Code wise, I believe we are ready for release.  This week we got reports of incompatibility with Bitdefender.  There always seems to be that one antivirus that gives us a false positive.  It's those little details that keep you busy.

I'm working on Squirreldome for the last several days.  Effectively, you can order the software now.  You will get a beta version, but release is only a week or so away, and the website needs to be fully functional by then, so it's going up now.

Phillip will likely be making changes to TheBest3d later this week, so we need to get synced up still.
Other than that, it's just a matter of dealing with the daily dealies until release.

We are now setting a release date.  It looks like it will be second week of September.

As of a few days ago, we've activated the use of keyframing in Puppyray, making it fully animatable.
All the parameters in the filter can be keyframed, so you could, for example, animate the sun rising and changing colors.  I do believe it's also possible to animate the 'texture' in the swap image, so you could load in an AVI or something to use as an animated texture.

Keyframing in Puppyray is based on a new keyframing class added to Howler in version 9, so more keyframing could be possible in the future.

I just realized I haven't blogged in quite a while.  Development has slowed down a bit this week due to being sick for an extended period.  Kind of feeling like I'd die-sick.

Anyway, we've got 3 new internal APIs being added to version 9.  One is for GDI+, which supports some of the plugins we've internalized that used GDI+ and .net framework.  They no longer use the .net framework, and rely on the new internal GDI+  layer.

A second API supports AVI and DWA files.  We aren't currently using it, but it should come in real handy in the days to come.

And the third is a new keyframing class that simplifies and unifies the use of keyframes.  It should come in real handy.  This should prove interesting if I'm able to stay lucid over the next few weeks.

We also recently integrated Twain support and fixed several bugs.

This morning I consolidated some spare parts into a working netbook, so I have a spare machine again.  It was my Linix box until it croaked a few weeks ago.  Lost my Linux and Windows 8 though, so I'm flying blind as far as Linux support goes right now.  We had plenty of time to outline what needed to be done, so we're just doing that.

Phillip is working on a new series, starting at the beginning with installation and introduction to Howler 9, beta.  There is now an offical page for Version 9, also showing some more specifics of what is new.  Mind you, we're still a month from release so there's more to come.

http://www.thebest3d.com/howler/9/


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0ICFnl3_TU&feature=c4-overview&list=UUhhWiBVGa-zLq52myfi-UlA

He also has a small feature on loading frames from an AVI file.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uPs6z8YXkg&list=UUhhWiBVGa-zLq52myfi-UlA