Glare Technologies ships Indigo Renderer 3.8
Glare Technologies has released Indigo Renderer 3.8, the latest update to the unbiased renderer. boosting render speed, and adding object scattering, a new sky model, and updating materials handling.
Anyone buying a new licence of the software also gets a free upgrade to version 4.0, which will introduce a new pure GPU-based rendering mode, with support for multi-GPU rendering.
Raw render speed up, new materials and scattering system
The headline feature in Indigo Renderer 3.8 is performance: Glare claims to have boosted raw rendering performance 1.5 times “on many scenes”, and by over two times on others.
Texture loading is now multi-threaded, and texture caching “enables up to 4.5x faster render start times, with render restarts up to 42x faster”.
There is also a new render-time object scattering system, a new Architectural Glass material, and improvements to the shading normals and the sky model. The SketchUp plugin has also been upgraded.
Full GPU-based rendering coming in version 4.0
Glare has also released more details of the pure GPU-based rendering mode due to be introduced in Indigo Renderer 4.0, shown running on a Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 GPU in the video above.
The rendering mode, which supports multiple GPUs, is based around a new OpenCL-based render core. Indigo’s existing GPU accleration, introduced in version 3.0, uses both OpenCL and CUDA.
Indigo Renderer 4.0 will also introduce a new hybrid photon mapping and bidirectional path tracing mode, assigned automatically by enabling a single checkbox.
The new hybrid mode is designed to handle “tricky lighting situations” such as “the combination of small light sources and specular materials like glass or water”.
Pricing and availability
Indigo Renderer 3.8 is available now for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Exporters are available for 3ds Max, Maya, Cinema 4D, Blender, SketchUp and Revit.
A new licence of Indigo Renderer itself costs €595 (around $730), while Indigo RT, which lacks network rendering and some advanced features, costs €145 (around $180).
Both versions are discounted by 16% until 31 December. The upgrade is free to registered users of Indigo 3.x.
Read more about the new features in Indigo Renderer 3.8 and 4.0