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Dear VRED Users,
We´d like to inform you that VRED 2022 Design & Professional has just been released. It is ready for installation through the Autodesk Desktop App and is available in your Autodesk Account. Here is a quick overview of what´s new and has changed:
GGX BRDF Shader Model
VRED 2022 is now using the GGX BRDF model for all materials. GGX is currently THE standard for many render engines due the fact it more closely mimics the look of real reflections on rough surfaces and allows high fidelity simulation of material reflection at both peek and shallow viewing angles, resulting in a softer highlight that falls off more gradually.
The new GGX BRDF model also uses a multi-scattering approximation to better preserve energy and an improved importance sampling method to reduce the chances of fireflies.
As a result of these changes the roughness of all materials changes slightly.
When starting your project with a new scene the default behavior is always set to the new rendering behavior using the BRDF GGX model but it is also possible to switch back to the "old" BRDF model in the Render Settings at any time.
When opening a scene, the was created before VRED 2022 the user is prompted with a dialog asking if he/she wants to migrate the scene to the new GGX BRDF model or stay with the "old" behavior. No matter what was chosen, it is possible to migrate the scene to the new GGX BRDF model at any time in the Render Settings.
BRDF Environment Sampling
In order to better match OpenGL- and Precomputed- with your full GI results we introduced a new pre-filtering method for environment HDRs. Instead of using a spherical harmonics approach for the pre-filtering we now sample the environment HDR against the new BRDF model and it is possible to control the amount of samples in the used for pre-filtering the glossy IBL to get a more accurate result. A higher sample values result in a better quality but longer pre-calculation time. The pre-filtering is now done on the GPU to reduce calculation time.
RAY File Improvements
The quality of RAY files depends on the number of photons stored in the file. Creating noise free images requires a lot of photons and often more than what is commonly available in a RAY file.
A new Emitter Cone parameter in the RAY Light properties controls the size of a cone that is used to vary the direction of each emitted photon to increase the number of photons that can be generated during tracing while sacrificing a bit of accuracy.
Light Spectrum Improvements
When converting a spectrum to VREDs RGB based color space it can result in colors that are outside of the color gamut, creating negative values. In VRED versions before 2022 this led to wrong colors, especially when using RAY files with a single wavelength per ray.
Note: Material colors must still be clamped to the 0-1 range in RGB to avoid wrong calculations.
Also, this change will significantly change the render result for those cases where out of gamut colors occur. All cases without negative values in their RGB should be unaffected.
UV Editor Improvements
We have added a new “Automatic Seam Selection” with different Selection Types to the UV Editor. The 3 different Selection Types “Manufacturing”, “Organic” & “Bake”, auto-select UV edges based on different algorithms and inputs that can be easily cut afterwards.
With the introduction of “Texture based Lightmaps” users are able to switch between 2 UV sets now and can easily copy UV´s from one set to the other. The 1st Material- and 2nd Lightmap UV sets are now imported and exported when using the FBX file format to allow a better round-trip with DCC tools.
A new “Reset Settings to Preferences” entry in the UV Editor menu bar resets all values in the UV Editor module to what is set in the VRED Preferences > UV Editor.
It is now also possible to disable the rendering of the wire-frame of UV shells in the UV Editor to better judge your material- and lightmap textures.
Texture-based Lightmaps
VRED 2022 introduces Texture based Lightmaps for Ambient Occlusion, Shadows and Light & Shadows including direct- & indirect light, caustics as well as IES- & RAY light profiles. This offers new possibilities and use cases due the fact it is now possible to bake high quality results on low polygon objects without subdividing meshes. The data baked into a lightmap can not change at runtime. Realtime lights can be overlaid and used on top of lightmapped scenes but cannot interactively change the lightmap themselves.
It is possible to calculate Texture based Lightmaps with CPU or GPU Raytracing and use VRED Cluster to distribute the calculation of Lightmaps and Lightmap UV generation on multiple machines. Note: It is not possible to use GPU Raytracing or VRED Cluster to calculate Vertex based Shadows.
Meshes you want to calculate Lightmaps for must have proper UV´s. Ideally using the maximum available UV space, have less as possible distortion and less as possible disconnected UV islands with enough space in between for an Edge Dilation necessary for lightmap textures.
With VRED 2022 every mesh got a second Lightmap UV channel that can have an independent UV layout compare to the Material UV. UV´s can be easily transferred from one channel to the other in the UV Editor. Compare to the vertex-based approach, Texture based Lightmaps require more video memory and therefore users must find a good balance between texture size and quality. The Bake Light and Shadows module provides the possibility to autogenerate lightmap UV´s based on a triplanar mapping or using the UV Editor unfold settings during the calculation. Depending on your scene data certain objects might require manual work in the UV Editor to get optimum results.
Geometry that is exchanged via FBX with other tools keep the 2nd Lightmap channel on im- and export as well.
It is possible to combine Vertex Shadow with Texture based Lightmaps in one VRED scene and users can toggle the bahavior either in scenegraph context menu or the combo box in the Advanced Tab of the Bake Light and Shadow Module.
To better judge the baked result in the scene users can toggle between the different Visualization modes (Realistic-, Ambient Occlusion- and Precomputed Illumination) in the Visualization menu or double check the lightmap texture directly in the UV Editor.
Alias Reference Assembly Support
Alias 2021 introduced the possibility to create an assembly structure out of various CAD file formats like .wire, .iges, .step, etc. Alias creates an intermediate .wref reference file for modeling and visualization purpose in the viewport while keeping the link to the original CAD file in the background. When importing an Alias .wire file that contains an assembly structure in VRED, the linked CAD files are now imported as well. All files that are assembled in the Alias Reference Manager are imported underneath a group called “Reference Manager” to reflect the Alias Reference Manager and Layer usability pattern.
VRED® Core Improvements
VRED® Core for Linux now supports Substance Engine v8.
Also, VRED® Core for Linux now supports the conversion of native CAD file formats via ATF (Autodesk Translation Framework). In addition, FBX is now also supported on Linux using the native FBX SDK.
Not all CAD file formats that are available on Windows are available on Linux and we are working on extending the list of supported CAD file formats in the future. Current supported CAD file formats on Linux are:
- IGES
- JT
- Parasolid
- SAT
- STEP
- OBJ
- STL
- FBX
Streaming App Improvements
We have added the possibility to read, create and remove VRED annotations in the VRED Streaming App. Besides just streaming VRED Annotations, it is also possible to switch to "Interactive HTML Annotations" in the Streaming App and edit text, color and position directly in the view-port. In addition, it is now possible to display the current frame-rate of the VRED scene as an overlay in the Streaming App.
If users want to work with different resolution or quality settings that are not available in the VRED Streaming App UI, it is now possible to add certain query parameters in the browser URL.
MR/VR marker & object placement
Users that own a Varjo XR mixed reality headset can now use Varjo-markers to place and move objects in the scene by simply creating a scene tag called Varjo(Number) assigned to the object that should be tracked.
A new entry in our VR controller menu allows to place and move objects in the scene with the laser pointer, that have a Scene Tag called “Place” assigned. The place tool uses a similar approach to the teleport for rotating objects and it is possible to snap the rotation to a 10° angle by pressing the controller Grip Button . It is also possible to place objects on top of another.
General Improvements
Community
From within the Help Menu, it is now possible to launch our Autodesk’s VRED Forum & Idea Station where you can share your knowledge, ask questions, collaborate on ideas, and explore popular VRED topics. As well a quick link to our Design Studio Blog that will serve to be your hub for hearing from our product teams, learning about product updates, new features and releases, discuss technology trends and of course share tutorials and best practices.
GPU Raytracing
The GPU Raytracer now supports Photonmapping with real-time feedback for Caustics and indirect lighting. In addition, it is now possible to use RAY lights GPU Raytracing.
Substance by Adobe
With VRED 2022 we have updated the Substance Engine to version 8 to support the new Cross Section- and Threshold filters as well as the improved Tile generator-, Distance-, & Curve node recently introduced with Substance Designer 2020.2 (10.2.0)
CPU Denoising
We have integrated the Intel® Open Image CPU denoiser. By default, VRED is using the Nvidia OptiX GPU denoiser if users have a capable graphic card. If not, and the denoiser option is activated in the Render Settings VRED automatically uses the Intel® Open Image Denoiser CPU denoiser as a fallback.
Realtime Rendering
We have improved our real-time rendering and now evaluate the animation curves for the current time independent of the animation framerate, so a 24 or 25fps animation can be played back smoothly with 60fps or more. A new option in the animation preferences called "Evaluate Subframes“ was introduced and is activated by default.
We have parallelized the import of file references in a PLMXML structure when the PLMXML file is initiated by calling the load function in the scripting API .
Offline Rendering
VRED 2021 now supports multilayer EXR files with mixed formats. This enables color channels and more to be written as 16bit float, while other passes like cryptomatte, depth, or position can be written as 32bit float.
Bug Report
For better issue tracking the Logfile now has a timestamp in front of each log entry.
File Conversion
It is now possible to load PLMXML structure files in VRED Design.
Sincerely,
Your Autodesk VRED Team
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