As you may guess we have modelled the shaderball. The purpose is to create several examples of nice materials and share. This is the first quick attempt.

Hello everyone!

We have released CentiLeo 0.43 for 3ds Max 2014-2017.

Download link: http://centileo.com/forum/forum13/78-download-link-centileo-for-3ds-max-v043-alpha-faster

This long time we were working on performance, bugfixes, interface, stability and a couple of features. From now on we will divide the work better and release new versions with less delays.

This is a list of changes

[core] CUDA 8 support. NVIDIA Pascal GPUs should be supported.
[core] Reworked render algorithm. Now it is progressive/bucket which on the first render iteration shows the entire Beauty pass and for any subsequent render iteration it computes Beauty pass and all enabled AOVs in parallel using buckets.
[core] One render iteration (“Iter” in IPR) now means one render over entire image with guarantee that every pixel received several samples. Before 0.43 the single render iteration stochastically fired up to one million samples over entire image (and it could lead to significant noise for large resolution images). The new sampling layout of 0.43 which is automatic and adaptive leads to significant noise reduction.
[core] New AOVs: Environment, Reflection1, Reflection2, Base, Transmission, Emitters. Now up to 16 AOVs can be computed in one render process in parallel with negligible (<5%) compute overhead. All this works also in IPR mode same way.
[core] Alpha channel support added.
[core] 15% faster render iteration computation in general.
[core] 3x faster render convergence for image parts with materials with several enabled layers like: multi-material, reflections+diffuse, reflections+transmission, reflections+diffuse+SSS. For example: glass with reflections, glossy and carpaint implementations are rendered much faster.
[core] All layers of material (reflections, diffuse, transmission, SSS are combined based on weights that are relative to each other). So all the layers have equal rights inside material. Stack-based policy is removed.
[core] Faster render convergence for shadow regions (perceptually2x faster).
[core] Rendering large resolution images like 4K or 10K is 30-50% faster.
[core] Render limitations are introduced for robustness. They are indicated in IPR window. For example, smallest GPUs with 1.5-2GB memory support 30-50M polygons and 100K mesh instances. GPUs with 3-4GB+ memory support 250-400M polygons and 1M mesh instances. These limitations will be further pushed forward.
[core] Bugfix: now render can work with at least 896MB of provided GPU memory by OS/driver. This low memory budget may be available on 1.5-2GB GPUs attached to display. Switching off other GPU applications may increase available memory for renderer.
[core] Bugfix: now environment map not blurred if seen through the glass.
[core] Bugfix: now absorption renders correctly.
[core] Bugfix: fixed rare overflow problems with complex shadows.

[IPR] IPR priority is introduced (see in render settings -> IPR). Larger priority increases render speed (samples/sec indicator) but can make GUI lags. Lower priority decreases render speed by 10-20% but makes work with GUI much smoother.
[IPR] Separate render resolution setting for IPR (see render settings -> IPR).
[IPR] Render region support.
[IPR] Render pause/resume.
[IPR] Render camera lock.
[IPR] Render enable/disable automatic scene updates.
[IPR] Full scene reload button.

[cntlmax] Material layers (Reflections, Diffuse, SSS, Transmission) now can be unrolled or hidden.
[cntlmax] UBER-light source. Create single light source, several instances of it and then change it’s type (Area, Sphere, Spot, Directional) on the fly for all instances.
[cntlmax] cntlTexture shader now can be seen in Viewport too (if enabled).
[cntlmax] native Bitmap is translated by CentiLeo (however still limited, need to implement the functionality for Output parameters).
[cntlmax] Improved converter for 3rd party light sources (now understands instancing and more lights).
[cntlmax] Bugfix: substantially improved stability when Camera is updated while working in IPR.
[cntlmax] Bugfix: substantially improved stability when Environment is updated while working in IPR.
[cntlmax] Bugfix: debug console can be enabled from the Hardware Settings rollout.

Known issues to be solved

- No yet multi-GPU
- May not initialize if AMD GPU is in your computer together with NVIDIA GPU.
- Very limited scene converter tool from other renderers (only diffuse property and textures from Standard material and Vray material)
- UVW mapping change of parameters may not be accounted by IPR scene auto update mode. To be solved.
- Resource collector for CentiLeo shaders and proxies is under construction
- Multi Texture and cntlRandom shaders are under construction yet.
- Still need to integrate ForestPack and Multiscatter with IPR.

As some of you may know the texture system creates the cache files *.mml together with original textures.
Currently the recomendation is to use cntlTexture for your images.

Please, test it and say what you think!
CentiLeo team

Hello Aimar,

Thanks a lot for your test!
This is good news that it actually works on Pascal GPUs
We have converted everything to CUDA 8 but only have 7xx and 9xx GTXs.

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Aimar NL_21 wrote: debug console Always crashes

It should crash when you close debug console and IPR is running. Same thing? I know the reason and will solve it some time. If you have opened it then just don't close. Better to leave it as is or close C4D itself (it closes correctly).

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Aimar NL_21 wrote: - in picture viewer if i stop the rendering and then render Again or do anything c4d crashes

I can reproduce it. It has appeared probably few days ago. When I worked on this thing it was ok. Later it was broken.

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Aimar NL_21 wrote: - object Always visible

Yes, Object visibility settings were not yet implemented. Do you mean that few checkboxes in the object Basic properties? Will probably do it in a very basic mode for 0.44 and with more flexibility (with additional tag) for 0.45 or further version.

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Aimar NL_21 wrote: - Subdivision Surface in rendering mode does not work

I guess it displays in picture viewer rendering mode the subdivision level which corresponds to subdiv settings for Editor. Am I right?
This bug/feature was done to make cheap scene loads when IPR is already running and user want's to continue in Picture Viewer (so he can either move all AOVs to PV by clicking the top-left button in IPR or he can just start PV and continue there). This is very benificial for overlay render in C4D viewport or C4D region render (when IPR is running which has already loaded the scene previously).
Maybe it would be better to create an option with checkbox where user can determine to work as now or to work with full scene reload when PV is explicitly started. What do you think?

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Aimar NL_21 wrote: some issue in displacement (maybe i'm doing something wrong).

There is probably not enough tesselation iterations and I see 8-bit texture quantization. This will be fixed.
Actually, displacement mapping feature development is still in progress. There are still a couple of problems there: 1) currently slow initial tesselation stage (it can be reduced around 10x and become a few seconds), 2) it flickers in animation and 3) has gaps when smooth mesh normals diverge (on the corners).
However this approach is very prospective direaction because in final optimized state it will support vector displacements, solved gaps on mesh corners. And it is fast for rendering once tesselated. Tesselation process will be accelerated. Storing a few dozen million triangles is not be a problem.

Some quick screenshot with new material GUI.

And now 0.43 is ready for Cinema http://centileo.com/forum/messages/forum18/message266/76-download-link-centileo-for-cinema-4d-v043-a...

Soon will be same for our 3ds Max plugin.

Hello everyone!

We have released CentiLeo for Cinema 4D 0.43.

Download link: http://centileo.com/forum/forum18/76-download-link-centileo-for-cinema-4d-v043-alpha

This long time we were working on performance, bugfixes, interface, stability and a couple of features. From now on we will divide the work better and release new versions with less delays.

This is a list of changes

[core] CUDA 8 support. NVIDIA Pascal GPUs should be supported.
[core] Reworked render algorithm. Now it is progressive/bucket which on the first render iteration shows the entire Beauty pass and for any subsequent render iteration it computes Beauty pass and all enabled AOVs in parallel using buckets.
[core] One render iteration (“Iter” in IPR) now means one render over entire image with guarantee that every pixel received several samples. Before 0.43 the single render iteration stochastically fired up to one million samples over entire image (and it could lead to significant noise for large resolution images). The new sampling layout of 0.43 which is automatic and adaptive leads to significant noise reduction.
[core] New AOVs: Environment, Reflection1, Reflection2, Base, Transmission, Emitters. Now up to 16 AOVs can be computed in one render process in parallel with negligible (<5%) compute overhead. All this works also in IPR mode same way.
[core] Alpha channel support added.
[core] 15% faster render iteration computation in general.
[core] 3x faster render convergence for image parts with materials with several enabled layers like: multi-material, reflections+diffuse, reflections+transmission, reflections+diffuse+SSS. For example: glass with reflections, glossy and carpaint implementations are rendered much faster.
[core] All layers of material (reflections, diffuse, transmission, SSS are combined based on weights that are relative to each other). So all the layers have equal rights inside material. Stack-based policy is removed.
[core] Faster render convergence for shadow regions (perceptually2x faster).
[core] Rendering large resolution images like 4K or 10K is 30-50% faster.
[core] Render limitations are introduced for robustness. They are indicated in IPR window. For example, smallest GPUs with 1.5-2GB memory support 30-50M polygons and 100K mesh instances. GPUs with 3-4GB+ memory support 250-400M polygons and 1M mesh instances. These limitations will be further pushed forward.
[core] Bugfix: now render can work with at least 896MB of provided GPU memory by OS/driver. This low memory budget may be available on 1.5-2GB GPUs attached to display. Switching off other GPU applications may increase available memory for renderer.
[core] Bugfix: now environment map not blurred if seen through the glass.
[core] Bugfix: now absorption renders correctly.
[core] Bugfix: fixed rare overflow problems with complex shadows.

[IPR] IPR priority is introduced (see in render settings -> IPR). Larger priority increases render speed (samples/sec indicator) but can make GUI lags. Lower priority decreases render speed by 10-20% but makes work with GUI much smoother.
[IPR] Separate render resolution setting for IPR (see render settings -> IPR).
[IPR] Render region support.
[IPR] Render pause/resume.
[IPR] Render camera lock.
[IPR] Render enable/disable automatic scene updates.
[IPR] Full scene reload button.

[C4D plugin] Large usability rework of CentiLeo materials GUI. Now can unroll attached textures right in material editor. Now can reach the editor of selected texture from material editor in one click. Now can drag&drop textures among different material properties.
[C4D plugin] Can transfer all IPR currently rendered images (in HDR mode) to Picture Viewer (push the left-most button in IPR window).
[C4D plugin] Scene copying and reloading is avoided if IPR is already running and user clicks to Cinema 4D render to Picture Viewer or render to viewport or render region.
[C4D plugin] Bugfix: material preview renders even with running IPR.
[C4D plugin] Bugfix: various problems fixed when IPR and/or Picture Viewer render are enabled.
[C4D plugin] Bugfix: various problems fixed which forced IPR render resets when expression tags are available.
[C4D plugin] Bugfix: CentiLeo material preview renders even with running IPR.
[C4D plugin] Bugfix: right side material layer toggles now have effect on render and are animatable.

Known issues to be solved

- No yet multi-GPU
- Need texture/shader copy-paste (and copy-paste as instance) across different materials.
- Need to fix problems with texture paths using “preset…” using native Cinema 4D bitmap procedures.
- Sometimes GUI of IPR window may have old style controls.
- May not initialize if AMD GPU is in your computer together with NVIDIA GPU.
- Very limited scene converter tool from Cinema 4D native materials (only diffuse color and texture are converted and translated if assigned to the object)

Please, test it and say what you think!
CentiLeo team

Hello everyone!

Currently done our part on lowering GPU requirements (now it can work with at least 896MB provided by OS/CUDA driver). Recall that sometimes on single-GPU setups even if you have 2GB on GPU box label the actual provided memory by the OS/driver for the renderer plugin can be much lower close to 1GB. From time to time the actual provided memory depends on many factors of what people run on their computer. This situation is heavy for primary display GPUs and when a few GPU plugins/programs are up and running.

Just need to fix GUI of CentiLeo materials in Cinema and to connect some Render passes and a couple of IPR with 3ds Max GUI. Compile and both plugins will be out.

A lot of time was grabbed by new introduced bugs.
But we have made a lot of things with IPR (now even more stable and featured with render region and varios convenient buttons) and render passes/AOVs. AOVs work in parallel and very fast, only consume CPU memory. Btw, IPR now communicates much better with Picture Viewer in Cinema 4D. PV can continue the work of IPR avoiding reload times, same is true for native Cinema render region. Also can copy IPR current render with all passes to PV.

In 3ds Max the work is going same way.

Remaining things to be done are:
1) bugfixes for small GPUs with 2GB memory (where actually less than 1 GB is available)
2) Re-arrangements material GUI for Cinema 4D

Working hard to deliver 0.43

Hello Gael,

We develop several plugins (currently just 3ds Max and Cinema 4D) and would like to keep our renderer very similar in both these apps (and those we will do in the future). At the same time we want to integrate with existing tools that are available in each. However right now the priority is multi-GPU, later scatters, even better algoritmic image convergence, better arsenal of shaders and light sources, better post processing tools, and iterate over the tools to integrate with them as best as possible.

New physical camera and physical sky (procedural) obviously go to the TODO list.

Btw, you may write a wish list of items of anything you want and we do it step by step Looking forward to your further experiments!

Best regards,
Kirill

Hello Gael,

Nice to hear from you.

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I used the area lights but I'm not sure to understand the "Portal" option as when it is checked on, there is no light from them...

Well, the Portal is not a light source. It is a shape that is usually placed to fill the windows in the room. And it helps the renderer to guide the light tays coming from Environment map (if you have attached any) to the interior. Nothing more.
The "Is Portal" option was implemented together with Area Light source just to make this simple switch on/off between Area Light (which emits the light) and Portal (which is implemented as a special mode of Area light).

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I'm still a bit lost on how to use the different options of the standard ctl material... I hope there will be a more clear window dialogue in a next future version.

Sorry for confusion. We have changed the behavior of material layers for next version. I hope they will be easier to tune. For each layer instead of masks there will be weights which determine the weight of Reflection/Diffuse or Transmission relative to each other. And material GUI is divided into several rollouts which can be closed/opened.

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Gael LE GOLVAN wrote: the result is interesting, a bit slow but clean.

What is slow? An iteration or convergence? For next version the iterations will work similarly or slightly faster but convergence to clean result should be around 2-3x faster.

We work super hard to make next version ready. So many delayes happend due to small new introduced bugs, they took so much time.

+ visibility settings per light recovered
+ material preview now work cleaner
+ direct lighting with materials more complex than just diffuse is much cleaner now. Indirect lighting too

Delayed with some stupid bugs. Additionally the "visibility settings per light" were broken due to new feature in light transport acceleration. Recovering this

Hello Gael,

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Gael LE GOLVAN wrote: The area lights with portal ON have no effect inside or outside the room, u can see the result when it is on or off on my image with no other change from me.

The image you have shown are correct:
1) AreaLightPORTAL_ON.jpg - this is are light in the middle of the room with enabled "Is Portal" option. And this portal area light should not be visible. It just guides the light transport rays towards the Environment map. But correct placement of portal is inside the windows (regadles of having glass or not). In this case it will accelerate rendering of interior scene where light comes from outside and through the windows.
2) AreaLightPORTAL_OFF.jpg - this image is also correct. When "Is Portal" is disabled then it behaves as an area light that emits the light to one side of a rectangle like you see on the render window.

I think we need to create soon few topics with short articles, pictures and scenes describing this thing and few others. Just need to publish 0.43 version before that.

Thanks for feedback!

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Aimar NL_21 wrote: I'd like to be one of Pascal Testers for c4d .

Hi Aimar! Welcome here! We are completing 0.43 which should support Pascal. Right now here and there we are connecting many small things together.
Too much time was taken by

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1) General image convergence improvement when materials with several layers are used (almost done).

But results are good, you will see them in a couple of days

Hello Gael,

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Next, I added a spot light and impossible to reduce significantly the light intensity except with the radius parameter.

So, have you reduced the intensity to 0.0001 and it was still bright? I think that there can be a there with accounting scene units in the renderer.
What units are used in this particular scene? millimeters or kilometers?
I would like to recreate similar conditions.

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At least, I created 3 aera lights outside the room in front of the windows and I checked "Portal" as u wrote me in your last message. No result at all, no light through the windows...then, I increased the max ray bounces as u mentioned to 20 but still nothing as u can see on the 3rd image.

It didn't come from area light with enabled "portal" or just area lights with disabled "portal"? It's probably a bug that a portal itself occludes area lights... Need to test.

Area light with enabled flag "Is Portal" is not a light source, it doesn't produce the energy, it is a geometry shape that hint the light transport processor where to direct the rays that should find light coming from Environment map. So, it has effect (faster lighting convergence) only for the light coming from Environment map to interior through the window or windows. With or without portals it should result in same image but with a faster or slower convergence.

Area light with disabled "is Portal" is the valid light source. We have made this switcher only for convenience where one can change the window environment texture to the area light with one click.

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Concerning the point lights, they have no effect at all...

Well, it should be a bug of converter. Our converter is still very limited and it could turn the light sources to black (which are not accounted in renderer as being useless).
I have noticed in the IPR window status bar that the number of lights is 2, but in the viewport I see a lot more light sources. Please, can you tune parameters of at least one point light (Color, Intensity, Multiplier, Gamma - they all contribute to light emission, try to play with them and see what happens). There are several parameters for light emission because the Color and Intensity (and later angular distribution) will be textured soon, and multiplier/gamma will be additional increasers of the textured values.

Thank you,
Kirill

Hi Gael,

Thanks for your feedback with images. As you see we need to calibrate things here and there.

I think we need to implement camera perspective correction. Right? Or are you using orthographic camera projection in ARTrender image?

I recommend you to use portals in interior (create centileo area light with dimensions matching the window size and enable checkbox "Is portal").

If you added the lights but the interior is dark then it is probably not enough intensity, please try increasing it. Or they are occluded by the window. If you have windows then keep in mind that if you decrease the number of ray bounces in render settings too much then small amount of bounces may not be enough to reach the light.

Our displacement mapping algorithm is currently in active development. For example, it has some bugs and tesselates not so fast as we want (this should improve a lot). It will also be more featured (vector displacements and et). It seems we should make a specialised shader for displacement with units as cm, meter or km. It should also have some more controls specific for displacement like on/off autobump, shader inherirtance priority for instances and so on.

Displacement works adaptively for each changing camera frame or changing objects.
Btw, you may notice a "retesselate" flag on the IPR window. It switches on/off the automatic retesselation of the whole scene when you change the viewpoint of camera or materials. But this flag doesn't invalidate the previously created displacement solution. So it can be usefull to switch if off temporarilly while you tune the lighting and materials.

I see your issues with licenses. Your needs are totally valid. As I remember the dongles have some additional price. Will need to evaluate all the options...

Btw, what GPU do you have in a laptop? Something like GTX 980M?

Hello Gael and thanks for writting your review!

Well we are preparing a 0.43 alpha. It already took so much time. But it has what is described here http://centileo.com/forum/forum21/74-status-of-preparing-centileo-043-alpha .
Will appear here very soon. Btw 0.43 is even faster.

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I don't know how to post an image of my tests, sorry.

For some reason the image uploads were switched on this and Cinema forum (they were ON from the start). I have fixed the problem. So you may upload now your images, it will be cool to see what you have renderered

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material editor is a bit confusing, I wasn't able to make a simple glass, for example.

You are right. That was my mistake to organize materials as layers on top of each other (when top layers are 100% visible then bottom layers under it are not visible). By default the base layer has mask=1 and it makes invisible Transmission layer regardless of Trasmission mask. How to switch Transmission on (reduce the value of base mask and increase the value of Transmission mask). Shown here http://centileo.com/forum/forum15/53-how-to-create-glass-and-material-layer-organization

We fix this confusing material behavior for upcoming 0.43 version. Instead of masks all the layers of cntlStdMat will have weights relative to each other (pretty much like in Corona or Arnold). So, with this new approach when the weight of the layer is increased then the corresponding property (transmission or reflection or SSS) appears and blends with other material properties.

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I didn't find how to use an opacity on a map, I think anyway it was on a ctlmultimat, if I have readden correctly...I will have to try it. I saw it when I tryed the displacement...

Right, this is possible to apply opacity map using cntlMultiMap. It understands only cntlTexture shader (driven by image file) and in the places where image is black (pixel value < 0.5) the geometry of surface is removed, if it's white (pixel value > 0.5) then geometry is visible. It has no additional noise, and it has unlimited depth complexity (you may place many objects behind each other and they will render correctly without some black pixels after 30's or 60 objects in a row). It's useful for the leaves of trees.

For the needs of better flexibility (like different shader combinations) it is possible to use Transmission layer of cntlStdMat with IOR = 1.

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This shader , displacement is also not so "easy"... THe name of the parameter that forces the displacement is too much technical..."OutofRange2", right ? just use "Z displacement value in cm"

To switch on displacement you need to attach cntlTexture to the slot of cntlMultMaterial and then switch on tesselation in Render Settings -> rollout Displacement Mapping.
outRangeA and outRangeB are used to convert the input values of a texture to any desired range. It is the same shader that can be used for everything from color values to surface displacement values, so the idea was to have no "centimeters" or "meters" there. So, if the shader is used for displacement then these OutRange values internally use selected units of the scene.
Do you recommend us to create a separate shader with everything the same as in cntlTextute but with displacement range renamed to "Negative displacement value", "Positive displacement value" and with proper units?

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I noticed that some 3d objects had been doubled at another area on the frame buffer, that strange...Maybe a problem with instanciations in the framebuffer...

One object appeared two times in the framebuffer or two framebuffer windows were open? It the last one problem then it was fixed in 0.43 few hours ago. It appeared if you hold that button or click it several times in a fraction of second.

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So, right now, as it is in alpha version, it is not really possible to use it in real conditions as it misses many small important tools. I have made some images that show some of the parameters on a very simple Architectural project but even here, the renderer is not yet usable. Hmm, I feel criticizing the renderer, in fact no...I really find it interesting, I just want to talk about the needs, we, 3D users, face everyday.And simplicity, efficiency are the exact words

Dont' forget to criticize us, this is very useful to make it improved. We are doing this work for you. It is important to know what other things you need to improve in our renderer.

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Is there any idea to use both GPU and CPU ?

We will see, right now we are working to support simultanious rendering using several GPUs. Then there we a couple of algorithmic render speed accelerations (regardless of device), later there will be work on more features (post production, scattes, 3rd party plugins, shaders, light sources).
Adding CPU support can be considerered in a longer future (after crucial features will be done). I think it is most important in render farms.

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A suggestion for the future , when it will be sold online, I hope, we won't have to be permanently logged on internet to be able to work with it... We need a box Licence able to be changed from one computer to another thanks to a dongle or something like that... For security reasons, we cannot let the computers plugged to internet...

This is understandable, we work same way for security reasons
The sales system is not yet drawn but we account user needs and will try to find proper solutions. There is some dilemma in this important question, dongle can be an option btw.

Looking forward for your further tests!

Hello everyone!

A lot of time passed since releasing CentiLeo 0.42 for Max and Cinema. And I fell we need to post how the work on the next version is going.

The next version 0.43 is still in progress because too many things have been started for it. Some of them are quite large.
The most time consuming part is multi-GPU implementation. As soon as it's implemented we will publish the new version. It may take few days or even one week more.

So far we have already implemented:

1) Transition to CUDA 8. Now the renderer should work on Pascal NVIDIA GPUs (but we need testers for that). A wonderful thing is that even on my old GTX 970 the renderer works 12% faster with new CUDA. This new CUDA has also fixed some bugs that could touch the renderer.
2) Faster image convergence when portals are used. Not yet measured how much faster.
3) Fluent GUI responce when heavy render computations are processed by CentiLeo IPR. This is true for both 3ds Max and Cinema 4D. This is now much more pleasant to work with it.
4) More AOVs (reflection layers, base, transmission) that can be summed into beauty image. And AOV with beauty+alpha and alpha as mask.
5) 30-50% speedup when rendering large resolution images like 4K or even 10K. The speedup is better when there are a couple of AOVs computed in parallel and the image resolution is larger.
6) Fixed the bug with texture resolution downscaling for environment map visible through the glass material.
7) More bugfixes for CentiLeo in 3ds Max plugin (lile no crash with Max physical camera and Undo/Redo for materials and lights).
More bugfixes for CentiLeo in Cinema 4D (a couple of crashes and unnecessary IPR restarts were fixed).

What is still in progress:

1) General image convergence improvement when materials with several layers are used (almost done).
2) Material GUI improvements in CentiLeo for Cinema 4D (in the middle).
3) Multi-GPU (in the middle).
4) More bugfixes for small GPUs like 2GB which I talked about. Sometimes you have 2GB labeled on the GPU but in reality the OS may give you around 1GB (less than in the middle).
5) Will highly likely switch the layer organization of cntlStdMat to additive mode by default (when you tune the weights of each layer relative to each other). And there should be no confusion with stack-based priority. Will add optional checkboxes to enable old feature for material reflection layers where it is usefull.

Most time consuming things were performance improvements and now is multi-GPU. If multi-GPU will take even more time then we will wrap up what is done and release. In this case multi-GPU will be done for 0.44. Btw, for 0.44 we plan to accelerate renderer for scenes with many light sources (there are very promissing early experiments).

After finalizing 0.43 we will split the work so that new alpha versions will come much more frequent. New versions should be produced at least once or sometimes twice per week.

Hello
Really happy about this. We are really making baby steps. Multi-GPU will be released soon together with other quite large updates. Among them is better convergence and much more fluent GUI when heavy render is processed in IPR

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pBarrelas wrote: 2-The Invert checkbox serves to invert on the fly the grey scale images used on certain parameters. This speeds the workflow. 4-Is a current limitation the fact that the Displacement channel, can't be used on the "regular" material?

1) Can it be usefull to break energy conservation? Right now it is possible to make colors with values higher than 1 when using a color multiplied by some high value using cntlBinary shader. It may create some sort of Emission which is slow to converge for extreme cases. But it is possible to create very white diffuse eyes in some dark room (and it is not extreme case and will converge quickly). Later when there will be some Emission slot for material this thing will be accelerated with dedicated techniques.

2) Will think about it. Btw, there is cntlColorCorrection shader where it corrects the input shader and it is possible to make inversion when you put out_rangeA = 1 and out_rangeB = 0.
The same inversion trick works for cntlTexture (imagefile) and cntlNoise.

4) Well, I have limited displacement to one only place (in multi-material) so that it would be easier to evaluate displacement for sufrace (without gathering all the layers). Later that parts became faster and soon they will become even faster. And there will probably be an opportunity to combine many things for displacement slot. However the shaders such as cntlFallof (i.e. based on view angle) seem to be irrelevant for displacement when somebody plays with them.

"surface mask" is the only material property that will remain understanding only cntlTexture. This is so because of performance reasons. It basically enables and disables some surface region based on texture. And it allows unlimited trace depth for this feature for free. But if some shader customization is needed for such things then Transmission with IOR = 1 and shadered masks of the cntlStdMat can be used, but trace depth for this feature will be limited to the number of ray bounces (maximum supported is 30).