we didn't want to leave this year, without a new tech announcement and so we have one, just in time! Among other things, we worked the last period on fine tuning the interactive render (IR). There were some careful improvements that make now navigation even smoother and much more fun to play with!
Special optimization has been made on the selection, click and orbit/pan, material drag & drop during interactive render: Thea uses now a different mechanism for these operations with instant feedback. In previous versions, there was some (initial) delay that was increasing with the scene complexity; now these operations are not a "show stopper" for IR anymore.
But the main addition corresponding to this tech announcement, is the introduction of a new powerful method (called Adaptive AMC) into IR. This method, that could be thought as the biased analog of TR2, has the ability to resolve difficult lighting conditions, SSS and medium scattering and still give interactive feedback.
And to finish with interactive render, there are some small but nice UI additions - like the new navigation toolbar, hide gizmo option (that could cause an accidental movement), material drag & drop undo and correct viewport drawing of lens shift - that "complete" the experience.
We have recorded here a video showing all these improvements. The architectural scene used as our test case is courtesy of Davis Carter Scott, Inc. (kindly offered for our internal testing).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7DldMuwbIM[/youtube]
best wishes
