Dear Friends of Silo,

We are very excited to announce that the first beta release of Silo 2022.0 is ready for all current registered Silo users, and this one comes with some MAJOR fundamental improvements to the deep inner workings of Silo!

DOWNLOAD THE BETA: nevercenter.com/silo/beta

First off, we’ve swapped in Pixar’s OpenSubdiv library to power Silo’s subdivision surfaces. This means that on high-subdivision models RAM usage can decrease by more than 50%, and interactive edits to your subd models will work faster and smoother than ever, often dramatically so. Of note, with this change we’ve temporarily had to disable Silo’s displacement painting, but plan to re-introduce it soon.

Next, we’ve completely redesigned how Silo’s memory management works under the hood, which should increase the long-term stability and efficiency of Silo (though there will be bugs in the beta that we hope you’ll help us find, since it’s such a major revision).

Additionally, many tools, manipulators, and other visual elements have been refreshed with a new, more modern look. We’d love to hear your suggestions on how to further improve them, especially in terms of offering useful visual feedback. In many cases models also draw faster for higher frame rates.

There are also several useful workflow updates like being able to highlight manipulators and geometry selections across multiple viewports without having to click to activate the viewport. Tons of little things like that have been tweaked and updated.

The best part is that the large fundamental changes we’ve implemented are paving the way for us to add other awesome big things that users have been requesting for a long time. So stay tuned for more, try out the beta, and let us know of any bugs or suggestions by using the Send Feedback menu item in the Help menu in the app!

Happy modeling,
Nevercenter