The new features include: UnrealEngine 4.18.3 support, more controls over lighting, shadow and post effects, selective asset conversion, shot duplication, and more. Please check the full release notes here: https://www.pisquareus.com/forum-1/pi-square/pistage-1-2-release-notes

Release Notes PiStage 1.2 1. New: UE4.18.3 support. 2. New: PiConverter can do partial asset conversion. You may update only the meshes and keep the materials enhanced in Unreal Editor intact when converting an assets. 3. Changed “Save Asset As” behavior. When you run “Save Asset As” in PiManager, the Unreal contents of the opened assets are also duplicated as well as the Maya contents. In the previous version, only Maya contents will be save and you have to convert the duplicated assets again before adding it to the shot. 4. New: “Save Shot As”. This feature saves the currently opened shot as a new shot. It is useful when you want to reuse the setting of a shot and add some modifications. 5. New: UE4 plugin sync. When you add plugins to PiConverterGame.uproject, the settings will also automatically applied to other two UE4 project, PiViewGame.uproject and PiRenderGame.uproject. This is to make sure the output consistency among among PiConverter, PiView and PiRender. 6. Changed the behavior of “Open UE” in asset mode. Each asset has its own umap opened when you launch Unreal Editor by running “Open UE”. You may add the asset and change the environment of the umap for examining and testing the asset. 7. New attributes of Skeletal/Static assets: Rendering Bounds Scale Lpv Bias Multiplayer Translucemcy Sort Priority Render CostomDepth Pass Lighting Cast Shadow Affect Dynamic Indirect Lighting Volumetric Translucent Shadow Self Shadow Only Dynamic Inset Shadow Lighting Channels 8. New attributes of Point/Spot Lights: Use Inverse Squared Falloff Light Falloff Exponent Min Roughnes Shadow Resolution Scale Shdow Bias Shadow Filter Sharpen Contact Shadow Length Cast Translucent Shadows Light Channels 9. Additional new attributes of Directional Lights Light Propagation Volume Dynamic Indirect Lighting Indirect Lighting Intensity Cascaded Shadow Maps Shadow Distance Num Shadow Cascades Distribution Exponent Transition Fraction Distance Fallout Fraction Light Shaft Light Shaft Occlusion Occlusion Mark Darkness Occlusion Depth Range Light Shaft Bloom Bloom Scale Bloom Threshold Bloom Tint 10. New attributes of Sky Lights Sky Distance Threshold Lower Hemisphere Is Solid Color Lower Hemisphere Color 11. New attributes of Post Process Light Propagation Volume Intensity Size Sec Occlusion Intensity Occlusion Intensity Diff Occlusion Exponent Spec Occlusion Exponent Light Injection Bias Sec Bounce Intensity Geometry Volume Bias Emissive Injection Intensity Occlusion Radius Diff Occlusion Intensity Spec Occlusion Intensity 12. New: Alignment options for creating static asset nodes. They are: “The origin”, “The center of mesh(es)”, “The pivot of the last selected”. 13. Content path setting will be kept when you reinstall or upgrade PiStage. 14. Trial version can be upgraded to standard version with node-locked license. 15. Bug Fix: Asset conversion works properly even when the asset umap is deleted manually. 16. Bug Fix: Static assets with additional nodes are allowed in a collective asset. 17. Bug Fix: Keys of locked attributes in shats can be queried and converted. 18. Bug Fix: Blendshape targets of the same name will be detected by Sanity Check tool and marked as a serious problem to be fixed. 19. Bug Fix: Collective asset can be unloaded and reloaded without any problems. 20. Bug Fix: Shapes with polyCopyUV input no longer crash shot conversion.

Please find the video tutorials here: https://search.bilibili.com/all?keyword=pistage&from_source=banner_search

Please find the video tutorials here: https://search.bilibili.com/all?keyword=pistage&from_source=banner_search

This version works with UnrealEngine 4.18. The new features include: more lighting controls and shadow attributes, selective asset conversion, asset and shot duplication, and more.

If the animation playback is not smooth in PiView, it's very likes that the frame rate is dragged by Maya's performance. Here is a tip for better FPS. Once the skeletal assets are finalized and converted into Unreal formats, you may delete the meshes under "Geometry" group or replace them with a low-res version(proxy). This will release the burden of processing heavy meshes from Maya and get a smoother playback. Remember to check in a version of the asset before you do this, in case you still want to modify the model later.

If duplicate names exist in blendshape targets, there will be conflict while exporting animation keys, even the target shapes of the same name belong to different Blend Shape Deformers. Make sure that each target shape have an unique name in a skeletal asset. Sanity Check tool will detect this problem in the next PiStage version.

PiStage 1.1.1 release notes: Fix texture converter problem. Optimize the sample project. Validate names when creating projects, sequences, shots and assets. Show notification about license expiration when it's less 5 remaining days. Check the status of the uasset file when checking out the asset. Message to close UE4Editor.exe when chceking out an asset or a shot. 

If you want to use additional UE4 assets (e.g. custom shaders, particles) in your PiStage projects. "Shared_Library" folder is the place for this purpose. Please refer to PiStage manual "Open UE" section for more details. https://pisquareus.github.io/PiStageDocs/08.%20Open%20UE.html#

https://www.facebook.com/pisquareus/videos/298847450642230/

https://www.facebook.com/pisquareus/videos/296757820851193/

We just found a bug in the texture converter. If a texture dimensions are not square powers of two, it could be removed during conversion. We are fixing the problem. Please be sure that the texture dimensions are set properly (e.g. 2048 x 2048) for now.

The 1.1 version of PiStage introduces support for Maya 2016, 2017 & 2018. Previously PiStage supported up to Maya 2016 extension 2.