Light Tracer Render 3.1.0

We are excited to announce an important step in Light Tracer Render's evolution! The new version introduces a completely redesigned bloom effect that now handles glare and streaks. This enables you to achieve a higher level of realism in industries like jewelry, automotive, and interior design.

Another significant advancement is the updated web version, which is powered by a completely new rendering engine. In terms of functionality, the engine is identical to the native version and now uses the WebGPU API, exposing modern hardware capabilities and allowing faster rendering and computation. To our knowledge, Light Tracer Render is the first general-purpose renderer that leverages WebGPU and provides first-class support for modern graphical capabilities.

Porsche 911 Carrera 4S by Lionsharp Studios

We invite you to learn more about the release's features in the following sections.

Enhanced bloom and glare

The latest release includes an advanced high-end bloom and glare effect based on the Fast Fourier Transform. Bloom creates a large, soft glow around bright objects due to light scattering in eyes and camera lenses. Glare creates a sharper, more focused glow with rays from bright areas in the image. This is ideal for producing a "starburst" effect around bright highlights on precious stones, car headlights, and other small light sources. Take a look at the renders below: on the left is a pure bloom effect, while on the right is a strong glare. In Light Tracer, you can combine them however you like.

Model by Wire Wheels Club

Bloom settings are available in a dedicated widget, which can be opened using the quick button on the right-side toolbar:

Let us go through the settings:

• The Intensity setting determines the minimum brightness that is used for the bloom effect. Increasing it allows the bloom to be applied to less bright pixels. By lowering the Intensity, bloom will only be applied to the brighter pixels.
• Size sets the bloom and glare radius relative to the image. 1.0 means the bloom will cover almost the entire image, 0.1 produces a very small and focused bloom, and so on.
• Glare controls the balance between bloom and glare. By increasing it, you can create bright streaks used to simulate lens flares.
• There are other settings that affect the appearance of streaks. Ray count determines the total number of streaks. Ray blur controls the fade-out factor for the streaks and allows you to produce more blurred or focused streaks. Finally, Rotation sets the angular offset of the streaks.
• Finally, the Scattering parameter determines the overall appearance of the bloom and glare. It controls how quickly the effect fades from the center to the edges (while the bloom radius remains unchanged). You can focus all the brightness closer to the center or, conversely, distribute it over a larger area.

Improved UX

The new version has received UX enhancements. The quick access buttons are now organized in a simple and clear manner: the left toolbar contains scene editing functions, the right contains rendering settings, and the upper toolbar contains general-purpose functions (which do not change either the scene or the rendering).

The right toolbar gives you quick access to the camera and lens, bloom and glare effect, tone mapping, color balance, denoising, and bi-directional path tracing (for efficient rendering of caustics and complex indirect lighting).

Updated web version

Finally, we are pleased to release the new web version, which, like Light Tracer Render 3.0, features a completely new ray tracing engine. In fact, the engines in the native and web versions are functionally identical. The web version uses the modern WebGPU API, which provides full access to graphics hardware in a web browser.

Ring model by Roland Schneider

The key aspects to understand about the web version are:

• The images produced by the native and web versions are identical. The web version has no rendering simplifications, ensuring a physically accurate rendering result.
• Because hardware ray tracing (RTX) is not yet supported by WebGPU, the web version uses software ray tracing. It is the same engine as used in the native version when launched on non-RTX NVIDIA or AMD cards.
• The web version renders at roughly the same speed as the native one (in software ray tracing mode)

Remaining limitations in the web version are: denoising is not yet available (it is planned for future updates) and there is no import of FBX and most CAD file formats.

At the same time, the latest web version lifts a number of limitations of the previous one. Firstly, thanks to the use of WebGPU, it now supports bi-directional path tracing (caustic mode). Secondly, the physics engine is also available on the web! Physics simulations can be run directly in the browser and even recorded as videos.

We hope this latest update to Light Tracer Render helps you create even more impressive visuals for your 3D projects — and faster than ever before. Your feedback is very valuable to us, so please feel free to share your ideas and suggestions. If you have any questions or simply want to chat, our Discord community is always happy to help!