Monday, June 16th, 2014 Posted by Jim Thacker

Cycles creator Brecht van Lommel to work on Arnold


Blender’s Cycles demo reel, released earlier this year. Brecht van Lommel, principal developer of the GPU-accelerated render engine, is moving to Solid Angle to work on its Arnold renderer.

Brecht van Lommel, developer of Blender’s Cycles renderer, is to move to Solid Angle to work on Arnold.

First incorporated in Blender in 2011, the Cycles GPU-accelerated ray tracing engine changed many non-users’ perception of the open-source package as a viable tool for commercial production work.

Cycles development still continuing
In an announcement on the renderer’s mailing list, van Lommel said: “I will no longer be able to add new features to Cycles, though I’ll still be around and happy to assist other developers.”

“Many important features in past releases have already been implemented by other contributors, and I expect that the improvements will keep coming.”

Van Lommel, who also previously worked as a developer on the Octane renderer, will remain involved in Blender development as a volunteer once he begins work at Solid Angle in July.

New Cycles features in Blender 2.71
In separate news, the first release candidate of Blender 2.71 is now available. New features in Cycles include support for deformation motion blur and texture baking, and initial support for rendering smoke.

Download Blender 2.71 RC1

Hat tip to BlenderNation for spotting this one.