Transmission from RustForge 🎙️
This update focuses heavily on stabilizing the Timelapse Engine and refining how the software handles massive source images. Whether your system crashed mid-painting or you are running Windows in a different language, these changes guarantee your artwork and timelapses compile flawlessly. I’ve also overhauled the supersampling logic to further enhance image quality.
Patch Highlights
Global Timelapse Architecture: The timelapse encoding pipeline has been refactored to use invariant formatting. This permanently prevents crashes and "Invalid Argument" errors for users whose regional Windows settings use commas for decimals instead of periods. Timelapses now compile smoothly worldwide.
Stranded Timelapse Recovery: System crashed? Windows forced a reboot? Added a new "Recover Timelapse" tool directly under the "File" menu and in the Timelapse Settings form. Simply select your stranded session folder, and the engine will instantly compile your saved image frames, and allows you to edit it as if it was never lost, completely eliminating lost data.
Native Supersampling: The image processing engine has been upgraded for massive files. Instead of using a standard scale that causes blurriness when crushing a 4K image down to a small sign, large images now use single-pass scaling paired with an unsharp mask. This preserves crisp edges, text, and micro-details natively. This makes lines and edges far more defined, with much more clarity.
Balancing & Logic
Timelapse Recovery System
The Challenge: If a user's PC crashed, Rust closed unexpectedly, or Windows forced an update during a live painting session, the timelapse video would fail to generate, leaving your raw PNG frames stranded on the hard drive with no way to compile them.
The Fix: Built a dedicated recovery tool into the main menu, and the Timelapse Settings menu. You can now point RustForge directly at any timelapse directory, and the engine will seamlessly ingest the raw frames, apply your custom overlays, music (optional), FPS, etc., and generate the final timelapse video as if the session had completed normally.
International Timelapse Encoding
The Challenge: The video encoder strictly requires standard decimal formatting (e.g., 30.00 FPS). However, European and South American Windows region settings inject commas instead (e.g., 30,00), causing the timelapse video generation to fatally crash.
The Fix: Hardcoded absolute invariant parameters deep into the argument generation pipeline. The engine now forcibly bridges the gap between your local Windows region settings and the strict command-line requirements, ensuring 100% successful generation globally.
HD Downscaling (Supersampling)
The Challenge: Users dropping massive high-resolution images onto physically small canvas boundaries were experiencing blurry, pixelated results in the UI preview.
The Fix: Rewrote the large-image downscaling logic. The engine now dynamically switches to Lanczos filtering when extreme reductions are detected, forcing the UI to retain the absolute original dimensions while painting razor-sharp detail onto the canvas.
📈 Known Issues
HD Canvas Scaling (Zooming): While the new Smart Brush Suggestion feature combats the Moiré effect, if you zoom in/out heavily while painting on canvases like the new Artist DLC Canvas' Large Banner on Pole or the XL Picture Frame, the engine's scaling will change and your paint strokes will misalign. Most large Canvas's require a higher brush size due to its inflated size on screen. Fix: Do not zoom in or out while mapping/painting. If you absolutely must zoom in or zoom out, manually increase/decrease your brush size slightly to bridge the newly created gaps.
Contour Tracing & Smart Pathing (Resume Limitations): With how Contour Tracing and Smart Pathing calculate the most efficient omnidirectional paths for curves and fills, it is mathematically impossible to resume a paused painting from the exact pixel you stopped at. Instead, the engine will resume from the currently painting color, and begin from the start of that specific color layer to ensure nothing is missed. This is an intended feature of these advanced methods. It may add a few minutes to your total paint time if paused and resumed, but this prevents missing structural chunks of your image.