The 'Render Challenge' is back, starting with the first 'Continual' challenge courtesy of CGSphere!

This time you will be competing against other software, as well as users, for fame and glory.

No deadlines... No excuses!

It's now possible for creative and technical users to enter, as everyone will be working from the same (base) scene file.




More information:

Competition Rules

Scene Download

Gallery Submissions

Now, let's show these folks what RenderMan can do! ;-)

Project Beaker

Announcing project Beaker, a major combined project to address performance and resource usage concerns in the current implementation of Aqsis.

The project management is available on the Wiki page.

Read on for more info...

RenderMan User Group

I was fortunate enough to attend the first European RenderMan user group meeting last night in London. It was a very well put together event, with some of the key people responsible for RenderMan at Pixar attending and giving excellent presentations.

The presentations covered the new features in RPS 13.5, some insight into new features coming in 14.0 and the announcement of the RenderMan Certified Courseware in conjunction with Escape Studios.

Read on for more...

Documentation Help Needed

The documentation for Aqsis is currently undergoing a complete revamp in preparation for a 1.4 release. We need as much help as possible with this.

The manual is written as part of the Wiki, with an option to export the result as PDF for delivery with the tool or printing. As it's Wiki based, anyone can contribute. So if you feel like helping out with Aqsis, but aren't in a position to help with the coding, this is probably a good opportunity to provide some input to the project.

The manual is on the wiki at http://wiki.aqsis.org/doc/index, and the discussion page off the same link details what needs to be done.

Spam Attack!
I've just had to spend far too much time cleaning up after another attack by small minded, impotent spamming pillocks.

I had to clean up a flood of 224 spam comments in the news module, manually because Xoops has limited comment management.

Unfortunately, this is becoming more frequent. I've taken various measures to prevent this, with no effect. At this point I have to explain that if it happens again, chances are I will be forced to close down sections of the site.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this is starting to take more of my time than I'm prepared to spend.

Paul Gregory