New appleseed 2.1.0-beta released

[bsavery]

If you have a materialX file, it is pretty easy to get the OSL representation.

[Leonard_Siebeneicher]

@Secrop

@Leonard_Siebeneicher

In Appleseed, you do not depend on a single script node.

In Cycles is the same and you can have lots of nodes connected together to produce a shader… I have dozens of nodes that do very small things, that I then connect all together; like a trace node that just do a single trace call, or a node that just returns the primitive’s coordinates of the sampled point, or some complicated equation, etc.

There is a misunderstanding. Assume we use OSL within Cycles. Its simple as that: no Script Node, no custom OSL shaders. In this sense, custom Cycles OSL shaders depend on script nodes.

— Edit —
Mh … my answer you replied to could be misunderstood, I was not aware of its ambiguity. Hopefully it is less ambiguous now.

[numen22]

Hi @pixel_master,
MaterialX is certainly interesting for us. Since currently all our few core developer are very busy with work I’m not sure when it will be implemented and attracting new developer is challenging.

[Secrop]

@numen22, thanks for the info. I’ll have to try compiling it in Linux.

@Leonard_Siebeneicher, hummm… if i understand your point correctly, then I think the issue is not really related to Cycles but to the Node Editor…
I’ve customized my blender to read my osl folder and add the scripts to the add menu. It still needs a bit more work to be included in the blender source (mainly because it requires changes in all addons that use the nodeitems_utils module), but it works.

[numen22]

@Secrop

thanks for the info. I’ll have to try compiling it in Linux.

As a note, we have separate dependencies for Linux.
Compiling the dependencies yourself is a must. Same applies for Cycles, you would need a Partio enabled OSL build for point-cloud functionality.

[Fatesailor]

Is there any plan for a new version for Blender? I have experimented with it some years before, when it was in its first stages of co-operating with Blender as an add-on, and very recently I did try it again. It is a quite advanced renderer and it can constitute a powerful alternative to other Blender compliant renderers, no doubt.

One thing that I did notice using and comparing it with Cycles and Radeon pro recently is that it is a little bit slow. It would be great to focus on some optimizations as to its render speed.

[Leonard_Siebeneicher]

@Secrop

I’ve customized my blender to read my osl folder and add the scripts to the add menu. It still needs a bit more work to be included in the blender source (mainly because it requires changes in all addons that use the nodeitems_utils module), but it works.

This … is … awesome!

[numen22]

@Fatesailor

Is there any plan for a new version for Blender?

We have regular developer builds for Blender, Max & Maya. The links are in the #builds channel of our appleseed discord server. You are very welcome to join.

We are of course aware of the speed issues. But don’t forget both Cycles and Radeon ProRender are developed to a large extend by paid developer and we cannot match their resources in manpower. Also appleseed is a pure cpu renderer while Radeon ProRender and Cycles are hybrid renderer which can use additionally the gpu.