I encourage everyone to take the time to read this announcement fully, since this software release rivals the significance of the original Earth Volumetric Studio release in August 2016, and other issues mentioned in this email are critical if you want to continue to receive announcements. I won’t recap the history of C Tech as I did nearly two years ago, I’ll just focus on what is new and why it is so special.

Earth Volumetric Studio 2018.5

In addition to a large number of bug fixes, stability improvements and minor enhancements, there are a few game-changing new features in this version that are sure to improve your work. When Studio first released, there were several new features as compared with MVS, such as Python scripting, fully 3D variography, and the 64-bit architecture which lifted the limits on model size. However, there weren’t many fundamentally new modeling or visualization tools until now.

I’ll list them according to my personal priorities.

1. Smooth Lithology: We’ve had adaptive_indicator_kriging for quite a while, but it has always been problematic and far from perfect, which is why we’ve deprecated it as of this release. Now, we’ve added a “Smooth” option to the indicator_geology module as well as a number of additional features such as the ability to use external grids and map lithology into multiple stratigraphic layers. The new Smooth option works perfectly.  It has no holes, it has the smoothness of stratigraphic modeling, and generally can get by with much coarser grids, while still achieving excellent results. Earth Volumetric Studio Projects 2018.5has many examples in the Lithologic Geologic Modeling folder.
2. Real-time Editing of Stratigraphic Geology: We’ve always given you lots of options when creating stratigraphic geologic models. There are: several Estimation Methods; Thickness Space; Pinch Factor; Normal vs. Reverse Hierarchy; and even the horizon_ranking module. However, if you wanted to truly change the shape of your horizons the only option we could offer was to add additional (synthetic) points to your data file. The new edit_horizons module allows you to interactively edit any and all of your stratigraphic horizons (surfaces) by adding probed 3D points which instantaneously modify your surfaces. You’ll need to see it to believe it.
3. Project Hand-Drawn Cross-Sections on 3D Fence Diagrams: Now that you can edit your stratigraphic geology, wouldn’t it be amazing if you could import hand-drawn cross-sections and accurately map them onto 3D fence diagrams…. and then modify your 3D geologic model to precisely match those hand-drawn cross-sections? The new texture_cross_sections module allows you to apply images along a complex non-linear thin_fence (cross-section) path and compensate for the image scale and registration points at various points along the fence path.
4. Support for International Characters (Unicode): Until now, all of the labeling in our software has been limited to ASCII character sets. This has precluded the ability to represent more complex languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Arabic, etc. This release provides high-level support for Unicode characters when using True Type fonts in many EVS modules such as: titles; and place_text; legend (user defined only). Please note that Unicode is not yet supported in any C Tech data file formats (e.g. .pgf, .gmf, .geo, .apdv or .aidv), and therefore is not supported in the automatic labeling provided by modules like post_samples.