...
- Ray-tracing performance has been improved to such a degree that we now recommend using the ray-tracing hider as the default renderer for scenes with highly complex geometry (instead of REYES). Users can expect gains up to 20x faster when using multi-bounce global illumination and glossy reflections.
- Ray-tracing of motion-blur, even in the most extreme cases, is not a problem anymore. Performance is such that there are no objectionable speed differences between motion-blurred and static frames.
- Ray-tracing of dense and translucent surfaces, such as hair, is up to 3x faster.
- Ray-tracer startup time has been diminishedaccelerated. Space partition build has been multi-threaded and other, geometry specif optimizations, have been implemented.
- Sampling in the ray tracing algorithm has been greatly improved. This means that less samples are needed to obtain noise-free images, especially with image based lighting.
- Subsurface scattering is 5x faster when combined with the path tracer.
- Multi-threading scalability have been improved for both the REYES rendering algorithm as well as in the path tracer.
- Better multi-threading of texture reads. This can drastically improve render times when using a very large amount number of texture files. We measured improvements of up to 25% faster.
- Rendering dense volume clouds (region with many interior shaders) is up to 2.5x faster.
- Point-cloud writing is now multi-threadesthreaded.
- Shader compiler produces better code and is able to use up to 50% less varying variables as before. This translate to faster renders.
- Access to very large files have been improved by using memory mapped I/O when possible. This is especially useful when accessing large point-based files.
- Memory usage usage for very large polygonal meshes has been reduced. We measured up to 4x less memory used on some typical production scenes.
tdlmake is 2x faster.
...
- Implemented the Rtx Plug-in interface. Meaning that users can provide reading functionality for their own texture formats.
- Curves now accept ’
vertex’ width parameters (and not only ’varying’ as before).
Free License Upgraded to quad-core
The free license can now take full advantage of a quad-core computer (previously it was limited to dual-core). In addition, users of the free license will now have access to the more frequent updates we offer to paid customers. This will enable to follow more closely all the improvements added to 3Delight Studio Pro.
...