POLL - v2.11 Development Priorities

[CodeHD]

Hi everyone,

This is the poll for new feature priorities, based on the previously collected ideas in this thread:
viewtopic.php?t=6667

We have decided to not put each individual feature up in the poll directly, but rather group items in a few categories. A feedback in which direction we should focus our attention presently makes more sense in our view.

Below, you find a more detailed description with examples which suggested features fall into that category:

Improve performance of existing features

• For currently implemented features, e.g. materials or textures: Perform timing analysis, determine potential for improvements, then do some optimisations
• Examples: GPU support for OIDN, multithreading in shape algorithms (subdiv, displace, simplify…), vectorization (SSE/AVX) in elementary operations (points, vectors…) for eligible platforms, precompiled GPU kernels

Extend existing materials and textures

• Improve the feature set of existing materials and textures.
• Examples: Disney material upgrade, support more Cycles textures, color space support

Add new materials and textures

• Adding completely new materials and models.
• Examples: Autodesk standard surface, new microfacet models, new Sky models

New core rendering features

• Changes to the engines. Not affecting materials, but how the ray tracing is executed.
• Examples: Path guiding, Spectral rendering, camera models, light linking

Geometry and file support

• Features that change or improve the way geometry is handled and support for file exchange formats
• Examples: Alembic, USD, Adaptive subdivision, remeshing, smoothing, hole filling, cryptomatte

BlendLuxCore-specific improvements

• Improving the performance of the Blender addon. Additionall,y There are some features available in LuxCore that are not exposed in BlendLuxCore.
• Examples: Improve export times, viewport response times. BakeCPU, BidirVM, user-defined sampling, russian-roulette, normalmap.

Standalone renderer: Pyluxcoreui:

• Replace the existing LuxCoreUI, written in C++, by a new Python implementation.

Some code quality: improve reliability and maintainability

• Use smart pointers instead of raw pointers, remove Blender dependency from luxcore.so (keep it only in BLC), reduce compile time, apply linter, fill documentation gaps

The poll will be open for 30 days from creation.
You can pick up to three options.
Votes can be changed before the end of the poll.

Best wishes,
The LuxCoreRender Team