New free version for Windows New Material Editor for Windows New Material Library compatible with all plug-ins Unified texture cache for all threads Automatic texture conversion at render time Stroke shaders for custom line drawing Leather & cloth shaders Watercolor shaders New light shaders Optimized global illumination Tiled rendering for BakeAir 64-bit BakeAir for Windows
AIR 13 (September 2013)
Physically plausible material shaders New Retexture application for interactive material tweaks of final images Radiosity cache for faster indirect lighting Faster ambient occlusion Additive shadow channel for better compositing Shaders for creating and shading carpet Shaders for spherical and projective lights Specify a light’s color as a solar spectrum Curve tapering Automatic color space conversion for raw textures Air Show print option
AIR 12 (August 2012)
64-bit Air binary for Windows Ray tracing option for primary hidden surface method New cache accelerates GI with environment shaders New ocean and ocean waves shaders More than a dozen new and improved shaders Much faster instancer sampling in 2D (for faster grass or fur) Instancer evaluation is now multithreaded Export outlines in AI and DXF vector format TweakAir can tweak networked shaders Air Show 7 with a new log window Vshade 5 with new iterator block mktex can stitch a grid of small images into one large image mktex: new incremental conversion mode for large textures Many fixes and optimizations to work with Air Stream
AIR 11 (July 2011)
Shader networks and layered shaders Environment shaders PTEX for per-face texture mapping Physical sun and sky shaders Tone mapping Deep image hider and file format Ray tracing memory optimization Smarter texture caching Directory mapping Mesh baking: bake shading values to mesh vertices
AIR 10 (July 2010)
64-bit Air binary for Linux Unlimited threading license option Stereo and multicamera rendering Spectral color definition Spectral Pre-filtering and Chromatic Adaptation Photometric lights and IES light profiles User-defined shading language structures Point-based ambient occlusion More efficient ray-traced occlusion More efficient subsurface scattering Multithreaded procedural primitives More efficient mesh displacement for polygons Improved micropolygon shade mode More efficient rendering with unconverted texture maps Export outlines in SVG vector format Geometry export to STL format
AIR 9 (August 2009)
Light shaders for baking shadows and illumination Improved fragment/deep shadow maps Light channel tracking through reflections Light channel tracking through GI Portal light shader for optimized interior rendering New controls for optimizing environment map queries Micropolygon shading mode View-independent tessellation option TweakAIR support for view/camera changes TweakAIR batch mode for scripted incremental rendering BakeAIR multithreading AIR Show 4 with 3D LUT support Vshade 3 with support for TweakAIR Compositing in mktex texture conversion tool New common product licensing policy
AIR 8 (December 2008)
Procedure shaders: generate new primitives at render time Instancer shaders: create new objects based on an existing primitive New 3D texture and point cloud features AIR Show 3.0 Vshade 2.0 Massive Agent Light Tool New option to interpolate fragment shadow maps Save individual channels of a color output variable More efficient rendering of large point sets Render points as disks or oriented patches Render curves as tubes Reflection group selection added to reflective surface shaders Enhanced geometry export Easy command line rendering of frame sequences New documentation and examples for Procedural primitives Update to version 5.0 of the Reprise License Manager (RLM)
AIR 7 (March 2008)
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 (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 (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
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
