Computer Vision News - January 2017

curves so you don’t have to do many Extrudes (like for all the windows of an airplane) and then merge them in another step. You can just have a single tool. It will simplify your schematic view. There is a dependency system and construction history in EQUINOX so, for example, you can create a curve. You can Extrude it. You can mirror it. You can refine it with a subdivision surface and so on. It remembers this creation and this construction history. If you go and change the original curve, the change will propagate all the way to the end. Sometimes when you have separate pieces, then you have to do a merge operation, and it makes things messier. With the new system, you can have a single dialogue box and see a list of all the curves. The other main feature is that there is a Clone along shape. For example, you can make one link in the chain on a track of bulldozer: it will make copies, or instances along another curve that just describes the overall shape. Then there is an offset that you can animate so that you can make the tracks roll as the bulldozer starts moving. The Merge Meshes tool will have built in merging for shading groups, materials, and automatic tiling of texture mapping. Spline mirroring is getting a lot better and more robust. The renderers are getting better. Importance sampling is working for all shaders now and working on multiple importance sampling. With importance sample, it’s not just the idea of the shader, but the environment light as well. Then you combine the two. You sample incoming light direction based on the combined contribution of the BRDF and the lighting around. Basically, you’ll get a higher quality rendering in a much shorter time. It will converge faster to a noise-free image. Is this coming in 2017? Yes, the next version of EQUINOX-3D is coming out in January 2017. Are you planning to have a Windows version of EQUINOX-3D? Not in the near future. Isn’t there enough demand? There is demand. I get several emails. The main thing is that if you watch the market share for Windows, it’s dropping at an accelerating rate. Even about 5 or so years ago, it was still about 95%. Now it’s 60% and dropping faster and faster. There is no Windows version planned at least right now, but a little bird told me that there are plans for an Android and iOS version. I trust your sources are very reliable. Tell me more about EQUINOX. One of the biggest advantages of EQUINOX is that because it was developed by one person, there’s no Computer Vision News Guest 7 Guest Gabor does not disdain to call himself a "tree hugger": he's been driving an electric car for almost 4 years, during which he never visited a gas station. If only he could get an electric helicopter... “ Give me a computer that is a billion- billion times faster, and in a week I will be complaining that it’s too slow! ”