LuxRender v1.0RC1 release

[jeanphi]

Hi all,

Surprise! Here is a brand new release candidate and we decided to jump the version number to 1.0 to emphasize the fact that LuxRender is a production ready application as is constantly demonstrated by the various artists using it. It still has a few rough edges that we'll try to polish in the next few weeks to get the best final possible. To meet that goal we await your feedback.
We are bundling SLG (Small Lux GPU) with this release because it is lightning fast and pretty usable even with its highly experimental status.
Thanks to all those who have made this release possible, especially new developers who have joined the team since the v0.8 release.

Get the new binaries from our downloads page and get ready for the upcoming splash screen contest.

Changes since v0.8 (yes it's big, and when you see much improved features, it really means it, the amount of work has been astounding):
- much improved SPPM rendering (stochastic progressive photon mapping)
- much improved hybrid path rendering
- new hybrid bidir rendering
- improved network rendering with better reconnect logic
- improved rendering speed and memory usage
- updated GUI
- point and spot lights now have lighting power and efficacy parameters like area lights
- normal mapping support
- much improved motion capabilities
- updated carpaint model so that it better matches the original paper
- new colordepth texture to assist in defining volume parameters from their appearance
- new layered material allowing arbitrary layering of materials
- new glossycoating material allowing to make any material glossy
- new fresnel functions to allow configuration from RGB colors, mixing, gradients, ...
- new metal2 material much more flexible than the previous metal material
- colorspace fixes
- better linear tonemapper behaviour regarding real lighting schemes
- improved loop subivision surfaces handling
- new direct sampling of lights for bidirectional
- faster image buffer handling
- new SQBVH accelerator given better results than standard QBVH (still experimental)
- much improved build system with reduced executable sizes thanks to the use of DLLs
- lots of bug fixes and improvements all around

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Source Code

People who want to download the source code can download the v10RC1 tag files of our HG source code repository here:
http://src.luxrender.net/lux/file/0488d0d3ad0a

LuxRays: http://src.luxrender.net/luxrays/file/396d39b06aa6

Luxblend (it is becoming deprecated): http://src.luxrender.net/luxblend/file/c16130cea655
LuxBlend25: http://src.luxrender.net/luxblend25/file/8c20fa83f33f

---------------------------

Cheers,

Jeanphi

[J the Ninja]

We've been working on a glossy "new features" page here, although it is quite incomplete atm: http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/New_in_1.0

Also, blender artists thread has been made: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthr ... 1-released!

[Lord Crc]

Yay, great work everyone

[pciccone]

Congratulations everybody! This is a great milestone.

[zsolnai]

Congratulations!
Maybe it would be beneficial to the artists to give a link to the "Gallery" and "Feature list" pages. That's about the first two things I personally like to see when encountering a previously unknown renderer.

[unit3]

Seems to run well. However, either build for linux (OpenCL or non-OpenCL, 64-bit) seems to have problems with luxblend:

Code: Select all

$ blender
[Lux 2012-Apr-16 16:27:58] Using pylux version 1.0RC1
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/blender/2.58/scripts/modules/addon_utils.py", line 207, in enable
    mod = __import__(module_name)
  File "/home/graeme/.blender/2.58/scripts/addons/luxrender/__init__.py", line 53, in <module>
    from . import core
  File "/home/graeme/.blender/2.58/scripts/addons/luxrender/core/__init__.py", line 46, in <module>
    from ..export.scene import SceneExporter
  File "/home/graeme/.blender/2.58/scripts/addons/luxrender/export/scene.py", line 38, in <module>
    from ..export         import geometry      as export_geometry
  File "/home/graeme/.blender/2.58/scripts/addons/luxrender/export/geometry.py", line 30, in <module>
    from bpy.app.handlers import persistent
ImportError: No module named app.handlers


I've got blender 2.58.1+svn38069 on Ubuntu 11.10 x64. I blew out my previous LuxBlend install completely, and I get this on the CLI when attempting to enable the new version of LuxBlend in the RC1 tarball. This is luxblend-2.6. Advice?

[J the Ninja]

LuxBlend for 1.0 requires Blender 2.62. Even if you can get the older version to enable, it won't be able to function correctly.

[unit3]

LuxBlend for 1.0 requires Blender 2.62. Even if you can get the older version to enable, it won't be able to function correctly.

Oh, gotcha. Makes sense. Docs probably need to be updated, since they all mention Blender 2.5x: http://www.luxrender.net/en_GB/blender_2_5

[J the Ninja]

LuxBlend for 1.0 requires Blender 2.62. Even if you can get the older version to enable, it won't be able to function correctly.

Oh, gotcha. Makes sense. Docs probably need to be updated, since they all mention Blender 2.5x: http://www.luxrender.net/en_GB/blender_2_5

Urk! Indeed they do, thanks.

[SATtva]

Congratulations guys! Considerable achievement.