Cube Mine

There is a new 3D renderer worth checking out called LuxRender . It's free, as in freedom, and despite being barely a month old, already has a big momentum, attracting many developers and artists. Some of its main features are:

• Physically correct, unbiased renderings
• Optional high-dynamic range output using OpenEXR
• Multi-thread support, with dynamic adding/removing threads
• Cross-platform, well written code (Windows, Linux and Mac OS X)
• Philosophy and goals (!)
  

Most open-source renderers end up as being just toys and get abandoned after some time, but LuxRender Goals clearly estates that they want to create a robust and high-end production renderer. Only time will tell, but it's clearly a step in the right direction.

Also, Metropolis Light Transport (MLT) is going to be available on the next release candidate and is probably the only open-source render to offer this. MLT is the latest trend in ultra-realistic rendering and is used on the Maxwell Render and Indigo Renderer. It can speed up rendering quite drastically on certain types of scenes by sampling important light paths more frequently.

LuxRender's gallery already shows some quite impressive renders:

And here's a quick test I did with the Cube Fields wallpaper scene, after changing a bit the materials:

It still is a very young software, with bugs and not optimized, especially under the Linux and Mac OS X platforms, but if development continues at the current pace, I bet LuxRender with substitute the rather dormant Yafray as the default external renderer in Blender very soon.

—Ratow