v1.5.0

1.5.0 changeset

Added

• Intro overview animation — a new optional cinematic intro prepended to the video: the
  camera starts from a top-down bird's-eye view of the entire route, holds for a configurable
  static period, then smoothly descends and snaps to the fly-through starting point. A 1-second
  clearance hold after the descent lets the overview ribbon finish fading before the journey
  begins. Configurable total hold duration (default 6 s); the descent uses Blender's native SINE
  EASE_IN_OUT for a true ease-in-ease-out profile.
• Dynamic speed — the fly-through camera automatically accelerates through "dead sections"
  (segments far from any photo waypoint) and ramps back to normal speed as the next stop
  approaches. Configurable peak speed multiplier (default 1.33×) and ramp duration (default 4 s).
• Auto-zoom — camera field-of-view responds to track curvature: the lens narrows on straight
  sections and widens into tight corners. Configurable curvature threshold (°/m).
• 3D locality map-pin banners — when the Locality names overlay is enabled, a new 3D
  banner mode renders place names as world-space billboard objects inside Blender (TRACK_TO
  constraint + LOC_DIFF scale driver + animated alpha), baked directly into the terrain frames
  rather than composited on top. Plain-text overlay and 3D banner modes are independent toggles.
• PreviewPipelineDialog — a single cancellable progress dialog that drives all three preview
  stages (frame render → photo composite → video assembly) through the server, replacing the
  previous per-stage dialogs.
• render_defaults.py — a new central module that holds all pipeline defaults (FPS,
  resolution, DEM/satellite settings, camera constants, etc.). All modules import constants from
  it instead of defining them inline.
• --reload flag for the georeel-server CLI, for development convenience.

Changed

• Locality name compositing is now a separate stage before photo compositing in both the
  preview and full-render pipelines. Photo overlay frames are never modified by the locality text
  compositor, and locality settings are computed before the render step so 3D pins are baked
  into terrain frames.
• Locality compositing settings JSON is written beside the output file rather than in the OS temp
  directory, so the stale-file sweep cannot remove it while the render is in progress.
• All pipeline constants consolidated into render_defaults.py; all modules import from it
  instead of defining values inline.

Fixed

• Intro overview animation: Blender keyframe injection now uses four sparse control points (hold
  start, descent start, descent end / snap, clearance end) with Blender's native SINE EASE_IN_OUT
  applied to the descent-start keyframe. The previous approach injected one keyframe per frame
  and baked the easing curve in Python, producing subtle artefacts at the boundary frames.
• Intro overview animation: a quaternion hemisphere check is now applied before each keyframe
  insertion so component-wise NLERP always takes the short arc. Without this, the camera
  could flip through the long arc mid-descent.
• Intro overview animation: look-at distance is now linearly interpolated during the descent to
  avoid a position discontinuity at the hold/descent boundary; easing was also changed from
  ease-out to ease-in to match the natural feel of the descent.
• Intro overview animation: the TrackOverview ribbon now fades during the descent and reaches full
  transparency exactly when the camera arrives at the track start. The clearance hold is played
  with no ribbon visible, giving a clean transition into the fly-through.