MoonRay for Modo 0.4.3

A critical performance update (Windows, Modo 16.1v9, experimental), with a new runtime: install the kit and the runtime together.

Faster to start a render

• Scenes load far faster before a render starts, in MoonRay and in MoonLightIPR. A mesh's long lists (points, faces, normals, UVs, vertex maps) go to MoonRay in its own binary scene format beside the scene text, which MoonRay reads in a fraction of the time. The geometry adapter now joins the many pieces Modo's render cache hands over into one per surface (one test interior came in as 41,940 pieces of 16 surfaces), and what was read of a scene is kept from one reading to the next. On that interior, getting MoonRay ready went from about 107 seconds to 18, and MoonLightIPR's packing from 6.9 seconds to 2.3, with the same pictures. Preferences: Load geometry as binary (on).
• Low-latency rendering: MoonRay runs below Modo's priority and leaves one processor thread free, so Modo stays quick to use while it renders. Preferences (on).

MoonLightIPR

• Uses far less power: it stops once the picture is clean, square by square, spreads a render over about eight seconds rather than running the graphics card flat out, shows the picture less often once it has settled, and lets the processor sleep while it waits on the card. It is no longer sent the scene again for a change of frame alone.
• Draws more of a scene: Shader Tree displacement layers and every displacement node (Normal, Vector, Combine, Switch), with motion blur; Shader Tree stencils; light links from Object controls, a material's links or Modo's groups; and a material stack's rows with their own shine (a dull print over shiny metal). An edit is rendered once the mouse is let go.

Modo's materials nearer Modo's, in MoonRay

• Shader Tree Displacement and Stencil layers render in MoonRay.
• Principled sheen, and Principled highlights that keep their rise toward the edge.
• Anisotropy along Modo's UV map, its strength fitted to Modo's renders.
• Glass: a tinted solid takes Modo's colour once rather than at each surface, and rough glass blurs as Modo's does.
• Masks: material, Part, Selection Set and item masks colour the same surfaces as in Modo's own render.

Fixes

• Replicators render with motion blur (a replicator's copies that Modo gives in a different number a moment from the frame no longer stop the render; MoonLightIPR showed nothing).
• Export as MoonRay Scene's RDLB writes only the RDLB beside the scene.
• A light's picture that cannot be found is left out with a notice, not drawn in MoonRay's pink.

Updating

Close Modo. Unpack MoonRayForModo-0.4.3-kit.zip and MoonRayForModo-0.4.3-windows-runtime.zip and follow INSTALLATION.md: the runtime changed (MoonRay's scene loading and MoonLightIPR), so the kit alone is not enough. The content ZIP is optional and the same ten example scenes as before.

What was checked

The packaged ZIPs were unpacked into an empty folder and checked with tools/check_release_package.py (MoonRay renders in XPU and vectorized modes, the scene and VDB readers, the hair grower, the MoonLightIPR session, the content in the asset library); the project's unit tests pass. MoonLightIPR's new drawing was compared with MoonRay's renders scene by scene (the numbers are in moonlightipr/README.md), and Modo's materials with Modo's own renders. Run on one machine (RTX 3090) only.