Open Source Renderer Aqsis 1.0 Released 16
cgTobi writes "I am very pleased to announce that the stable 1.0 release of Aqsis - The Open Source Renderman Renderer, has been released. This release will remain stable in terms of publicly visible interface, no new features, only bug fixes. This will allow users who have been concerned in the past about things changing underneath them to use Aqsis in the confidence that it will not change. We have branched the CVS repository to allow 1.0 to be maintained in terms of bug fixes, while work goes ahead on new exciting features, including performance and memory optimisation, ray tracing/global illumination, and deep shadow maps."
This is cool (Score:3, Interesting)
It's good to see open source graphics tools. I'm a big fan of pov-ray, but its license is a little too restrictive for my tastes.
Unfortunately, aqsis is not a raytracer, just a scanline renderer, but according to their faq they plan on adding raytracing and global illumination next.
How does this compare to BMRT and blender?
Re:This is cool (Score:3, Interesting)
No, it has a scanline renderer built in and an optional ray tracer backend called yafray [yafray.org].
I think the most reasonable solution for global illumination is photon mapping [ucsd.edu]. The algorithms are elegant, produce very good output, and (unlike radiosity) are not horribly resource intensive.