Added: Loading mat.pack files.

Added: Online Repository for materials.

Added: Bevel. It can be accessed in Thea Object Tag.

Added: Windy, Marble, Worley and Edge Ramp in Thea Procedural Shader.

Added: Triplanar projection in Thea Bitmap Shader (added the parameters cut off and Sharpness)

Added: Support for LUT files

Added: Image Alpha checkbox in Thea Material's Clipping channel.

Changed: Improved per-light UI in Relight Manager. Added a slider bar to manage the power easier and negative values are no longer valid.

Changed: Thea Bitmap Shader using "Inherit Texture Tag" as default value.

Changed: In "Add Custom Folder" dialog in Content Browser, the filter name is refreshed based on the chosen Directory.

Bug Fix: Thea Commands would not appear in "Customize Commands" Dialog.

Bug Fix: Thea Bitmap Shader projection would be transferred incorrectly in the engine.

Bug Fix: Scene with many IES lights sometimes would cause a crash.

Bug Fix: Clearing IBL image in Thea Sky Tag, would not be refreshed correctly in the engine.

Bug Fix: Display Settings in tonemap parameters would appear greayed out

Bug Fix: Custom Folder name would not be set correctly when created in Content Browser.

Beveled Edges

Triplanar Mapping

Presto optimization for instanced scenes without displacement

Improved overall interactive render refresh rate in the absence of displacement

New procedurals: Worley Noise & Edge Ramp

Presto support for all procedurals

Integration of NVIDIA Optix 6 for RTX cards

Support for LUT files

Added Fiji, Ellesmere AMD family in Presto OpenCL port.

Circle of confusion - for DOF % - is now independent of resolution. Render results will differ now if DOF% is used (same effect only when resolution is 1024 pixels).

Regression bug fix when computing bump/normal map of a combined texture

Fixed strength and orientation of normal maps in CPU engines (matching now Presto).

Fixed difference in clipping when using soft vs hard with scatter(reflection)-only visible surface behind.

Presto makes now consistent evaluation with respect to CPU engines for various quantities, such as alpha/clip mapping and material weights.

Fixed sun point light custom evaluation for Presto

Sun point lights are evaluated on top of sky evaluation now with Presto.

Corrections with respect to Fresnel Ramp preview generation.

Added support in Presto for procedurals on area emitters.

Crash fix for Presto bucket rendering when warming-up in the presence of moving objects/camera.

Fixed artifacts appearing with Reinhard tonemapping on CUDA display.

Optimization for Presto procedural area emitter support.

Fix for Fresnel Ramp in Presto when used in clipping component.

Optimizing Presto CUDA (5% performance boost).

Some fixes with respect to Color Ramp texture interpolation.

Fixing irradiance artifacts in Adaptive BSD.

Fix for Presto hang in bucket rendering due to bevel mapping yielding zero normal vectors.

Fixed displacement from parallel view that could yield no intersections at all.

Fixed sky color in Presto when view is exactly vertical.

Nlm Denoiser: Added Fiji, Capeverde AMD family compilation.

Nlm Denoiser: Added Blend parameter.

Nlm Denoiser: Changes for stereo images.

Fixed vignetting weight applied from accelerated standard displays (GPU+CPU) when a denoiser display follows (optix or nlm).

Fixed scaling issue when saving png+alpha.

Mac: Thea suports now OSX 10.8+

Added: Support for Cinema 4D R20

Added: Latest Thea Render engine update 1816

Added: Relight Manager, which allows you to modify any light's color and power in post-rendering state.

Added: Options to remove the UI controls from the Darkroom in Darkroom > Window menu. That makes the darkroom easier to dock the darkroom without taking too much space.

Changed: We have removed the display settings from the darkroom and we have created a new dialog, which contains the display settings along with the relight options. This one operates separately from Darkroom.

Changed: Decreased minimum size of the Darkroom

Changed: The default Thea Render's network rendering port from 6200 to 7200.

Removed: Device Mask has been removed.

Bug Fix: Material preview would be rendered black

Bug Fix: C4d procedurals would appear black in Thea Node client.

Bug Fix: Object buffers would not be rendered correctly in their corresponding IDs.

Bug Fix: Switching render mode in Render Settings wouldn't update the state of Denoise controls.

Added: Thea Render engine update v2.0.00.1803.

Added: Faster scene transferring with Multi-threaded conversion.

Added: Easy sun positiong in HDRi. Go to Thea Sky Tag > Sun Properties > Sun Mode > Sun Position and click the HDR image.

Added: Support for "Seen by rays" parameter in compositing tag. Visibility in thea objects is now distinguished in Camera and Scattering.

Use "Seen by camera" and "Seen by rays" respectively.

Added: "Show in render" parameter in Thea Light Tag (Area Light), is replaced with "Seen by camera", "Seen by rays" and "Cast shadows".

Added: Shadow Catcher material in Thea's material presets.

Added: Thea Object commands that can be used to easily createa a Light, Camera, Sky and Ground Plane.

Added: Diaphragm and Blades options in Thea Camera Tag

Added: Imrpoved Region Rendering in Darkroom. The minimum region is 32x32. Double click to remove the region.

Added: Object link for Sun in Thea Sky Tag in group "Sun Properties". Place the infinite light you want to consider Sun.

Added: Option Inherit Texture Tag in Texture Coordinates Projection. It can be used in any texture parameter of a material to inherit the projection of that material's texture tag.

Added: Thea Layer Shader. Provides access to Thea's layering system.

Added: Thea Color Shader to choose between RGB, Blackbody, Spectrum.

Added: Thea Bitmap Shader. Shader links texture parameters can be handled from Thea Bitmap Shader (bitmap options, texture coordinates and tonemapping)

Added: Thea Procedural Shader: Perlin Noise, Curl or Concentric. More Thea procedurals will be added in the next version.

Added: Thea Fresnel Ramp Shader.

Added: Load button in Thea Material, that allows you to load *mat.thea files.

Added: Content Browser for Materials (*.mat.thea) and Skies (*.hdri). Thea Material library *.lib4d is no longer supported. The materials must be replaced with the ones found in the content browser.

Added: Thea Object Tag. It can be used to handle specific cases where transferring is not taking place during animation. It consists 3 options:

1. On Tweak: This is the default option that objects are transferred automatically on state change. Even objects without Thea Object Tag use this mode.

2. On Frame Change: It forces the object to be retransferred on every frame change during animation.

3. Never Retransfer: this option locks the object state.

Added: Denoise (only in Presto and Production mode). Before start rendering, you need to enable the "Denoise" option in the Render Settings. Any scene rendered form this point, will also produce the denoise image. Use the display options in the darkroom to configure denoise settings without having to render the whole scene again (strength and details).

There are 2 supported denoise methods: Non-Local Means and Nvidia's Optix.

Added: Tonemap controls in the darkroom.

Added: Thea Camera Tag can override both Denoise and Tonemap options.

Added: Support for 32-bit buffers. Enable it in Render Settings > Thea Render > Channels > Channel Custom Depth.

Added: Back face materials via side option in Texture Tag (not supported yet for restricted materials in Selection Tags).

Added: Exr save options in Render Settings

Added: Cinema4D's IRR invokes Thea Render's production rendering. The image appears after the render process is completed.

Added: Substance support in R19

Added: Stereoscopic view in Thea Camera Tag. The modes Left, Right, Left-Right, Top-Down and Anaglyh can be selected in Tag's display settings.

Added: Custom light evaluation properties in Thea Light Tag and Emitter Material. (It will be xplained in detail in the upcoming manual)

Removed: Presto AO has been removed. Presto MC can be modified to work as Presto AO By enabling Ambient Occlusion and Diffuse Interreflection in Render Settings.

Removed: All Thea Studio's dependencies have been removed. This includes material lab and dialogs such as Devices, Update, Network and License.

Removed: Pan, Dolly and Rotate controls from the Darkroom. The same functions can be achieved either using the mouse or the same control buttons in Cinema 4D's viewport (top-left corner).

Removed: Texture menu is removed from ALL material layer shaders. To get access to extra texture parameters, add a Thea Bitmap Shader.

Removed: Shadow catcher from Render Settings is removed . As mentioned above, to create a ground plane in Thea, add a floor object and a Shadow Catcher Material.

Removed: Thea Bake Tag and Texture Baking parameters from render settings.

Removed: Region Rendering combo box has been removed from the darkroom. Only one region can be activated at any time.

Removed: Dirt texture from Material's General settings.

Removed: Reflectance90, Sigma and Dirt texture properties.

Removed: Retransferred Materials object. This object is no longer required since materials with mograph shaders are detected automatically.

Removed: Lib4d is not supported anymore. Content browser has replaced its functionality.

Removed: Trace Reflections and Trace Refractions options from Thea Materials.

Removed: XML parameters have been removed.

Removed: Support for Legacy Xref objects.

Removed: Repaintable and Two-Sided paremeters from materials.

Removed: Colimo save operation from Darkroom.

Bug Fix: Solved issues that would prevent detecting hierarchy changes.

Bug Fix: PickMaterial command in the Darkroom wouldn't pick the correct material if many materials had the same name.

Bug Fix: Region Render area would be discarded if started from bottom-right instead of top-left.

Bug Fix: Clamp Min and Clamp Max in bitmap options are correctly converted to Thea engine.

Bug Fix: Frame change is transferred interactively without having to retransfer the whole scene.

Bug Fix: Hierarchy layer data were not being transferred correctly

Bug Fix: Thea Render menu wouldn't appear in BP 3D Paint and BP UV Edit.

Bug Fix: Thea material menu would appear multiple times in Material Manager menu.

Bug Fix: Changing Render Settings wouldn't cause the selected materials to be updated.

Bug Fix: Material's Medium component would not be initialized correctly

Bug Fix: Material Preview image would not be stored in *.mat.pack after saving the material.

Bug Fix: Parallel projection would not be transferred correctly.

Bug Fix: In a Light object without Thea Light Tag, IES color would not be taken into consideration.

Bug Fix: Darkroom's resolution preset is saved and loaded correctly.

Bug Fix: Issues with mograph materials applied in parent nodes.

Bug Fix: If darkroom was open while user loads a scene, the Time and Sample values in production mode would not be refreshed correctly.

Bug Fix: Longitude value in Thea Sky Tag was not sent correctly to the engine.

Bug Fix: Loading a different scene while rendering would cause a crash.

Bug Fix: Synchronization issues between Light Object and Thea Light Tag.

Bug Fix: Mix mode "Subtract" in Material's Shader channels was not calculated correctly.

Bug Fix: Object buffer images would not be retrieved correctly from the engine.

Bug Fix: Deformers are converted correctly during animation.

Bug Fix: Device settings would not be stored correctly

Bug Fix: Adaptive BSD options during transferring.

Bug Fix: Sun attenuation was not converted correctly

Bug Fix: Hot spot value in spot light uses fall off value as upper bound (Thea Light Tag).

Bug Fix: Darkroom's CRF is initialized correctly.

Changed: Linear workflow option in Project Settings is always disabled by default when rendering with Thea Render in Picture Viewer.

Changed: Texture baking is optimized to work at least 50% faster.

Changed: Added option "Fit to Darkroom" in Darkroom's resolution selector. It causes the rendered image to scale based on Darkroom's size. Also, removed many unecessary resolution presets.

Changed: Removed options Sky + Sun and IBL + Sun. Added "Show sun in render" in Sun Properties.

Changed: C4D and Thea Materials can be applied on Sky and Physical Sky objects. In C4D material the Color channel will be taken into consideration,

while in Thea Material, the diffuse color and texture of Basic BSDF will be used.

If the texture is preset, it will be set as IBL bitmap in Thea's environment, otherwise the color will be set for Dome Illumination.

Changed: A newly created materials are set as active.

Changed: When a Cinema4D Material is converted into Thea Material, the newly created material is set as active.

Changed: Simplified Material Interface.

Changed: Intermediate files are no longer produced during texture baking

Changed: Moved Extended Tracing (Render Settings) in Advanced Group.

The plugin in v2 requires Thea Render Data to be installed from scratch.

To activate the License go to main menu Thea Render > License and add the *dat license file.

We are currently working on the new manual, so some features might not be explained in detail here.

We have noticed issues with camera manipulation on highly demanding scenes that we try to resolve. Sometimes, having thousands of objects in the same hierarchy level might cause a crash. Consider using Null groups to reduce the number of objects per hierarchy level.