Features
The Aqsis tools provide a comprehensive list of features that are considered
necessary for production use, the following list details some of the important
high level capabilities.
- Programmable Shading – Aqsis supports the
‘RenderMan Shading Language’. Shaders written
in RSL can be used for surface shading,
lightsources, displacement, volumetric shading
(interior/exterior) and imaging. This feature
provides artists with complete freedom to describe surfaces, lights and other
parts of the rendering pipeline, in any way they require, providing much more
flexibility and control than more restricted procedural material systems.
- High Level Primitive Support – Aqsis uses the REYES rendering approach, which means all primitives
are broken down into sub-pixel micropolygons (MP’s) during rendering. This
means that Aqsis only needs the high level surface descriptions to render
from, reducing the data passed to the renderer, while ensuring a perfectly
smooth silhouette edge. Some other renderers would require, for instance NURBS geometry to be polygonised before rendering.
Aqsis will render a NURBS surface directly, while ensuring that it is rendered
at a sufficiently high rate to prevent artifacts on silhouette edges.
Effectively, the REYES approach provides automatic, adaptive subdivision at
render time, ensuring that the surface is subdivided enough to produce an
accurate representation of curved surfaces in areas that need it, while not
over subdividing in areas that don’t need it. Many polygon based renderers
would require a high level curved surface to be pre-subdivided, meaning the
surface is likely to be subdivided too much in some areas, or not enough in
others, often a user choice, this results in large amounts of data being sent
to the renderer in order to avoid silhouette artifacts.
- Sub-Pixel Displacement – The REYES approach allows Aqsis to provide true
displacements at the sub-pixel level. Where some other renderers would need
densely subdivided geometry to be passed into the rendering pipeline to
achieve similar functionality, Aqsis provides this for all primitive types, with no requirement to alter the
geometry before it is passed to the renderer.
- Motion Blur (MB) – Aqsis supports multi-segment
motion blur. Objects can be described by any
number of keyframes during a single shutter period and Aqsis will properly
interpolate those keyframes to provide a motion blurred representation of the
moving object. Allowing a completely arbitrary number of segments, allows the
user to more accurately motion blur such things as rapidly rotating objects
which, due to the linear interpolation of segments, is difficult ot achieve
with only a few segments.
- Depth of Field (DoF) – Aqsis is able to accurately blur elements in the
scene to emulate the focal capabilities of a real camera. Unlike a post
processed depth blur, render time depth blurring accurately captures the
effect of otherwise hidden scene elements showing through highly out of focus
parts of the scene, a feature not possible with post processed blur using a
depth map.
- Shadow Mapped Ambient Occlusion – Aqsis supports a special type of
shadow map that contains the shadow information
from a number of points in a single map, allowing ambient lighting that
incorporates shadowing. By generating shadow maps from a hemisphere (or
sphere) of lightsources surrounding the scene, and combining them into one
large depth map, Aqsis is able to determine how occluded any part of the scene
is from the surrounding ambient light. This information can be used to enhance
the effect of ambient lighting, providing less illumination in areas that
would naturally receive less ambient light.
- Arbitrary Output Variables (AOV) – Aqsis is able to output multiple images
from a single render pass, each containing different information. The images
can contain any shader variable, including the standard built in variables,
such as surface normal, texture coordinates, surface derivatives etc.
Alternatively, it is entirely possible to define new output variables of any
supported RSL type to render any sort of
surface information. These multiple passes can then be combined to produce
various effects, such as cartoon rendering, or for complex post processing
during compositing.
- Subdivision Surfaces (SDS) – Aqsis can render
Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces, subdividing
to sub-pixel level at render time. No need to pass Aqsis a heavily subdivided
mesh, Aqsis will subdivide as it renders, you only need to pass it the low
poly control hull. As with NURBS surfaces, the
subdivision of SDS primitives is adaptive, Aqsis will subdivide only as much
as necessary to produce an accurate representation of the curved surface.