, in addition to add, subtract, screen, etc, and 2 tone mode where you can select specific colors for the plasma.