Clarisse 5.5 Early Access 1 is a public preview build meant to let you try the new Angie renderer, that we're super excited to introduce today, and to gather feedback from the community. Angie should not be used in production as Isotropix does not guarantee it will provide production level support on these Early Access builds. Nevertheless, we can't wait to hear feedback from you and to see the awesome renders you will create with it. For more information, please refer to the known limitations https://angie-limitations.isotropix.com and the FAQ https://angie-faq.isotropix.com pages. Rest assured that we will do our best to fix the bugs you may report and to improve Angie in future Early Access builds that we will often release.
Also, please note Clarisse 5.5 Early Access 1 is VFX Reference Platform CY2020 compliant, as is Clarisse 5. More information can be found here: http://www.vfxplatform.com. Furthermore, Clarisse 5.5 is only available on Windows 10 and Linux for now. Isotropix does not certify Clarisse 5.5 is working on Windows 11 and it is not yet compatible with Apple Silicon macs nor can it be run yet on Intel based macs on macOS 11 (Big Sur) nor macOS 12 (Monterey). Our team is doing its best to support these platforms in the future. For now, we're sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.
As always, you will find our software in the download area but before using the software, make sure to read the following DISCLAIMER.
WE STRONGLY DISCOURAGE YOU TO USE THESE EARLY ACCESS BUILDS IN PRODUCTION. WE WON'T PROVIDE ANY PATCHES/FIXES UNLESS YOU HAVE A SPECIFIC SUPPORT CONTRACT WITH ISOTROPIX. FOR PRODUCTION USE, WE RECOMMEND YOU TO USE THE LATEST 4.0 OR 5.0 SERVICE PACK (SP) AVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. DEVELOPMENT SNAPSHOTS DON'T PASS THE SAME CAREFUL QA PROCESS AS OF OUR NUMBERED PRODUCTION RELEASES (IE 4.0 OR 5.0). THEY ARE THEN CONSIDERED UNSTABLE. THESE BUILDS SHOULD ONLY BE USED FOR TESTING. THEY ARE MEANT SO THAT YOU CAN EXPERIENCE WHAT'S COMING NEXT, ANTICIPATE PIPELINE CHANGES WHEN NECESSARY AND MORE IMPORTANTLY PROVIDE US YOUR CRUCIAL FEEDBACK ON SOME PART OF THE WORKFLOW THAT WILL BE COMING IN THE NEXT VERSION OF OUR SOFTWARE. AS SUCH, SOME PART OF THE WORKFLOW INTRODUCED IN THIS RELEASE MAY CHANGE OR EVEN BE COMPLETELY REMOVED ACCORDING TO YOUR FEEDBACK. IN OTHER WORDS YOU MAY EXPECT SOME COMPATIBILITY ISSUES BETWEEN DIFFERENT DEVELOPMENT SNAPSHOTS.
What new in Clarisse 5.5 Early Access 1:
- A new Angie renderer is introduced. Much faster than the classic Clarisse renderer, it comes with both CPU and GPU rendering backends (GPU rendering is only available on NVidia GPUs, starting with Pascal models). Angie is a hybrid renderer, therefore, you can choose to render using the CPU or the GPU backend, depending on your hardware setup, with near pixel-perfect results between the two modes. The new Angie renderer provides a new sampling interface, very simple yet very powerful, to control under which criteria the progressive rendering stops. In the Preferences panel, you can now select your default renderer. In this Early Access release, Angie is the default renderer. For more information, please refer to the Reference guide.
- A new set of lights is introduced for the new Angie renderer. These new lights are specific to Angie and cannot be used with Clarisse classic renderer. Same goes for Clarisse lights that cannot be used with Angie. Please note we provide shelf scripts to convert your light rigs from Clarisse to Angie, and vice-versa. Should your scene have both Clarisse and Angie lights, incompatible lights will be ignored by the chosen renderer. Please note that Angie lights can only be textured using OSL nodes. Angie area lights (Plane and Sphere lights) can be combined and scattered the same way as gemeotries and volumes are. For more information, please refer to the Reference guide.
- Contrary to lights, classic Clarisse cameras are compatible with the new Angie renderer. There is no need to create specific cameras for Angie and the same camera can be shared between an Angie and classic Clarisse renders. In this release, Angie supports depth-of-field but motion-blur is disabled for now.
- A new Angie image layer is introduced to render your 3d scene with the Angie renderer. Like the classic Clarisse 3D layer, it provides all the attributes to specify the camera, Angie renderer, shading layers, visibilities, etc… All the features you love in the classic 3D layer are present in this new layer. For more information, please refer to the Reference guide.
- OSL shaders and closures are fully supported by the Angie renderer. Indeed, OSL is the shading system used by Angie and it works both with the CPU and GPU backends, providing near pixel-perfect renders between these backends. You can now use this powerful shading system to create looks for Angie. For more information, please refer to the Reference guide.
- A new MaterialX workflow is introduced to create portable looks. The full set of MaterialX nodes is at your disposal to lookdev your scenes. Compatible with Angie only, MaterialX looks are automatically converted to OSL shaders internally at render time. This conversion is transparent and does not require any action from users thus making MaterialX as easy to use as OSL for look development in Angie. You can also import and export MaterialX to and from other DCC applications. Finally MaterialX graphs can be collapsed into a single encapsulating node for enhanced scene management. For more information, please refer to the Reference guide.
- In addition to OSL and MaterialX, original Clarisse materials can be directly used with the Angie renderer. In the same way as for MaterialX, they are automatically translated into OSL shaders internally at render time via our Rosetta Stone Library. Please note there are some limitations in the OSL conversion and your Clarisse materials may look different when rendered with Angie. We plan to bring better compatibility in future Early Access releases.
- The Create menu has been completely overhauled to fit the new Angie renderer as well as the new OSL and MaterialX texture nodes.
- The 3D View has been improved to support both Clarisse classic and Angie renderers. You can select which renderer is used to display your scene in the 3D View preferences. For each renderer, specific options will be available in the 3D View toolbar. For instance, Angie provides 3 rendering modes: Simple Shading, Previz (with selectable environment light) and PBR. Please note that we chose to remove the GPU support for Clarisse renderer as the focus is now on Angie for GPU accelerated rendering. For more information, please refer to the Reference guide.
- A new simpler yet powerful AOV and LPE workflow is introduced for Angie layers. You can now directly setup your AOVs and LPEs by connecting builtin predefined nodes to your Angie layer. For more information, please refer to the Reference guide.
