LuxRender v1.2 final release

[jeanphi]

Hi all,

Here we are again with a new stable release of LuxRender featuring lots of bug fixes. You are strongly advised to upgrade to this 1.2 version due to the huge improvements in the correctness of the renders in this release. See below for the list of improvements.
Many thanks to all the developers involved in this development cycle, this is going to be a strong base to add the next features like full GPU acceleration. If you have questions, do ask them in our forums, and if you find bugs or want to suggest improvements, do so in our bug tracker so that they don't get forgotten..

The splash screen has been changed to the one submitted by Piita for the v1.0 contest, it finished almost at a draw with the winner, congratulations to him.

Packages or installers for most platforms have been made available from our downloads page. Some exporters have been packaged in the installers depending on the platform, otherwise you'll be able to get them from the download page or the repositories.

Changes since v1.2RC1:
- fix a memory leak in the GUI
- fix display of .flm statistics
- fix rendering artefacts when the scene is very small
- fix for incorrect rendering of environment lights with large black areas
- fix for severe regression introduced in bidirectional rendering when optimizing dispersion code
- fix a long standing bug in bidirectional which made renders with bidirectional appear darker than with path
- fix lots of issues with hybrid path rendering, it should now match normal path rendering
- fix wavelength mutation in metropolis
- fix for image filters having a width less than 0.5
- removed the annoying message box when loading a queue file
- fix display of negative numbers in statistics
- lots of fixes for SLG3

Other changes since v1.1:
- hybrid rendering modes are now available even on non OpenCL builds
- SLG bidirectional implementation with vertex merging or hybrid mode
- fixes to SLG sun light
- fixes to bounding boxes causing instances objects to sometime disappear or be clipped
- tile rendering with SLG
- more advanced GPU memory management with SLG
- SLG core is now a library
- port of some more Lux features to SLG core
- user driven sampling and noise aware sampling (still experimental with bidir and metropolis combination)
- all scenes rendered are now added to the queue so you don't have to choose between single render and batch rendering
- improved queue handling
- fix dispersion using SPPM rendering
- new woven cloth material
- WARNING: backward compatibility break: the displacement direction when using loop subdivision has been reversed to match general expectations and to be consistent with microdisplacement or bump mapping
- improved dispersion handling with path and bidir
- much faster bloom filter
- fix a memory leak that could be dramatic when using hybrid rendering
- fix for projector light not applying transforms correctly

In LuxBlend25 since v1.2RC1:
- improved smoke support including fire (with path integrator)
- fix for lights in dupligroups
- many tweaks to sanitize the UI and improve usability
- adapt to Blender 2.66
- proper export of render layer visibility
- proper motion blur export
- material preview improvements
- metaballs export

In LuxBlend25 other changes since v1.1:
- improved preview
- add new LuxRender features
- be compatible with Blender 2.65 (not backward compatible)
- primitive proxy support to allow exporting of more LuxRender native shapes like spheres, cylinders, ...

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Source Code

People who want to download the source code can download the v12 tag files of our HG source code repository here:
Lux: http://src.luxrender.net/lux/file/ee0b9ff73d62
LuxRays: http://src.luxrender.net/luxrays/file/475fbf15f0ca

LuxBlend (2.66): http://src.luxrender.net/luxblend25/file/3b84c4d3f009

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Cheers,

Jeanphi

[Lord Crc]

I'm in the process of testing the installers for Windows, will be uploaded shortly I hope. I'll update the download page once they're up.

edit: installers should be up now.

[carlosa]

ty !

[SATtva]

That's an impressive list of fixes, it's sometimes hard to comprehend by reading the changelog. Congratulations everybody!

[filanwizard]

Just as a heads up, the links to the linux versions are still pointing at 1.2RC1 I do see the final stable is in that directory though

[Rhys]

Thanks1

[tomb]

Congratulations everyone

[jeanphi]

Just as a heads up, the links to the linux versions are still pointing at 1.2RC1 I do see the final stable is in that directory though

Sorry, my bad, I thought I had updated it too. It is now fixed.

I should do a complete overhaul of the download page in the coming days.

Jeanphi

[Piita]

Loads of new stuff and fixes, as usual. Awesome work developers! I'm happy to see the bidir darkening bug nailed.
And thanks for the splash screen. That was a surprise

[B.Y.O.B.]

Congratulations
I'm aching to get back to my computer and try all the new stuff out...