What's New in Action

Relighting

Have more creative control over your compositions when working with lights in Action, with these new effects.

	New Light Types Action now supports additional light types. In addition to Point Lights and Spotlights, Action can now generate: Directional Lights Ambient Lights Area Lights All of the light types have a Decay parameter that you can use to adjust the way the light intensity decreases with distance. See Light Menu Settings.
	Shadow Casting Action lights can now cast and receive 2D and 3D shadows, as well as self-shadow. You can also output shadows from Action. See Relighting: Casting Shadows.
	Lens Flares Action lights can now generate procedural lens flares with built-in 3D occlusions. You can add many texture components to your lens flares, such as irises, streaks, rings, and glows. See Relighting: Lens Flares.
	Rays Action lights can now simulate volumetric effects with the new Rays object. Rays can also use the same texture components as the new Lens Flare and it is also possible to generate rays that use the colour of an object in your Action scene. See Relighting: Rays.

Geometries & 3D Text

Working with FBX and other geometries in Action is more manageable with the following improvements and new features.

	Improved FBX Support in Action Smoke supports the 2012 FBX SDK, in sync with all Autodesk 3D applications. To ensure compatibility, all applications must use the same version of the FBX SDK. The following FBX features are now preserved in Action:. Point lights, spotlights, area lights, ambient lights, directional lights. Shadow casting. Object ID and material assignments: they appear explicitly in the Action schematic.See Object Group and Material Nodes. Sub-materials are now exposed explicitly in the Action schematic whenever possible. Textures can be changed by any Action media. See Using Materials. Bezier animation curves. Geometry caching (mesh animation). See About Mesh Animation.
	New FBX Models The FBX models provided with Smoke have been updated with new primitives; available in /usr/discreet/smoke_2012/models/FBX.
	Material Node The Material node creates a central hub to control the specular, ambient, diffuse, transparency, and shininess of a geometry's children maps and substances. See Material Node.
	Multi-Material Options for 3D Text You can now apply different textures to the front, back, and extruded faces of an extruded 3D Text using the Multi Material button. Even if you are not using the multi-material option, the UV mapping on extruded faces has improved.
	Delaunay and Medial Axis Tessellation Is it now possible to use Delaunay or Medial axis tessellation in 3D Text. See Changing Tessellation Properties.

Navigating in Action

The following updates help you move around in Action quicker.

	New Action Node Bin Menu with Dynamic Tabs The Action node bin is now located in a dedicated menu, and offers similar dynamic functionality as the Batch Node bin. It is possible to Add, Delete, Rename tabs and move nodes between them. It is also possible to Save and Load a Bin Layout. See Using the Node Bin.
	Changes to the Action Media List Workflow Work more efficiently in the Action Media List with the following changes: The New Media button (or New Input in Batch) has been moved from the Media List and replaces the Add Media button. You can manage Media List items with the new Extract (to externalize a selected media in Batch) and Replace (to replace the media in a Media List entry) buttons. You can now use the Ctrl+N hotkey directly from the Batch schematic to add an Action Layer node (the Action node has to be selected).
	Adaptive Degradation Settings are now available in the Preferences tab of the Action Setup menu to temporarily deactivate taxing operations during interactive manipulations. Full quality is restored upon pen up. The settings do not affect the final renders. See Adaptive Degradation Settings.

Miscellaneous Action

Finally, these Action updates do not fit into the above categories, but are no less helpful in creating great effects.

	Lens Distort Image surfaces (including Stereo images) now features a Lens Distort submenu. Differences in camera lenses or perspective irregularities cause lens distortion that results in skewed angles. Use the Lens Distort settings to rectify or simulate these types of distortions in your images. See Lens Distort Settings.
	Photoshop Blend Modes Photoshop blend modes are now available in Action when working with surfaces and geometries.
	Camera Displacement Camera Displace is a new option available in the Direction settings of the Displace Map object. This option forces the displacement to occur along the frustum of the camera you select. Surface polygons are extruded. The extrusion effect is only visible when seen through any camera but the displacement camera.

	Z-Depth Output You can now output a Z-Depth pass from Action. You can use the Z-Depth as an input for the new Depth Of Field Flame FX tool.
	Keystone Correction in Stereo Objects A new option in the Stereo Object menu allows you to apply keystone correction settings manually, use the automatic settings derived from an analyzer, or inherit settings from a stereo camera.