Gaffer 0.62.0.0 alpha 1

[johnhaddon]

Improvements

• Viewer : Improved accuracy of OpenColorIO display transforms when applied using the GPU.
• LightEditor/SceneViewInspector : Improved performance when viewing complex scenes, by improving cache usage during history queries.
• Node menu : Removed unsupported Arnold shaders ramp_rgb and ramp_float. The OSL ColorSpline and FloatSpline shaders should be used instead.

Fixes

• ScriptContainer : Fixed typeName(), which was omitting the Gaffer:: prefix.

API

• Signals :
  • Added a new Signals namespace with Signal, Connection, ScopedConnection and Trackable classes. This provides significant performance and memory usage improvements over the old boost::signals library.
  • Removed usage of boost::signals::detail::unusable as a substitute for the void return type in the Signal bindings. Custom SlotCallers may now use a standard void return type.
  • The following signals now use a CatchingCombiner so that exceptions in one slot will not interfere with calls to other slots :
    • ApplicationRoot : ClipboardSignal.
    • GraphComponent : UnarySignal and BinarySignal.
    • Gadget : VisibilityChangedSignal, EnterLeaveSignal and IdleSignal.
    • Node : UnaryPlugSignal, BinaryPlugSignal.
    • ScriptNode : ActionSignal, UndoAddedSignal.
    • ViewportGadget : UnarySignal.
  • The following signals now handle exceptions thrown from C++ slots as well as Python slots :
    • Gadget : ButtonSignal, DragBeginSignal, DragDropSignal, KeySignal.
  • The following signals no longer suppress exceptions thrown from Python slots :
    • StandardSet : MemberAcceptanceSignal.
• Monitor : Subclasses may now override mightForceMonitoring() and forceMonitoring() in order to ensure the monitored processes always run, instead of being skipped when they are cached.
• ValuePlug : Added hashCacheTotalUsage() function.
• ScriptContainer : Added Python binding.
• Version.h : Added versionString() function.

Breaking Changes

• Signals :
  • Replaced all usage of boost::signals with Gaffer::Signals. These are largely source-compatible, with the following changes :
    • Boost snake_case naming has been replaced with CamelCase.
    • Connection groups are not supported. Use connectFront() to connect in front of existing slots.
    • The Connection class has simple setBlocked()/getBlocked() accessors, rather than block()/unblock()/blocked() methods.
  • Removed the Gaffer/BlockedConnection.h header file. BlockedConnection can now be found in the Signals namespace provided by Gaffer/Signals.h.
  • Remove the Gaffer/CatchingSignalCombiner.h header file. CatchingSignalCombiner can now be found as Signals::CatchingCombiner in Gaffer/Signals.h.
  • Moved all Python classes into the Gaffer.Signals submodule.
  • Deprecated the default value for the scoped argument to Signal.connect(). Pass scoped = True to maintain the previous behaviour, or consider using an unscoped connection.
• ViewportGadget : Removed RenderRequestSignal type. Use the identical UnarySignal instead.
• Replaced all usage of boost::optional with std::optional.
• Random : Renamed contextEntry plug to seedVariable. Old .gfr files will be converted automatically on loading.
• SceneAlgo : Removed historyIDContextName() function. history() no longer uses an ID in the context to ensure fresh evaluations, it instead uses Monitor::forceMonitoring() to temporarily disable caching.

Build

• Moved minimum required C++ standard to C++17.
• Updated to GCC 9.3.1 for Linux builds.
• Updated to GafferHQ/dependencies 5.0.0 :
  • Boost : Updated to version 1.76.0.
  • Alembic : Updated to version 1.8.3.
  • TBB : Updated to version 2020.3.
  • USD : Updated to version 21.11.
  • OpenImageIO : Updated to version 2.3.11.0.
  • OpenShadingLanguage : Updated to version 1.11.17.0.
  • OpenVDB : Updated to version 9.0.0.
  • OpenColorIO : Updated to version 2.1.1.
  • Cortex : Updated to version 10.4.0.0.

---

This discussion was created from the release Gaffer 0.62.0.0 alpha 1.