Feature List

From Affogato

Contents 1 Geometry Output 2 Motion Blur 3 Camera 4 Light Output 5 Automatic Map Generation 6 Textures 7 Data File (RIB) Formatting 8 Pipeline

Geometry Output

• NURB Surfaces
  • NU(R)B Surfaces can be written out non-rational, saving data
• NURB Curves
  • Arbitraty parameter support through userDataMaps
  • Width/radius can be set at root, middle and tip
  • NU(R)B Curves can be written out non-rational, saving data
• Polygonal Meshes
  • Polygons
  • Subdivision Surfaces including support for arbitrary sharp creases & corners
  • Additional data that gets exported by default:
    • Vertex colors
    • Weight maps
• Hair as Curves
  • Hair gets rendered as smooth b-spline curves, not approximated using line segments
  • The hair inherits displacement of the emitter from the Rendertree
  • Data that gets exported by default per hair curve
    • Position of the first CV at the root
    • Normal of the emitter at the root
    • uv coordinates of the emitter the root
    • unique hair strand id
• Primitives (Quadrics)
  • Spheres
  • Blobby modeling extension for Spheres
• Particles
  • Supported render types: Particles, Disks, Spheres, Sprites or Blobbies. To come: Lines & Curves
  • Data that gets exported by default
    • Color
    • Opacity
    • uv coordinates of the emitter
  • Arbitrary per-particle attribute and userDataMap support
  • Blobbies can be split using a custom attribute or userDataMap "blobbyid"

Motion Blur

• Transformation motion blur support
• Deformation motion blur support
• Up to 16 motion samples
• Separate control over camera, shadow map, transformation and deformation motion blur
• Control over shutter timing & offset; four different timing modes to choose from
• All other RenderMan-specific motion blur attributes are fully supported:
  • Motion factor
  • Shutter efficiency (3Delight only)
  • Sample motion (3Delight & PRMan only)
  • Extreme motion with depth of field sampling strategy (3Delight & PRMan only)

Camera

• Depth of Field support
• Front- & back plane geometry can be automatically generated for special effect shaders
• Support for Hype lens- & resolution data to produce images with a safe overscan for re-distortion at compositing stage
• All other RenderMan specific camera attributes are fully supported:
  • Focus factor (3Delight only)
  • Extreme motion with depth of field sampling strategy (3Delight & PRMan only)

Light Output

• XSI distant-, spot- & point lights supported natively
  • If no shader is attached to a light, default Affogato lightsource shaders are used (affogatopoint, affogatospot & affogatodistant); these lights mimic the behavior of the standard XSI light sources.
• Full custom light shader support

Automatic Map Generation

• Automatic shadow map generation for distant- and spotlights (point light shadow maps are currently unsupported)
• Automatic shadow map generation from arbitrary orthographic- or perspective cameras (including an unlimited number of shadow cameras per light for custom light shaders)
• Automatic environment map generation from any object

Textures

• Full UV support for
  • NURB Surfaces
  • NURB Curves
  • Subdivision Surfaces
  • Primitives
  • Particles
  • Alternative output for all geometry types to support multiple UV sets
• Optional normalized UV output for NURB Surfaces & Curves

Data File (RIB) Formatting

• Data granularity support allows to write out data files in several chunk sizes:
  • Sub-Frame — One data file for options & world
  • Sections — One data file for options, world split into lights, spaces & geometry
  • Sub-Sections — One data file for options, world into lights, spaces, geometry, each of the latter split into archives per-object
  • Output of any Section or Sub-Section can be omitted to shorten export time
• Transformations can be separated from geometry in Sub-Section mode
• The world block data files is always shared in all shadow- and environment map data files

Pipeline

• Job files can be output in Liquid XML format or RSP's proprietary 'jobEngine' XML format.
  • Full dependecy tree of final image modeled in job file
  • Both formats are easy to parse
  • Job files can be written out at arbitrary chunk sizes to allow firing off the renderung of part of a sequence before the data generation of the entire sequence has finished; minimum granularity is a single frame
• Arbitrary OS commands can be run before and after each frame
• Render globals/options can come from an external XML file or a custom property inside XSI
• Arbitrary frame sequences can be specified (not just start frame, end frame and step size)
• All paths can be written absolute or relative to a base path (the project root)
• Built-in cache support for ultimate pipeline flexibility on a renderfarm:
  • Writing files to the cache (data files, images and maps)
  • Sourcing files from the cache (data files and maps)
  • Copying files back from the cache to their final correct location after rendering is done (data files, images and maps)
  • Support for 3Delight's network render cache
• Data can be sent directly to the renderer, omitting generation of any data files (e.g. RIBs) for faster feedback, reduced i/o and less (intermediate) storage requirements (only supported by 3Delight or RenderDotC)
• Different verbosity levels supported so log files only contain needed information
• Properties in XSI can be aquired the XSI way or using hierarchical scene tree scanning (like e.g. in Maya), allowing the inheriting of properties from parent objects
• Support for 3Delight's multi-CPU and multi-host rendering