vRigger 12 Revision History

Maintenance Release—December 8, 2021

This maintenance release added several enhancements to the Gear Builder and Gear Manager, improved gear importing, improved zooming with the mouse (i.e., when pressing the Ctrl key and scrolling your mouse wheel), and improved the display of curved ropes. This update is free to anyone who owns version 12.

Major Release—September 3, 2021

Many of the changes to version 12 were "under the hood." These are changes that you might not notice immediately, but which will improve vRigger's performance and stability for years to come.

The most significant under-the-hood changes were:

• vRigger is now a 64-bit program, which allows you to have more gear on the workspace,
• The "graphics engine" was rewritten, which improves the appearance of gear, and
• Tens of thousands of lines of code were revised to improve performance and product stability.

Sharper Graphics

The new graphics engine affects every aspect of vRigger, from displaying, printing, and saving image files, to creating your own gear.

• Everything that is drawn on the workspace (e.g., ropes, gear, text, etc) now appears in higher resolution with smoother edges. As shown below, the difference is subtle yet significant.

• New gear no longer has faint yellow edges. (This change does not affect rig files that you created before version 12.)
• A new Opacity setting was added to the property pane that lets you set the transparency of gear to indicate motion and before-and-after effects.

• You can zoom in much closer, up to 800%, regardless of how many pieces of gear are displayed. And zooming is much faster.

Improved Memory Management

• Moving from 32 to 64 bits allows vRigger to use more of your computer's memory and reduces memory-related limitations. (The amount of memory being used is now displayed on the status bar.)
• The maximum number of items that can be on the workspace was increased by 30%.
• Rigging files now load in about half the time and are much smaller. (Note that pre-version 12 files will load slowly! You can re-save them in v12 so they load quickly.)
• Multiple instances of vRigger can now be run at the same time on the same computer.

Updated Gear Builder

• You can now use png files with transparent areas within the Gear Builder (i.e., you no longer need to convert transparent areas to yellow bitmap files). This eliminates the yellow outline that appeared around some gear.
• You can set the alignment of customized force labels (e.g., left, right, or centered).
• An "Auto Zoom" option was added to the Zoom menu in the preview pane.
• Anytime you save an item in the Gear Builder, it is automatically moved to the Gear Manager's "gear I might use" list.

Increased Productivity

• The Gear Finder will now locate gear based on additional search terms. For example, typing "locking karabiner" will find gear that doesn't include either of terms in its name.
• A new File Insert command lets you insert an existing *.rig file onto the currently displayed workspace.
• The Text Properties dialog can now be resized and it displays the text based on its alignment (i.e., left, center, or right).
• A Zoom To Selection button was added to the View toolbar.
• You can insert png format pictures that contain transparent areas (rather than needing to convert the transparency areas to yellow.)
• You can save the workspace as a png file with a transparent background.
• Printed images are larger, higher resolution, and centered.

Additional Gear

Dozens of new pieces of gear were added. (Items that are only included in the optional gear kit are marked with asterisks.)

*Items marked with an asterisk are included in the optional gear kit. If you don't own the optional gear kit, you can purchase it for a one-time fee of $69.95. You can purchase the gear kit when you upgrade for only $44.95.

Enhanced Force Calculations

• When working with gear that can pull or release rope, you can now specify that this gear is holding the rope stationary, in addition to pulling and releasing. This can allow force calculations when there are multiple "pullers" on the workspace.

• The maximum pulling force and gear strength can be set independently on gear that can pull or release rope.