Thea Render - Interactive Rendering

notareal · 12 Oct 2011, 16:26

Little heads up, Thea Render v1.1.03 Revision 576 (6 October 11) is available at
http://www.thearender.com/cms/index.php/downloads/thea-render.html
(Quick Installation guide and Changes Log)

Rich O Brien · 12 Oct 2011, 16:31

I'm loving the last 2 revisions. Feature rich and fast. Any info on the future roadmap?

notareal · 12 Oct 2011, 18:10

@unknownuser said:

I'm loving the last 2 revisions. Feature rich and fast. Any info on the future roadmap?

There is no update for the road map at the moment. But like earlier stated, material db and GPU rendering are on the way. Those will be done during 1.x version... probably sooner than later - no exact dates. AutoCAD Exporter Plugin is on the way.

notareal · 26 Dec 2011, 18:30

Thea Render Technology Preview - Adaptive AMC

The introduction of a new powerful method (called Adaptive AMC) into IR. This method, that could be thought as the biased analog of TR2, has the ability to resolve difficult lighting conditions, SSS and medium scattering and still give interactive feedback.
We have recorded here a video showing all these improvements. The architectural scene used as our test case is courtesy of Davis Carter Scott, Inc. (kindly offered for our internal testing). Naturally there are some workflow improvements with the next release, maybe one can spot those too

[flash=854,480:ovbowqdv]http://www.youtube.com/v/Q7DldMuwbIM[/flash:ovbowqdv]

irwanwr · 26 Dec 2011, 21:51

@notareal said:

Thea Render Technology Preview - Adaptive AMC

hi there notareal,
since you are also within Kerkythea (i assume), do you mind if i ask you about the next Kerkythea? i haven't heard much about the next Boost after the Echo release.
thank you.

notareal · 27 Dec 2011, 06:21

@irwanwr, Like you probably already do know, the early development version is available at the Kerkythea forum. There is no release date yet.

irwanwr · 27 Dec 2011, 11:20

thank you, notareal.

sonder · 28 Dec 2011, 23:33

I've been using Kerkythea for years now. This looks amazing. I went online to purchase - it looks like you bill the purchaser? Any infor for us US purchasers would be great. I'm in!

notareal · 29 Dec 2011, 07:55

@Sonder, Not sure what info you need? Prices listed are net as euro, VAT does not apply to US customers (further instructions). If some alternative payment method is needed, please use contact form.
You most welcome to join at Thea Forums (preferably use the same email as with the purchase. If not, please use the contact form to get a proper status).

sonder · 29 Dec 2011, 17:54

@notareal said:

@Sonder, Not sure what info you need? Prices listed are net as euro, VAT does not apply to US customers (further instructions). If some alternative payment method is needed, please use contact form.
You most welcome to join at Thea Forums (preferably use the same email as with the purchase. If not, please use the contact form to get a proper status).

Thanks - my comment was due to the cart and checkout process. I saw no place to give a payment method. I'll go back and look again. I will join the forum as well.

notareal · 3 Jan 2012, 17:19

Happy New Year! First Thea Render update for 2012. New interactive render engine;Adaptive AMC, bugfixes and some important workflow improvements. Available at the development forum for licensed users.

@unknownuser said:

Dear friends,

besides our best wishes for a happy new year 2012, we bring you a maintenance update for Thea Render, the 4th update in the 1.1 series.

This update contains the latest improvements related to interactive render, as announced in our related tech preview post. Fine tuning of the refreshing, faster operations during IR and a new engine (Adaptive AMC) solving caustics and SSS make interactive rendering much smoother and more fun to play with.

Apart from the interactive rendering, there are some very important noise bug fixes for TR1/TR2; they are related to bump mapping on glossy materials, but also some weird noise - very hard to resolve - appearing on strange lighting conditions.

With respect to the user interface, if you have any bitmaps missing from a scene, there is no need to worry now; Thea will now remember them, tag them and show them to you to browse. And finally, there is a new format "lib.thea" that is going to be used for library installation (a new library will be available soon making use of this functionality).

As always, you can find the detailed changes log and download links, in our usual thread:
http://www.thearender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=1849

best wishes

notareal · 1 Feb 2012, 16:23

Dear friends,

as you may know, we are working currently on tighter integration of Thea with modeling applications, but - of course -
we couldn't leave the studio without any updates. Brief summary of Thea Render Revision 627.

You can find the detailed changes log and download links, in our usual thread. (Download available for licensed users. Non licensed users can grab the latest tested revision from our website page.)

notareal · 3 Feb 2012, 20:55

Brief introduction to new animation features inside Thea; complex motions.

[flash=800,480:1v3xuo95]http://www.youtube.com/v/ZhQkVLqVkdk?hd=1[/flash:1v3xuo95]
Note: Thea does not try to compete with modeling applications that have a rich user interface and algorithms for setting up animation and motion. The important thing for us is the support of such complex motion and a rather minimalistic user interface that uses it.

notareal · 8 Feb 2012, 19:41

New Solid Iris Material Libraries by Patrick Nieborg (Thea Technical Artist) available for licensed users.

Rich O Brien · 8 Feb 2012, 21:00

very exciting stuff indeed. Can't wait to deconstruct.

notareal · 7 May 2012, 16:34

Solid Iris Material/Model Libraries (Part 2) for Thea Render licensed users.

and while you browsing Thea forums, grab a Outdoor Furniture Set Model Library to test these new material libraries.

ps. There is also a Wall Finish library available for the first material library set:

Please remember the following:

The materials have been tested thoroughly and render very nicely and fast.
The texture quality is as high as it can get (without using a photo camera that is).
The materials have been created from scratch and are our own copyright - you can use them in your renders without second thoughts (see 4).
The materials are intended to be used in the context of creating images with Thea Render and can be used only by Thea licensed users (no redistribution allowed).

Gaieus · 7 May 2012, 17:04

Those wicker materials are fantastic!

nomeradona · 8 May 2012, 00:10

i must say i began to enjoy thea after seing the great improvement with TR1 and now i love AMC

notareal · 16 May 2012, 17:45

A little heads up from Thea Render development: Unbiased TR2 has long been the engine for the most challenging unbiased light simulations. Now TR1, the faster unbiased engine, got a important update... and naturally there is something more available.
I personally like a lot about ability to drag and drop material layers, even from a matlab to a another matlab

@unknownuser said:

Dear friends,

after long time, a new (maintenance) update is finally here. And there are lots of new things and improvements accumulated! But first of all, we would like to say a big thank you for your support!

Now, to the meat of this revision! If you have anticipated for it, yes!, this revision includes the improvement with the unbiased TR1 engine being able now to render sun pool caustics. You don't have to set any special setting for sun pool caustics to appear. If they exist, they will be there in the image! This makes Thea unbiased core the most complete around. For more info, please check out our tech announcement: http://www.thearender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=7670

During all this time with plugin development undergoing, there were also some new features supported by Thea, as byproducts of the integration. One of them are the global model texture coordinates that act as "overriding" coordinates for the material. Thus, you can change the offset/scale/projection for each model now, keeping the same material. Even more, there are more projection modes to choose from now (but please note that support for them in the Viewport has not been implemented yet).

One of the last moment improvements was the acceleration of the OpenGL viewport when viewing a textured scene in solid mode. You will find that the viewport is now much more fluent.

Various improvements have been also implemented for network rendering. And this makes it a perfect moment for us, to start our Render Farm Beta Program, basically a call to all interested parties wanting to support Thea with their commercial (public) render farms. More details in the days to come (you could also visit our related webpage for some resources).

As always, you can find the detailed changes log and download links, in our usual thread:
http://www.thearender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=1849

best wishes

notareal · 10 Jul 2012, 09:28

Solid Iris Natural Stone Tiles material library for Thea Render is available for licensed users.