Spherical cameras are available in alpha 20. They are mentioned in the release notes but not in our somewhat outdated documentation.
A spherical camera has model “spherical_camera”. Here is an example of a spherical camera definition. The only parameters recognized by spherical cameras are “shutter_open_time” and “shutter_close_time”.
Franz
Version 0.3.1 is out. (Yeah, I’m sorry, I didn’t even notice I wasn’t putting the first part of the version number on this thread until now)
For Windows x64 users, it includes a fairly substantial speedup of mesh export.
It is working ok. Thanks. : - )
I’ve added Linux support and material nodes to blenderseed. Please try downloading the addon from the GitHub blenderseed repository. The link is on the first page / first post of this thread, as well as the link to the latest version of appleseed.
You can direct blenderseed bug reports here or to the issues section of the repository.
you mention there is Linux support does that mean all that’s involved is installing the plugin and then pointing the addon to the Appleseed renderer directory? I know previously, post #40, there was an issue on Linux and OSX launching Appleseed studio. Is this working now?
Should be, yes. I’m also working on compiling the addon for Linux x64. By the way, I just made some changes to the addon to fix a bug with re-used node networks, so if you’re planning to try the addon, make sure to download the latest snapshot from GitHub.
If someone has it working, could you please report here with a short description about wich blender version and how to install blenderseed properly? I keep getting the same error messages (key “blenderseed” not found) on various blender versions on OSX and Windows.
My apologies, I forgot to mention that when you’re downloading the addon from GitHub, it names the .zip file “blenderseed-master”. I don’t know why GitHub feels the need to do that. The folder needs to be renamed to “blenderseed”. Correct naming is kind of essential to the addon running correctly.
Also, in order to run appleseed, the executable directory needs to be set in the User Preferences, when you enable the addon. Click the little arrow next to “Render: appleseed”, and you’ll see the text box where you can set the path.
I’ve just uploaded some compiled versions of the exporter at https://github.com/appleseedhq/blenderseed/releases/tag/v0.3.4
There’s a small bug in the 2.70a version for Windows: node networks used by more than one material create duplicate names in the .appleseed file, causing errors when appleseed tries to load it. If you want to use the same node network for two different materials, all you have to do is duplicate the node network, then assign it to the new material.
I made a mistake in the release notes. The Linux version is actually working with Blender 2.70a. It was compiled with Python 3.4, which is the version of Python that Blender 2.71 RC+ is using, so it should work with an official 2.71 RC build as well.
@ohsnapitsjoel
I am posting in reply to your question in the Appleseed thread Link
I have uploaded the .Blend file here: Hair_Mesh.blend
The script works by just automating the process I use to convert hair to mesh. Its really slow, mainly due to the time it takes Blender to convert a vertex string into a curve. I aim to look at faster/better ways of doing this, possibly reading the particle data directly and using it to create the curves.
The process is to select the object with the hair and run the script. You will then “after a minute or so” have the curve object, a bevel object and a taper object. once you are happy convert the curve object to mesh, or leave it as is. I leave it as a curve object because you can use the bevel and taper curves to fine tune the hair.
It uses the preview data for the hair so I added a “multi” variable so that you can assign how many times the script gets the hair at a different seed. Ideally you want to keep the number of hairs low and the multi high, I don’t know why but Blender crashes if you try and convert a lot of vert strings to curves at once.
Would like to test but…still cant install properly: neither blenderseed nor appleseed nor blendseed-master whatever works…;
what should be the folder name in addons ?
Download the compiled addon here: https://github.com/appleseedhq/blenderseed/releases/tag/v0.3.5 I just changed the link in the first post.
Extract the “blenderseed” folder to /scripts/addons.
My mistake: was in addon-contrib instead !
Very cool new release of blenderseed (if I do say so myself :)) is available! appleseed is one of my favorite renderers these days, and quite a bit of work has been done to the blenderseed exporter. Special thanks to Esteban Tovagliari and Jasper van Nieuwenhuizen for their help with this release!
Download it here: https://github.com/appleseedhq/blenderseed/releases/tag/v0.3.6
Make sure to download the latest release of appleseed for your platform: http://appleseedhq.net
There is also a material tester for testing out appleseed materials. Check it out: https://github.com/appleseedhq/appleseed/releases/tag/materialtester-1.0
OSX should now be supported, as well as Linux 64-bit!
Two of the coolest new features in appleseed are the Disney BSDF and camera diaphragm maps.
Here are the release notes:
blenderseed v0.3.6 provides:
-support for OSX
-support for Disney BSDF / Disney BSDF node
-support for adding objects to render layers (including an operator for adding or removing all the selected objects to / from the selected render layer)
-support for particle / dupli-instance motion blur
-support for some experimental features, such as camera diaphragm image maps (ie., bokeh maps)
-textured spotlights
And a host of bugfixes, including:
-a fix for a bug in the Specular BTDF which was causing incorrect refractions
-some particle system fixes
-a fix for deformation motion blur meshes being written to the .appleseed file incorrectly
-UI label fixes
-a fix for the .appleseed file-only export (when exporting only, not rendering)
-a fix for the export of focal distance
-a fix for texture nodes writing linear color space incorrectly
This Appleseed Version is not working on osx 10.9.4
Kind of the same error previous Version had:
./run-appleseed.sh
dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/local/Cellar/ilmbase/2.1.0/lib/libIex-2_1.11.dylib
Referenced from: /Applications/appleseed-1.1.0-alpha-22-0-gcdbec94-mac64-clang5/lib/libImath-2_1.11.dylib
Reason: image not found
Trace/BPT trap: 5
I don’t really mind atm though… might look into building it myself, seems almost easier 
But i’m really interested in your “appleseed is one of my favorite renderers these days” - What do you Render with it? What do you like most about it?
I rendered this guy in appleseed recently:
That was actually pretty easy to set up using the blenderseed exporter. Hair curve rendering was missing from appleseed at the time, and it’s still being worked on. It’s not quite feature-ready enough in appleseed for me to expose hair rendering in the exporter, but it’s getting there 
I also just like to throw old projects at appleseed, and see what they come out looking like. It really never disappoints It’s fairly easy to get a nice-looking render, especially now that material nodes are available in the exporter.
What do I like most about it? Interactive rendering in appleseed.studio (and Esteban may have found a way to get that into Blender’s viewport as well ;)), the BSDFs in appleseed just have a pleasant, physically accurate look… there are probably more things I like about it, it’s just getting late and I’m having trouble thinking clearly.
Congrats on that new release Joel, fantastic work!
Franz
I still need to get OSL and the Disney layered material with SeExpr in there as well!
Great work, Joel!
The mac package errors are my fault. 
I’ll try to fix them very soon (when I have access to a mac).
About progressive rendering, yes, it’s possible.
But that would require an important refactor / rewrite of blenderseed and a
change of license of blenderseed to GPL.
There is a blender C / C++ API (RNA) that can be used in C / C++ python extensions,
just like Cycles does. In fact, you could use the API to export Alembic caches, cortex things and
many other useful things.
The API is not public, so you need to extract the headers yourself from a blender build.
I have a repo with the 2.71 headers here: https://github.com/est77/Blender_RNA_API
The idea would be to keep an instance of a C++ appleseed Project class alive in the RenderEngine.
blenderseed would not export anymore geometry or project files, instead it will use RNA and appleseed’s API
to convert scene objects and pass them directly to appleseed.
We can talk about it in the appleseed dev mailing list, if it’s interesting enough.
Est.
I could help with that if I had instructions, but since I’ve on Mavericks/Xcode 5.1, I don’t know how that would translate to other users.
