RenderMan & RISpec, ANN: 3Delight 7.0 (Django)

1. ANN: 3Delight 9.0 and 3Delight For Maya 5.0

Hello everyone,

3Delight 9.0.0 and 3Delight For Maya 5.0 are available for download.
Here is a list of the most important improvements:

New Unlimited-threads License
  * A new unlimited-threads license is now available for both the
    3Delight standalone renderer and the 3Delight for Maya plug-in.
    Clients that purchased the 8-thread license (and under yearly
    support) are automatically upgraded to unlimited-threads. The
    8-thread license will no longer be available, but the 4-threads
and
    2-threads will continue to be available at a reduced pricing.

3Delight For Maya
  * Introducing RIB Fragments: a user-friendly and flexible way of
    creating and managing RIB archives. This feature is useful to
    accelerate re-renders.
  * The display drivers UI has been improved and simplified making it
    easier to manage and visualize output variables (AOVs). "Primary
    Displays" and "Secondary Displays" have been collapsed into the
    same UI.
  * Major performance improvements to the 3Delight Relationship Editor
    which make it responsive even with very large scenes.
  * Improved UI in the 3Delight Relationship Editor by using
    distinctive icons for different shaders and attributes.
  * Added support for many useful Hypershade nodes, most importantly:
    misss shaders, car paint, metallic paint, glossy reflection and
    glossy refraction.
  * Scene parsing optimizations reduce RIB output time by 20%.
  * It is now possible to render Shave and a Haircut nodes without
    loading the 3dfmShave plug-in: 3Delight for Maya automatically
uses
    Shave plug-in's RIB export function in that case.
  * Maya sprite particles can now be rendered as "volumes" for correct
    shadowing.
  * Maya fluids implementation enters a beta stage. All current
    limitations are listed in the user's manual in the Rendering
    Guidelines chapter.
  * Added Maya 2010 support and dropped Maya 8.0 support.

3Delight Features
  * Introducing multi-camera rendering. This features enables the
    output of many camera views from a single render. This
    functionality is especially useful for stereo rendering as it
saves
    rendering time.
  * Improvements to point-based occlusion quality: concave corners are
    rendered more accurately.
  * The subsurface shadeop can proceed from a point-cloud file. This
    can save a potentially costly pre-processing step when rendering
    sequences.
  * Billboard particles can now be rendered with a "thickness" for
    correct shadow casting.
  * Network caching, a feature unique to 3Delight, is now available on
    Windows systems.
  * Added detailed memory statistics to 3Delight to better track
memory
    usage.

3Delight Performance
  * Improved performance of occlusion() and indirectdiffuse() shadeops
    when rendering dense meshes. Speedups can reach 200%.
  * Improved multi-threading performance on scenes containing
    procedural geometry (such as delayed read archives). Procedurals
    are now allowed to execute in parallel which can lead to speed
    improvements linear to the number of threads used.
  * Accelerated point-based occlusion as it nows respected the
    "irradiance shadingrate". Speedups with default settings are in
the
    200%-300% range. Also improved quality of the occlusion in concave
    corners.
  * Improved multi-threading performance and memory consumption of
    subsurface scattering algorithm.
  * Improved deep shadow map creation performance. On large shadow
    maps, performance increases linearly with the number of cores.
    Temporary disk space usage during DSM creation has been reduced
    three-folds.
  * A new memory allocation scheme in the ray-tracer significantly
    lowers memory consumption when rendering object: only one object
    instance is kept in memory at any time. This feature is enabled
    through a special variable.
  * Improved point-cloud loading time. This has a positive performance
    impact on effects such as point-based occlusion and color
bleeding.

Shader Compiler
  * RSL 2.0 improvements including resizeable arrays, better supports
    for shader classes and more efficient execution.

Pipeline & API
  * Introducing the "VolumeTracer" API. This RSL plug-in allows user
to
    easily write volume renderers.
  * The "Sx" shader evaluation API is now embedded with the 3Delight
    library (takes a single 3Delight license when used).
  * Added "Implicit Field" plug-in support (extension to the
`RiBlobby'
    primitive).
  * Display drivers can now access 3Delight's deep frame buffer which
    provides the list of visible surfaces for each pixel sample.
  * Added new entries to the Ptc API and fixed compatibility issues.
  * `RiNuCurves' now support vertex normals.

Thank you,

-- aghiles
www.3delight.com

2. LiquidMaya - OSX Maya 6.5 and 7.0 with 3Delight - RenderMan & RISpec

3. ANN: 3Delight 8.0 (Midnight Express)

Hello,

3Delight 8.0 and 3Delight For Maya 4.0 are out. Here is a list
of the most important features and improvements:

3Delight For Maya

  * The way 3Delight attributes are connected and interpreted
    has been much improved for greater flexibility and ease of
    use: it is now possible to connect only a small subset of
    attributes to any given node. This  feature enables a
    hierarchical attribute interpretation scheme in which
    undefined attributes for a given object/node are looked up
    higher in the scene hierarchy.
  * Images can now be rendered in background so artists can
    still use Maya while rendering frames.
  * The Coordinate System node can now display an environment
    dome in Maya's view for easier image based lighting.
  * Added render-time CSG support (boolean modeling operators).
  * Improved HyperShade translation and support:
       * The following nodes exactly match Maya's look:
         `cloth', `ramp' and `contrast'.
       * Added support for `mia_material',
         `mib_ambient_occlusion' and `particlSamplerInfo'.
       * Photons can trigger HyperShade shader evaluation to
         get the correct surface color.
  * The plug-in now honors Maya object visibility attributes
    ("Render Stats") in case no 3Delight visibility attributes
    have been defined.
  * Added more control on how particles are rendered. For
    example, particles can now have a sub-pixel size.
  * Added support for area lights.
  * Advanced features include:
       * RenderMan shader writers gain control on how
         parameters are presented in the AE using a new
         parameter grouping functionality.
       * User definable light nodes gives the necessary
         flexibility to customize RenderMan commands output
         when issuing light sources.

3Delight Performance

  * Ray-tracing performance, especially for specular rays, has
    been significantly improved.
  * Multi-threading performance has been further improved, in
    both memory use and speed. 3Delight implements a true
    multi-threaded rendering core meaning that all threads
    share as much memory as possible.
  * The photon casting algorithm has been multi-threaded.
  * Improved performance and memory use on subdivision surfaces
    with many texture coordinates and vertex variables. Such
    geometry uses up to 5 times less memory.
  * Atmosphere and interior shaders run much faster (up to an
    order of magnitude) and are controlled using an independent
    "volume shading rate".

Rendering Features

  * Improved point-based occlusion and global illumination
    delivers higher quality results without loss of performance.
  * Photon mapping quality has been improved:
       * Photons can trigger surface evaluation for both
         caustics and color bleeding to get correct reflectance
         and transmittance.
       * Caustics rendering quality has been improved.
       * It is now possible to cast photons from high dynamic
         range environment maps.
  * Displacement shaders can run on vertices (instead of
    micro-polygons) for better ray-tracing efficiency.
    Additionally, many displacement shaders can be assigned to
    a specific object and be evaluated sequentially.
  * Dicing cameras can be used to heal "pops" in displacements
    during animation.
  * Specular highlights from area ligths are correctly rendered
    (e.g. square area lights will produce square shaped
    highlights).
  * Improved filtering of blurred cubic environment map lookups.
  * Edge detection has been further enhanced and outlines can
    now be composited directly over an output variable.
  * Improved the accuracy of NURBS and conics.
  * Implemented `RiScopedCoordinateSystem'.

Pipeline

  * Introducing a new shader evaluation API and library: Sx.
    This API exposes methods to load and execute RenderMan
    shaders, in SIMD.

Shader Compiler

  * Initital support of "Shader classes".
  * Functions can have multiple exit points.

Tools

  * `tdlmake' supports a new output file format: directory
    textures. A directory texture (or "dirtex" in short), is a
    standard directory with all mipmaps saved as TIFF files.
    This new texture format enables a more fine grained data
    transfer between the server and the network cache.
  * `ptcview' can load and display photon map files.

Thank you,

  The 3Delight Team

4. ANN: 3Delight 8.5 and 3DFM 4.5 - RenderMan & RISpec

5. ANN: 3Delight 1.0 (Beta 2)

Hello everyone,

This is version 1.0 beta 2. The more notable fixes, and improvements,
in this 2nd beta release are:

  - The raytracer has been improved in every way possible: quality,
speed, memory usage and reliability. All known problems have been
fixed, including one with automatically raytraced shadows. Also, a new
"float trace(point, vector)" shadeop is now available. It returns the
distance to the closest intersection in a given direction.

  - Multi-depth shadow maps now use significantly less core memory at
the creation step and a compressed mode has been added so they take
less space on disk (up to %50 less). Also, multi-depth shadow maps can
now be computed for volume attenuation as well as attenuation due to
translucent surfaces (preserving light transmission discontinuities).
Finally, a new conversion tool is now included (dsm2tif) to convert
any multi-depth shadow map to a TIFF at any desired depth.

  - Output variables can now be oversampled and filtered in the same
way as colors. A separate filter can be specified for each output
variable.

  - The "shaderinfo" tool is much more robust and now recognizes
output variables.

  - Lights declared in a RIB stream (using LightSource) can now be
identified with strings and specified as such to Illuminate.

  - All polygonal primitives now support "facevarying" variables.

  - Variables assigned to curves other than Bezier now behave
properly.

  - A problem with very thin trim curves that was causing the renderer
to halt is fixed.

  - The frame buffer display driver now remains open even when
3Delight exits.

  - IMPORTANT: recompile your shaders.

3Delight is now more robust than ever, thanks for all the feedback
from the RenderMan community.

The 3Delight Team.

6. ANN: 3Delight 2.0 - RenderMan & RISpec

7. ANN: 3Delight 2.1

8. ANN: 3Delight 3.0.0 - RenderMan & RISpec