Thea Render - Interactive Rendering

dale · 15 Dec 2010, 14:57

Another killer upgrade. I can't believe what you folks have done to Thea during beta.
Cudo's, and thanks so much.

Gaieus · 16 Dec 2010, 03:19

Don't forget to mention the enhanced TR1 rendering with interiors, Notareal! That is also a very valuable improvement (and of course, region rendering!!!)

Chris Fullmer · 16 Dec 2010, 06:36

Ooh, I had not noticed the ambient occlusion and dirt map before.....those sound fun! Thanks for the heads up. Its downloading now.

Chris

notareal · 16 Dec 2010, 08:14

@chris fullmer said:

Ooh, I had not noticed the ambient occlusion and dirt map before.....those sound fun! Thanks for the heads up. Its downloading now.

Chris

AO & Dirt map are under development, so just some basic features are now available. Some discussion at http://www.thearender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=4365

notareal · 16 Dec 2010, 08:19

@gaieus said:

Don't forget to mention the enhanced TR1 rendering with interiors, Notareal! That is also a very valuable improvement (and of course, region rendering!!!)

I think I mentioned "improved efficiency of unbiased TR1 engine", but true... it's worth to emphasis; TR1 did got a serious boost, some scenes gained about 100% speed increase. It's almost like a dual core laptop jumped to quad. You may read about improvement of TR1 unbiased engine here: http://www.thearender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=4262

(pop image open for animation and compare shadow areas)

Gaieus · 16 Dec 2010, 11:22

Sorry, indeed you did. Sigh... That was 4:19 a.m. here (without sleeping the night before...)

notareal · 11 Jan 2011, 21:57

Thea Render Beta 1.7.2 Revision 451 is released at the Thea development forum. In this revision, you will mostly find some fixes regarding animation setup. The rotation interpolation scheme has been replaced with a new one that is much more consistent when interpolating key frames. In addition to that, you can now click and drag the key frames (from the small handles on the top of the lines) having more control on the setup. There are also some network rendering improvements.

simon le bon · 11 Jan 2011, 23:49

Hi Dear Pentti,

All these new improvements sound very attractive (appreciate those focused on "network"). Thea Render brings together a wonderful team, really

@unknownuser said:

Important note: the revision posted here is the latest development snapshot. To stay on the safe side, it is recommended to wait until some basic testing is made and version is accessible from our web site downloads section.

Do you think we can install this new release right now ?

Cheers,
simon.

Chris Fullmer · 12 Jan 2011, 00:38

Will animation rendering work now? Mine always skips frames. If I can't get it to work, I'll take the issue over to the Thea forum.

notareal · 12 Jan 2011, 16:08

@simon le bon said:

Do you think we can install this new release right now ?

Cheers,
simon.

There is a little IES related bug in the new RV, that should be fixed when new release is added on public download at http://www.thearender.com/cms/index.php/downloads/thea-render.html If you are using IES, it might be worth to wait for the public release - it should be available in few days.

@Chris, have you made a bug report? There are several bug fixes for animation and key-frames, so it may be fixed, give it a try.

Chris Fullmer · 13 Jan 2011, 22:01

I've got the new one downloading now. I'll give it a try and see if my animation works better. I was reading through the release notes and saw this one:

@unknownuser said:

Fixed case when a late client was contributing a "ghost" image for a previous render. (network)

YES!!! That has come back to bite me so many times.... Glad to see its fixed. I'll test it later tonight I think.

I don't think I've really said how much I enjoy Thea. Glad my company invested in it,

Chris

notareal · 15 Jan 2011, 14:36

@unknownuser said:

Thea Render Beta 1.7.2 Revision 453 (15 January 11)

Corrected opening of IES File (for point lights) from a properties panel (bug present in RV451-452). (UI)

Corrected auto-detection of server in network rendering (bug present in RV451-452). (network)

Automatically setting up min/max depth range in Viewport (fixing most cases where part of the scene becomes invisible). (UI)

Page not found - Thea Render

Thea Render (www.thearender.com)

Latest RV should be now fairly stable, one day closer to the release I suggest that those with network rendering issues will give this release some hard beating.

notareal · 22 Jan 2011, 11:37

@unknownuser said:

Dear friends,

our 2011 showreel is now ready taking some of the best renders and animations that you have posted!
We would like to thank all creators* and all of our members for their contribution and - of course - for
pushing this renderer forward.

You can watch the showreel in our youtube page or in our facebook page where you are invited to join us.

best wishes

*credits appear at the end of the video.

(Attached to the first post of topic)

Gaieus · 22 Jan 2011, 13:51

Wow. I saw something in BasCampe (on Pete's computer) and I cannot remember if this (or at least parts of it) is the same but even if so, it is definitely impressive to watch.

A big for Giannis and the whole team (including plugin authors, beta testers, contributors and all)!

solo · 22 Jan 2011, 15:22

At Basecamp I had a bunch of renders strapped to a slideshow, this is something way beyond what I had, very impressive stuff here. The music works well too.

I'm just happy I got a few renders included in this masterpiece.

I'm most happy that in a small way I was able to be a part of Thea's growth.

notareal · 1 Feb 2011, 22:28

Moving towards the release - farewell beta. Thea Render v1.0.1-RC1 Revision 460 is now available at the development forum.

@unknownuser said:

This is our first release candidate!

Nevertheless, it has also new features and not only bug fixes. For those that work with the OpenGL Viewport
a lot, they can now start a region render (in the darkroom) by selecting an area in the Viewport. You have to
click on the tool drop down menu and select the Region first, then left-click and drag to select the area
to be rendered. Even more, as a workflow optimization, you can now pin the tools/navigation drop-down
menu (a new menu appears above the compass), so you can quickly make a selection!

Another cool UI addition is locking camera aspect ratio; something very small, yet asked for so many times!
There are also various fixes for Relight and also displacement mapping is now rock solid.

The point lights can now be also described in terms of Power/Unit/Efficacy, establishing a uniform
description between point and area lights. On top of that, there is a crucial bug for all unbiased engines
(and IR included) that was adding wrong noise when rendering with 2+ threads - this is now fixed
and it basically means faster renders when using TR1/TR2/IR!

You can find latest revision in our usual thread:
http://www.thearender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=1849

best wishes

thomthom · 2 Feb 2011, 07:25

whooop!

notareal · 9 Feb 2011, 21:48

Second release candidate is now available for testing.

Thea Render v1.0.2-RC2 Revision 465 (10 February 11)

Emitters are now normalized according to compensate for color given, i.e. a red and green emitter of same power will have the same luminance. (all engines)
Finer accuracy regarding emittance and color manipulation. (all engines)
Minor scale fix when saving in hdr/exr formats. (I/O)
Minor correction reading correctly Sharpness check box from a scene. (I/O)
Material and texture editors can now open XML files from user interface. (I/O)
Material editor preserves now material name after opening a file. (I/O)
Display/saving of an image is now consistent when changing between relight and channel images. (UI)
Bug fix for anisotropy mapping when textures are used. (all engines)
Fixed script execution (keeping normal refresh rate in the display). (UI)
Server is successfully stopping now when reaching max number of passes in network rendering. (net rendering)

notareal · 23 Feb 2011, 19:17

Thea Render RV470 v1.0.3 RC3 is available at the development forum.

@unknownuser said:

Dear friends,

with this revision, we have basically made our big step towards final release, in fact, this release candidate could be the base for the final release. And we simply, "touched" a lot of important areas in Thea.

First of all, and most crucial, is that we have re-calibrated the display output along with changes in sun-sky system. All lights and HDRIs have been confirmed with respect to their power. We introduced also new units Watts per nanometer (W/nm) for representing power distribution and removed the - obsolete now - multiplier for point lights. These changes won't show much difference when trying to render a scene (quality-wise), but for older scenes, sun-sky has to be regenerated (disable/enable sky) to get proper render. This is why, if you are in the middle of production rendering, that you should not jump directly to this revision, as it generally needs some re-tuning on the lights.

Moving on, this revision is the most robust one, geometry-wise. Displacement, anisotropy, bump and normal mapping have been considerably improved. Anisotropy is now working excellent even on the most difficult meshes (mixed flat/smooth meshes). Normal and especially bump mapping are better than ever, without exhibiting the high frequency noise ("fireflies") that takes so long to clear in unbiased modes!

Apart from the above, there are also other small fixes along with full string table for translators (to be published). As always, you can find the new revision in the usual thread: http://www.thearender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=1849

best wishes

Vicspa · 23 Feb 2011, 21:22

SOLO, I just got Thea, and playing around with it, I'm trying something like your 2 enclosed images, but not getting shadow results, can you elaborate more or show settings, and is it possible to control size of image. Thanks much.