Alright, why not. Explains some of the new features. At least, how they are supposed to work.
The maps tab has been revised just a little bit. The continent selector has moved up. Since the locations tend to cluster in specific areas, I made it so the rollover preview shows several thumbnails from that area.
The Browser tab is also more useful with larger collections, because thumbnails can be shown at 3 sizes.
LScript doesn't really allow me to freely scale images, so I had to use pre-calculated image sizes. But it turns out that the controlled modes make it easier to adjust the display for optimum visibility - note how smaller thumb sizes remove the titles and put them in the help line below:
Then there is the new Inspector tab. For this to work correctly you may need to re-download sets from the archive. Then it will show you the Preview.
Note how some relevant information is also shown below the image. You can browse through the library in this mode, with the Pre/Next buttons, or just the arrows on the edges.
You can also look at the reflection image (I.e., when there is no preview available, or you are specifically looking for good reflections).
And you can also look at the ENV lighting image. This mode also calculates an HDR histogram, that is properly compensated for the spherical distortion. Notice that 1.0 (white) is in the middle, so anything that is beyond that will actually shine a lot of light into your scene. The histogram actually looks very cool in action, because the it grows like sand piles as it is calculated.
Also, this version already detects plate images that may be embedded in a sIBL set. Although it doesn't use them for setup yet (hey, its beta).
The setup options tab only had some cosmetic changes to keep up with the new dark color scheme of LW 10.
But a lot of innovation is in the Prefs tab. Here you have now a list of installed sIBL-Collections. This list is just a plain text file, located in the same place like your regular lightwave configs. When you hover over the list, you can see the location in the help bar.
This should make it much easier to fix a corrupted installation, because you can just edit or delete that text file yourself.
But the safer way is to use the built-in buttons to manage this list, because it will actually bring up a new importer window and validate the path you give it.
All the collections installed in this list will show up in the main Collections dropdown (that is visible on every tab). Only what you have selected there will actually be scanned and loaded when you start the plugin - so this is a great way to work faster on a project. Or you can select "Show All" to scan all collections on start (takes longer).
So yeah, that's about it.
Biggest improvement, however, is that it is now fully Mac-compatible and there should be a very noticeable speed increase when browsing through the library.
As beta tester, please make sure to report every single issue. And keep your Auto-Update set to Daily, just so you won't miss a new build. The update splash screen also has a link back to this forum thread, so do not hesitate to stick your head in and say Hi.
Oh, and my personal favorite is the "Surprise Me" button.
It will use all your current Setup options, but will randomly select one of the sets and build the setup right away. Was a silly idea at first, but it actually works great for just having a quick look at a character you're modeling.
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