New Features/Changes
Blender Integration (click to enlarge)
Blender Integration (click to enlarge)
Maya Integration (click to enlarge)
Maya Integration (click to enlarge)
Core engine
Full Spectral rendering
The engine now performs all lighting calculations by sampling full spectra instead of RGB colours.
New Sampling Infrastructure
The sampling infrastructure has been rewritten in a modular way which allows combinations of modern samplers and integrators. Traditional random and quasi random samplers have new film sampling choices, and intelligent samplers such as MLT (Metropolis Light Transport) and ERPT (Energy Redistribution PT) are available.
Biased and Unbiased integrators
All integrators can be combined with any of the samplers as above:
Unbiased: Path Tracing, Bidirectional Path Tracing
Biased: Direct lighting (can be used for traditional raytracing w/ ambient occlusion), Photon Mapping with optional final gather
Hierarchical 2D & 3D procedural material and texture system
Various 2D & 3D procedural textures can be used to modulate all channels of all materials luxrender supports, and infinitely complex hierarchical mixes of them can be constructed. Various mapping types can be used on 2D textures such as UV, planar, cylindrical and spherical.
Native support for all Blender procedural textures
All blender 3D procedural textures have been ported to the source code and are natively implemented with the same parameters/controls as in blender.
Displacement mapping and engine level subdivision
Mesh objects can be supplied as base meshes and can be subdivided internally in the engine, and displacement mapping using the new hierarchical texture system can be applied.
Distributed network rendering & network transparent API
The network rendering code has been finalized and can be used for distributed progressive rendering across multiple computers.
Volumes/Participating Media rendering
Homogenous, exponential density and 3D volume data can now be rendered for effects such as mist, smoke, lightrays, etc...
