New Rhino-to-Air plugin with TweakAir support Automatic level of detail (LOD) Houdini 9 support Better filtering of HDR images New alternate noise algorithm Shading compiler support for function overloading Precise shadow control with shadow casting groups Per-light output values Field rendering Arbitrary clipping planes Improved subsurface scattering New Air Control render queue on Windows New Air Show options for sRGB and background display Texture conversion of mirror ball environment maps
AIR 6.0 (July 2007)
Adaptive motion blur Tips for rendering Massive scenes New massrib tool for manipulating Massive scenes Optimizations for Massive scenes RI command filter plug-ins New shading compiler optimizations New bake3d() and texture3d() shadeops for general point sets New implicit surface primitive for rendering grid data as an isosurface Support for the Reprise License Manager Mesh displacement for NURBs and polygon meshes Local caching of networked texture file Better sampling for occlusion and GI without caching New screen-space occlusion cache Better mid-point shadow maps AIR Show option to show checked background AIR Space 0.3 Gamma correction for mktex and mktexui
AIR 5.0 (December 2006)
Fragment shadow maps for “deep” mapped shadows Render objects to separate layers in a single pass Per-light output channels from AIR surface shaders Much more efficient rendering of motion blurred particles and curves New “meshdisplacement” displacement method Higher quality traced reflections More efficient rendering of instanced particle systems Motion vector output for the Reel Smart Motion Blur plugin Volume primitive enhancements Access up to 4GB memory under 64-bit Windows New shaders for normal mapping TweakAIR support for moving area lights AIR Space 0.2
AIR 4.1 (July 2006)
AIR Space TweakAIR enhancements Much improved environment map filtering Conditional RIB Gzipped RIB support AIR texture map display New subdivision mesh texture interpolation option Automap improvements Automatic tangent vectors for polygon meshes
AIR 4.0 (November 2005)
Volume primitives Automatric shadow maps Fast re-lighting mode for TweakAIR New and enhanced illumination models More efficient curve rendering and wide curve support More efficient and accurate subdivision meshes New shadow map display mode for AIR Show
AIR 3.1 (June 2005)
TweakAIR Display driver for writing layered Adobe® Photoshop® PSD files Image reader for reading PSD files New AIR Control tool on Windows Enhanced support for multipass rendering Indirect and shadow passes for most surface shaders New shader documentation in the AIR user manual Revised shader library New geometry export options New fast shading language voronoi() function More accurate ray tracing
AIR 3.0 (February 2005)
Geometry export & displacement baking Vector textures with Alex Segal’s Vtexture Improved outline/toon rendering Enhanced texture conversion utilities Fast volumetric fog function New optimizations for shading, ray tracing, and displacement AIR Show 2 Vshade 0.4
Feature Summary
Multithreading Fast Scanline Rendering Ray Tracing Programmable Shading Global Illumination Motion Blur Depth of Field True Displacement Area Lights Automatic Meshing Trimmed NURBs Subdivision Meshes Curves/Hair/Fur Particles Blobbies Caustics HDR Input and Output Level of Detail Procedural Modeling Ambient Occlusion Subsurface Scattering Toon Rendering Distributed Rendering Volume Rendering
