LuxCoreRender 2.1 ships
The LuxCoreRender team has released version 2.1 of the open-source physically based renderer, adding a new image denoiser, plus the option to pause and resume renders via the Blender integration plugin.
A hybrid CPU/GPU unbiased render engine, formerly known as LuxRender
Formerly known as LuxRender, LuxCoreRender was rebooted last summer with a change of name, a new project website, forum and online documentation.
It’s an unbiased render engine with a range of production features and, as of LuxCoreRender 2.0, supports hybrid C++/OpenCL rendering on CPUs and GPUs.
The 2.0 release also reduced the number of DCC tools into which the renderer is integrated: whereas LuxRender used to have plugins for a range of apps, LuxCoreRender only supports Blender.
New in 2.1: Bayesian Collaborative Denoiser, option to pause and resume renders in Blender
New features in LuxCoreRender 2.1 include a render denoising system based on the same open-source Bayesian Collaborative Denoiser library recently adopted in appleseed 1.9.
There is also a new CPU-based direct light sampling cache, intended to accelerate renders of scenes with multiple small light sources.
The Blender integration also gets the option to pause a render in progress, edit light groups and other settings, then resume the render: a feature orignally rolled out in version 2.0 of the standalone edition.
System requirements and availability
LuxCoreRender 2.1 is available under an Apache 2.0 licence. Binaries are available for Windows and Linux; Mac users will need to compile it from the source code.
BlendLuxCore 2.1, the current version of the Blender integration plugin, requires Blender 2.79b.
Read a full list of new features in LuxCoreRender 2.1 in the online release notes