Unbiased Path Tracing

High-quality one-way ray tracer with configurable tracing depth and Russian Roulette.
Extensive support for multiple importance sampling.
Uses AVX optimization for performance.
CPU only.

Spectral and RGB solution

Can render in two modes: RGB or spectral.
Spectral mode uses the Hero Wavelength AVX extension for a continuous spectrum.
Special version of materials and algorithms for the Hero Wavelength extension.
Can calculate fully physical color dispersion, spectral roughness for GGX surfaces.
Physically accurate thin film effects.
Spectral effects in clouds, such as rainbow and halo.
Supports color profiles CIE1931, CIE2006, and arbitrary files.

Surface and Volumetric Caustics with REDS rare event solver

Includes a never-before-described REDS algorithm for rare events.
Can render surface caustics without any simplifications or fakes.
Can render volumetric caustics without any simplifications or fakes.
Supports caustics on surfaces with intermediate roughness (Glossy).
Supports volumetric light sources and the Sun & Sky model.
Helps with rendering light reflections from water, light patterns on the bottom of a pool, light beams within water, light rays in fog, and bright blurry highlights on wet leaves with wide camera apertures.

Volumetric Rendering

Supports volumetric fogs with uniform and varying density.
Supports emissive volumes.
Can convert emissive volumes into optimized emitters to reduce noise.
Supports single scatter and multiple scatter sampling.
Can render different types of volumes even when they overlap.
Uses the latest Spectral Decomposition Tracker algorithm with several improvements, including emissive ones.
MIE phase function for rainbow spectral effects.
Supports OpenVDB and PhoenixFD.
Procedural data for filling volumes.
High-quality interpolation using the Gaussian function.

Nesting Dielectrics

Includes a system of nested dielectrics for easier modeling. During rendering, it keeps a list of active materials with their priorities.
Helps when modeling complex intersecting geometries;
Allows the use of Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG).

Motion Blur

Supports motion blur for geometry deformations, particles, and splines (for hair and fur).
Supports motion blur for the trajectories of geometry, particles, splines, light sources, and cameras.
Uses full trajectory description based on spline keys, similar to 3ds Max Curve Editor: this completely eliminates artifacts for fast-moving and rotating objects.
Supports complex shutter curves: rectangular opening, triangular, and custom spline-based.

Depth of Field

Supports depth of field for many types of cameras.
Supports physical properties of cameras.
Supports polygonal and circular camera apertures.
Supports apertures defined by a texture map.
Supports “Cat Eye,” “Center Shift,” and asymmetric aperture effects.

Emitter Adaptation

Allows using millions of emitters in a scene.
Helps get a less noisy image.

Adaptive Image Sampling

Adaptively prioritizes pixels based on their noise and brightness.
Can warp time for Motion Blur, focusing more on necessary time segments.
Separate adaptation processes for the main image, direct caustics, and indirect caustics.

Denoising

Supports Intel AI denoising.

Firefly Remove System

Supports classic brightness clamping for pixels, reflective, and secondary energy components.
Supports an advanced statistical analysis algorithm for pixel samples that removes the rarest and noisiest samples (Fireflies).

High Quality Path Sampling

Uses high-quality blue noise matrices for random number generation.

High Quality Image Filtering

Supports many blur options for better anti-aliasing.

High Quality Texture Filtering

Supports anisotropic texture filtering.
Supports bilinear and elliptical filtering.
Up to 8 channels in textures.
Arbitrary texture color profiles: sRGB, AdobeRGB, and others.
Supports formats: JPEG, JPEG2000, BMP, TIF, EXR, PNG, HDR

Progressive rendering

Progressive image creation, with a preview result right from the start.
Stopping criteria based on the number of passes, time, and signal-to-noise ratio.

Stereo Rendering

Three different schemes for generating stereo images.

Geometry Subdivision

Supports Loop and Catmull-Clark subdivisions using the Open Subdiv library.
Subdivisions for splines when rendering fur and hair.
Unique settings for each object.

Adaptive Geometry Subdivision

Adaptive surface subdivision depending on their visibility to the camera.
Unique settings for each object.

Displacement

Supports displacement maps based on values and vectors.
Supports Motion Blur for geometry structure after applying displacement maps.

AOV

Supports complex settings for AOV rendering.
Saves results in a multi-channel EXR file or in several single-channel EXR files.

Cameras

Supports the 3ds Max Physical camera with most properties.
Additionally, it supports Physical, Cylindrical, Spherical, Orthographic cameras, and the Fisheye camera.
Supports stereo images.
Supports image distortion, advanced aperture settings, advanced shutter settings, and the Cat Eye effect.
Supports camera lens shift and rotation.
Supports spherical focus surfaces.

Temporary Data Caching

Many results from complex calculations are cached for future use.
Subsequent renderings are faster.

Active Shade

Limited Active Shade support for quick material adjustments.

EXR, TIFF and JPEG export

Allows saving the final image in EXR, TIFF, and JPEG formats.

Sky Portals

Supports portals for efficient scene lighting through narrow windows.

Instances

Automatically detects whether geometry is a duplicate of one already in the scene.
It compares each scene model bit by bit with all the others for automatic scene optimization.

Direct Spline-based Hair and Fur rendering

Supports direct rendering of splines for fur and hair without converting them into triangular geometry.
No segmentation for hair.
Can apply a texture to each individual hair.
Supports elliptical hair cross-sections.
Hair thickness can vary along the central line.
Can animate hair deformation for Motion Blur.
Can render standard 3ds Max spline objects.
Can render hair from Ornatrix.
Includes a special fur and hair material with lots of settings.

Direct Particles Rendering

Can render spherical particles directly, without converting them into triangular geometry.
Perfect spherical shape without corners.
Can use any material for particles.
Can render particles from standard 3ds Max Particle systems.
Supports foam, splashes, and water mist from PhoenixFD.
Supports particles from OpenVDB and AUR files.

MIE Phase Function

Supports a physically accurate light scattering function on MIE particles for spectral effects.
Can calculate rainbows in rain clouds, a whitish rainbow in fog, and sunlight reflections off clouds.

Lens Tilt Using Focal Plane Animation

Lens rotation in the camera is achieved with an animated focal plane based on the Camera Target position.
No need to manually adjust numbers in the GUI anymore—just link the Render Target to the desired object.
Allows you to lock the focus plane on both of a character’s eyes and make them equally sharp.

Materials

Almost full and accurate support of Physical Material from 3ds Max;

Dali Physical material supports the following features:

Coating layer,
Thin Film layer for spectral effects like oil on water or soap bubbles.
Diffuse, Reflection, Retro-reflection, Transmission, and Conductor lobes.
GGX and Beckmann roughness for surfaces.
Spectral roughness for color dispersion in reflections.
Edge reflection for effects like velvet.
Subsurface scattering (SSS) using unbiased Monte-Carlo sampling.
Lambert, Oren-Nayar, Disney, and Hammon profiles for the diffuse lobe.
Simplified and true unbiased stochastic algorithms for the Coating layer.
Bump mapping and Normal mapping for body and coating layer.
Transparency, Displacement, and Emission settings.
Dali Hair for hair and fur.
Dali Volumetric for fog and clouds.
Triplanar, Mix, Blend, Two-sided, and many other materials.

Texture Maps

Supports many 3ds Max texture maps: Bitmap, Composite, Gradient, Mask, Mix, Noise, Output, RGB Multiply, RGB Tint, Substance, Physical Sun & Sky.
All other maps can be supported in compatibility mode.
Built-in Dali Texture maps:
– Blend, AO, Wireframe, Falloff
– Color, Color correction
– Gradient, Math
– Noise
– Ocean Surface
– Select, Shuffle
– Triplanar

3DS Max Support

Supports the Physical Sun & Sky emitter with high-quality sampling.
Supports exposure settings and texture gamma.
Supports Physical Material, as well as some other materials and texture maps.
Supports the Physical Camera with almost all settings.
Supports Physical Light with almost all settings.
Supports instances, xRef scenes, xRef objects, and xRef materials.

3rd-Party Plugins

Supports MultiScatter with instances, animation modes, and object colors.
Supports Forest Pack with instances, animation modes, object colors, and scatter texture coordinates.
Supports Ornatrix.
Supports Phoenix FD for volumetric rendering and foam particles.
Supports tyFlow with instances.