appleseed 1.8.1-beta Released

We just released appleseed 1.8.1-beta, the ninth release of our beta program and the 32nd release since the first alpha in July 2010.

Downloads and release notes:

• appleseed 1.8.1-beta
• appleseed-maya 1.0.1-beta
• appleseed-max 0.4.7-beta
• blenderseed 0.7.0

This release introduces a massively improved Blender plugin thanks to the downright obsessive work of Jon Dent and Luke Kliber:

• Entirely redesigned the plugin’s user interface
• Removed the need to set a project folder
• Added all missing BSDF models
• Made render buckets visible
• Made the render progress bar functional
• Exposed the orthographic camera
• Removed obsolete features
• Fixed Many. Dozens. Bugs.

Our Autodesk® 3ds Max® plugin also got its share of attention thanks to the mad work of Sergo Pogosyan and the valuable inputs of our beta testers:

• Added physically-based plastic and metal materials
• Introduced a blend material to blend up to 10 materials together
• Added a log window displaying appleseed’s debug and warning messages during rendering
• Fixed many bugs

Our Autodesk® Maya® plugin was noticeably improved as well thanks to coding machines Esteban Tovagliari and Luis Barrancos:

• Added support for SSS sets, allowing to group translucent objects using arbitrarily named tags
• Implemented swatch rendering in the Hypershade window
• Improved interactivity when rendering to the RenderView
• Fixed several bugs

Finally, the core renderer and associated tools received a number of important bug fixes and improvements as well as the introduction of energy compensation in the glossy and metal BRDFs.

As usual, please give appleseed and the plugins a try and let us know what works, what doesn’t and how we can make appleseed better and more useful to you. Feel free to reach out on our users forum or via Twitter.