Alice/LG v2.3.0 for Blender 2.93.6+

This is the official release of Alice/LG 2.3 for Blender 2.93.6 and later. Please see the change log below for the major changes since Alice/LG 2.2.2.

Change Log for v2.3.0:

• added: Looking Glass Go and other new Gen3 devices (Thanks to @alxdncn)
• changed: Hologram preview defaults to the left corner of the viewport to avoid UI collisions (Thanks to @arturojreal)
• fixed: Some languages caused a UnicodeDecodeError. (Thanks to @Philmist)

Known issues:

• on macOS the lightfield viewport does not work on Blender 4.0+ due to a bug in Blender

Alice/LG v2.2.2 for Blender 2.93.6+

Change Log for v2.2.2:

• fixed: Incompatibility with Apple Silicon due to changes in the pynng dependency.

Alice/LG v2.2.1 for Blender 2.93.6+

This is the official release of Alice/LG 2.2 for Blender 2.93.6 and later. Please see the change log below for the major changes since Alice/LG 2.1.0.

Change Log for v2.2.1:

• fixed: Incompatibility with Blender 4.0+

Change Log for v2.2.0:

• added: Command line argument --alicelg-install to install python dependencies in headless mode

• added: Option to automatically make the active camera in the scene the Looking Glass camera

• added: Option to synchronize focal plane of the Looking Glass and focus distance of the Blender camera (depth-of-field settings)

• added: Option to fix the clip start/end values relative to the focal plane, which allows to move the complete Looking Glass volume

• added: Warning if the compositor/sequencer is active, since under some circumstances this might cause crashes

• changed: The lightfield window is in manual refresh mode by default now

• fixed: Alice/LG did not respect camera markers during quilt animation renders, which made it impossible to switch cameras

• fixed: Hologram preview failed to update when loading a new Blender file

• fixed: Hologram preview was not working in Blender 3.4+ due to changes in the shader modules

• fixed: Undo operations caused the lightfield viewport to be closed (should have been fixed before, but was not)

• fixed: The logger system prevented the printing of exceptions, when a user was debugging their own code in the Blender script window

• fixed: There was an issue with the log file naming, which could cause exceptions

• fixed: OpenCV installed numpy in the lib folder of the add-on although Blender already ships a numpy versions, which caused conflicts in other add-ons

• fixed: All command-line arguments for Alice/LG consistently start with a double dash now

Alice/LG v2.1 for Blender 2.93.6+

This is the official release of Alice/LG 2.1 for Blender 2.93.6 and later. Please see the change log below for the major changes since Alice/LG 2.0.6.

Change Log for v2.1.0:

• added: Hologram preview for the Blender viewports and the image editors

• added: Command line arguments --render-view and --view-range for rendering single views and view ranges

• fixed: Bad aspect ratios for LKG Portrait quilt presets (thanks to user Nindos on Discord)

• fixed: The logger system raised an exception after installation on some OS

• fixed: Undo operations caused the lightfield viewport to be closed

• fixed: Default quilt presets are now set according to the selected device (in Quilt & Render Settings)

• fixed (partially): Autosave didn't work (Note: the issue still persist when the lightfield viewport is active on a Looking Glass)

Alice/LG v.2.0.6 for Blender 2.93.6+

This is the official non-experimental release of Alice/LG 2.0 for Blender 2.93.6 and later. Please see the change log below for the major changes since Alice/LG 2.0.0.

Change Log for v2.0.6:

• added: Support for Blender 3.10
• added: Support for 2nd Gen Looking Glass devices

Change Log for v2.0.5:

• added: "errors only" option for the logging (thanks @TheDuckCow)
• added: Error reporting when unsupported video formats are selected
• fixed: an issue with stereoscopy settings that could raise an exception during quilt assembly in multiview rendering mode (thanks @MiniEval)
• fixed: saving quilts on network drives failed
• fixed: an exception during deactivation of the add-on
• fixed: some smaller issues with the logger system

Change Log for v2.0.4:

• added support for a Blender patch which speeds up the live view rendering
• added preferences' option which enables to set the level of detail for log-files (useful for bug reports)
• removed: support of versions 2.93.0 to 2.93.5 (those were missing the color correction for the add-on's live view due to a Blender bug)
• fixed: quilt rendering did not work correctly when the camera was parented to another object
• fixed: the add-on's "Shading & Overlay" view settings for the live were not applied correctly

Change Log for v2.0.3:

• added support for Macs with M1 processors
• added a command line mechanism which enables render farms to implement support for Alice/LG
• optimized live view performance on the add-on side (still require Blender modifications for significant speed improvement)
• fixed a bug which caused Blender crashes upon selection of specific quilt presets
• fixed a bug with the "Use Device Settings" option, which was not respected in all cases
• fixed a bug occurring during the quilt assembly if "View and Quilt Files" option was selected
• fixed a bug on Linux where pip could be missing and prevent the installation of the Python dependencies
• further minor fixes

Change Log for v2.0.2:

• added a new preview mode ('No Preview') for the Lightfield Viewport, which only updates the hologram after the user stoped its current interaction
• 'skipped views' and 'restricted view cone' preview modes render a bit faster now
• fixed a bug where the lightfield viewport was redrawn during material setting changes although the quilt viewer was active
• fixed a bug which prevented the cancelling of the quilt rendering using with theEsc key

Change Log for v2.0.1:

• default quilt presets are now detected automatically based on default quilt settings reported by HoloPlay Service
• automatically detect quilt presets for the quilt viewer based on the quilt metadata suffix
• aspect ratio for metadata suffix now limited to 2 decimal digits
• changed: the "restricted view cone" preview mode for the lightfield viewport ("live view") is now turned on by default
• fixed a bug that prevented the creation of a new Looking Glass camera
• fixed color management issue of the lightfield viewport ("live view") for Blender 3.0+ (still persisting for Blender 2.93 LTS)

Change Log for v2.0.0:

• major internal code optimizations to make the add-on more future proof towards changes, new devices, etc.
• added a detailed log-file mechanism to make bug-reports easier
• optimized the "Continue Incomplete Render Jobs"
• the separate lightfield viewport window was removed and Alice/LG now relies on HoloPlay Service for displaying content on devices (no manual window movement required anymore)
• added an additional option in the preferences to use the multiview camera system during quilt rendering
• added a "cancel" button for the quilt (animation) rendering
• added alternative preview modes to speed up the lightfield viewport ("live view")
• custom quilt presets can now be added in the presets folder of the add-on (future versions will implement an user interface for this)
• some smaller bug fixes & smaller optimization

Experimental: Alice/LG v.2.0.3-beta for Blender 2.93+

This is an experimental pre-release version of the add-on for Blender 2.93+, which implements a large re-factoring of the code base to make future implementations of new features and bug fixes easier. The lightfield viewport ("live view") is still a work-in-progress feature and will undergo further changes in the upcoming weeks. Please see the change log below for the major changes since Alice/LG 2.0.0.

Change Log for v2.0.3:

• added support for Macs with M1 processors
• added a command line mechanism which enables render farms to implement support for Alice/LG
• optimized live view performance on the add-on side (still require Blender modifications for significant speed improvement)
• fixed a bug which caused Blender crashes upon selection of specific quilt presets
• fixed a bug with the "Use Device Settings" option, which was not respected in all cases
• fixed a bug occurring during the quilt assembly if "View and Quilt Files" option was selected
• fixed a bug on Linux where pip could be missing and prevent the installation of the Python dependencies
• further minor fixes

Change Log for v2.0.2:

• added a new preview mode ('No Preview') for the Lightfield Viewport, which only updates the hologram after the user stoped its current interaction
• 'skipped views' and 'restricted view cone' preview modes render a bit faster now
• fixed a bug where the lightfield viewport was redrawn during material setting changes although the quilt viewer was active
• fixed a bug which prevented the cancelling of the quilt rendering using with theEsc key

Change Log for v2.0.1:

• default quilt presets are now detected automatically based on default quilt settings reported by HoloPlay Service
• automatically detect quilt presets for the quilt viewer based on the quilt metadata suffix
• aspect ratio for metadata suffix now limited to 2 decimal digits
• changed: the "restricted view cone" preview mode for the lightfield viewport ("live view") is now turned on by default
• fixed a bug that prevented the creation of a new Looking Glass camera
• fixed color management issue of the lightfield viewport ("live view") for Blender 3.0+ (still persisting for Blender 2.93 LTS)

Change Log for v2.0.0:

• major internal code optimizations to make the add-on more future proof towards changes, new devices, etc.
• added a detailed log-file mechanism to make bug-reports easier
• optimized the "Continue Incomplete Render Jobs"
• the separate lightfield viewport window was removed and Alice/LG now relies on HoloPlay Service for displaying content on devices (no manual window movement required anymore)
• added an additional option in the preferences to use the multiview camera system during quilt rendering
• added a "cancel" button for the quilt (animation) rendering
• added alternative preview modes to speed up the lightfield viewport ("live view")
• custom quilt presets can now be added in the presets folder of the add-on (future versions will implement an user interface for this)
• some smaller bug fixes & smaller optimizations

Patch: Alice/LG v1.1.6-beta for Blender 2.83+

added: Portrait specific quilt presets with 48 to 96 views.
added: Support for relative paths in the file output settings.
added: Option to add the Looking Glass metadata suffix to quilt filenames upon rendering.

fixed: Rendering resulted in cannot create a file when that file already exists exception under Windows.
fixed: The parallax was significantly different between the lightfield viewport and rendered quilts on Looking Glass Portrait.
fixed: An issue were the quilt rendering was not properly executed causing an irreversible hang up of the Blender session.
fixed: An issue were the quilt rendering was not properly executed if the camera was constrained (e.g., by "track to" constraints)
fixed: During quilt animation rendering the view files accumulated even if the user opted not to keep them.
fixed: A bug that could cause a crash when using the panels that enable property adjustments in the lower left of the SpaceView3D.
fixed: Minor bug fixes.

Thanks @LamerDeluxe (Milan), @JohJakob, @xzrxzr, and @omgitsraven for finding the bugs and the helpful feedback during fixing.

Alice/LG v1.1-beta for Blender 2.83+

added: Implemented free HoloPlay Core API to resolve licensing issues with the GPL-incompatible HoloPay Core SDK
fixed: Fullscreen & Lightfield Window Button was not working well if multiple scenes are used

This is the first public beta release.

Alice/LG-beta.5 for Blender 2.83+

• added: Blender 2.83 is now supported in addition to Blender 2.9x

• added: Option to choose if individual view files shall be kept or not after quilt rendering

• added: Incomplete render jobs due to Blender crashes are detected and can be continued

• fixed: Frustum drawer casually caused crashes due to missing context checks.

• fixed: Quilt viewer casually caused crashes due to missing OpenGL texture checks.

Alice/LG-beta.4 for Blender 2.9x

• fixed: the camera frustum was not drawn correctly when other objects where in front of it

• improved: the color management of quilt rendering (in particular for EXR files) was still corrupted. Not resolved fully due to restricted Blender Python API, but should work in most situations now. However, the current solution is rather slow.

• unresolved: Color management is not correctly applied to the lightfield viewport; this seems to be a Blender bug and a report was submitted