Indigo 2.6.1 Released

[OnoSendai]

We're happy to announce the first post-2.4 beta.
There are two changes in this release:

30-Day Trial
First off, there is now a 30 day trial that will start as soon as you install this beta. The trial allows you to render at unlimited resolution for 30 days. There will however be relatively subtle watermarks over the high resolution image. After the 30 day trial has expired, you can still render at <= 0.7 Megapixels with the single Indigo watermark in the lower right corner.

Architectural Glass Acceleration
Secondly, we have a new acceleration technique for bidirectional path tracing that helps with the rendering of light through glass. In particular, it greatly improves rendering of the 'sunlight through glass' type of lighting, where the camera is outside a building looking in through a window into an interior that is also illuminated by sunlight.

The accleration option is called 'Architectural Glass Acceleration' and can be enabled by setting
<glass_acceleration>true</glass_acceleration>
to true in your inifile.xml or renderer_settings inside your scene. Support for this option should be made availble soon by the exporter writers.

Architectural Glass Acceleration is an unbiased technique that makes no approximations.

It can slow down rendering a little bit, so for scenes with no architectural glass, it should be set to false.


Changelog:
2.6.1
* Added Architectural glass acceleration option 'glass_acceleration'
* Added 30 day trial which allows rendering at high res with watermarks for 30 days.


Indigo for Windows 32-bit:
IndigoRenderer_2.6.1_Setup.exe

Indigo for Windows 64-bit:
IndigoRenderer_x64_2.6.1_Setup.exe

Indigo for Mac 32 and 64-bit:
IndigoRenderer2.6.2_1.dmg


Results


You can see some results using Architectural Glass Acceleration below - each scene is rendered first without glass acceleration, then rendered with glass acceleration for the same period of time. Architectural Glass Acceleration allows the sunlight illuminating the interiors through glass to resolve much faster.

[StompinTom]

Halllllellujah <off to dance in the street>

EDIT: Does this also work for accelerating emitters behind glass? Like, the opposite of the sun coming into the building? Off to play...

EDIT2: A download link could help!

[OnoSendai]

Links are up now

[StompinTom]

Ono, does the acceleration work with all rendering modes? For example, if pathtracing will be the only GPU accelerated render method, will that benefit from this speedup?

[OnoSendai]

Glass Acceleration doesn't work with single-directional path tracing yet, but we'll definitely try it out and see how it performs. If it's a net win, then it will be available with GPU rendering.

[CTZn]

What is architectural glass exactly ? A Phong-null blend on a single sheet (aka ghost glass) ?

[lycium]

There are no approximations, it renders the usual accurate Indigo glass material; however it works best for architectural windows.

[fused]

A Phong-null blend on a single sheet (aka ghost glass) ?

No, it must be a proper sheet of glass with a volume.

[CTZn]

Understood, thanks. I was puzzled by the name.

[snorky]

wonderfull!
is the "30-Day Trial" full functionality? (net render...)
so my boss could understand the potential of indigo and buy it
my single home pc is much slower than "my" 5 office PC and a full rendering takes too long...

It can slow down rendering a little bit, so for scenes with no architectural glass, it should be set to false.

really? ;)

[Zom-B]

Oh, thats some nice improvement we've got here, well done!
I'm also interested like Tom if ArchGlass speeds up interriors with windows & external lightsource too,
and if it also does its magic with envMaps?

I'll do some tests by myself for sure, but I'm a little out of freetime atm :/

The 30days HighRes trail isa good idea for sure!

It can slow down rendering a little bit, so for scenes with no architectural glass, it should be set to false.

really? ;)

Once the sample/sec is 15% and once 23% lower with AG, but the result speaks for itself!

I would like to see also how high the drop in samples/sec is for non-glass studio renderings for example!
I could imagine the drop to be way lower, since the rays that come through windows and resolve nicely eat up some time in the example images above....

[triplej28]

Very nice guys, this will be used for my up and coming presentation :D

[pixie]

With the amount of rock you put in your workyou should form a rock band, cause you rock!

[Whaat]

hmmm....I wonder if this feature can be used to accelerate underwater caustics? Is it not the same principle?

Ono, any plans to add a single-sided arch glass material? I don't think it's possible to create it with shaders yet.

[Zom-B]

Jo Ono,

after benchmarking the new release a little bit I have to admit that also non glass scenarios are affected by the slowdow of this feature. So I just thought if it could be possible to automate this feature to trigger?! After something like a first pass of XX samples glass_acceleration could be enabled if needed.
I have no idea if acquiring such data is possible anyhow...

hmmm....I wonder if this feature can be used to accelerate underwater caustics? Is it not the same principle?

Good question... need to be tested ;)

Ono, any plans to add a single-sided arch glass material? I don't think it's possible to create it with shaders yet.

So As I understood this new feature "only" speeds up scenarios where you look through glass into a house etc.
The Arch Glass You request would also speed up scenarios where the cam is inside a room with windows that is lit from the outside (through the glass) => interiors