SplutterFish: Brazil r/s Public Test Version 0.4.x

Synopsys

Brazil r/s Public Test is a feature limited verison of Brazil r/s, the commercial production renderer from SplutterFish. Brazil is, at it's core, a high performance raytrace renderer that supports many advanced and super cool features like area lighting, gi, sss, and much much more (see http://www.splutterfish.com/brazilfeatures.html for more information). The Brazil r/s Public Test is for not intended for use as an evaluation. It is distributed by SplutterFish to stress test and debug components and portions of the commercial version of Brazil r/s.

Motivation

As always, the purpose of the Brazil public test releases is to provide mass testing and use, debugging information, stress testing and design evaluation. All are welcome to participate to what ever degree they wish and feedback is appreciated but not mandatory. This public test release is not intended as a demo or evaluation for end users. This is a feature limited version that will test the systems we need targeted at present. It is not representative of the breadth and depth of the tool-set in Brazil r/s or of the actual speed of the system (some performance enhancing features have been removed).

In this build we intend to test our core systems - raytracer, acceleration system, 3dsmax /VIZ and 3rd party plugin compatibility

What's Not In This Build

This build does not include many of the advanced features in Brazil r/s as we are not currently focused on testing these. A list of disabled features and limitations would include:

- All images render with a text overlay along the top and bottom of the image
- sub-surface scattering (sss) has been disabled
- render passes have been disabled
- g-buffer output has been disabled
- toon shading has been disabled
- glass effects (glossy and dispersive refractions) have been disabled
- reflective effects (glossy) have been disabled
- motion blur has been disabled
- bump displaced shadows have been disabled
- render effects have been disabled
- exposure control has been disabled
- image size has been limited to 1024x768 maximum
- the advanced camera has been disabled
- the area lights have been disabled
- photon mapped caustics have been disabled
- photon mapped illumination has been disabled
- the high-performance acceleration system has been disabled.
- loading/saving of render presets has been disabled
- MAXScript extenstions for advanced handling of missing maps and missing mapping coordinates has been disabled.

While this does sound like the renderer is pretty severely limited, the Brazil Public Test still includes a slew of high performance and advanced high-quality features. Aside from the resolution limitation and the overlay, this test build is still a fully functional renderer that will do full raytracing and path traced global illumination. This version is faster than previous versions, is more robust (better 3ds max compatibility and far fewer bugs) than the previous public test builds, and contains the same features that were used to generate nearly all the images in the gallery at splutterfish.com.
What's New In This Build
In the interest of equal time, here's a little rundown of what's new since the 0.2.26 alpha versions :)

- There is no time lock
- It is much faster
- Way more stable
- Now supports nearly all of max's core feature set
- Works with virtually all 3rd party plugins
- Has an all new depth of field sampler
- Exclusion lists for ray tracing in the material
- Exclusion lists for gi generators
- Exclusion lists for skylight shadows in the Luma Server
- A proprietary image sample jittering algorithm which frequently allows dropping max image samples by 1 step
- Huge improvements to GI undersampling (try shade rate -4/1 with a fine bump map)
- TRANSPARENCY support (yes, for shadows too)
- Uses much less memory
- Has proper instancing support, etc. etc. -- go ahead, find out how much geometry you can throw at this thing now
- New image filter types ( Catmull-Rom, Cook Variable, Blackman, Video, Gaussian)
- Secondary GI Rate option for independent control over GI calculation of reflected/refracted surfaces
- CSG plane now fully accepts materials, not just maps
- New Invert and Reverse At Focus options added to depth-of-field 'Bokeh'
- Brazil Test Mtl adds a new 'Transparent Shadows' (think: Standard material Opacity), as well as 'Prevent Internal Reflections', to cut down on rendertimes by allowing 'trapped' rays to 'escape'

We've intentionally made the overlay non-intrusive and you are welcome to crop the overlay off of your rendered images if you so wish. You may do whatever you wish with images you create using the Brazil Public Test.

Usage

Those that have used previous Brazil r/s Test versions should be able to pick up on the usage of this newer version very quickly. Check the reference manual for explanations of specific UI controls. There is no usage guide or tutorials included with this version.

Pub Test Version History

- Version 0.1.3, 0.1,4 - proof of concept - development and testing - implementation as render effect.
- Version 0.2.21, 0.2.25, 0.2.26 - running as a true renderer plugin - solidifying core architectures
- Version 0.4.x - feature complete - final bug whacking

To Be Done

bugs, bugs, bugs.... - help us find them :)
Check out http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/tut30/tut30.htm for some good pointers on finding and describing bugs you find. Go to http://www.splutterfish.com/splutterbugs.html to report bugs. Thanx in advance for any help you provide.

Installation

docs are here.

General

All the usual disclaimers apply. If you have any comments or suggestions, direct them to software@splutterfish.com. Give us some feedback on this stuff. ... and as always, Enjoy :)

See also: the license agreement. By using this software, you are agreeing to abide by that granted license.

R&D at SplutterFish, LLC.
Venice Beach, CA 90291

software@splutterfish.com
Scott Kirvan - SplutterFish

Last Modified : 04/23/02

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