EVERMOTION released free unbiased renderer NOX
Evermotion, a well known and respected 3D content provider, has released an unbiased renderer NOX. They opened the beta to the public. It is free for private,educational, as well as commercial use. This is a standalone render system similar to LuxRender. To participate and download the beta you need to create a free account and evermotion.com.
The software works in a similar manner like all other unbiased systems. You render your light buffers and later mix / adjust the lights. What is quite useful in NOX is the fake DoF tool. It provides extensive control and most important seems to suffer not from the artifacts Z-Depth filters often do.
The Blender Exporter can access NOX own materials by loading them into Blender and give you access to material and texture properties – or when assigning a material you can start the NOX material system. There is no material preview in Blender currently possible.
Here is the technical rundowns:
Renderer: http://www.evermotion.org/nox
Forum: Link
Manual: PDF Download
Supported Features:
- mutlithreaded
- 32/64 bit
- standalone ms windows application
- gi based on metropolis light transport
- materials
- multiple layers
- physical based micro-facet model
- transmission
- fake glass
- dispersion
- opacity
- emission
- textures + simple processing
- local and online material library
- regions (only direct ligthing)
- camera
- physical exposure settings – iso, apeture, shutter
- physical based realistic dof or fake dof in post-process
- aperture shape settings
- realistic bokeh effects
- sunsky system
- blend layers
- post process
- exposure correction (ev)
- standard color correction: brightness, contrast, saturation, rgb, temperature
- curve (rgb or luminance)
- camera response functions
- vignette
- bloom
- glare
- fake dof
- chromatic aberrations
- grain
- load/save post settings
- 3dsmax plugin
- nox sunlight
- nox camera free/target
- nox material
- exporter
- renderer in another process
- blender script
- nox sunsky
- nox material
- nox camera
- exporter
- renderer in another process
- files compatibility
- typical image files (jpg,bmp,tiff,png,gif)
- exr image file
- scene as custom binary or xml file
- materials as xml file
- postproduction settings as xml file
- blend settings as xml file
- final post as xml file
- autoupdate
Not yet Supported Features:
- displacement
- bump/normal mapping
- subsurface scattering (sss)
- instancing/proxy
- sky portals
… but don’t worry, it is going to be developed someday.
So can anybody tell me why I would use this instead of Cycles??
Not available for Linux. -_-
It’s frustrating.
windowsOS only -1
That EverMotion Communicator looked nice too! They did that ‘just on the side’?
Too bad this will probably become a commercial product despite the ‘org’ domain name. Neither is it open-source. Too bad. I’ll stick with LuxRender or Cycles.
As far as I was informed this will remain a free renderer.
Time will prove it is powerful enough. However the DoF system is pretty handy to be honest.
@jiggles This is a finished renderer, cycles is still in development. But that’s all I can think of right now
@Jiggles: Different rendering engines have different benefits. As it stands at the moment, NOX has some pretty neat DoF features that are easy to do. Many professionals have lots of rendering engines in their arsenal and they pick which one they want to use on a job-by-job basis.
I downloaded the files and noted that you need to put an extension on the NOX_mat_lib file (add .exe) and the same goes for the installer (it came with a goofy extension – and once the download was over, I made sure it was a .exe). Other than that I only had a chance to look at the test scenes. It will have to win my heart over LuxRender (I LOVE LuxRender).
@james
what do you mean by finished?
many would consider the lack of displacement/bump mapping to be a standard feature
Is it GPU based…?
it does not have GPU (yet or ever) and it is also not finished – it is open beta now.
However I assume they have more programming resources to throw at it then Ton
has for Cycles. However one must also understand that Brecht not only adds a render
engine but also works on a different material and render language.
@jiggles100
Because sometimes a hammer is not the right tool for the job. I could not however, tell you why it might not be the right tool for the job, I have found hammers to work for most anything.
If the only tool you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail.
I have a lot of specialized hammers for particular tasks.
@iant lol
Too many engines nowadays. Grumblemumble
“… but don’t worry, it is going to be developed someday.”
Lines like this usually set off alarms for me if it’s something I’ll be needing.
So I checked out the website (hadn’t visited before), the site is a bit confusing, and unclear what the main goal is.
I ended up reading the “about us” and found out they are a commercial site that makes various models so you don’t have to. I’ll take a stab and say they could be developing nox for in house rendering, and figure they can also give it to their hobbyist customers so they can render their newly purchased models.
The gallery, well, the first few renders just felt really fake, could have been the materials or settings etc. As I continued I saw some pretty familiar shot setups, nothing fancy, but some very nice renders.
So in closing, the Nox renderer seems to do a pretty good job, and is probably worth checking out if you’re not completely happy with your current render tools.
Cheers
no way… i am not going this path again of “free” software. i was using kerkythea a lot when developers thought.. ok lets just leave it to die. i will stick with luxrender and yafaray and cheer with the open source movement.
I am always pleased to discover new unbiased renderer engine.
Personnaly, I can understand that some people or firms dont want (or can’t -according to their commercial strategy -) to deliver an open source and sometime a totally free product.
Actually, at the moment, it is free and seems pretty handy. So thank you ever motion for this release :-)
@abhifx +1 Just this.
Work on Ubuntu 11, by Winie :) but only 32 bit version, exporter for blender 2.58 does not work :( so there is no hope in hope… (but you can play with that baby on the Linux a little)
@dat Valid point XD
@dat Valid point XD
I thought they said it was finished, my bad
Have read that:
-it will stay free and there is no plan to change it, since everymotion would like to have better community on their site and board
-it will have GPU support but I’m not sure if soon
It was written on Polish site max3d.pl (everymotion is from Poland) by NOX developers!
I think it might be good alternative… I bet that everymotion will sell some materials or other stuff connected with this renderer and it might be only thing which won’t be free ;)
NOX is not stable yet.. it hasn’t displacement and few other things yet ;/
NOX will remain free. I know Blender community has some bad experiences with Indigo and Kerkythea, but as a member of Evermotion team I can assure you it’s a different kind of story.
Here’s a simple video of how to use Nox and Blender.
http://vimeo.com/26754710