This page will outline all new and updated features of the new 9.0 program version. Use the help manual, chapter "What's new in version 9.0", for a quick and easy guide to all changed and new topics.The elimination of minor errors and repairs are not mentioned here. For demo pictures and animations demonstrating the new capabilities visit the gallery. Demo projects are part of the CyberMotion installation and can be downloaded by registered users from the web library.

New features in version 9.0:

Global Illumination using Photon Mapping

  • Raytracing is a standard for high picture quality and for realistic reflections and refraction. One of the major drawbacks in a general raytracing implementation is that it does not take into account the indirect illumination - the light that is reflected from other objects in the scene other than the direct light from a light source. Usually a constant light intensity can be defined to simulate this indirect lighting but that is a very poor approximation. Especially in architectural scenes the illumination in a room is dominated by indirect light reflected many times from the diffuse surfaces in a building. Now, with the newly implemented photon mapping algorithm, CyberMotion provides a global illumination model that combines the pros of raytracing - reflection and refraction - with the ability to render also the indirect illumination caused by diffuse reflections in the scene. Rendering a picture with photon mapping is a two pass procedure. In a preliminary run little packages of energy (photons) are emitted from the light sources in the scene. Similar to ordinary raytracing the path of this photons is traced through the scene and just like in raytracing photons are reflected from specular surfaces and refracted in transparent objects. But each time a photon hits a diffuse surface, the position and properties of the photon are stored in a 3-dimensional data structure called the photon map. Simultaneously a diffuse reflection is calculated and the diffuse reflected photon continues its way through the scene until it is absorbed in the scene or lost in space. After the photon map has been calculated the picture is rendered in an ordinary raytracing run and the photon map is evaluated when calculating the incoming light intensity for a point. There are more advantages of photon mapping:
    • Color Bleeding - e.g. when a green wall casts greenish reflections on a neighbouring white wall.
    • Caustics: Caustics are light reflections from highly specular surfaces or, e.g., the light gathered in a focal point after transmission through a glass lens.
    • Photon maps can contain several millions of photons - so a high amount of RAM memory (at least 128MB) is a priority when testing photon mapping.
    • You can apply photon mapping in two different ways:
      1. Photon mapping only for indirect illumination in combination with the conventional direct light calculations.
      2. Only photon mapping as a global illumination model. All the light in the scene is calculated by evaluating the photon map
    • CyberMotion generates two different photon maps - one for the diffuse indirect illumination and one for the light reflections due to caustic reflections. This is due to the fact that caustic reflections usually need a lot of more photons to render sharp contours, e.g. when light is refracted through a glass and focused in a sharp point.
    • You can specify for each light source, wether it contributes to the photon mapping or if it is interpreted only as a direct light. If, e.g., insignificant background lights are involved, you can exclude them from the photon mapping process without reducing the quality of the picture.
    • Static photon map for animations. The photon map will be calculated only once at the beginning of an animation. You can use this option for Fly Throughs in architectural scenes where the objects themselves do not move.
    • You can exclude individual objects from the photon mapping. This objects will be rendered using conventional direct lighting. There are 2 possible uses:
      1. For small tiny objects that are not hit by enough photons to shade them correctly
      2. For moving objects in animations with static photon maps. Thus you can use a static photon map for the architectural environment and conventional direct lighting for moving objects like, for instance, cars on a street in a city.

Light and Fire

  • Area Lights - Each object can be interpreted now as an area light. In the material dialog there is a new property called "Area Light". When you activate this option an object changes to an area light object. The amount of light/shadow feelers to scan an area light is determined by the amount of points the object consists of and the more regularly the object the better the result. NURBS-patches are an ideal way to realize an area light. They have a regular point interval and can be easily inserted as flat panels in walls. A great benefit also - you can change the point-resolution of a NURBS patch anytime, thus reducing the number of points for preview pictures and increasing it again when rendering the final picture. Anyway, the number of light- and shadow sensors is limited to a maximum of 200, if there are more points in an object, points will be picked randomly from the object. Apart from NURBS-patches you can use any object for an area light, even analytical objects or objects with the property "Point=Sphere" switched on. That would result in a cluster of light spheres. Once you set the area light property for an object in the material dialog it is also listed in the light dialog. In the light dialog the object is managed as a normal light object with all familiar parameters belonging to a light source. You can edit and animate light colors and intensity there. The light color is different from the material color. This is due to the fact that area light objects are interpreted as a hull for an inner light source and the hull can have any material you like, for instance, a diffuse plastic light panel or a simple glass sphere. Only then the light color is added and makes the light object shine. In an animation you would increase the light color slowly from a dark color to a bright color to let the object light up. Last but not least an area light object also contributes to the photon map when photon mapping is applied. Therefore all relevant parameters for photon mapping are provided for area lights to.
  • Light Intensity - The intensity fall off of light objects is calculated now exponential instead by a constant linear value. This results in a faster light intensity fall off which comes nearer to the real world conditions. This change will also help to coordinate the two different illumination modes - direct lighting and photon mapping - to match in their intensity levels. This will enable you to switch from raytracing to photon mapping and vice versa without having always to adjust the intensities again. Differences can be smoothed by using the Intensity Correction parameters provided for each light source.
  • Shadow Sensors - the number of shadow sensors can be input now for each light object separately (up to 97). Additional shadow sensors are only calculated for Lamps and Spots with a certain radius. There is no Shadow Dispersion-value anymore, since the amount of distraction for every shadow sensor is calculated from the light circle given by the light radius.
  • Volumetric Fire - with the new Volumetric Fire object almost all kinds of fire can be simulated, beginning with smooth burning candle flames up to vividly burning torches, camp fires or blazing seas of flames. Volumetric Fire is confined to a cylindrical bounding box with an additional lamp object fixed to it. Volumetric Fire objects are created within the Light Dialog. Since a lamp object is subordinated automatically to the fire cylinder, all parameters for lamp lights can be edited when a lamp belonging to a fire object is selected. Additionally to the lamp details, all parameters forming the Volumetric Fire are displayed in the Light Dialog. Fundamentally, Volumetric Fire is calculated similar to Volumetric Fog, applying a ray marching algorithm that takes samples of fire density along the path through the fire cylinder, so most of the parameters describing the fire are similar to the Volumetric Fog parameters. Additional parameters define the color palette of the fire, the shaping within the cylinder, the turbulent flow and the flickering (shifting of lamp position and intensity in an animation) of the flame.

Backgrounds

  • Atmosphere - "Sky", "Sky & Clouds", "Fog Linear" and "Fog Turbulence" were integrated into one single "Atmosphere" entry. 4 separate register tabs are provided to control the background color range, the cloud formation, the widely extended fog functions and the atmospheric filter functions. Many improvements have been made and thus former project files may have to be adjusted slightly, but of course all projects will be converted automatically to suitable atmosphere settings as far as possible.
  • Sky Colors - Additional color range mode for backgrounds. Apart from the color range gradient from zenith to horizon you can apply now also a sun centered color range. The colors will run from the sun concentrically around the world sphere. This enables more realistic sunsets with bright (reddened) colors around the sun and darker (blue) shadings on the opposite direction of the sun. So there is no need anymore for animating the background colors when you only want to animate an all around pan with the camera.
  • Atmospheric Filter - As a light ray traverses an atmosphere some light is extinguished and some light may be added by emission and scattering. (Atmosphere means now fog switched on in CyberMotion). This yields in a change in color with distance, i.e., dark backgrounds becoming bluer (sky, additive component) and light backdrops redder (filter component). On the Filter tab you can switch on now both filter types with corresponding color values and intensities. Don't hesitate to experiment with this new filters (mind to switch on fog also), they can largely improve the realism of outdoor scenes and reduce the fiddling to find proper background color ranges. With proper settings for the atmospheric filters and fog you could even simulate a blue sky with a red sunset with nothing more than a single dark background color.
  • Fog - There are 2 optional fog modes, an atmospheric fog that is coordinated with the atmospheric filter functions and should be activated in every outdoor scene, and an additional ground fog. Both fog modes are provided now with two height parameters, ground height and overall height. This is due to the fact that fog is now getting thinner with increasing height (underneath ground height full density is applied). As ground fog is for heavy layers of thick fog gathering above the ground the thinning out of ground fog can be switched of optionally.
  • Fog is calculated now with exponential increasing density.
  • Fog can be illuminated - this means the fog color is calculated from the incidence light from parallel light sources (suns).
  • Volumetric Ground Fog - You can switch on a volumetric function to render the ground fog. By doing this not only a layer of uniform fog is applied but a real whirling and cloudy media is calculated. This is done by tracing the viewing ray through the foggy media and taking many samples of fog densities and illuminations along its path - rendering time will increase accordingly. Another advantage of volumetric fog is the possibility to render realistic animations of swirling fog rising from the ground and driven forth by the wind. Even the illumination of point light sources and spot cones will become clearly visible in volumetric fog, as the incoming light is sampled also when tracing through the fog media.

Materials

  • Noise Normal Distortion - The noise function has a new Scale parameter for the general frequency of the noise pattern, independent from the separate values for the x, y and z-axis. The algorithm was improved considerably (on cost of rendering time), so that especially landscape textures will benefit from it. You can also switch on the B-Spline-function to further improve the normal distortion (again with increasing rendering time cost).
  • Procedural Textures - New option "Texture Color = Material Color" for all texture patterns. This deactivates the color mixing so that only normal distortion will be visible. You can use it to simply check the normal distortion without disturbing interference with the color pattern or just to create a simple tiled texture, e.g., with a single plain color but the normal distortion of the invisible block texture.
  • Landscape Texture Layers:
    • additional option to apply a texture layer with a spotted appearance. Only patches of the texture layer will show on the ground, mingling with underlying layers resulting in a more complex appearance.
    • normal distortion and random application improved, landscape layers have a much more realistic appearance.
  • Water - Wave algorithm improved with a smoother flow of water and more turbulent currents.

and...

  • Additional "Dimension"-box in "Scale Object" work mode. You can directly define the dimensions of the object via the width, height, and depth of the objects bounding box, in world space and object-axis mode. This can also applied to analytical objects (corresponding axes will be adjusted automatically).
  • Drop Selection - In "Move Object" work mode you can drop objects to the ground. If an object hovers above another object it will land on it, if not, nothing will happen. You can drop selected objects or hierarchies as a whole object or let each object/hierarchy fall down on it's own path.
  • To support the construction of objects bitmaps can be displayed now in the Viewport windows. There are 2 new menu entries in the "View" menu bar available to switch on a bitmap for a Viewport and to select a bitmap via the file selector box.
  • Dialog parameters that will generate automatically a keyframe when changed are painted with a light blue background to indicate that these parameters can be animated.
  • Object Selection Dialog - You can select now several objects in one go with your mouse dragging up a frame in the selection window. Then a Popup-selection will appear where you can decide whether to switch on/off or copy/delete the objects.
  • The Mousewheel can be used now to scroll up and down in object selection lists, library windows and within the render window.
  • In "View - Normals" viewing mode only normals of selected objects or facets are drawn.
  • The default parameters for generating landscapes and atmospheres were adjusted for better coordination with fog, color filters and waves.
  • Landscape Editor - a suitable camera position for the generated landscape will assigned automatically and the background switched on if the corresponding option is activated on generation.
  • Viewport Zoom - Additional zoom steps from 4% down to 1% has been added to provide an overall view when working with large scale landscape objects.