Blender Adds Raytracing 233
rastachops writes "Blender, the Open Source 3D modelling tool has recently added Raytracing to its extensive list of features. 'Believe it or not, but Ton has integrated the raytracer from Blender's predecessor, Traces into Blender. He said "the algorithm has been optimized and is now ten times faster. Combine that with a PC that's forty times faster than in the early 1990's and raytracing is almost usable". For a comparison checkout the before and after screenshots.'"
Much easier way... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Much easier way... (Score:2)
Re:Much easier way... (Score:2)
Re:Much easier way... (Score:3, Funny)
Blender is getting mature (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Blender is getting mature (Score:2)
What has happened to BMRT (Blue Moon Render Toolbox, I believe is the full name)? It looks like not only has development stopped, but all trace of it has vanished. What gives?
Let's pull a "Blender" and make sure it gets OSed!
Re:Blender is getting mature (Score:2, Informative)
The founders of Exluna were accused by Pixar, their former employer, of misappropriation of trade secrets, copyright infringement and patent infringement. Exluna was able to settle the lawsuit by ending BMRT.
Here's a list of RenderMan-compliant renderers [dotcsw.com]. Some of them, like AQSIS [aqsis.com], are open source.
Re:Blender is getting mature (Score:2)
Re:Blender is getting mature (Score:2)
Cheers
Re:Blender is getting mature (Score:5, Informative)
Actually there's been an undo feature for a long while, it was just clunky and unwielding before...
Undo in Blender 2.3* (Score:4, Informative)
It's quite useful, and you can also set how many levels of Undo you want. You can also set it to auto save every so many minutes.
The Blender documentation is ongoing, but they are coming out with a new 2.3 manual in January. 600+ pages and Blender 2.31 on a CD, along with tutorials.
Check out blender.org [blender.org] for the main site and some useful overviews. To really hone your skills, visit Elysiun [elysiun.com] and browse the forums. They are all about Blender and have sections for animation, modelling contests, GameBlender (Blender 2.25), and an extensive artwork section. To me, Elysiun is a great place to learn about different aspects of modelling in Blender.
Hah... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, at least we've got someone that is being truthful about their software's feature set... A bit too refreshing, if you ask me.
Re:Hah... (Score:2)
Re:Hah... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hah... (Score:3, Interesting)
It was also essentially 2D (often called "2-1/2D") in Doom. They used some major trickery to make it look like you had real 3D. However, the tricks greatly constrained the ma
Impressive but ... (Score:5, Funny)
Compare: www.whitehouse.gov [whitehouse.gov]
&
blender.org [blender.org]
Judge for yourself
Re:Impressive but ... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Impressive but ... (Score:2)
Re:Impressive but ... (Score:2)
But I will add that it is not only available by Googling for "miserable failure" (inside quotes), but all you have to do is hit the "I'm feeling lucky" button!
What's the use? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What's the use? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What's the use? (Score:5, Informative)
Radiosity isn't *the* solution to rendering either. There are a whole range of lighting effects we see in daily life, and even radiosity only simulates some of them. For example, caustics (the funny patterns of light on the bottom of the pool). Even more general approaches to simulating light are being researched, but I don't really know if any of them are in use commercially yet.
Also, in case you were wondering, Quake/Unreal/etc actually use radiosity rendering as part of the map making process, then store the results in "light maps" which are basically textures that control how light or dark a wall is instead of its color. Pre-computing the lighting allows real-time rendering of nice levels with radiosity effects, but it has several problems. Firstly, light maps take up a lot of memory (there's one for each wall, while most other textures are used on more than one wall and are tiled repeatedly), so they are stored at a pretty low resolution to minimize memory usage. This produces a blocky "stair-step shadow" effect that you've probably seen if you've played Counter-Strike. Secondly, since all the lighting is pre-computed, you can't change it easily. If you want a light to turn on and off, you have to store two light maps for every wall affected by that light: one with it on and one with it off. This is why in most games where you can shoot out lights, there are only a select few that you can shoot out. This approach has even more trouble with moving objects or moving lights (flashlights, car headlights, explosions, muzzle flashes). Real-time OpenGL or DirectX style lighting is usually used for these types of lights and moving objects, but then you don't get the nice shadows and other lighting effects that radiosity gives you.
Re:What's the use? (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, proper accurate raytracing as I've described will take a
Re:What's the use? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What's the use? (Score:4, Informative)
Sure it can! Raytracing can absolutely model diffuse interreflections. However, while radiosity is an analytic (though approximated through a mesh) solution, raytracing typically uses a Monte Carlo sampling technique to achieve this. You can imagine how painfully slow this is, but it works just fine. (And it doesn't require meshing your objects beforehand, either.)
Re:What's the use? (Score:2)
Also, it all must get quite a bit more complicated when the medium itself is diffracting. In this case you'd need to sample on all possible dir
Re:What's the use? (Score:4, Insightful)
Take caustics, for instance, like a magnifying glass focusing a light source onto a small point on a surface. This is, and has been, done using raytracing.
I've not actually implemented it, but I'm slightly familiar with the techniques. I imagine some intelligent sampling of incident rays, and maybe adaptive supersampling of these rays, would help a lot with the phenomenal costs.
Photon maps are another solution, and (if I remember correctly), they implement forward ray tracing instead of the usual backward ones. Since you can then cast rays from the light source outward, this can be much, much cheaper.
Re:What's the use? (Score:2)
Re:What's the use? (Score:5, Informative)
We make a commercial renderer ( Brazil r/s ), and I can safely say "Yes" to that one.
Most of the commercial renderers, either specific or coming with an application, support global illumination through the use of Quasi-Monte Carlo sampling.
It, in essence, does calculate everything accurately - as long as you set the scene up as such.
It's also stupid-slow
That's why there's Photon maps, Irradiance Mapping, metropolis light transport, and even more simple constructions such as highly optimized skylighting, arealights/shadows and so forth and so on.
Re:What's the use? (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, a bi-directional monte carlo path tracer
Yes, it's an approximation. It always is. The more samples you take, the more accurate. At some point, takin more samples won't do you much good, and it's accurate enough.
Yes, more advanced shader models (brdf, bssrdf, shader models derived from actual models, etc.) yield better results. But then again, that falls under the whole 'set your scen
Re:What's the use? (Score:2)
http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/metro/fig6.jp
http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/metro/ [stanford.edu]
Well-written tutorial on radiosity (Score:2)
Re:What's the use? (Score:2)
Szo
Re:What's the use? (Score:2)
For example, take this image. You might think that's a fine raytraced image.
That's about the lousiest raytraced image I've ever seen. Now this is a fine raytraced image [povray.org]!
Re:What's the use? (Score:2, Insightful)
Keep in mind that all the Pixar movies use rasterization techniques, not raytracing or radiosity. The reason you see those problems you stated above h
Re:What's the use? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What's the use? (Score:2, Interesting)
The REYES algorithm (the scanline algorithm that has been the "backbone" of Renderman since its creation) is incredibly fast, but with great results. A G5 at Pixar's booth at the SIGGRAPH conference last summer was rendering a frame of "Fi
Ewwwww (Score:2, Funny)
*bleah*
What he forgets to say (Score:2)
Comparison (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Comparison (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Comparison (Score:2)
Hrm, mirror? (Score:2)
Has to be said... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, you said Blender...
Not a graphics expert.... (Score:2)
Re:Not a graphics expert.... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not a graphics expert.... (Score:3, Informative)
I think it has to be done backwards, or you end up shooting rays all over the place, 99.99% of which are completely redundant. Whereas if you trace them from the screen back to their origin you don't end up burning processor cycles in vain.
But I may have that wrong - I'm a real-time graphics guy ; )
Re:Wrote one (Score:2, Informative)
It does have some pretty big deficiencies, which is what my graduate work is about.
Your tracer looks nice (it's in java?!?)
Re:Not a graphics expert.... (Score:2)
Re:Not a graphics expert.... (Score:4, Informative)
Raytracing on Linux (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Raytracing on Linux (Score:2)
LOL! Yes, POV can do raytracing. It's also a Monte Carlo raytracer (ie, Photon Mapping) and a Radiosity renderer, as well.
Don't forget ArtOfIllusion (Score:2)
Oh yeah, runs on Windows and Mac too. Guess someone might find that useful
http://www.artofillusion.org
Vik
If they were serious (Score:3, Funny)
Re:If they were serious (Score:3, Funny)
Ximian people.
Yay - Blender/GTK+ shouldn't be far away now
Mirror (Score:5, Informative)
Before [mindwarp.net]
After [mindwarp.net]
Re:Mirror (Score:2)
Re:Mirror (Score:3, Informative)
My one issue with the second image is the lack of soft shadows. The shadowmaps in the 1st image look nicer than the overly crisp raytraced shadows in the second. If they could implement area lights or some other soft shadowing technique for raytraced shadows it
Info: The monkey on the picture/other stuff... (Score:5, Informative)
Further down somebody talks about more features (shader, etc.)
This was a big issue with the 'future developement talks' at the blender conference this year. Software design issues were discussed and different approaches were evaluated. This years suzanne animation award winner has designed a shader tool that will be integrated into / act as a interface/usability reference for the big blender 3.0 redo. Which will have a shading enviroment integrated. Some other major parts of the new stuff will probably make extensive use of the Yafray raytracer and the basic design that went into it.
Far out dreaming into the future led to considering a solid interface to the OSS crystal space 3D engine as to bring back the closed source realtime stuff into blender and provide a professional editor and design tool for crystal space.
The problem with that is that CS has a totally different structure than recent and current realtime solutions in blender, so this only is an option after the big Blender 3.0 redo that will shed all the dirty hacks and establish a solid software design to the Blender codebase.
So goes the plan for blenders future.
Can't say no to this karma-whoring, can you?
How was the statuette produced? (Score:2)
Out of curiosity, how was the statuette produced? Was the output of blender used in the making of a mold or numerically-controlled machine instruction file?
I ask because I've begun wondering if blender could be used for modeling things that would ultimately be made in the real world, like prototypes of enclosures, mechanical gears, etc.
Re:How was the statuette produced? (Score:2)
Ton showed a picture of the box that came with the statuettes all broken of on the standing leg. Apparently the dutch company that had made them had forgotten to fill the box with stuffing material. Suzannes standing leg was thickened and then the statuettes were to be remade.
Apart from the bad packeging they where defi
Re:How was the statuette produced? (Score:2)
3D Art to Part [3darttopart.com]
I Just had a Blender workshop (Score:3, Interesting)
It si just great..definetivelly not ewasy to learn on one's self from the ground up. At elast not with another miriad of multimedia packages that come in any modern distro.
I have always being a POVray fan, and I'd say that some kinds of work I still could do faster on POVRay than on Blender, but it is great to see even more features in it.
Anyway, blender is wellcome to the team.
Re:I Just had a Blender workshop (Score:2)
But it was part of a Free Software interchange initiative among cities - a guy froma city a couple hundred kilometers came up to coordinate this workshop. In exchange, one of ours will travel there to work out a Python workshop in January. Maybe you could try to organize stuff like this with your local LUGs or other groups.
what did they use before?! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:what did they use before?! (Score:3, Informative)
Whar Blender really needs... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Whar Blender really needs... (Score:4, Informative)
I'd give you the link... but the website is slashdotted into oblivion right now.
Before and after pics - a graphics point of view (Score:4, Informative)
I am not trying to put down the quality of ray-tracing though, it is the best. Others try to simulate ray-tracing. But folks rarely use ray-tracing in interactive settings (like gaming). Unless you can play at less than 1 fps.
Others Blender Raytracing examples .. (Score:2, Informative)
Open source success story (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not Maya, but it's on par with anything in the low-mid range for windows, and it's getting better by leaps and bounds
Give Blender a couple years and we might Hollywood contributing code. Hollywood lves Gimp, and I could see this becoming a real player in 3D.
Re:Open source success story (Score:4, Interesting)
Completely agree. Blender is a real workhorse now. It's stable, fast, and I can do a lot of things very quickly. In one demo I created an airplane complete with rivets, rusty tail section and bullet holes in under 15 minutes. It can easily replace many of the $15,000 setups used in news stations or even some low end studios.
Now let's get some real-time raytracing (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, people also already have photon mapping working on the most recent generations of NVIDIA and ATI hardware offerings, and I think I recall someone from NVIDIA saying at some point that they expected this to be able to work at interactive framerates sometime during the NV4x cycle of GPUs.
Usability? (Score:2)
Yes, all we now need is a complete rewrite of Blenders UI-from-hell(TM) so people finally can say the same thing about Blender.
Re:Usability? (Score:2)
Re:Usability? (Score:2)
However, the Blender UI has gotten a major overhaul with the 2.3 release. It's now possible for me to use Blender, where before I'd just become frustrated and give up (and yes, I read the documentation).
There's a lot that remains to be done, but from the mockups I've seen (for example, those by William Reynish [shadeless.dk]), using Blender in the future promises to be a joy rather than a case of "Rage Against the Machine".
Finally... (Score:2)
Blender had that year of non-development and was stuck at 2.23 until NAN was able to get the donations to free the code.
Since Blender has come a long way adding in Quicktime export, a new interface, NTSC (16:9 HD) rendering size. Granted the Game engine had been removed, but still it was commin
Re:Finally... (Score:2)
To me, it would seem like this is an advantage, because then you aren't locked in to one raytracer.
Plus, Povray is AWESOME. I was hopelessly addicted to making a recreation of a Dr. Seuss scene. It was my first real project using povray (aka non chrome ball over green and white checkers) and it turned out VERY decently!
povray is VERY professional grade software. check out these [povray.org] for what
Before and After pictures (Score:3, Funny)
Figure 1. A normal webserver
Figure 2. A molten, smoking mass.
What's with the example picture? (Score:3, Funny)
Hybrid Renderer (Score:5, Informative)
Ton's had the raytracer written for some time now, but it never got incorporated into Blender. The preview is the first to incorporate the code.
You could already do shadows and reflections in Blender, but they were simulated with shadowmaps and reflection maps, the same way that Pixar's Renderman renderer had done it.
The Yafray [yafray.org] (Yet Another Free Raytracer) is a stand-alone full raytracer with a lot of features that has nice integration (thanks to Python scripting) in Blender. Future versions of Blender promise to integrate it more tightly, and seems more likely that's where a 'full raytrace' option for Blender will come from.
Art of Illusion (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Art of Illusion - exellent stuff (Score:3, Informative)
It would be great if Blender and ArtOfIllusion could share a decent file format. It'd save everyone a lot of heartache in the long term.
It has rendering and raytracing options, so both camps can be kept happy. Oh, and don't be put off by its use of Java. This is by far the speediest Java graphics app I've come across anywhere.
Vik
Oh please!..... (Score:5, Funny)
Blender is going places (Score:5, Informative)
Copies of the 2.0 Blender book can still be fond in some shops or simply downloaded as a PDF [blender.org] (of course, this one doesn't cover armatures and has the 'old' interface) There is also a newer documentation project [blender.org] using the 2.0 guide as base but completely reworking the obsolete content. Of course, there is also a truckload [nuance9.com] of tutorials available on the Net
Since the move to Open Source, Blender has gotten, amongst others
These are just my favorites. There is tons of other stuff as well.
In the coming weeks/months, we'll see
And the whole thing runs on most of todays's OSes
As you can see, lot's of stuff to go around. It might not be Maya or SFX or Houdini but it sure is a lot more fun!!!
If your first encounter with Blender's non-standard GUI made you trow up your hands in disgust, you should consider to try it again.
Re:Blender on Linux (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Blender on Linux (Score:2)
Re:Blender on Linux (Score:2, Informative)
Distributions such as Debian, SuSE and Red Hat ship slowest common denomitator binaires, which are very slow. I have done it, and the speed of blender well offsets the installation time.
Re:Blender on Linux (Score:2)
grab the source and compile it with hardware rendering support.
Voila! it's not 2 times faster than windows. (really! it is!)
Re:Blender on Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Blender on Linux (Score:2)
As you may know, you are pretty much stuck with having to get an Nvidia card or a recent ATI card to get actual hardware OpenGL on Linux. Kind of sucks but at least you will also improve the Windows performance as well, with these better cards. If you have such a card you may be missing the drivers, which is probably more of a pain to solve than replacing the card. You can get the Nvidia driver from their site, look for the file with the instructions "s
Re:Wow! Almost Usable! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow! Almost Usable! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wow! Almost Usable! (Score:2)
Re:Wow! Almost Usable! (Score:2)
Re:WTF? (Score:3, Interesting)
The news is that Blender now has built in support for it, so that you can raytrace your models to see how they'll look without messing with a separate program.
Re:What I want to know is .... (Score:2)
Re:What I want to know is .... (Score:2)
As far as 3d applications go for Unix you have Blender, SoftImage, Lightwave, Maya, Alias/Wavefront, PovRay, Renderman, and more. Note that Lightwave doesn't run under Linux, but is ported to SGI's Irix - a Unix based OS.
There are 2d applications as well: the GIMP, Photogenics, even Photoshop if you count MacOS X - or version 3 whi
Re:What I want to know is .... (Score:2)
That reminds me of my last job. I was the 'IT Director' (aka computer repair dude with a fancy title) and part of my duties was to admin the webserver.
Long story short, I decided to leave that job when the head webdesign lady told me "I don't know HTML and I don't plan on learning it." I'm not kidding, those were her EXACT words. Apparently she was just using frontpage (which COMPLETELY fucked up a bunch of S
Re:What I want to know is .... (Score:3, Informative)
On the other hand, there may not really be much there that technically couldn't be done on UNIX/Linux software, though a) it may involve repeated head-bangning-against-the-wall and wasted time due to the interfaces of much of the programmer designed *nix graphics software interfaces, and b