3.1.41 - 2013-05-18

3.1.40 - 2013-05-09

• Better sampling quality when using progressive render.
• Less noise in depth of field and ray-trace hider.
• i-display can now save to jpegs.
• Better handling of translucent surfaces when used in global illumination (uses less memory).

3.1.39 - 2013-04-26

• “Continuous rendering” is now enabled by default, no need to use a special option in “settings.txt” (#4483).
• Fixed bad pixels caused by the 3Delight Material (#4322).
• Accelerated area light sampling. This means that scenes that contain area lights can render up to 50% faster.

3.1.38 - 2013-04-23

• Added option “Send all AOVs to i-display” in the Diagnostics tab.
• Added an “EXR auto crop preference”

3.1.37 - 2013-04-19

• Fixed interactive rendering when using custom Lights (#4307).

3.1.36 - 2013-04-10

• Fixed problems of “white spots” appearing when using global illumination (#4375).
• i-display: multiple selection can now be moved in the thumbnail view.

3.1.35 - 2013-03-14

• Fixed refresh problems when handling environment shaders.
• Added the physically plausible 3Delight Material.

3.1.34 - 2013-03-08

• Removed IBL tab. This functionality is superseded by environment multiple importance sampling.
• Completely removed everything is related to photon maps. This functionality is superseded by vastly improved path-tracing engine.
• “Archives and RIB Export” tab is removed. This functionality is superseded by realtime render region.
• Minor UI changes
• Always use “accurate” area light sampling for area lights.
• Ray-Traced Color Bleeding improvements.
• Reflection/Refraction improvements.

3.1.33 - 2013-02-27

• Improved sampling of environment maps. Extreme noise reduction in many typical HDR lighting scenarios.
• Textures which has a .tdl in their name are not converted (new default for texture conversion).
• New sampling algorithms performs well even with multiple-bounces. For example, a reflection in a mirror will show same amount of noise than a direct camera view.

3.1.32 - 2013-02-24

• More refresh issues fixes (#4307).

3.1.31 - 2013-02-21

• Fixing refresh issues when using the relighter (#4307).
• Fixing subsurface problems when using ray-tracer.

3.1.30 - 2013-02-15

• Export “hair_id” shader parameter for ICE strands (advanced).

3.1.29 - 2013-02-07

• Fixed crash.

3.1.28 - 2013-02-06

UNSTABLE

• Display the pre-pass for global illumination.
• Stability fixes.

3.1.27 - 2013-01-22

• Much faster subsurface scattering when combined with global illumination (#3927).

3.1.26 - 2013-01-17

• Further optimizations in the ray tracer (up to 10% speedups have been observed).
• Subsurface scattering pre-computation step is an order of magnitude faster if multiple bounce GI is used.

3.1.25 - 2013-01-09

• Much faster subsurface scattering when using the Raytrace algorithm (#4099).

3.1.24 - 2013-01-07

• More efficient texture lookups when using global illumination (#3872).

3.1.23 - 2013-01-05

• Native MARI textures support. If your MARI files are named color1001.tif, color1002.tif, etc ... then put the file name as “colorUDIM.tif” in your file node. No need to load complicated shading networks anymore.

3.1.22 - 2012-12-08

• Drastically accelerated ray-tracing when combined with motion blur
• A further 20% acceleration when ray-tracing dense scenes

3.1.21 - 2012-11-29

• Accelerate ray-tracing of dense polygonal meshes by up to 20%
• Fixed exr compression issues
• Avoiding dubious shader recompilations when in IPR mode

3.1.20 - 2012-10-19

• Corrected texture lookups on objects with UVs outside [0,1] range.

3.1.19 - 2012-10-18

• Avoided generating invalid file names when converting textures.
• Solved alpha problem when using background imager.
• Faster rendering.

3.1.18 - 2012-10-09

• Sphere particles are much faster to render (including much better startup time).
• Vastly improved memory consumption of dense polygonal meshes.
• Fixed self-intersection problems with motion blur and the raytrace hider.
• Fixed alpha artifacts when using gamma color correction (#3962)

3.1.17 - 2012-09-15

• A new subsurface algorithm provides much sharper results without sacrificing speed.

3.1.16 - 2012-09-13

• Token _CAMERA_ is now correctly working with statistics file name (#3953)
• Solved artifacts appearing on polygons when using the RT hider (#3947)
• Vastly accelerated subsurface when used with GI (#3962)

3.1.15 - 2012-09-05

• Better management of texture and shader conversion. Textures are converted only when needed.
• Added progress bar during Softimage scene transfer to 3Delight (#3911)
• Better compatibility with Softimage SP1 (fixed several shaders).
• Occlusion and color bleeding are 10% to 20% faster when using the ray-tracing algorithm.
• Ray-traced shadows (when using blur) are of higher quality (much less noise) when using the ray-tracing algoriothm (#3937).
• Area light sampling is faster, we measure up to 10% speed improvement on total render time (#3946).
• Fixed crashes due to deep ray level (#3939 and #3930).
• Fixed point-based GI when using the render region (scene was cropped along with the render region during baking phase) (#3771).
• i-display can now show an image as a background.
• Shadow maps can now be generated in a specific directory (#3661).

3.1.14 - 2012-08-15

• The “scale” attribute in the Subsurface properties doesn’t affect misss_* shaders anymore. The scale of these shaders is the one that is considered (#3457).

3.1.13 - 2012-08-07

• Added search paths for procedurals (this is mainly useful to import Massive agents into Softimage using 3Delight).

3.1.12 - 2012-08-04

• Improved arealight sampling in both speed and quality (especially when using the RT hider).

3.1.11 - 2012-07-27

Features

• Improved GI speed, when used with reflections and refractions (speedups of up to 500% have been observed).
• Improved noise levels when using GI and the Raytrace “hider”.

3.1.10 - 2012-05-15

Features

• Timings in statistics now properly work in multi-threading.
• Added a CAMERA tag that can be resolved in file names.

3.1.9 - 2012-04-30

• Fixed version number problem in previous package.

3.1.8 - 2012-04-28

• Fixed a memory leak.

3.1.7 - 2012-04-13 (DO NOT USE)

• Accelerated ray-tracing of curves. Curves with many segments ray-trace twice as fast.

3.1.6 - 2012-04-12 (DO NOT USE)

Features

• Fixed degradation of multi-threading performance with very dense scenes (such as scenes containing hair and fur).

3.1.5 - 2012-03-28

Features

• Fur/Hair intensive render use 25% less memory.
• Camera interest can be used in as the focal distance in depth of field parameters.

Shaders

• added mib_color_alpha shader.

3.1.4 - 2012-03-06

Features

• Subdivision surfaces take less memory and render faster.
• Improved multi-threading of texture and point-clouds access.

Fixes

• Fixed bug when Shadow Caster Switch dosent work properly with the shadow shader (#3437).
• Fixed a problem when using dicing cameras and shadow maps (#3420).

3.1.3 - 2012-02-10

Features

• Accelerated ray-tracing of curves.

3.1.2 - 2012-01-25

Features

• Diffuse and specular intensity multipliers of light are animatable and not limited to 0-1 (#3481).

Fixes

• 3DFS Light properties can now be animated (#3480).
• Fixed sub-samples properties of lights.
• Fixed ambient in misss shaders, it wasn’t overridden by scene ambience.
• Fixed point-based occlusion and GI on transparent objects. Transparent objects will now let light pass as they should.

3.1.1 - 2012-01-23

Features

• Hugely accelerated baking stage. Speedups can reach 400% on multi-core machines.
• Ability to use presets in co-shaders using shader annotations.
• Add a lightsource property to multiply diffuse and specular intensity (#3453).

Fixes

• Fixed AOVs. Basically, compositiing the standard AOVs together will lead to the correct “beauty” image.

3.1.0 - 2011-12-22

Features

• Improved render start up time: first rendered pixels can appear up to 50% faster than in previous versions.
• Improved multi-threading performance of texture mapping. Renders can run up to 50% faster when a large number of cores and textures are used.
• Marginally improved the speed of point-based global illumination (up tp 3%).
• Removed the control for occlusion GI algorithm. Both color bleed and occlusion are now controlled using a single UI element.
• Depth Of Field aperture controls are grayed when polygonal aperture is disabled (UI improvement).
• Co-shaders loaded into the render tree can now define how their parameters are displayed in Softimage.
• ‘ApertureNumberOfBlades’ and ‘ApertureRotation’ are now animatable (#3389).
• Improved point-based global illumination speed when using bump-maps.

Fixes

• Fixed PNG output (#3062).
• Fixed crash in shader compound (#3406).

Shaders

• Improved shader compatibiliy with Softimage 2012. This affects the following shaders: simple_aniward, simple_blinn, simple_cooktorr, simple_phong.

3.0.21 - 2011-12-02

Features

• Added aperture control for depth of field. Users can now specify polygonal apertures (by specifying the number of blades in the aperture).
• Motion blur performance when coupled with ray-tracing has been greatly improved. On some of our scenes, we reached a 500% render time improvement.
• Shadow map properties are no more: they have been moved to light properties for a more fine-grained control.

3.0.20 - 2011-11-26

Changes

• sdlImport script command renamed to RendermanShaderImport.
• Removed “Max Ray Depth”. It is computed using max specular and max diffuse depth. (#3186)
• Fixed instability in 3.0.19 package.

3.0.19 - 2011-11-23 (UNSTABLE)

Features

• sdlImport is easier to use and can now present parameters with nicer UI.
• Subdivision surfaces take halve the memory compared to previous versions.
• Added support of anisotropy rotation and texture space parameters in mia_material (#3306).

Changes

• Default smooth subdivision threshold is now 1.

Shaders

• Added sib_slide_proj_light shader

3.0.18 - 2011-11-16

Features

• Added ability to use render tree in a light (#3302).
• Improved ray-tracing performance when using motion-blur (#3264).

Shaders

• Added Bionic_Light_lit.

Fixes

• Fixed crash with “Use Velocity for Frame Interpolation” option.
• Repaired support for “Instance Master Hidden” visibility flag.

3.0.17 - 2011-11-04

Fixes

• ICE Particles orientation was fixed for Softimage 2012.
• Better texture management when re-rendering a region.

3.0.16 - 2011-11-1

Features

• Global ray-tracing optimizations. Occlusion renders are up to 10% faster.
• Ray-traced shadows on hair are 200% faster.
• Multi-threading performance improvement. This is especially visible on shadow map renders.
• Adding a GI shading rate multiplier object property. This allows for finer control on GI quality. Particularly useful for hair.
• Point-based algorithm produces deeper shadows, closer to what ray-tracing would achieve.

Shaders

• Added sib_color_to_boolean shader.

Fixes

• Environment shaders are now fixed.

3.0.15 - 2011-09-27

Features

• Added ability to cast photons from environments.
• mia_material emulates soft reflections using Point-Based indirectdiffuse like MR

3.0.14 - 2011-09-23

Features/

• Accelerated ray-tracing when combined with subsurface scattering.
• Accelerated ray-tracing when combined with displacements. This can lead to dramatic accelerations.
• Accelerated environment lookups.
• Added ability to cast photons from environments (Issue #3162)

Bugs

• Fixed new properties propagation to old scenes.

3.0.13 - 2011-09-02

Features

• Removed the “final gather” label. The same effect is achieved by using ray-tracing and enabling photon mapping. Old scenes will automatically be translated to use this new naming.
• Added ability to to use photon-mapping for mutiple-bounce point-based global illumination.
• Adding a separate control for diffuse and specular ray depth. This can dramatically affect ray-tracing speed.
• Improved performance of shadow rays.
• Improved performance of area light sampling.
• Adding support for “half” floats for EXR display driver.
• Fixed rendering of displcements when using RenderMaps.
• Improved performance of the baking stage when using point-based global illumination.

Shaders

• Fixed si_toon shader for Softimage 2012.
• Fixed a “grid” artifact when using glossy reflections.
• Fixed phong shader when using texturable “Reflect Glossy” port.

3.0.12 - 2011-08-02

Features

• Improved ray-traced displacements speed.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed glossy reflections: the grid pattern seen on blurred reflections is gone.

Documentation

• Documented our support of RenderMaps.

3.0.11 - 2011-07-20

Features

• Added support for global illumination visibility flags.

3.0.10 - 2011-07-18

Features

• EXR multi-channel write support. No need to install EXR libraries.
• Adding finer control on how shading is performed for multi-segment motion-blur: per-frame or per-segment. Setting this option to “per-frame” can improve rendering times substantially without affecting image quality.
• Motion blur property can now be specified per-object.
• Clipping planes can bow be hidden

Fixes

• Fixing ambiance property behaviour in some shaders.
• Blinn shader lost its specular component, fixed.
• Particle orientation was wrong in 2012, fixed.

3.0.9 - 2011-06-15

• New optimizations will will have a 10-20% speed impact on overall rendering speed (only 64 bits platforms).
• Added support for reading of PNG textures.
• Fixed compound traversals for bump mapping port.
• Fixed misss* shaders to work with point-based GI.

Shaders

• Added basic support for the ray-switch node (sib_color_rayswitch and mip_rayswitch). “Transparent”, “Refraction” and “Environment” are still unsupported.
• Blinn shaders now behaves as the MR one.
• Fixed sib_*_switch nodes. They now behave as MR.

3.0.8 - 2011-05-18

Features

• Added ability to assign/edit 3Delight properties of several selected objects
• Color bleeding now affects hair.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed lookup shaders to work with weightmaps
• RT color bleeding was not working with Final Gather and mia_material. Fixed.
• Better handling of transparency in shaders. Previously, some surfaces could never be completely transparent (clamped to 99.99% transparency).
• Fixed mix8 and mix2 shader nodes.

3.0.7 - 2011-04-23

Features

• Point-base GI is now correctly affected by environments.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug in point-based algorithms.
• Physical sky/sun shader was not rendering properly in SI 2011 and 2012. Fixed.

3.0.6 - 2011-04-17

Features

• Added support for Render Maps. For now, only main color is supported and only export format is TIFF.
• New point-based algorithm delivers higher quality occlusion and global illumination.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed update of custom preferences.

Shaders

• Fixed texture layers.

3.0.5 - 2011-04-11

Features

• Added ability to use custom SL file location for render nodes.
• Added “Shader Nodes Paths” parameter to 3delight preferences.
• UVW transformations are now working.
• New “Export Object” parameters in 3Delight custom preferences.

Bug fixes

• sib_color_8mix in Softimage 2011
• mia_material specular
• incidence shader in Softimage 2011
• sib_color_gradient

3.0.4 - 2011-03-17

Shaders

• map_lookup_scalar and map_lookup_color.
• mia_material* has improved reflection/refraction controls.

Bug Fixes

• Density falloff in ICE particles was off. Now behaves as in MR.
• Fixed crash bug in ICE volumes.
• Fixed shader Layers bug in SI 2011.

3.0.3 - 2011-02-16

Features

• Ability to use co-shaders in the Render Tree using a special Softimage command.
• Improving ICE rendering (more closely matches Mental Ray renders).

Bug Fixes

• Fixed misss_* compilation problems with Softimage 2011.

3.0.2 - 2011-02-02

Features

• Accelerated ICE volumes rendering by about 10%.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed Linux crash (always crashed on second render).

3.0.1 - 2011-02-01

Bug Fixes

• Fixed broken license server in 2.0.70.
• Fixed broken properties (hit mode, ray tracing and CSG)
• Fixed free version crashes.

2.0.70 - 2011-01-28

Features

• Moved the subdivision threshold to the Quality property page.
• Moved some global properties into a newly created preference page.
• Accelerated ICE volumes rendering by up to 30%.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed Object Labels output channel.
• Fixed Pixel Coverage output channel.

2.0.69 - 2011-01-24

Bug Fixes

• Fixed final gathering. Was broken with scenes that are extremely large in scale.
• Improved support for use of stand-ins with motion blur.

2.0.68 - 2011-01-18

Features

• Added “Smooth Subdivision Threshold” option.

Bug fixes

• Fixed the license server which was broken since 2.0.66.

2.0.67 - 2011-01-14

Features

• Enabled stand-ins to work when motion blur is enabled.

Bug fixes

• Fixed support for ICE attribute ShapeSizeAbsolute.

2.0.66 - 2011-01-12

Features

• Added _hair_id parameter for curves generated by ICE strands.

Bug fixes

• Fixed incorrect ICE particle orientation in Softimage 2011.5.

Shaders

• Improved diffuse and specular model in mi_car_paint_phen.
• Added support for Softimage 2011 version of mi_car_paint, mi_metallic_paint, mia_material, misss_fast_shader and misss_skin_specular.
• Added new Softimage 2011 shaders mia_material_x, mib_glossy_reflection, mib_glossy_refraction, mib_illum_blinn, mib_illum_cooktorr, mib_illum_lambert and mib_illum_phong.

2.0.65 - unreleased

Bug fixes

• Fixed a crash with overrides of shader parameters in Softimage 2011.5.
• Fixed texture projections for hair and NURBS which were broken in 2.0.63.

2.0.64 - 2010-12-16

Features

• Added option “Use Velocity for Frame Interpolation” for motion blur on ICE particles.
• Abandoned the Studio and Artist editions : all features are always available.

Bug fixes

• Fixed 3D textures which were broken in 2.0.63.

Shaders

• Added sib_diffuse_reflection and sib_diffuse_refraction_phen.

2.0.63 - 2010-11-29

Features

• Added support for ICE attribute ShapeSizeAbsolute.

Bug fixes

• Repaired texture projection wrapping mode.

Shaders

• Fixed a hair shading bug.