 Announcing version 2.2 of D5 Render In this latest version, you'll find many new updates to D5 Such as snow and rain, projector, merge project, decals, layer, autofocus This update also includes optimizations to emissive attenuation, brush and post-processing Let's dive in and see what's new in this update Emissive attenuation for lights is greatly improved in 2.2 Compared with previous versions, the emitted lights now have a softer transition making them look more natural in your renderings You now have better effects for your curved light strips Two new widgets are provided with this update The first one is used to create a projector that you're seeing now When this widget is toggled on, you can add this new light by going to the navigation bar, then, add lights The rectangle projection supports JPEG, PNG, BMP, MP4, AVI and WMB file formats You can adjust the projected pattern by editing the cone angle The position and size of the projected pattern is determined by the UV parameters If fog is needed for the projection, you can turn on the volume light by going to environment, weather and then fog The second widget is merge project This is especially useful for teen collaboration or when reusing a project or parts of a project With this widget toggled on, there are three ways to merge your projects One, on the welcome page, go to recent, click the icon in the upper right to open the merge project tab Two, in recent, right-click on a project, which will be the first project to be merged and then select merge project And three, select the menu in the upper right then file and merge project Choose the models, lights or cameras you want to merge into the project and then select the location to save the merged project D5 now supports merging up to 10 projects at the same time D5 2.2 comes with a complete weather system You can now add snow or rain to your scene with ease in D5 You can change the intensity of the weather by adjusting the rain or snow parameters You can also add wind Weather strength and ponding are also adjustable Strength controls the size and density of raindrops or snowflakes in the air Ponding controls the influence of the rain or snow on the ground and a higher value creates more ponding With rain in the scene, outdoor glass is given dynamic water streaks The much requested feature for creating decals is now available in D5 Check out all 144 decal assets by going to asset library, models and then decals You can use decals to create road signs, wall damage, water stains and even graffiti Decals can be applied to the surfaces of models and the size, material and projection ranges can all be adjusted With layers, you now have better control over the resources in your scene You can find layers on the left side of the interface Every scene has a default layer and you can click on the plus icon to create new layers The selected layer will have a small tick mark to the left of the name Meaning that you have activated the layer and new objects will be placed on the layer You can lock or hide a layer When a layer is locked or hidden, the objects on that layer will be locked or hidden, too When you add an object to a hidden layer, it also gets hidden To select all objects on a layer, you can right click on that layer To help you quickly locate an object within a layer, the current layer option has been added when filtering the resource list If you click on an object, D5 will display on the right sidebar, which layer it's on You can then move it to another layer in the drop down list In version 2.2, global illumination is further enhanced for vegetation The leaves now have much more realistic and clearer textures You'll definitely see the difference, especially when creating a large area of vegetation Every asset library update introduces new models and materials They are tagged as new, so you can easily find what's been newly added and try them right away Vegetation tool has also been optimized in this update The vegetation you chose will be displayed in the lower left corner So you can easily delete them all When you use a brush or scatter tool to draw vegetation on a model Records of the vegetation placement will be shown on the right sidebar of the model You can hide or delete any of these records Or choose the vegetation of a certain record to erase the vegetation or brush again To allow you to produce better output from D5, we have something new for you Three parameters are now available for post-processing, tint, vignette and chromatic aberration You can adjust tint with color temperature to create an ideal white balance Vignette can be used as in photography to simulate the darkening of corners in an image Also as in photography, chromatic aberration simulates color distortion that creates an outline of unwanted color along the edges There you have it We've now covered some of the major updates, but there is much more for you to explore in D5 2.2 Click on the link below to see more details and instructions for this update on the D5 forum See you in D5 2.3