RenderMan & RISpec, ANN: 3Delight 8.5 and 3DFM 4.5

comp.graphics.rendering.renderman - RenderMan interface & shading language.


RenderMan & RISpec >> ANN: 3Delight 8.5 and 3DFM 4.5

by aghilesk » Fri, 08 May 2009 18:36:15 GMT

Hello,

3Delight 8.5 and 3Delight For Maya 4.5 are available for download at
www.3delight.com. Here is a list of the most important features and
improvements:

3Delight For Maya
* Introducing the 3Delight Relationship Editor. This new
user interface replaces the now deprecated Shader
Manager and Attribs Node Manager and makes it much
easier to view, assign and modify 3DELIGHT shaders and
attributes, in a centralized location. The usability
of shader and attribute collections is substantially
improved thanks to this same feature and one can
inspect, for each pass and at a glance, what
attributes and shaders are in effect.
* Introducing "Pass Templates" It is now possible to
save a given render pass as a template and create new
passes based on existing templates.
* A new "round edge" features enables automatic edge
rounding of sharp geometric features. Using this
feature, one can round edges at render time (such as a
table edge) instead of performing a costly
modeling-time operator.
* Added a icing cameraattribute in the geometry
attributes node (in the ulling and Dicing section). This features is useful to stabilize popping
displacement during animation.
* Updates to HyperShade:
- The "useBackground" node is fully supported.
- Checker node with much better anti-aliasing.
- 3D texture nodes now use texture reference
objects if these are exported.
* Scene export has been optimized and runs twice as fast
for certain scenes.
* The following MEL bindings have been added: `RiBound',
`RiDetail', `RiDetailRange', `RiOrientation' and
`RiShadingInterpolation'.

3Delight Performance
* An overall speed increase of 20% is to be expected on
all scenes thanks to SSE2 optimizations.
* Ray-tracing speed on displaced surfaces has been
substantially improved. The increase can reach tenfold
with large displacement.
* Cubic curve primitives take up to 20% less memory and
can render up to 50% faster when using Ray-tracing.
* Improved performance of RIB reading on Windows to
match that of other operating systems.
* Procedurals generated through `RiProcRunProgram'
require much less peak memory, especially for very
large primitives.

Improvements to multi-process rendering include:
* Multi-machine rendering is fully supported on Windows
platforms.
* Baking 3D point-clouds using many machines is now
possible.
* "Ri Filters" are supported in multi-host rendering.
* Improved behaviour with unresponsive or crashing
rendering hosts.

Pipeline & API
* Array support has been added to the Ptc API. This also
means that `texture3d()' and `bake3d()' accept array
parameters.
* Helper functions have been added to the Display Driver
API.

Shader Compiler
* 3Delight now supports co-shaders (as per RSL 2.0) and
completes the implementation of shader objects.

Thanks,
-- aghiles

www.3delight.com
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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

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