radium renderer

[Smaug7800]

Thank you VERY much for taking the time for that info of links....and so quickly!
So to begin design my interfaces first and basically set up the render engine flowchart....(ie I think PERCEPTUM has a documentation of a flowchart.)

Also what do you think of trying out MLT based algorithims and experiments on SunFlow since it has the foundations and I can just try to extend it???

My first project though is I want to build a Flash or Java based interface that can create layered Materials settings (ala Maxwell-like layered BSDFs) and combine it into one XML file to load into Indigo.....or is there something like that already?!

Cool Brain challenging stuff

[IanT]

If you like Java then using Sunflow as the foundation for MLT would be an excellent start. Sunflow currently lacks an unbiased path-tracing engine and also lacks the architecture necessary to store paths in their entirety (which is a pre-requisite for MLT) but implementing this would be relatively easy. You would need to:

- Define a path/vertex structure for storing a complete path
- Implement probability-based light source sampling (there's something like this in there already so would be very straightforward).
- Modify the "Bitmap" class and/or implement MLT sample buffers, since the MLT markov chains hop randomly around the image. I'm not sure the existing Sunflow image buffer would support this at the moment.
- Implement MLT (by far the most complex out of this list )

If you're more of a C++ man, PBRT might be better. It already has most of the light-sampling and BSDF-sampling stuff you'd need, along with additional user-provided modules for bi-directional path tracing (although I looked at the source code and found something that would make the results biased ) I believe someone's also written an MLT module but I've never seen the code.

There's also the DART library, which has an implementation of MLT in it (both path-tracing and BiPT) but only the very basic mutations in it so far. I can send you this on request.

I personally prefer Java as it's MUCH quicker to develop with, it's 100% platform portable and, with the recent release of 1.6.0, is getting very quick. Also, the Netbeans IDE is simply awesome

Ian.

[Smaug7800]

IanT, Thanks for your concise and structured answers...I have a plan of action now. I like Java too but I think a C++ one may be the way to go since I can follow that PBRT book....I am still deciding.

I am interested in that DART library you mentioned. If you dont mind you can send it to: jcarrola@yahoo.com.

Thanks again.
John

[Ana028]

Hi all, last day I see the radium forum and I can see the second version of this renderer, and I can see a great menu and other day I saw too an images of preview menu of the next luxrender. I don't know if indigo in the future will have a menu to setup the scene but I think that's a great idea and I would like of course.