Pixie 2.2.5 is out

Okan Arikan — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 06:55:48 -0000

Hi everybody,

Pixie 2.2.5 is out. This release incorporates many bug reports and improvements in the SVN trunk.

Okan

Pixie 2.2.3 is out

Okan Arikan — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 03:25:01 -0000

Hi Everybody,

Pixie 2.2.3 is out. This version has significant improvements over the previous version in terms of accuracy, performance and stability.

It also has support for __nonspecular / __nondiffuse shader parameters.

As usual, a significant number of the bugs raised in the discussion forum are also addressed. Thank you Pixie user community.

Okan

Pixie 2.1.1 is out

Okan Arikan — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 21:24:23 -0000

Hey Everybody,

Pixie 2.1.1 is out !!!

The new stuff includes:

Added support for:
- Inline RIB archives using ArchiveBegin/ArchiveEnd
* You can go crazy here. Pixie simply dumps the inline archive
into a RIB archive on disk, so there are no limits on the size
or complexity of your inline archives. The conditional execution
also works in these inline archives.

- Conditional execution using IfBegin/ElseIf/Else/EndIf
* We need your help here. Pixie now supports querying
user defined options/attributes as well as options/attributes
defined thru Attribute/Option. Unfortunately,
RenderMan documentation is not exactly clear on the names for
the standard option/attribute names. If you know the names of
standard options/attributes (the x resolution for example), let
us know.

- Named resources using Resource
* You can now create named resources that contain shading state and
restore portions of the shading state using these named resources.

Various optimizations/bug fixes.

Format change for pointcloud/brickmaps to store various renderer info.

Some arbitrary/hardcoded limits removed.

Okan

Pixie 2.0.2 is out

Okan Arikan — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 08:17:33 -0000

Pixie 2.0.2 has been release. The changes are:

* 64Bit clean codebase. The Pixie source should
compile cleanly on 64Bit platforms. Please let
us know if you have any issues with this. Note:
you'll need libtiff (and X11 on linux / OSX) to be
compiled in 64Bit mode too.

* Fixed issues with dissapearing subdiv geometry when raytracing
* Fixed issues with speckled irradiance / occlusion data when using
the "R" mode

* Reduced raytrace memory overhead

* Support for vector/color/point/normal subscripting shorthand in SL
v[n] = x => setcomp(v,n,x)
x = v[n] => x = comp(v,n)

Pixie 2.0.1 is out

Okan Arikan — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 22:58:18 -0000

Hi Everyone,

If you've been following our progress, you will notice that we didn't make a release since October. But this has not been a vacation for us...

George and I present Pixie 2. The changes from 1.7.6 are so many that I will not even try to enumerate them all.

Here're the important ones:

- Multithreading
Pixie has a new, multi-threaded core. Our implementation is very efficient and scalable.

- Scalable raytracing
We rewrote the entire raytracing pipeline to be more scalable and more accurate. Pixie now uses adaptive multiresolution raytracing using ray differentials. Combined with the raytracing cache, you should be able to use raytracing with complicated scenes.

- Various optimizations bug fixes.
Pixie is now much faster (due to not only multi-threading but also various optimizations we did to the rendering core). It is also much more scalable.

Okan

Pixie 1.7.3 is out

Okan Arikan — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 16:53:41 -0000

Hi Everybody,

Pixie 1.7.3 is out and it has some cool features. We implemented the "bake3d" and "texture3d" support. So your expensive shaders can cache computation and access it at arbitrary resolutions.

According to PrMan app-notes, these functions may replace "indirectdiffuse" and "irradiancecache" functions in the future releases.

Okan

Pixie 1.5.7

Okan Arikan — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 23:17:13 -0000

Pixie 1.5.7 is out.

It includes the following imrpovements / fixes

GI/irradiancecache improvements:

maxError is 0.5 by default, turning it higher gives faster / smoother results (but less accurate). Lower, say 0.1 is suitable for high quality. Memory consumption and speed during GI baking are much improved. Note that the difference between 1.5.7 and 1.5.6 is improved compatibility of the way the maxError parameter works for tweaking the quality of the irradiance bakes.

OpenEXR support:

OpenEXR support has tentatively been added. Not all compilers / platforms appear to support this yet.

Pixie detects OpenEXR support, but the check for OpenEXR needs to be told where to look if the libs are not in the standard /usr/lib location.

It can also be told to link in statically. Both are options to configure:

--with-openexr-prefix=/path/to/openexr/install/location/
--enable-static-openexr

This enables an OpenEXR display driver to output OpenEXRs

Subdivision Surfaces:

Subdivision surfaces should now displace properly and their rendering has been improved in meshes with creases specified

Raster Oriented Dicing:

There are three new attributes (for the zBuffer and hidden hiders)

"dice" "rasterorient" 1 - 0=nonrasteroriented dicing
"cull" "backfacing" 1 - 0=don't cull backfaces (for bake and GI)
"cull" "hidden" 1 - 0=don't cull hidden surfaces (for bake and GI)

These do the following (respectively)
backface culling is disabled for unshaded objects (they're shaded regardless)
hiding of unshaded grids is disabled
the dicing metric is determined in 3d raster-space rather than 2d raster

Either way, the visual result (which uses shaded grids) should be the same.

This is really useful for situations where the side-effects of running the shader are the important output of a render - eg irradiance cache generation. The generated caches will be valid from more angles than without these options

Other Changes / fixes:

* Corrected man page for texmake (the cube map face orders now match the program)
* RiTransformEnd should properly maintain the 'handedness' of the current transform
* fixed an issue where the RiSubdivisionSurface might alter the spline basis
functions in the current attributes
* String handles for lights are properly handled
* Environment lookup is fixed
* DESTDIR is respected for installing the shaders using the Makefile (supports RPM installations

Pixie 1.4.4 is out

Okan Arikan — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 17:59:06 -0000

Pixie 1.4.4 contains a .NET port of Pixie. The windows version of the renderer should now work faster.

PS: You can still compile Pixie with Visual Studio 6. There are two different set of project files (under "windows" directory) for .NET and VC6.

Okan

Pixie 1.3.23 is out

Okan Arikan — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 04:55:28 -0000

This version fixes most of the bugs submitted in the last 2-3 weeks.

Okan

Pixie 1.3.20

Okan Arikan — Tue, 21 Sep 2004 22:09:10 -0000

This version has significant improvements on the scan-line portion of the renderer. More specifically, the occlusion culling works much better now.

This version also fixes some scan-line rendering bugs that used to happen around transparent surfaces.

Okan

Recent posts to news

Pixie 2.2.5 is out

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