AccuRender nXt

AccuRender nXt is a new AccuRender rendering engine currently under development.

The next AccuRender is under development. It is completely new technology and we need feedback from a wide range of users. Both professional renderers and designers that need an occasional killer image.

Contents 1 Goals 2 New technology 3 Technical Specifications 4 See also

Goals

The goals for the new AccuRender technology include:

• Substantially faster. Our long-term goal has always been to make our rendering technology fast enough to "Design with the lights on"™. We believe the new core makes that now possible for many users.
• Easier to use. The AccuRender technology should not burden designers with having to understand rendering technology. The new AR makes big steps in that direction.
• More accurate images. For a designer it is important to both understand how a space or building will actually look and feel, and also have the rendering tools needed to show off a design "in the best light". Our goal is to make both easy for the designer. The new core takes another big step in that direction.

New technology

The main differences are:

• Optimized core engine runs 4-5 faster

• handles models on large sites much better
• better thread scheduling for multi-core machines

• Better image quality

• images are continually refined and updated until halted
• trade processing time for quality
• much better anti-aliasing
• better tone reproduction, more saturated colors

• Indirect lighting without radiosity

• can handle complex models with many polygons
• fewer artifacts
• no specialized modeling required

• New HDR sky source algorithm

• better analytical sky source

• Better interior day-lighting

• possible to do without special "daylight sources"

• new material editor w/lighting and anti-aliasing

Technical Specifications

Core

Physically-based luminance calculation Choice of Packet Tracer or Path Tracer engines Progressive refinement algorithm 64-bit version for massive data sets

Multiprocessing

Parallel algorithms efficiently use all available cores Near-linear performance increase WRT number of cores Vector-based calculation using SSE

Lighting

Analytical sky and sun HDRi image-based lighting Up to eight Lighting Channels IES file support Luminance values available for all surfaces Refractive and reflective caustics Automatic daylight portals for efficient interior daylight simulations

Materials

Efficient displacement mapping with low memory overhead Normal and bump mapping Texture set support Procedural textures and bumps Blurry transparency and glossy reflection Fully assignable to ACA components

Entourage

3D plant editor and library Textured mesh object support (OBJ and 3DS format) RPC™ support

Ready-made Content

Fractal Trees Material Library HDRi Backgrounds

Camera

Perspective 2-Point Perspective Orthographic Panoramic Accurate depth of field

Image Editor and Output

Lighting channel manipulation Post-process fx like real-time depth of field, haze, and veiling glare. Image arithmetic Piranesi™ support HDR and EXR high dynamic range output Mask, material, and distance channels Automatic alpha-compositing

Animation

Easy to use 3D slide show animation Path-based animation

See also

• IRender nXt