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VEX Language Reference - Version 6.2

Side Effects Software Inc. 2003

Changes since Houdini 6.1

These are highlights of major changes since the 6.1 release of houdini.

  • Function Additions/Modifications
  • Custom VEX Ops

  • Function Additions/Modifications

  • The shading contexts now have a function to query some information about the render state. Please see help for the renderstate() function.

  • Custom VEX OPs

  • The optimization levels in specified in the custom VEX Ops (i.e. VEX plug-ins) have changed slightly. The new meanings of the optimization levels are:
  • VEX_OPTIMIZE_0
    The plug-in function will never be optimized out by the run-time optimizer. This allows users to write functions like printf() which don't have any actual bearing in the results of the VEX execution, but shouldn't be optimized out.
  • VEX_OPTIMIZE_1
    Minimal optimization is performed. If the results of the computation performed by the plug-in function aren't used, then the function will be optimized out. However, the optimizer assumes that the result of the plug-in function is not solely dependent on the inputs to the function.
  • VEX_OPTIMIZE_2
    Full optimization. The optimizer will attempt to minimize the number of calls to the plug-in in order to produce more efficient run-time code.

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