Upcoming v1.4 Edition - Requirements and Deprecated Features

[giannis]

Dear friends,

with next edition 1.4, we are also making a leap forward with respect to some of our development tools and libraries. Due to this progression, there will be certain incompatibilities with some systems. Even more, to have accelerated development some features are also deprecated.

It is therefore important for us to see that the impact these changes will bring is going to be minimum. And the majority of our users, if possible all, will continue to enjoy the newest edition. The changes involve the core of Thea Render, which will have a direct impact on the integrations (and Studio).

Please read below.

Best wishes


Operating Systems

Windows
- SDK available in both 32/64-bit. Thea Studio available in both 32/64-bit. Presto GPU will need CUDA 6.5 compatible driver.
- Windows XP 32/64-bit: Support for WindowsXP is discontinued.
- Windows Vista: Supported by Thea Render but not supported by Thea Presto GPU (due to Vista unsupported by CUDA 6.5).
- Windows 7/8/10: OK

OSX
- SDK available in both 32/64-bit. Thea Studio available in 64-bit only. Presto GPU will need CUDA 5.5 compatible driver on 32-bit and CUDA 6.5 compatible driver on 64-bit.
- Tiger 10.4: Discontinued by both integrations and Studio.
- Leopard 10.5: Discontinued by both integrations and Studio.
- Snow Leopard 10.6/Lion 10.7: Supported by integrations including Presto GPU. Studio will not run with Thea Presto GPU (due to unsupported CUDA 6.5).
- Mountain Lion 10.8/Mavericks 10.9/Yosemite 10.10: OK

Linux
- SDK available in 64-bit only. Thea Studio available in 64-bit only. Presto GPU will need CUDA 6.5 compatible driver.
- Ubuntu 14.04 & other OSes up-to-date OSes: OK.
- Older OSes: should run (but officially unsupported).


Deprecated Features
- Progressive AO/MC will not be directly available. Due to the rise of Presto AO/MC, which is the analog of Progressive AO/MC, we decided to remove these engines for better clarity and less maintenance work (although, one will still be able to use them through presets).
- Max Passes will not be available anymore. Only Max Samples (renamed to Sample Limit) will be available, which makes more sense anyway.
- Displacement micro bump will not be available anymore.


Unsupported Architectures
- NVidia Graphic cards of compute capability 1.x will not be supported anymore due to shifting to CUDA 6.5.

[eph]

The OS support makes perfect sense.

I have to say I'm especially glad to see the feature "simplifications". Thea has been growing a bit "wildly", plugging on options, making it every time more complicated for me to explain to colleagues which is the right preset for them today.

This move will allow for more focused development, along the KISS guidelines ("Keep it Simple, Stupid"), without sacrificing on pro features. Highly appreciated!

[giannis]

Indeed. SW development must be always like this, expand and clean up. And even don't be afraid, to (re)start something from scratch.

Best wishes

[ThomasHelzle]

Looks good to me and makes sense.

Cheers,

Tom

[sepo]

What is the rational behind removing displacement micro bumps?

[ivan.dedos]

Indeed. SW development must be always like this, expand and clean up. And even don't be afraid, to (re)start something from scratch.

Best wishes

Very well said! I think most users are very happy with these simplifications, it signify progress.

Best wishes!

[Rombout]

Thats a big leap, but the older systems was holding thea back i think. Good decision!

I never actually used micro bump, perhaps 1-3 times orso

[Javadevil]

This seems to be the way to go, the only engines I use are Presto, TR2 and TR1.


cheers

[Spherical]

- Displacement micro bump will not be available anymore.

This is "Micro-displacement" not "Micro Roughness"?

[hammer]

Will there be some implementation of micro roughness in the future? How do I find out if I have cuda 6.5?