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Our Thea Render v1.1 edition (codename "Chameleon") is out since the end of September, so what is next? First of all, let us point out the big steps that we have made so far! Thea has grown to be the most versatile engine with exporter plugins for most modeling applications. The material system is unique in both terms of visual management and achieved quality. The render core has some "details" that cannot be found even in renderers - so called - acclaimed for their quality and accuracy; sun-pool caustics, terminator artifact treatment and true unbiased volumetric scattering to name a few. But besides quality, Thea speed has improved vastly and in the last edition, it is as fast as it can get on a CPU-based render solution.

There are two main directions that we will be moving on; the first is adding a GPU-based render method. There is already some work on a prototype and such solution will be based on the OpenCL standard; following the standard has the benefit that the solution is vendor independent. And this key feature, was of crucial importance for us when choosing between OpenCL and the alternatives. The second is tighter integration on modeling applications; work has already begun on certain modelers and more info will be disclosed later on.

So, how do we see the future of Thea? With a dedicated development team, a supporting community and a network constantly increasing, the future can only be bright!

Dear friends,

it has been a while since our last revision, but we took the summer to enhance Thea Render as much as possible. And now, we are coming out with our next edition v1.1, codename "Chameleon", another great milestone accomplished!

The new edition has two very important additions. The first is a performance improvement, up to x2, which makes Thea faster than ever (tech announcement here) while the second is the very important integration with Motiva Colimo (tech announcement here) that makes possible to generate "infinite" variations from a single render!

But it is not only the additions above. There are some cool features in Thea that improve the workflow a lot. Like the History panel, which based on the feedback so far, it is of those features that once you have used it, you simply cannot go back! Please take a look at our v1.1 Demoreel (watch on youtube, watch on facebook) that shows all the new things in fast forward.

You can find the download links to our newest Thea v1.1 in our webpage. You can also download the newest Colimo v1.2 from our webpage and explore the new "repaint" feature. Don't forget to watch our video tutorials, particularly the new ones, showing the changes introduced in v1.1 (watch on youtube, watch on facebook) and the integration with Colimo (watch on youtube, watch on facebook).

Even more, we have set a special promotional offer for Colimo application, that you can buy now in the special price of 99 euros (nominal price at 139 euros; vat not included and will be applied for EU private customers). This offer is a limited one for a period of 2 weeks (until Monday 10 October) and only available for Thea licensed users or users purchasing Colimo along with Thea Render.

I hope that you will enjoy the new revision as much we enjoyed creating it! The warm spirit of the community and the people contributing makes the process both challenge and fun!

Yours

Ioannis Pantazopoulos