EIAS 9 Camera Feature List

New Camera 9.0 Features

1. Multithreading
2. 64-bit renderer
3. New GI engine
4. New rendering features
   1. GI Glossy
   2. New Parallel Light Source options. The Sun Light
   3. Blurred Refractions
   4. Reactive Masks
   5. Locked Camera Maps
   6. Surface Raytrace transmission
   7. New Raytrace reflections filters
   8. Background and Foreground layers
   9. Caustics Rainbow
   10. TGA frames sequence render
   11. More Shaders added to host

See also: EIAS 9 Animator Feature List

1. Multithreading

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  We are pleased to inform you that Camera 9.0 can use all of your computer's processors. Most of the rendering operations are multi-threaded and performed in parallel: raytracing, GI, shading and lighting, photon emission and a variety of other functions as well.

  Multithreaded applications don't do everything in parallel. For example, I/O and plug-in operations are not parallelized because that wouldn't make Camera faster. This also means that multithreaded rendering does not require new versions of your plug-ins. Shader developers can support multithreading (easily in most cases), or, alternatively, inform Camera that their code can not run in parallel.

  All plug-ins and shaders that ship with EIAS v9 are multi-threaded. For network rendering (typically 2 or more slaves on the same machine), you can specify the number of processor cores used by each Camera instance.

2. 64-bit Renderer

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  Camera v9 coming as 32 and 64-bit render engines. Now Camera can use all of the RAM installed in your computer. Although 64-bit code is not faster in itself, faster rendering can be achieved indirectly because a larger amount of data can be allocated without disk swapping.

  Using Camera in 64-bit mode is optional. With only 2 GB of RAM installed in your computer it is more efficient to render in 32-bit mode. The choice between the 32 and 64 bit render engines is under your control: simply set the desired mode in Camera's settings dialog.

  The 64-bit render engine can invoke 32-bit model plug-ins. Although this produces some overhead, we hope it will make the migration to the 64-bit rendering architecture smoother for plug-in developers. Most third-party plug-ins don't require immediate updating.

  Third party shaders and flare plug-ins must be 64-bit compatible to run in the 64-bit render engine. The older ones will continue to work properly in the 32-bit render engine.

3. New GI engine

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  All of Camera's raytracing and Global Illumination software has been re-written, not only for multi-threading and 64-bits, but also for enhanced performance. The new GI features are:

  • caching secondary illumination (Irradiance caching). This provides much faster GI and soft shadows when used together with raytrace reflections and refractions.
  • alternate secondary illumination caching using pre-calculated photon maps. This feature was introduced in a previous EIAS version and has been improved in EIAS v9. Now photon maps can be used independently for raytrace reflections and refractions and can be controlled by each individual material's settings.
  • simplified setup, the Secondary Rays edit boxes (in the Light and GI Info windows) have been replaced with pop-ups that define the overall caching quality.
  • GI anti-aliasing has been enhanced to improve GI quality for small details.
  • new memory management allows Camera to render more polygons with same amount of RAM.

4. New rendering features

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  4.1 GI Glossy.

  GI Glossy is a reflective view-dependent effect, known also as "dull reflections". It's similar to blurred reflections but corresponds to the material's ability to reflect in a wide angle (like 10 or more degrees). Although GI Glossy requires additional GI rays (25% by default), it is calculated significantly faster than blurred reflections. The GI glossy feature was added in EIAS v8, but only for Image Based Lighting (IBL) and without any UI controls (material's specular attributes were used).

  In EIAS v9, the feature is expanded and fully equipped with UI options. So now GI glossy can be controlled for individual materials and for GI Sky Lights and GI Reverse Illumination separately.

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  4.2 New Parallel Light Source options.
  The Sun Light

  Parallel lights now support soft shadows, so now they can be used as real Sun lights. i.e. a sources that are infinitely far away but with a non-zero angular size. Therefore they produce soft shadows.

  The photon emission for Parallel Lights has also been updated. Now it casts photons in a parallel direction with new user controls to limit the emission area.

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  4.3 Blurred Refractions

  The functionality is similar to blurred reflections.

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  4.4 Reactive Masks

  A texture map (bitmap or procedural) can be installed as a Reactive Mask in the current material channel. The mask is not rendered itself but can be used by the maps that follow as an alpha channel. Additionally any texture can use the model's color as an alpha channel. The reactive shader system that was formerly part of the shader system is now available to Camera.

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  4.5 Locked Camera Maps

  This new feature allows you to fix Camera Maps at a specified position. This "sticks" them to surfaces just like material textures.

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  4.6 Surface Raytrace transmission

  This new option allows raytrace lighting to penetrate non-transparent objects regardless of whether they are modeled as a solid or a surface. Leaves are a typical application.

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  4.7 New Raytrace reflections filters

  Three new raytrace reflection modifiers have been added to the Material settings:

  • HDRI - provides more control for HDR reflections. A larger or entire HDR range can be used for materials with a small reflectivity value. The same textures can be reflected with less intensity by ideal mirrors, e.g. by highly reflective materials.
  • Falloff - a standard power modifier/modulator was added for raytrace reflections.
  • Diffuse - this filter affects the reflected diffuse component, but does not affect the other channels. This can be used to make only the brightest highlights reflective. The effect looks similar to caustics but is view-dependent.
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  4.8 Background and Foreground layers

  Background and Foreground textures (assigned in the Camera Info Window, Roto tab) are added automatically as layers (similar to Motion Blur and Glows).

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  4.9 Caustics Rainbow

  Also known as "chromatic aberration". Different wavelengths have different refraction indices, e.g. a prism produces rainbows.

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  4.10 TGA frames sequence render

  EIAS now can render to multiple TGA frames. Additionally all frames formats (PNG, TGA, PICT) are now supported by Renderama.

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  4.11 More Shaders added to host

  - RLimit
  - SuperLines
  - Texture Filter