Aqsis Renderer / News: Recent posts

I have just put up a new release of the source, win32 binary archive, and the new Win32 Inno Setup based installer. The Installer is experimental so try it and see if it works, almost certainly will need changes. It will setup AQSIS_* environment variables under WindowsNT/2000 and possibly XP, but that's about it. By the way the numbering has changed, I got fed up with the stupid x000, x001 release, now it is just an incrementing release number.

Big News!

The first Mac OSX binary release of aqsis is available. See the release notes for details of usage.

Cheers Doug.

PaulG

Mainly a bugfix release, both source archive and Win32 binary available. See release notes for changes.

Quick turnaround, only required a few small updates to get the Win32 archive and binary working. See release notes for major change details of the 0.6 version.

Version 0.6.0000 is release, quick overview...
Major texturing rewrite
Mac OSX support
CSG support
see release notes for more details.

NOTE: this release is only tested against Posix, new source release and Win32/Mac binary release shortly.

PaulG

Both source archive and Win32 binary. Main changes include Michel Joron's implementation of texture map filtering and out-of-range value support, and his MPG culling work. Also includes some optimisation work across the board.

Following the Source release for 0.5.4000, the Win32 binary release. See the notes for changes, include rib out library, binary rib support, trim curves, improved textures.

0.5.4000 released as a source archive. Many changes, rib out library, binary and gzipped RIB support, trim curves etc.

Thanks again to Lionel Lacour, we now have support for binary encoded RIB files, as well as gzipped ASCII and gzipped binary RIB files. Well done again Lionel.

Thanks to Lionel Lacour, we now have an ASCII RIB library, similar in functionality to BMRT's libribout. This allows us to do nice things like compile alternative language bindings (Perl,Python,Java etc.) against Aqsis without relying on other packages. Currently only available in CVS, there will be a release soon to include it.

Version 0.5.3000 is now available as a binary archive for the WIndows platforms. See notes for more details of changes.

0.5.3000 is now available as a source archive, Windows binary to follow soon. Many fixes and the implementation of sockets based display devices on Posix. See notes for more details.

libargparse is now released as a source archive for Posix. Should help to aleviate the problems some newcomers have been having compiling Aqsis for the first time.

There are archives for the new release 0.5.2000 as both source tar archive and Windows binary. Changes include various bug/memory leak fixes, and tranformation motion blurred subdivision surfaces. Finally all primitives are supported in transformation motion blur. See release notes for details.

Enhancements:

• Aqsis now uses a new configuration mechanism.
  The base path for Aqsis is obtained using the following mechanism.
  If the -base option is passed on the command line it is used.
  If the AQSIS_BASE_PATH environment variable is defined it is used.
  The current working directory is used (./).
  The configuration file (used to be ribber.cfg) is now .aqsisrc.
  It is found using the following procedure.
  If the -config options is passed on the command line it is used.
  If the environment variable AQSIS_CONFIG is defined it specifies the name and location of the config file.
  If HOME is defined, and contains a .aqsisrc, it is used.
  If the Aqsis base path contains a .aqsisrc it is used.
  If /etc/.aqsisrc exists it is used.
  This file is a standard RIB file used to set up the default state of various options, in particular the searchpath.
  The various searchpaths default to the following (prior to loading the .aqsisrc file).
  If the -[shaders|textures|archives|displays] option is specified on the command line it is used.
  If the AQSIS_[SHADERS|TEXTURES|ARCHIVES|DISPLAYS]_PATH environment variable is defined it is used.
  Otherwise the Aqsis base path followed with /[shaders|textures|archives|displays] is used.
• Windows and Posix now both use aqsis(.exe) as the primary rendering command, cribber is now removed.
• Windows and Posix now both use aqsl(.exe) as the shader compiler.
  Windows has a new executable aqsl.exe which performs the same task as the aqsl script on Posix.
• slpp has been modified to support stdout as its output for use with aqslcomp.
• Andy Gill has added support for occlusion culling and caching object bounds.
  This is significant improvement over the basic operation allowing much more complex scenes to be handled.
• Thomas Burge has added a Bessel and Disk filter.
• Andy Gill has speeded up motion blur by using multiple bounds for each micropolygon.
  Once again this is a sigificant speedup in the case of motion blurred images.... read more

This is the first release since going open source and is a major update, first release to include Posix support. The two main applications are now ported to Posix, the command line renderer and sl compiling facilities.

The current status of the Aqsis Renderer project is now checked in to the CVS repository. Still needs a bit of effort to build it, rudimentary instructions in the BUILD document for the brave. Commenst and suggestions gratefully accepted. Any problems email me and I'll do my best to help.