Daz Studio Pro 4.22(.0.x) - NVIDIA Iray

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• rbtwhiz Posts: 2,470

  October 2022

  Iray 2022.0.0 beta, build 359000.876

  Known Issues and Restrictions

  • The minimum NVIDIA driver version in order to support the new CUDA and OptiX features is R510 U6 (Windows 512.78). Note that the R515 driver series unfortunately features a performance regression that only affects Iray 2022.0.0. So when using R515 drivers, only drivers 516.93 (Windows) and up feature the necessary performance fix (nvbugs 3707149 and related to 3678591).
  • On macOS/x86 SSSE3 enabled CPUs are now the new minimum requirement.
  • Removed support for the already deprecated portal lights in Iray Photoreal. It is now suggested to use the new guided sampling and/or the improved caustic sampler instead.

  Added and Changed Features

  • General
    • Updated general libraries:
      • IndeX Direct:
        • Fixed volume-brick iterator precision issue for very large ray origin positions (leading to the iterator getting stuck).
        • Fixed free sampler node caching (reduced overhead for repeated sampling in close proximity).
        • Severly improved CPU performance.
        • Added tri-linear filtering mode for CPU path.
      • Embree-3.13.2-359470 (with a custom patch for the crashes seen in nvbugs 3643565)
      • OpenVDB 8.0.1
      • LLVM 12.0.1
      • CUDA 11.6
      • OptiX 7.4.1
      • GLEW-2.1.0-358555
      • OpenImageIO (not enabled in the beta yet though)
  • Iray Photoreal & Iray Interactive
    • Added support for the OptiX based upscaling AI denoiser (2x2 upscaling for the moment). If denoising is available and upscaling is requested, the render target canvas in question must be scaled as well. If upscaling does not happen (e.g. because post processing happens on CPU), the original pixels are written to the upscaled location but only fill a quarter of the window.
    • Replaced the AI denoiser with the newer OptiX AOV denoiser model for improved image quality.
    • Made the resolution requirements for user render target canvases more flexible. Instead of requiring an exact match between the full camera resolution and the resolution of each canvas, each canvas is now only required to fit the offset render window. So canvases may be larger or smaller than the camera resolution as long as the render window fits in its correct location. In addition, canvases which exactly match the size of the render window but do not leave room for the offset will also be accepted.
    • Implemented (optional) recursive picking. This allows picking of all objects along a ray, rather than just the first one.
    Iray Photoreal
    • Added support for JIT compiled MDL materials in inhomogeneous volumes.
    • Added emission support for volumes. This features a fast path as well as JIT support. The fast path supports blackbody emission using a temperature field as specified by the new base::volume_blackbody_emission MDL function. Even more efficient emissive volume support (improved sampling) will hopefully be available already with the 2022.0.0 final.
    • Implemented a first set of improvements for faster material updates, thus PTX code generation and compilation/linking times are often reduced massively. Note though that updates currently still feature the same main limitation as before, i.e. only full rebuilds are currently supported. This will be addressed in the next releases.
  • Material Definition Language (MDL)
    • Added support for building the MDL SDK and the Examples on MacOS on ARM.
    • In this version, all backends depend on LLVM now. The LLVM version was lifted from 8.0 to 12.0.1. This change is only visible, if LLVM-IR is chosen as the output format.
    • The old GLSL backend was replaced by the new LLVM based one. This new backend supports all capabilities of the HLSL backend, especially:
      • It can compile functions (as the OLD GLSL backend).
      • It can compile materials (by using the libbsdf).
      • GLSL is now at the same level as HLSL, PTX, and native.
    • In this version, not all options of the old GLSL backend are supported, in particular the state cannot be configured in the same flexible way as it was possible with the old backend. Only passing the whole state as a struct is currently supported.
    • Added support for node attributes in Distiller rules.
    • Added support for Distilling to custom target material model.
    • Added methods on IImage_api to clone canvases and tiles, to convert the pixel type and for gamma correction on tiles.
    • Disabling the "materials are functions" feature is now deprecated. To that end, the interface IMaterial_definition has been deprecated and most of the interface IMaterial_instance has been deprecated. Similarly, for the corresponding enumerators of Element type and IMdl_evaluator_api::is_material_parameter_enabled(). See the documentation linked from IMaterial_instance for details. The interfaces with the full set of methods and the enumerators are still available if MI_NEURAYLIB_DEPRECATED_13_0 is defined.
    • Added IMdl_factory::is_valid_mdl_identifier(). Using this method avoids the need to hardcode the list of MDL keywords yourself. The example "Generate MDL identifier" makes now use of this method.
    • Both overloads of IModule::get_function_overloads() now also accept the simple name to identify the material or function definition.
    • Disabling encoded names is now deprecated. (There are no related API changes, disabling just emits a corresponding warning.)
    • The native runtime now blends between frames for animated textures.
    • Added methods on ITriangle_connectivity and IAttribute_vector to transfer data as bulk data.
    • Improved .mi importer to avoid unnecessary edits when dealing with material/decal/projector references.

  Fixed Bugs

  • General
    • Increase maximum supported canvas resolutions (still depends on the chosen pixel format (for now) and if OpenGL is involved in the postprocessing pipeline, but the new maximum is now at 4 GigaPixels).
    • Increase maximum supported image output resolution (still limited by the capabilities of freeimage and its used libraries though).
    • Register exclude_from_white_mode as a known attribute and properly handle it in traverse.
    • Fixed missing file path in case of VDB textures returned by IValue_resource::get_file_path.
    • Fixed remote server shutdown (nvbugs 3645048).
  • Iray Photoreal & Iray Interactive
    • Reduced energy loss for things like df::custom_curve_layer,same behavior as already available in libbsdf (OM-27060, OM-39190, OM-44244).
    • Denoiser failures, which are not fatal, no longer issue a confusing warning about having run out of memory.
    • Improved postprocess de-duplication of canvases. This allows more extensive sharing of passes.
    • Fixed alpha channel extraction for mono channel textures (set to 1 now) (MDL-829).
  • Iray Photoreal
    • Replace self intersection handling code, leading to less conservative offsets in some scenes (especially when using instancing), and better self intersection handling/less or no artifacts in others. Please report new regressions or not-yet improved ray tracing precision issues.
    • Improved convergence efficiency when both caustic sampler and guided sampling are enabled.
    • Improved convergence efficiency when volumes are used in combination with guided sampling.
    • Slightly improved memory usage and on average improved convergence efficiency in general when using guided sampling.
    • Optimized CPU heterogeneous volume rendering performance.
    • Fixed a bug where uninitialized surface volume coefficients could be used.
    • Fixed a general SSS/volume precision artifact fix for very dense media (e.g. skin).
    • Fixed potential problems as paths start within high density SSS/volumes.
    • Made the parameter conversion of ground/global fog consistent (now all parameters respect the scene unit, as before only the density did).
    • Fixed invalid zero thickness early-out for thin film (MDL-852).
    • Do not intersect objects with primary ray visible flag disabled for the ambient occlusion buffer.
    • Avoid some unnecessary geometry updates in flattened geometry mode (instancing off).
    • Fixed potentially excessive instancing in auto mode.
    • Slightly improve precision of volume rendering.
    • Increased verbosity of data handling statistics/log outputs from debug to verbose.
    • Improved weight estimation for measured BSDFs. Fixes peaky noise, e.g. for certain AxF-imported carpaints with low albedo measured BSDFs that caused sub-optimal BSDF selection probability.
  • Material Definition Language (MDL)
    • Fixed bug in material hash calculation.
  • MI exporter
    • Ignore more unsupported object/instance/options flags during export.
• rbtwhiz Posts: 2,470

  October 2022

  Iray 2022.0.0, build 359000.2512

  Known Issues and Restrictions

  • The minimum NVIDIA driver version in order to support the new CUDA and OptiX features is R510 U6 (Windows 512.78). Note that the R515 driver series unfortunately features a performance regression that only affects Iray 2022.0.0. So when using R515 drivers, only drivers 516.93 (Windows) and up feature the necessary performance fix (nvbugs 3707149 and related to 3678591).
  • On macOS/x86 SSSE3 enabled CPUs are now the new minimum requirement.
  • Removed support for the already deprecated portal lights in Iray Photoreal. It is now suggested to use the new guided sampling and/or the improved caustic sampler instead.
  • FreeImage is now deprecated, due to its missing source code maintenance. It will be replaced by the now also included OpenImageIO plugin. Please test this evaluation build and let us know if this new plugin features regressions compared to FreeImage, or worse performance.

  Added and Changed Features

  • General
    • Updated general libraries:
      • OpenSSL 1.1.1q
      • FreeImage-3.19.x-r1903-OpenEXR-3.1.5-libTIFF-4.4.0-360897
      • FFmpeg-lgpl-4.4.2-360169
      • OpenEXR 3.1.5
      • Embree-3.13.2-359470 (with a custom patch for the crashes seen in nvbugs 3643565)
      • AxF 1.9.0 (now supports all platforms)
      • IndeX Direct 359000.2512 (fixes an issue with empty VDBs, nvbugs 3720395)
      • OpenImageIO 2.4.1.2 (for evaluation purposes)
  • Iray Photoreal & Iray Interactive
    • Added support for df::thin_film modifier for glossy BSDFs that feature mode df::scatter_reflect_transmit (OM-52209).
  • Material Definition Language (MDL)
    • Added contribution instructions and a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) form to the open source release.
    • Added support for df::thin_film modifier for glossy BSDFs that feature mode df::scatter_reflect_transmit or df::specular_bsdf (OM-52209).
    • Improved distilling of bsdf color-mixes.
    • Fixed serialization failures when serializing optimized modules with removed unused functions.

  Fixed Bugs

  • General
    • Issue a fatal error in case the default/fallback-material could not be created (related to nvbugs 3707629).
    • Improve contour detection/stability of Toon postprocess (nvbugs 3724232).
  • Iray Photoreal & Iray Interactive
    • Improved inside-projector-geometry test, which avoids unstable behavior for planes where one coordinate is zero (nvbugs 3621214).
  • Iray Photoreal
    • Fixed artifacts visible in the environment/dome when using the caustic sampler.
    • Fixed a potential crash when using guided sampling.
    • Fixed missing backplate when switching from AUX to the result buffer.
    • Fixed potential errors and crashes when returning too early from cancel_render, i.e. while the postprocessing was actually still running. This is now synchronous as intended.
    • Improved performance for certain cutout opacity cases when using the caustic sampler (nvbugs 3710624).
    • Fixed a discrepancy between evaluation and sampling of thin-walled glossy surfaces.
    • Fixed crash for certain multi-/overlapping emissive volume data setups and instancing being turned on.
    • Fixed regression on RTX/Turing-and-up cards with fiber rendering (restore originals fiber endcap behavior) (nvbugs 3699759).
    • Improved scene error handling (e.g. reject invalid camera transforms before rendering, add a safeguard to reject picking) (related to nvbugs 3692956).
    • Fixed disappearing backplate by correctly clamping inverse tonemapped backplate color to zero.
    • Fixed a rare issue with render calls being falsely rejected in network rendering mode.
    • Optimized linking-phase pre-processing stage if no JIT MDL materials found.
    • Improved efficiency of rendering emissive volumes dramatically for complicated setups.
    • Fixed missing contributions (i.e. too dark) within uniform emissive volumes.
    • Fixed crash when using df::microfacet_ggx_smith_bsdf.
    • Improved preprocessing speed for multiregion/material objects (nvbugs 3705800).
  • Iray Interactive
    • Fixed a crash when going out of GPU memory (nvbugs 3600421).
  • Material Definition Language (MDL)
    • Fixed loss of tint for specular BSDF (MDL-870).
    • Fixed handling of MDL cast operators in the SDK.
    • Fixed missing struct constructors of re-exported structure types.
    • Fixed handling of the uniform modifier in the MDL module builder that caused correct graph constructions to fail.
    • Fixed generation of pattern including thin film.
    • Fixed typos and descriptions in support definitions.mdl.
  • MI exporter
    • Added support for custom attributes on textures/volumes to exporter.
    • Avoid exporting (ignored on import) face statements.
• rbtwhiz Posts: 2,470

  October 2022

  Iray 2022.0.1, build 359000.3383

  Known Issues and Restrictions

  • Material Definition Language (MDL)
    • Adding an environment function to a link unit (via method mi::neuraylib::ILink_unit::add_environment()) is currently broken for all backends and will result in a wrong code. As a work-around, please generate environment functions as single code (i.e. do not add it to any link unit)

  Added and Changed Features

  • General
    • Updated general libraries:
      • FreeImage-3.19.x-r1903-OpenEXR-3.1.5-libTIFF-4.4.0-361926 (fixes problems/crashes with huge TIFF metadata TIFFTAG_RICHTIFFIPTC)
  • Material Definition Language (MDL)
    • Added compiler context option "mdl next": Setting this option will enable preliminary features from the upcoming MDL 1.8 Version, especially:
      • Full utf8 identifiers in MDL.
      • Lifted restriction on scene access functions: The name of a scene data can be now any expression of type uniform string.

  Fixed Bugs

  • General
    • Fixed failed worker renderings with error invalid parameters (nvbugs 3759010).
  • Iray Photoreal
    • Fixed a CPU crash with guided sampling enabled (nvbugs 3758281).
    • Fixed some issues with guided sampling in combination with the caustic sampler or SSS.
    • Optimized fiber rendering performance on Turing and above (1.1x to 1.7x, at the price of a bit more memory).
    • Fixed/Unify ambient occlusion rays to be able to hit invisible-to-primary-rays geometry on all GPU/CPU configurations.
  • Iray Interactive
    • Fixed slight precision problems with Oren-Nayar BSDFs (nvbugs 3777916).
  • Material Definition Language (MDL)
    • Fixed error message regarding wrong array type issued two times.
    • Speed up material compilation: Instantiation of a material instance is now faster due to less database queries and lesser reference counted operations.
    • Fixed module inliner handling of relative resource paths.
    • Fixed libbsdf handling of Fresnel factors. (OM-52209)
• rbtwhiz Posts: 2,470

  November 2022 edited November 2022

  Daz Studio 4.21.1.13 - *Public Build*

   

  • REQUIRES:
    • NVIDIA Driver 512.78 (R510) on Windows
    • NVIDIA Driver 516.93 (R515) on Windows
      • NVIDIA Driver 517.40 (R515) on Windows is the "last known good"
        • A regression (nvbugs 3838022) in the driver after this version results in OpenCL errors, and ultimately causes dForce simulation to fail
        • This issue is discretely mentioned in the Open Issues section of the driver release notes
        • NVIDIA has identified and fixed the issue - the fix is in the process of being validated
        • A Game Ready Driver (GRD)/Studio Driver (SD), 526.98, with the fix is expected to be available on 11/10 11/16
        • An Enterprise Driver with the fix is expected to be available on 11/16 11/28
    • See NVIDIA Driver Downloads
      • NVIDIA recommends installing Studio Drivers (SD)
    • ​​SSSE3 enabled CPU is a minimum requirement on macOS/x86

  Post edited by rbtwhiz on November 2022
• rbtwhiz Posts: 2,470

  December 2022 edited January 2023

  Iray 2022.1.0 beta, build 363600.482

  Known Issues and Restrictions

  • The minimum NVIDIA driver branch version in order to support the new CUDA and OptiX features is R520 (Windows 522.06 and up).
  • FreeImage is now removed, due to its missing source code maintenance. It is completely replaced now by the OpenImageIO plugin. All examples were also switched over now.
  • Removed get/set_backplate_dof_enabled, as it was already deprecated in 2015.
  • Removed the Blend renderer.

  Added and Changed Features

  • General
    • This release adds native support for all Ada Lovelace and Hopper generation GPUs. Note though that all Lovelace GPUs are already supported implicitly since the Iray 2020.1.0 Beta (build 334300.1111).
    • Updated general libraries:
      • CUDA 11.8
      • OptiX 7.5 (which addresses (at least) large parts of nvbugs 200777017, caused by AI denoiser temporary memory)
      • zlib 1.2.13.patched-363203
      • FFmpeg-lgpl-5.1.2-362780
      • SQLite 3.39.4
      • OpenImageIO 2.4.2.1-dev
    • Added support for loading volume data via IReader.
    • Added support for CUDA render targets to the bridge render context.
  • Iray Photoreal & Iray Interactive
    • Implemented new Hosek-Wilkie spectral sky model.
    • Added support for a world space hit point auxiliary/AOV buffer.
    • Added support for a new render target buffer producing outlines around selected objects. In addition to the new canvas type and associated parameters, this introduces a new boolean flag, selected to control which scene elements are included in the auxiliary buffers to drive the outline generation, i.e. which elements receive an outline. In order to align with the outline feature, the toon buffers edge color now features a fourth component to control alpha blending between the outlines/toon edges and the beauty image. Note that there is no compatibility fallback, so integrations must be adapted to supply the correct parameter type.
  • Iray Photoreal
    • Guided sampling now keeps and updates the stored guidance data during camera movement/updates (instead of resetting it). This greatly enhances interactive rendering quality/convergence for complex scenes (e.g. indoor/architectural).
    • Guided sampling is now also implemented for the caustic sampler, which increases its efficiency for complex scenes, especially ones which are spatially large or with a lot of multi-bounce caustic paths.
    • Due to the latter improvement, enabling the caustic sampler will now also always force-enable guided sampling.
    • Added support for new sphere/particle primitive to help with rendering particle systems and the like. This is exposed via IParticles. A new example has also been added.
    • Added support for per-vertex fiber motion blur.
    • Added support for linear segment fibers (which will render faster than the existing higher order fibers/curves).
    • Added support for Catmull-Rom fiber data.
    • Added parallel building of RTX acceleration structures (e.g. scenes with many instances will now preprocess faster on RTX GPUs).
    • Added explicit control of grazing angle reflectivity of ground reflections via environment_dome_ground_reflectivity_grazing (default = -1, which is interpreted as white but also keeps the behavior of disabling ground reflections if environment_dome_ground_reflectivity_grazing is less or equal to zero) (nvbugs 3760308).
    • JIT compiled MDL code now supports incremental updates, leading to less recompilation on sparse material updates.
    • JIT compiled MDL environment and backplate functions are evaluated in the rendering core now and are no longer baked upfront, leading to faster updates/pre-processing, and no more fidelity loss of procedural environments/backplates. Backplate functions are now inversely tonemapped in core. Note that this may change the appearance of environments and backplates which were previously baked. (nvbugs 3785159)
    • Added warnings if MDL generated code (for run time evaluation, material, environment, and backplates) converts spectra to RGB, if spectral rendering is enabled.
  • Material Definition Language (MDL)
    • Allowed varying values on parameters of base::rotation_translation_scale().
    • Added the context option "export_resources_with_module_prefix" (defaults to true). If set to false, the module prefix is avoided if resources are exported as part of an exported MDL module.
    • Added support for Unicode identifiers to the MDL compiler (for MDL version >= 1.8).
    • Added implementations for state::geometry_tangent_u() and state_geometry_tangent_v() functions in JIT generated code. Before they were returning 0.
    • Distilling
      • Renamed mrulec2 to mrulec.
      • Removed built-in target diffuse_glossy.

  Fixed Bugs

  • General
    • Changed BMP export of alpha channels with OpenImageIO. While the correct behavior is debatable, it restores the historical behavior of FreeImage (nvbugs 3853252).
    • Changed the compression level for the export of PNG files back to 5 for much a better speed/space tradeoff (nvbugs 3647089).
    • Fixed handling of hostnames starting with a number, e.g. 123.com.
  • Iray Photoreal & Iray Interactive
    • Protect Perez sun and sky model against implausible input (nvbugs 3447755).
  • Iray Photoreal
    • Drastically reduced memory usage when rendering inhomogeneous volumes. At the same time this means that the trilinear volume filtering had to be changed. It now works on the MDL function, rather than the input data, which usually outputs an overall smoother result.
    • All state is now available to backplate functions on backplate meshes as they are no longer baked (e.g. previously the W texture coordinate was ignored) (nvbugs 3741312).
    • Fixed wrong computation of bounding boxes for rendering of fibers on pre-RTX/preTuring GPUs, leading to wrong rendering on some transformations.
    • Fixed an issue with active instancing and multiple scopes which could lead to ghosting artifacts (nvbugs 3843793).
    • Fixed incorrect cutout evaluation leading to a semi-transparent surface in case a simple JITcompiled MDL expression drives the cutout.
    • Spectral volume coefficients were converted to RGB even if with spectral rendering was enabled. This has been fixed (nvbugs 3818865).
    • Made lightpath connection handling of rough materials with same IOR on both sides consistent/more correct.
    • Improved robustness and convergence behavior of guided sampling, including support for SSS/homogeneous volumes.
    • Changed behavior of auxiliary/AOV buffers when rendering with depth of field (single sample images now are basically ignoring DOF).
    • Further improved self intersection handling/precision on all setups (CPU/pre-RTX/RTX) (nvbugs 3634421, 33756731, 634421, 2839115, 2869227, 2884158, 2948029, 2948171, 3296260, 3621145, 3625574, 3632810, 3632823).
    • Improved performance of fiber rendering on RTX cards (at the price of slightly more memory usage).
  • Material Definition Language (MDL)
    • Fixed artifacts in base::perlin_noise_bump_texture(), base::worley_noise_bump_texture() and base::flow_noise_bump_texture() when using small cell sizes.
    • Fixed IFunction_call::reset_argument() for cases where a default parameter referenced the directly preceding parameter.
    • Fixed IFunction_call::set_argument() to reject expressions that contain (forbidden) nested parameter references. Similarly for IFunction_definion::create_call().
  • MI exporter
    • Fixed broken export of triangle mesh motion vectors in case more than one motion step exists.

  Post edited by rbtwhiz on January 2023
• rbtwhiz Posts: 2,470

  December 2022

  Iray 2022.1.0, build 363600.1229

  Known Issues and Restrictions

  • Newer driver versions (R525 branch) fix a brightness/color clamping issue when using the AI denoiser, especially with bright images (nvbugs 3760304).
  • Also due to additional performance improvements, R525 GA2 (Windows: 526.67) is thus the recommended driver for Iray 2022.1.0.
  • Note that due to the new features listed below, this time unfortunately the bridge had to be changed compared to the 2022.1.0 beta.

  Added and Changed Features

  • General
    • Replaced still leftover FreeImage usages by OpenImageIO (e.g. SDK examples, Server, plugins).
    • Updated general libraries:
      • OpenSSL 1.1.1s
      • OpenImageIO 2.4.5.0
  • Iray Photoreal & Iray Interactive
    • Added multi matte canvas. This adds a new render target type (see mi::neuraylib::TYPE_MULTI_MATTE) and accompanying parameter type to the public API. It offers a scalar or vector canvas that contains one coverage mask per channel.
  • Iray Photoreal
    • Native ghostlight support, a new concept to make lights seemingly invisible when viewed via specular or glossy reflection, see e.g. ghostlight_factor for how it is used, or the new section in the programmers manual (IRAY-1753).
    • Added LPE support for emissive volumes and introduced a new light subtype, Lv, to denote light emitting volumes in LPEs (nvbugs 3867389).
    • Added UV texture coordinate computation for spheres/particles.
    • Added support for spheres/particle motion blur.
  • Material Definition Language (MDL)
    • Improved Windows implementation of mi::base::Lock to use SRWLOCK instead of CRITICAL_SECTION primitives.

  Fixed Bugs

  • General
    • Fixed releasing of scopes (nvbugs 3877982).
    • Support gray-alpha images with 16 and 32 bits per channel in OpenImageIO plugin (nvbugs 3829963).
    • Fixed missing initialization of the volume_priority attribute.
    • Fixed a bug where nvenc_encoder failed to load on a host with no GPU driver, causing the worker to refuse to start (nvbugs 3874131).
    • Fixed missing tracking of changed geometry status when adding spheres/particles or setting particle data.
    • Re-enabled network timeout by default, which was disabled by accident in an earlier release. Without the timeout, hosts leaving the cluster were not detected in UDP mode.
  • Iray Photoreal & Iray Interactive
    • Fixed ground/matte shadow for a sun disk size of 0 (nvbugs 3867412).
  • Iray Photoreal
    • Made guided sampling fully deterministic, so renderings on the same rendering setup will result in exactly the same image.
    • Fixed spectral rendering accidentally clamping EDF values.
    • Fixed more issues with and added some small optimizations for the optional instance camera shift (nvbugs 3860755).
    • Fixed some performance regressions for materials featuring glossy transmission with no cutouts.
    • Fixed missed intersections on transformed linear fibers (nvbugs 3845215).
    • Fixed an issue with guided EDF sampling and direct light sampling (nvbugs 3858634).
    • Fixed near clipping events to enable volumetric properties (nvbugs 3787726).
    • Fixed remaining triangle/self intersection precision issues on Turing-without-RTcores (GeForce GTX and low-end mobiles with sm75), A100 (sm80) and H100 (sm90) (nvbugs 3870551 and 3881264).
    • Fixed some remaining triangle/self intersection precision issues on CPU (nvbugs 3883738).
    • Retweaked some ambient occlusion and rounded corners precision issues (nvbugs 3864452).
    • Fixed crashes happening when using the ground/global fog (nvbugs 3872355).
    • Fixed an issue with volumes and far clipping planes (nvbugs 3878355).
    • Fixed a crash when rendering AUX buffers in combination with inhomogeneous volumes.
    • Fixed numerical corner cases where the hair BSDF could create invalid numbers (Jira MDL-798).
    • Made volume emission vs scattering/background scale independent.
    • Improved section objects/caps interaction with SSS/volumes (nvbugs 3878246).
    • Avoided some severe performance overhead (around 1.2x, depending on rendering setup and scene) for enclosing glossy transmission-only hulls, like found in a popular public benchmark scene (nvbugs 3846081).
    • Optimized light hierarchy traversal, especially noticeable on CPU.
    • Optimized hair BSDF component selection to reduce variance in importance sampling (OM-72862). Note that this will also lead to noticeably brighter hair rendering in some cases, if the firefly filter is enabled.
    • Further reduced memory usage for volume data a bit, especially visible for huge, but rather sparse volumes.
  • Iray Interactive
    • ​Fixed an issue with sampling the glossy component for environment maps/IBL (nvbugs 3557365).
  • Material Definition Language (MDL)
    • libbsdf: Optimized hair BSDF component selection to reduce variance in importance sampling (OM-72862).
    • Fixed IType_factory::is_compatible() for enums (the sets of enumeration values need to be equal, not just one a subset of the other).
    • OpenImageIO plugin
      • Fixed import of gray-alpha images with 16 and 32 bits per channel.
    • Fixed crash inside the MDL core compiler when an enum value is used as the right hand side of a select expression.
    • Fixed crash in the MDL core compiler when the qualified name of an import declaration is ill formed.
    • Changed the behavior of state functions when used with an invalid texture space. Now they return always zero.
• rbtwhiz Posts: 2,470

  December 2022

  Iray 2022.1.1, build 363600.1657

  Fixed Bugs

  • General
    • Fixed a memory leak regression in image canvas introduced with the 2022.0.0 beta.
    • Fixed multiple small issues with the new multi matte canvas.
  • Iray Photoreal
    • Fixed a missing material update for MDL JIT-compiled materials when changing the spectral rendering parameter (nvbugs 3887626).
    • Fixed the new selection flag for CPU/Embree spheres/particles and fibers (nvbugs 3891574).
    • Fixed a wrong condition for (indirect) ghostlight detection when using the caustic sampler.
    • Fixed block artifacts in ghostlights when also using guided sampling (nvbugs 3906572).
    • Fixed way too large temporary memory buffer usage on pre-RTX/pre-Turing GPUs when using spheres/particles or fibers.
    • Fixed an efficiency regression issue when rendering moderate or small resolutions, if guided sampling is enabled (as the scheduler did not crank up step sizes like it still did in the Iray 2022.1.0 beta) (nvbugs 3906561).
  • Material Definition Language (MDL)
    • Restored compatibility of base::perlin_noise_bump_texture(), base::worley_noise_bump_texture(), and base::flow_noise_bump_texture() with previous versions (differences were noticeable, in particular with strong bump factors). Note that the server component of the Iray Bridge needs to be updated as well to obtain correct renderings (although the Bridge compatibility with Iray 2022.1.0 itself is not affected).
• rbtwhiz Posts: 2,470

  December 2022

  Daz Studio 4.21.1.26 - *Public Build*

   

  • REQUIRES:
    • NVIDIA Driver 526.67 (R525) on Windows
    • NVIDIA Driver 526.98 (R525) on Windows in order to retain OpenCL/dForce compatibility
    • See NVIDIA Driver Downloads
      • NVIDIA recommends installing Studio Drivers (SD)
    • ​​SSSE3 enabled CPU is a minimum requirement on macOS/x86
• rbtwhiz Posts: 2,470

  January 2023

  Iray 2022.1.2, build 363600.1913

  Fixed Bugs

  • General
    • Fixed sphere/particles bounding box computation.
    • Fixed sphere/particles motion vectors to get lost when editing a particle object.
    Iray Photoreal
    • Fixed a problem with guided sampling where a large previous iteration batch before a camera move caused only single iteration updates from there on.
    • Fixed guided sampling iteration scheduling overshooting the number of iterations between updates.
    • Fixed partial framebuffer rendering support (needed to fit very very large framebuffers onto smaller GPU models).
    • Fixed tint loss if different VDFs with different colors are mixed for spectral rendering.
    • Fixed crash with spheres/particles in case the (triangle or fiber) instance count does not the match object count (on RTX/Turing and up GPUs).
• rbtwhiz Posts: 2,470

  January 2023

  Daz Studio 4.21.1.29 - *Public Build*

   

  • REQUIRES:
    • NVIDIA Driver 526.67 (R525) on Windows
    • NVIDIA Driver 526.98 (R525) on Windows in order to retain OpenCL/dForce compatibility
    • See NVIDIA Driver Downloads
      • NVIDIA recommends installing Studio Drivers (SD)
    • ​​SSSE3 enabled CPU is a minimum requirement on macOS/x86
• rbtwhiz Posts: 2,470

  February 2023

  Iray 2022.1.3 Internal, build 363600.2373

  Fixed Bugs

  • General
    • Fixed loading of uv-tilesets/animated textures with filenames containing meta-characters of regular expressions.
    Iray Photoreal
    • Fixed incorrect texture list indices for builtin bumps if used as dependency for MDL-JIT compiled code, e.g. in case a normal input slot of a builtin bump function was connected to another function, the input slot was not consumed.
    • Fixed spectral importance sampling weighting in case the scattering coefficient is zero in one channel.
    • Changed the way internal ray tracing API contexts are managed. Contexts are now shared more broadly, which avoids re-initialization in some use cases.
    • Fixed the instantaneous shutter mechanism for motion vectors. It also makes sure that the alpha and albedo buffers behave like the beauty buffer when the instantaneous shutter flag is on and that the shutter offset and the instantaneous shutter have no effect if motion vectors are disabled.
    • Avoid computing camera motion blur if motion vectors instantaneous shutter is on and motion vectors are enabled.
  • Material Definition Language (MDL)
    • Fixed a crash related to parameters declared with auto type.
    • Fixed wrong compilation and/or possible crashes if a function with an assignment of an atomic type to a vector type was inlined into a material body.
    • Fixed generated code for MDL math functions that are directly mapped to HLSL/GLSL intrinsics when several overloads of the same intrinsic are used.
    • Fixed uninitialized variables in generated HLSL code in some cases when the layer and the base BSDF of a layering distribution function are the same.
    • Fixed support for modf() and sincos() for HLSL and GLSL.
  • MI exporter
    • Fixed a crash during the export of on-demand meshes with userdata.
• rbtwhiz Posts: 2,470

  February 2023

  Iray 2022.1.4, build 363600.2768

  Added and Changed Features

  • General
    • Updated general libraries:
      • JsonCpp 1.9.5
      • OpenImageIO 2.4.5.0 (without dbghlp dependency)
      • OpenSSL 1.1.1t
    • The priority of the FreeImage and OpenImageIO plugin has been decreased by one level, such that it is possible again to override the default plugin with a custom image plugin.

  Fixed Bugs

  • General
    • Improved performance of scene updates, especially visible for huge scenes.
    • Added missing retrieval of per-vertex userdata attributes of on demand meshes during scene updates.
    Iray Photoreal
    • Fixed crash when using uniform userdata for volumes.
    • Improved navigation speed in large scenes with enabled motion blur, but no (or rare) motion.
    • Fixed a rare crash caused by missing cleanups of device data for MDL-JIT-compiled functions.
  • Material Definition Language (MDL)
    • Fixed a crash in the MDL compiler if a variant of a struct constructor is created.
    • Fixed calculation of return type for variants of auto declared functions.
    • Allow the creation of variants of the material type itself.
    • Fixed wrong optimization of the body of function variants.
    • Fixed crash when processing invalid annotations.
    • Fixed handling of struct fields with incomplete type.
    • Fixed crash when the same namespace is declared again.
    • Fixed negative results in df::fresnel_factor in numerical corner cases (libbsdf).
• rbtwhiz Posts: 2,470

  February 2023

  Daz Studio 4.21.1.41 - *Public Build*

   

  • REQUIRES:
    • NVIDIA Driver 526.67 (R525) on Windows
    • NVIDIA Driver 526.98 (R525) on Windows in order to retain OpenCL/dForce compatibility
    • See NVIDIA Driver Downloads
      • NVIDIA recommends installing Studio Drivers (SD)
    • ​​SSSE3 enabled CPU is a minimum requirement on macOS/x86
• rbtwhiz Posts: 2,470

  March 2023

  Iray 2022.1.5, build 363600.3430

  Added and Changed Features

  • General
    • Improved robustness when handling CUDA render targets supplied by the integration.
    • Improved performance of texture import via the OpenImageIO plugin, in particular when only the metadata is needed.
  • Material Definition Language (MDL)
    • Improved output messages for errors in annotations.

  Fixed Bugs

  • General
    • Fixed crashes with Iray Server (nvbugs 3875764).
    • Slightly improved OpenGL error handling.
  • Iray Photoreal
    • Fixed a crash with guided sampling, if the caustic sampler was toggled while guidance remained active (nvbugs 4011777).
    • Fixed issues when changing a material to become inhomogeneous participating media (and other corner cases) (nvbugs 3972155).
    • Fixed artifacts when rendering with guided sampling on multiple devices (nvbugs 3978162).
    • Fixed invalid auxiliary buffer values when clipping inhomogeneous volumes (nvbugs 3970624).
    • Hopefully prevent launch failures due to previously unknown launch memory requirements when using guidance.
  • Iray Interactive
    • Fixed occasional pixel garbage when rendering frame subwindows (nvbugs 3964935).
  • Material Definition Language (MDL)
    • Fixed potential crashes in the code generator when a module name contains a ".".
    • Fixed crash in the MDL compiler caused by invalid constant declarations.
• rbtwhiz Posts: 2,470

  March 2023

  Iray 2022.1.6, build 363600.3938

  Fixed Bugs

  • Iray Photoreal & Iray Interactive
    • Fixed a crash when constants are used as layer normals in MDL.
  • Iray Photoreal
    • Fixed Ambient Occlusion kernel overwriting the hit state, leading to GPU failures or CPU crashes (nvbugs 4020134).
    • Fixed missing change detection when a new material is assigned to a volume (nvbugs 4012311).
    • Fixed rendering selection subset buffers on RTX cards (nvbugs 3891603).
    • Fixed missing ground fog absorption when paths miss the scene bounding box (nvbugs 3983116).
    • Improved the interaction of ground fog if a finite dome is used.
  • Material Definition Language (MDL)
    • Fixed layout of API reference documentation for types using the __align__(x) macro.
    • Fixed ITargetCode serialization for cases when there are multiple materials in the link unit.
    • Fixed some cases where invalid MDL source code can lead to compiler crashes.
    • Fixed total internal reflection happening on coating if thickness is 0.0 (libbsdf).
• rbtwhiz Posts: 2,470

  March 2023

  Daz Studio 4.21.1.45 - *Public Build*

   

  • REQUIRES:
    • NVIDIA Driver 526.67 (R525) on Windows
    • NVIDIA Driver 526.98 (R525) on Windows in order to retain OpenCL/dForce compatibility
    • See NVIDIA Driver Downloads
      • NVIDIA recommends installing Studio Drivers (SD)
    • ​​SSSE3 enabled CPU is a minimum requirement on macOS/x86
• rbtwhiz Posts: 2,470

  April 2023

  Iray 2022.1.7, build 363600.4887

  Fixed Bugs

  • General
    • Prevent leaf objects from reusing the tessellation of objects that have not been processed yet (nvbug 4058103).
  • Iray Photoreal
    • Fixed total internal reflection happening on coating if thickness is 0.0 via texture inputs.
    • Fixed rendering selection subset buffers in presence of decals (nvbug 3976531).
    • Fixed adding multiple instances of the same particle object, leading to crashes (nvbugs 4061583).
  • Material Definition Language (MDL)
    • Fixed rare crash in HLSL code generator regarding translation of load instructions.
    • Fixed crash for zero sized arrays in argument block layout builder.
    • Several bug fixed in the MDL compiler when compiling syntactically invalid MDL code.
• rbtwhiz Posts: 2,470

  April 2023

  Daz Studio 4.21.1.48 - *Public Build*

   

  • REQUIRES:
    • NVIDIA Driver 526.67 (R525) on Windows
    • NVIDIA Driver 526.98 (R525) on Windows in order to retain OpenCL/dForce compatibility
    • See NVIDIA Driver Downloads
      • NVIDIA recommends installing Studio Drivers (SD)
    • ​​SSSE3 enabled CPU is a minimum requirement on macOS/x86