• Added support for Cinema 4D versions R20 through R23.
• Made improvements throughout the plugin to improve the user experience. Almost everything has been improved in at least a small way. The overall workflow has been improved and has generally been made more fun.
• Dramatically increased the rendering speed of the plugin, by using Single-Instruction Multiple-Data (SIMD) instructions found in modern Intel processors. On some scenes the rendering speed has been increased by a factor of four!
• Added real-time rendering capability to the plugin. This capability existed in our Lasershow Converter MAX and BEYOND 3D products, but we were unable to add it to Lasershow Converter 4D until now.
• Improved the Laser Preview window, making it resizable, and also providing more information.
• Added the ability to show information relevant to laser frame rendering in several Cinema 4D rendering windows. The additional information shows the number of points in the frame, as well as the Z-axis coordinates of the rear-most and front-most elements in the scene. This information is very handy when using Beam Brush.
• Added Soft Line capability to the LC4D Tag. This allows you to create faded line endings on any object independently. In order to do faded line endings previously, you needed to import frames of the animation and perform a post-process. This created extra work and also provided sub-optimal visual results.
• Added Beam Brush capability to the LC4D Tag. This allows you to create animations that use dynamic beam divergence capability built into Kvant's line of Beam Brush projectors.
• As a final note for this version, Lasershow Converter 4D was released in 2004, as an add-on for the LD2000 platform which was released in 1999. At the time the LD2000 SDK was the most developed of its time. However, LD2000 is now a 22-year-old platform, and when compared to BEYOND, LD2000 really has a lot of limitations. The newer BEYOND platform is much more open and expansive from a development standpoint. For the past few versions of Lasershow Converter 4D, we struggled to create code that worked well with both LD2000 and BEYOND, but during the development of version 6.0, this struggle really hindered our ability to add the new features you see documented in this help file. Since the LD2000 platform is now 22 years old, and is no longer sold by Pangolin, we have removed support for LD2000. From this point forward, Lasershow Converter 4D will only work with BEYOND.

• Added an option that will automatically prevent mysterious flickering lines for scenes made too perfectly.
• Continued improvement in the integration with Lasershow Designer BEYOND.

• Added support for Cinema 4D version R12-R14 (32-bit and 64-bit) as well as R15-R18 (64-bit).
• Work on 64-bit operating systems, QM2000.NET related systems and compatibility with LD2000 version 5.60.
• Added the ability to work with Lasershow Designer BEYOND version 3.0 and higher.

• Added support for Cinema 4D versions up to 16.
• Made preparatory steps to allow LC4D to be used with BEYOND.

• Optimized support for spline rendering and textures/light rendering.
• Changed the default for contour axis from Object X axis to Object Y axis as this seems more natural and is conceptually compatible with Lasershow Converter MAX.
• Also created a release for Cinema 4D version 12.
• Other minor fixes and improvements.

• Made a few internal changes related to the way contours are drawn on objects. The change should improve quality and fix any problems related to partial lines.
• Also created a release for Cinema 4D version 11.5.

• Made continued improvements to the program in terms of functionality and speed.
• Created a version for the 64-bit version of Cinema 4D. If you want to use this version, you will also need the 64-bit version of the LD2000.DLL (LD2000_64.DLL). Please contact Pangolin for more informaiton about this.

• Changed internal structures and made other optimizations for Cinema 4D version 10.0. Note that there is now a separate version of the LC4D plug-in for Cinema 4D version 10.0 and later.
• Made a few changes with respect to internal handling of Z-clipping. This change fixes a problem seen by some users when doing “fly through” type scenes. Also, this version should be faster than previous versions on most scenes.

• Lasershow Converter 4D has undergone major revisions since the time of its initial BETA release in February 2004. The latest version includes a number of improvements including a “Grid” line type and the ability to render Splines in laser.

February 2004

• BETA Version 1.00 represented the first public release of Lasershow Converter 4D. Lasershow Converter 4D is built on the award-winning auto-digitizing engine of Lasershow Converter MAX. Prior to its public release in February 2004, Lasershow Converter 4D had been in development for nearly one year.

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