Clarisse 5.5 Early Access 2 is a public preview build meant to let you try the new Angie renderer, which we've vastly improved since the release of the previous Early Access, 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.
Also, please note Clarisse 5.5 Early Access 2 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 mac systems running 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 CLARISSE 5.0 SERVICE PACK (5.0 SP) AVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. DEVELOPMENT SNAPSHOTS DON'T PASS THE SAME CAREFUL QA PROCESS AS OF OUR NUMBERED PRODUCTION RELEASES (IE CLARISSE 5.0). THEY ARE THEREFORE 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’s new in Clarisse 5.5 Early Access 2
New Features & Enhancements
General
- This build brings many improvements plus many changes in attribute’s naming, attribute’s organization and object’s type names. You may have to rework your Clarisse Early Access 1 scenes (and most probably your Angie shaders) to make them work for Clarisse 5.5 Early Access 2. For instance, the OslShaderTextureMapFile texture node has been renamed OslShaderMapFile. Another example is Volume geometries, the attributes related to the classic Clarisse renderer have been moved from the Volume>Sampling category to the Volume>Clarisse>Sampling one.
- We’ve greatly improved the GPU memory usage when multiple 3D Views or Image Views are open and use the Angie renderer in GPU mode.
- We’ve improved the Module documentation in the Reference Guide. User Reference pages have been simplified to show fewer technical details but Technical Reference pages are now more detailed. In particular, you'll find the raw CID code corresponding to each module class. We’ve also added the documentation of node outputs which is very useful for OSL and MaterialX nodes.
- It is now possible to specify a preferred hardware device for rendering with Angie. The preferred device is used to specify which device is used for rendering when creating a new Angie renderer or a new 3D View. Users can change the preferred device in the Angie section of the Preferences panel.
- Volume rendering has been greatly improved both in quality and speed.
- We’ve added support for motion-blur in both CPU and GPU modes. A new “Rendering>Motion Blur” category has been added to the Angie renderer to control motion-blur.
- We’re introducing on-demand texture loading and texture caching for the GPU rendering mode. A new “Texture Cache” category has been added to the Angie section of the Preferences panel. From there, users can control how much GPU memory is allocated to the texture cache, they can clear the texture cache and they can see how much GPU memory is used by the caching system. In addition, the memory allocated to texture caching for the CPU mode can also be specified from there and by default it uses the value specified in the “Input Output” section (which is used by the classic Clarisse renderer).
- A new automatic TX management system is introduced. It allows users to specify a folder in which TX files will be automatically generated and automatically used at render time by OslShaderImageFile. This system can be switched on/off from the Preferences panel in the “Input Output” section.
- Clip maps are now supported by the Angie renderer in both CPU and GPU modes.
- Opacity is now supported by Angie materials. As for materials for the classic Clarisse renderer, opacity is controlled via the Opacity attribute in the Surface>Geometry category of the material.
- New Transparency Depth and Threshold attributes have been added to the Angie renderer, in the new Rendering>Transparency category, to control how Angie optimizes the rendering of multiple transparency layers, the same way the classic Clarisse renderer does.
- A new caustic system is introduced. Controlled by the “Caustics Contribution” and “Caustics Sharpness” attributes, in the Sampling>Advanced category, this new system allows for an intuitive yet powerful control over choosing between physicality and rendering speed.
- In addition to the “Tessellation only” Displacement mode, we’ve added support for "Bump Only" and "Tessellation With Bump" modes for both the CPU and GPU modes of the Angie renderer.
- Geometries with multiple shading groups can now be assigned to different Displacement nodes.
- A new Cylinder light has been added to the Angie renderer in addition to the existing Plane and Sphere lights.
- It is now possible to control the sampling seed in the Angie renderer via the Seed attribute of the Sampling>Advanced category. The default value is $F which specifies that the seed is changing at each frame. It is possible to lock the noise by setting a constant value to the Seed attribute.
- When rendering curves, the matching of CPU and GPU renders has been improved.
- The “world_normal” AOV has been removed.
- The OSL node set has been completely redesigned in order to create an easier-to-use and more efficient node set for quicker look development than using Clarisse 5.5 Early Access 1. These changes may require rebuilding your shaders if users intend to load a scene made in Clarisse 5.5 Early Access 1 into Clarisse 5.5 Early Access 2. For instance, the input and output of many OSL texture nodes have been changed and this may result in connection loss when loading a scene from a previous build. Also, many texture node names have changed, again resulting in connection loss. One important change is now the ability to connect input and output of different types between 2 OSL nodes (an implicit conversion will be automatically done when necessary). Another important change is how projections are handled by the pattern generators and the Image File nodes. By default, they are now using the first UV set available (if any) or the parametric coordinates for texture mapping. A new Texture>Transformation category has been added to these nodes to control the texture mapping at the node level. For more information about this new node set, please refer to the latest documentation.
- New OslShaderScript and OslMaterialScript have been added to the OSL texture node set. These new nodes allow users to write custom shaders directly from within Clarisse.
- We’ve added new OSL nodes (OslMaterialSwitch, OslMaterialRaySwitch, OslShaderColorSwitch, OslShaderColorRaySwitch, OslShaderColorSideSwitch…) allowing branching in OSL shaders based on the ray types, the geometry side and a scalar input.
- We’ve hugely improved the rendering parity between the classic Clarisse shaders and the Angie ones.
- Bump mapping now works on all Angie materials.
- Diffusion subsurface scattering is now supported in both CPU and GPU modes.
- Thin film is now supported in OSL Autodesk Standard Surface material.
- Energy compensation on rough BSDF is now supported by Angie in both CPU and GPU modes. As for the classic Clarisse renderer, it compensates the loss of energy produced by rough standard microfacet BSDF and results in more realistic renders.
- A new OSL GetProperty node has been added to output geometric properties such as Object ID, Curve Radius… This node is the OSL equivalent of the Extract Property node in the classic Clarisse renderer.
- A new global variable $ANGIE_DEFAULT_TX has been added and is used by the Image File OSL node in the Filename attribute to specify the default texture. This variable can be changed in the Angie section of the Preferences panel.
- The classic Clarisse Blend material is now automatically translated by the Rosetta Stone Library for use by the Angie renderer.
- It is now possible to specify the include paths used by the OSL extension shaders (OSL shaders created by users in addition to the built-in OSL node set shipped with Clarisse 5.5) in the OSL section of the Preferences panel.
- MaterialX looks are now imported from USD stages. This means that fully lookdeved assets in USD format can be imported in Clarisse via References (no support for UsdBundles yet).
- Transmissive materials are now properly rendered in Previz mode allowing for higher fidelity of the renders in this display mode.
- In Previz mode, Subsurface scattering is now rendered using the Diffusion model (even if the shader uses the Random Walk model).
- Drag-and-dropping an AOV Item in an Image View now automatically adds the AOV to the viewed Angie layer.
- When an attribute is bound to a node output, its numeric field is now disabled.
- The Attribute Editor now displays the bound output name (as object_name.out_name) for bindable reference attributes.
- The Class Explorer now displays Object Class documentation as a tooltip. The Create menu as well as the New contextual menu now display item documentation in the status bar.
- In Material Editor, the left-side hierarchy view optionally displays Object Class documentation as a tooltip. A button in the toolbar allows to disable/enable the feature. The default value can be set in the “Nodal View” section of the Preferences panel, category “Material Editor”.
- The Tab-creation menu can now be restricted to only show Clarisse/MaterialX/OSL nodes.
- In Material Editor, when creating an item pops up the Browser Picker, the item is named according to the chosen file. It is now also post-fixed with the file extension.
- At startup, a progress bar now indicates the completion of the initial compilation of the OSL shaders.
- It is now possible to specify a display name of an attribute or a node output. If a display name is specified, it is used by the UI instead of the attribute name.
Bug Fixes
- The instantiation of Angie lights has been fixed.
- Fixed the “camera_shading-normal” AOV that was in world-space instead of camera-space.
- Fixed potential issues with Optix Denoiser when "Use World Normals" was activated.
- The OptiX denoiser is now given the proper normals to improve render denoising.
- Fixed a crash in the Angie renderer when using USD assets containing geometries with authored purposes.
- Fixed a precision issue when ray tracing big triangles.
- Some attribute names are now properly displayed. For instance, in the previous build, TextureBlend.input1 resulted in being displayed as 1.
- Fixed a crash when setting a fisheye or panoramic camera as look-through item in the 3D View.
- Fixed Dot insertion between 2 MaterialX nodes.
- Fixed a crash when there was an override material set in an Angie layer in GPU mode and when there were shape lights in the scene.
- Fixed a bug when trying to localize and then expand MaterialX materials which contain embedded custom node definitions or graphs.
- In Angie renderer, clamping is now working properly.
- Many many other bug fixes…
