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fryrender one SP2 has been released!!!
Dear reader,
March 2009 has been an important month to us, as we have had 3 new releases:
1- fryrender one SP2
2- SWAP v1.1
3- frybench.com
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This newsletter revolves around the release of fryrender SP2, the biggest leap forward in our light simulation
technology since the Release Candidate. The newsletter elaborates a bit on why SP2 is the best fryrender to date, and what has changed
since SP1. On the other hand, a brief description on what's new in SWAP 1.1 and what's frybench.com is provided.
Note for our fryrender or SWAP customers: You can upgrade yourself by
downloading the new setups from the usual location. Note that SP1 licenses are compatible with SP2, so you won't need to re-activate your
products. To avoid unnecesary re-activation requests, please make sure that you backup your license.ini file in a safe location
before you install the new setup.
Note for our fryrender DEMO users: The DEMO version of fryrender has been upgraded to SP2 as well, and it is
available for download from our website www.fryrender.com as usual.
fryrender one SP2
Of all the improvements introduced in this upgrade, maybe the most remarkable change is that
>> SP2 is about 20% FASTER than SP1 <<
This speed gain is the result of a deep revision, clean-up and optimization of our rendering core,
which has led to better code. No cheats, shortcuts, biases, or any fundamental changes in the technology have been
involved whatsoever. The following animated .GIFs depict this assertion:
Another remarkable improvement that many of you were asking for is the resurrection of Importance-Sampling-driven IBL.
IS-IBL, which was broken in the previous build, has been fixed in SP2 and is back for good. Moreover, we have strengthened it so now it
will behave better than it used to in scenes with strong reflective or refractive caustics:
We have also reviewed and re-written our anti-aliasing system to improve the final output quality. We detected some
weaknesses which are gone now. You can see more images and read more about these changes in the fryrender forum:
This is the detailed changelog for SP2:
Additions & improvements
- 20% faster rendering core
- Importance-Sampling IBL is working again
- Definitive Anti-Aliasing system
- IBL will render caustics and certain GI situations more smoothly now
- Better tonemapping for burnt-out tones
- sRGB-corrected physical sky hues
- Material auto-conversors are supporting .PNG / .TIF now
- Added support for mouse-wheel in the UI
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Bug fixes
- Fixed some glitches in the UI
- Old multi-threading conflicts when using several instances of the standalone are fixed
- Fixed scrollbars in the UI
- Fixed Light UI
- Fixed problems with cropped sliders when resizing the UI
- Fixed .TGA vertical flip in some .TGA files
- Fixed bug that would make .TGA files fail to save under RAM-stressed situations
- The OBJID buffer will keep the same colors through all the frames in an animation now
- Random colored spots in the framebuffer at very high efficiency (10000+) values fixed
- All Kelvin colors will now carry the same average power regardless of their temperature
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Warnings for existing users
- .DSIs generated with versions older than SP2 will not load properly in SP2
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SWAP 1.1
SWAP, fryrender's young sidekick was upgraded a couple of weeks ago. The most obvious improvement introduced in SWAP 1.1 is
multi-swapping, which means that now it is possible to tag as many objects as you want to SWAP materials on them.
We recorded a few new sessions of use, which we posted in SWAP's home page
for you to watch. They are particularly descriptive and self-explanatory:
Some other improvements were made in the texture filtering process performed by the GPU which will improve the output quality:
And other minor features were added, like the ability to apply many textures in a batch for quick creation of brochures
with multiple variants of the same render.
A detailed changelog for SWAP 1.1 was posted in our forum:
SWAP 1.1 announcement in the fryrender forum
frybench - fryrender-based CPU benchmarking tool
Many customers and DEMO users have asked us which computer architecture would help them render faster.
This recurring question led us to think that it would be a great idea to set up a public benchmarking chart that could provide
a definitive answer...
...so we started the frybench initiative.
frybench is a minimal version of fryrender, with all the UI trimmed away, and restricted to just one
demo scene provided by us. Anyone can download it, run it, and see how the performance of his machine compares to the results
posted by other users.
We have strong reasons to believe that fryrender is in fact an extraordinary tool to determine the raw power
of a CPU. Such a tremendous effort has been put into optimizing the rendering core at all levels that we are sure that it leaves no
room for the CPU to breathe during a single cycle.
The frybench initiative is open to everyone, not just fryrender customers or DEMO users. Anyone, from
hardware builders or reviewers to die-hard gamers can download the kit, run it, and see how good their computers are, and even
post results in our public chart.
You will find the public ranking, the downloadable kit and an F.A.Q. at
http://www.frybench.com
A persistent copy of this newsletter can be found at http://www.randomcontrol.com/newsletters
Kind Regards,
The RandomControl Team
www.randomcontrol.com
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