Glossy reflection & refraction effects

Glossy reflections & refractions are used for shading, when several rays must casted per reflection/refraction point, according to variable amounts of dispersion (provided as an aperture angle of dispersion) and sampling (given by a number of rays to cast from the reflection/refraction point). Glossy rays are essential for the rendering quality of metals, where gold, copper, chrome … all have their own parameters for glossiness.

The picture on the right provide a sample of the same picture used above, but without glossy rays. You can see glossy reflections / refractions have an astonishing influence on the way the environment is rendered on the object.

High quality & performance texts

Redsdk now provides a better rendering quality and drawing performance for 2D and 3D texts, through the use of texts quads. Indeed, when zooming in/out, users will always get the best rendering quality as offered by the fonts in use, while the resolution in use will be automatically managed by Redsdk.

Ray-tracer GPU cut-off

Cut-off has almost always been in use for ray tracers based on the CPU. The purpose of this functionality is to avoid the processing of indirect rays in a high level of the recursive tree of indirect rays, while the result will not modify significantly the final picture or animation.

The challenge for Redsdk was to enable the same feature at the GPU, which has a hardware interface less flexible than a CPU. Redsdk 1.5 not only offers this functionality to its users, but keep the same flexibility in setting the cut-off threshold.

Linux

The range of supported Operating Systems has expanded and Redsdk now supports Linux, with native 32bit and 64bit support. Hardware features and performance tests are made under Red Hat Fedora, but other distributions may be considered, according to customers' requests.

Redway3d will now enter the driver certification process with its hardware partners, to provide the same reliability it provided under the Windows versions supported (W2000, WXP, Wx64 with native 64bit support, Vista32, Vista64 with native 64bit support).