Mercenaries Engineering ships Guerilla Render 1.3

Look dev workflow in Guerilla Render 1.0. Mercenaries Engineering has just released version 1.3 of the lighting and rendering system, improving handling of volumetrics and hair, and supporting Python scripting.

Mercenaries Engineering has released Guerilla Render 1.3: a sizeable update to its look development, lighting and rendering system that improves its handling of volumetrics and fur, and adds Python scripting.

The software has been used on a range of commercial projects, including Onyx Films’ upcoming CG features Mune: Le gardien de la lune and The Little Prince.

Guerilla Render: a primer
Designed for heavy-duty movie and TV work, Guerilla Render provides both a Reyes renderer and an unbiased path tracer. It is architected to be fast on demanding tasks like raytracing hairs and SSS.

The software is designed to provide fine control over render set-ups, offering light/trace linking and light override options, and a neat option to set sampling individually per shader, per BRDF and per light.

It is intended to be completely customisable by anyone with “basic TD skills”, with components written in RenderMan Shading Language, and a RenderGraph for organising and debugging projects.

It also provides good support for pipeline standards, including a core Alembic workflow, support for UDIM textures, and a Maya exporter capable of baking “every kind of geometry and animations”.

Version 1.3: improved performance and pipeline integration
Version 1.3 essentially builds on those strengths, further optimising Guerilla Render for demanding render tasks, with new dedicated shaders for volumetrics and particles, and a new hair procedural.

According to the devs, workflow using the RenderGraph is now “700% faster than in previous versions”.

Pipeline integration has been extended with support for Python scripting on top of the existing C++ and Lua SDKs; and support for OpenEXR 2.0 and Yeti, Peregrine Labs’ increasingly popular Maya hair solution.

The following list, taken from the official press release, provides a good summary of the new features:

Performance
Global performance enhancement: Guerilla Render is now faster, smaller and nicer than ever
Super-fast opacity for transparent leaves, hairs, particles, etc
The RenderGraph has been improved and now allows you to work 700% faster than in previous versions
Volumetrics
Volumetrics of all kind can be raytraced with the Volume shader
Includes Maya Fluids, OpenVDB and FumeFX; objects filled with volumes; infinite volumes
FX
Render any point cache format (ABC, BGEO, BIN, etc) with any shape (points, streaks, blobbies, sprites, etc)
New dedicated Particle shader
Portals
Improve the render quality for indoor scenes
Procedural geometry
Generate millions of hairs or grass blades using the new procedural
Use Yeti fur files directly in Guerilla Render
Python scripting
Guerilla Render API is now scriptable in Python
Deep Image workflow
Render OpenEXR 2.0 deep images
New powerful shaders
Rough glass, Eye shader, Volume and Particles
Image picker
Identify, select, inspect, drag and drop geometry directly in the Render View
Lens shader
Introduce new programmable camera lens shaders (lens distortion, fisheye, lat-long projection)
HTTP monitor
Monitor render nodes in a web browser. Watch the rendering live

Pricing and availability
Guerilla Render 1.3 is available now for 64-bit Windows and Linux.

Pricing isn’t listed on the website, but at the time of the 1.0 release, the MSRPs were €2,000 (around $2,180) per artist workstation licence, and €700 (around $760) per render node, including one year’s maintenance.

The update is free to registered users. You can also download one free licence for use on a machine with up to 16 cores, which may be used in commercial work.

Homepage image: © 2014 LPPTV – Little Princess – ON Entertainment – Orange Studio – M6 Films.
Look dev, lighting and rendering were completed in Guerilla Render.

Mercenaries Engineering ships Guerilla Render 1.3

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