VolumeViz

Slice rendering : Interpolation in Discrete mode

Slice rendering has been improved when using the SoVolumeData::valueInterpretation in DISCRETE mode.

You now have a proper rendering with all the SoVolumeShape::interpolation modes.

See the image below an example with different modes of interpolation.

NEAREST	LINEAR	MULTISAMPLE_12	CUBIC

Core

Physically based light model

Introduced in version 2024.1, the light model SoLightModel::Model::PHYSICALLY_BASED benefits from several new features that can improve the lighting and the rendering quality of your scene.

New quad area light: the new class SoQuadAreaLight allows you to specify a rectangular area that emits light in your scene. A quad area light is like a window that brings daylight into a room.
New camera exposure settings: two new settings are added in both perspective and orthographic cameras to control the exposure of the rendering. See the new public fields SoCamera::exposureMode and SoCamera::exposureCompensation for details. The control of the exposure can be compared to the pupil which controls the amount of light reaching the retina. Using the exposure compensation can be useful when you add several lights in the scene. It provides an easy way to control a rendering that is too bright or too dark as it does not require you to change the intensity of every light in your scene. It is also useful when the rendering has very high contrasted parts and very low contrasted parts. The control of the exposure is also known as tone mapping in computer graphics.
New setting to mimic a camera depth of field: a new field SoCamera::blur is added which defines the amount of blur applied around the focal distance of the camera. The area near the focal point remains sharp, while the areas in front of and behind this point gradually become blurred. This setting highlights the most important area of your scene and draws user focus to it.
New environment map: the new class SoEnvironmentMap allows you to specify a texture used to simulate the reflection of the environment on the objects of your scene. Although the new class does not inherit from SoLight, the environment map can be compared to a light. You can combine it with any type of light.
New emissive color: a new field SoPhysicalMaterial::emissiveColor is added to specify the color emitted by a surface.

The class SoVolumeRenderingPhysicalQuality becomes deprecated as these new features provide more flexibility and cover all of Open Inventor, not only VolumeViz.

Double side colors

Open Inventor is extended to allow you to render 2 different colors for the front and back side of any surface shape. The class SoMaterialBinding contains a new SoSFEnum field face which can be either FRONT, BACK or FRONT_AND_BACK. It controls which face the subsequent materials are bound to.

The demo depthBuffer has been updated to display 2 different colors on the front and back side of a polygon.

C++: $OIVHOME/examples/source/Inventor/Features/PolygonOffset
.NET: $OIV.NET/examples/source/Inventor/DepthBuffer
Java: $OIVJHOME/examples/inventor/sample/depthBuffer

Faster picking

The time to apply a ray pick action and retreive the picked information has been optimized when it can use the GPU to process the picking. When the user selects a pixel on the render area, a slight amount of data related a small viewport around this pixel is sent to the GPU. This uses less memory and reduces the picking time.

See SoRayPickAction, SoPickStyle::GPU and SoPickStyle::method for detail.

New platforms

Open Inventor C++ on Qt6

Open Inventor C++ for Visual Studio 2022 is now built with Qt6 library instead of Qt5 (note that Open Inventor C++ is still built with Qt5 on Ubuntu). The documents Platforms of Open Inventor 2025.1 and Files to distribute are up to date.

Open Inventor Java on JDK 21

Open Inventor Java is built and tested with JDK 21. It now requires version 2.5.0 of the JOGL third party. All JOGL jars provided in the folder $OIVJHOME/jre/lib/ext (jogl-*.jar and gluegen-*.jar) correspond to JOGL 2.5.0

Limitations:

if your application uses a renderarea of the package viewercomponents.awt.newt (based on the JOGL NewtCanvasAWT class), you must add these options to the java command when launching your application:

--add-opens java.desktop/sun.awt=ALL-UNNAMED --add-opens java.desktop/sun.awt.windows=ALL-UNNAMED --add-opens java.desktop/sun.java2d=ALL-UNNAMED
if your application uses a renderarea of the package viewercomponents.awt.glcanvas (based on the JOGL GLCanvas class), you must add the above options to the java command when launching your application, and set the property sun.awt.noerasebackground to true.

Compatibility notes

The class SoVolumeRenderingPhysicalQuality is now deprecated. We suggest you use the new features described above instead.

Life cycle events

Removed tool Inventor Studio

The tool Inventor Studio is removed as of Open Inventor 2025.1. The tool IvTune allows you to edit any scene graph and provides equivalent features to Inventor Studio. Therefore, the documentation Files to distribute has been updated.

Dropped platforms

As of Open Inventor 2025.1:

Open Inventor C++ on Visual Studio 2022 is no longer built with Qt5 (replaced by Qt6)
Open Inventor C++ on Visual Studio 2017
Open Inventor C++ and Java on RHEL
Open Inventor Java with JDK 11 (replaced by JDK 21)

Future platforms

In 2025.2, we plan to support this new platform:

Open Inventor .NET Framework 4.7 or 4.8 with VS2022 only

In 2026.X, we plan to support these new platforms:

Open Inventor C++ and Java on Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04

Licensing

Node-locked license : retreive your hostID

Starting from OpenInventor 2024.2.3, we have added the Flexera LmHostId application.

You can find it in the $OIVHOME/License directory. Simply execute this application to retrieve your hostID, which is necessary for activating your node-locked licenses.

Open Inventor Release 2025.1.0