MoonRay for Modo 0.4.2

Native Windows experimental release for Modo 16.1v9. Download the kit and the windows-runtime ZIPs and follow INSTALLATION.md. The content ZIP is optional: it adds MoonRay's ten example scenes to the asset library. All three unpack to a MoonRayForModo folder; merge them into one. The kit finds its bundled runtime folder by itself, so no paths or environment variables need setting.

0.4.2 needs its own runtime ZIP: install the kit and the runtime together, not the kit over the 0.4.1 runtime. MoonRay itself changed (display and pixel filters, the MoonRay Source Overrides, time per pixel), as did MoonLightIPR, and the runtime now carries MoonRay's scene converter for RDLB export.

The full list of changes, with pictures, is in What's new in 0.4, 0.4.1 and 0.4.2.

New since 0.4.1

• MoonRay's display filters (all 18), pixel filters (Gaussian, Triangle, Blackman-Harris), time per pixel, visibility and primitive attribute outputs, and switch displacement in the node editor.
• The compositor builds itself from passes or light groups, with a Grade on each; colour nodes take a mask; a probe reads values at the pointer; it runs on the graphics card.
• Cryptomatte: pick mattes in the preview, names and IDs on objects and materials, a Cryptomatte node in the compositor, and fog with mattes of its own.
• MoonRay's cameras are Modo cameras: looked through in the viewport by their lens, with Modo's resolution gate; Convert to MoonRay Camera replaces a Modo camera in place, animation kept; a Camera Sequence keys cameras to frame ranges; stereo and overscan from Modo's camera.
• Export as MoonRay Scene (MoonRay menu, and the preview's Options): RDLA, RDLB or both, with outputs, collected textures and each frame of the range optional. More of a MoonRay scene comes in on import: motion, creases, fog meshes, values by point or face, instancers of any size.
• MoonLightIPR: velvet, motion blur on by default, MoonRay's own cameras, hair toon and even fog; faster on scenes without its heaviest materials, and large texture sets fit on the graphics card.
• Saving pictures: PNG, JPEG, TIFF and Targa besides OpenEXR, a new Export AOVs window, and a choice of EXR compression.
• Eleven MoonRay Source Overrides: fixes to MoonRay's own source where it renders something wrongly for an artist (smooth toon edges, fog in Cryptomatte, images without alpha read as opaque, and more), each a checkbox in Preferences, on by default.
• Render settings: Global Switches, volume factors, presence quality and more; settings a sampling mode does not use are greyed; MoonRay LS samples adaptively or uniformly.
• Fixes: Modo's own light linking reaches MoonRay; HDRI environments reach MoonRay whole, match Modo's direction and turn quickly; glitter works in reference space; the Denoiser set to Off is off everywhere; ACEScg scenes render and look right, and an ACES 2.0 view sits beside ACES 1.3; scenes of more than 32,767 meshes render; a preview that fails on the GPU falls back to the CPU.
• A texture that cannot be found no longer stops the render: a notice names it, and the material renders without it.
• Change to Modo Camera: right-click a MoonRay camera to make it Modo's own camera again, framing as it did.
• The button greys while a render stops, saying Stopping, until MoonRay has finished with what it has.

Known limits

As in 0.4.1. Also: now and then a preview with glitter in the GPU (XPU) mode fails on the graphics card; it is rendered on the CPU instead, with a notice. Open issues are on the issue tracker.

What was checked

The packaged kit and runtime ZIPs were unpacked into an empty folder and checked there with tools/check_release_package.py: MoonRay renders in XPU and vector modes, the scene reader, VDB reader and hair grower run, MoonLightIPR starts and quits, and the packaged scene converter writes RDLB. The content ZIP was checked for its layout and integrity, not installed from. Each change was tried in an isolated Modo 16.1v9 on one machine (RTX 3090) while it was built; the project's unit tests pass. No clean-machine install was tested.