Release Notes for v0.9.0

2021

First release of rs-pbrt in 2021!

The source code is currently not changing that much anymore. The renderer is more or less feature complete and compatible to v3 of the C++ code. The book about v4 is on the horizon and the matching C++ code already online. I created an invite to a Discord channel (about the Rust version), which will expire after 100 uses.

The Future

To be honest, v4 looks pretty good, and deals with GPUs vs. CPUs, but I doubt I will have that much time to work on a Rust counterpart anymore. I'm more than willing to participate in such an undertaking, but not as more or less the only developer (rs-pbrt had two contributors so far).

Click here for a link to the YouTube video. In the video I show the C++ code of pbrt v4 in action, rendering an example scene into the tev viewer. I do plan to port at least this feature over to the Rust counterpart. Any help on that would be appreciated.

Windows Executable

To make things more user friendly I started to provide a Windows installation package (.msi) for those who are not familiar with Rust and how to compile an executable themselves. From now on this will be part of each release. Something similar for Linux is planned. For Windows I used the WiX toolset and the Rust crate cargo-wix. The installation itself should be self-explanatory, but here are some screenshots:

Setup Wizard

License Agreement

I didn't find a way to make this dual-licensed, so only one of the licenses will show up in the installer (for now).

Custom Setup

Install

Completed

Right now there should be a copy of the license in Rich Text Format (License.rtf) and a bin folder containing a Windows executable (extension .exe) called rs_pbrt.exe. In the future I would like to add at least a couple of scenes in .pbrt (v3) format to the installer, but maybe it's best to distribute those separatly.

USD

Another topic for future devlopment would be to write a USD Hydra Render Delegate for rs-pbrt so the renderer could work like a plug-in within Houdini and other programs (e.g. Blender).

The End

I hope I didn't forget anything important. Have fun and enjoy the v0.9.0 release.