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."
Major Users? (Score:2)
Re:Major Users? (Score:1)
Re:Major Users? (Score:2)
Not that we're aware of.
Re:Major Users? (Score:1, Funny)
It's also rumored to be used for Excel easter egg in Excel 2005, copies of which are being tested by various corporate groups at the moment. Microsoft was extremely impressed by Aqsis's speed and realism, and the version used in Excel apparently includes an entire map of the 1 Microsoft Way campus.
Very impressive st
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:5, Informative)
If it helps, Aqsis is about at the stage where Pixar's Photorealistic RenderMan was at about the time of Toy Story. So while it is unfortunate (and we know how we're going to do it), don't think of this as a limitation. :-)
Unlike BMRT, it's available. :-)
Re:This is cool (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is cool (Score:2)
BMRT was a radiosity raytracer from the start. It never supported scanline rendering.
Re:This is cool (Score:2)
Re:This is cool (Score:3, Informative)
Blender, as far as I know, is just a design tool, it doesn't actually do any rendering, it just allows you to develop models in a range of formats that you can then
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.
Re:This is cool (Score:3, Informative)
Cone tracing is a nice idea at first, but it doesn't actually fit well with the demands of a modern high-end renderer:
Re:This is cool (Score:1)