Cycles Render Engine

Cycles is a ray tracing renderer focused on interactivity and ease of use, while still supporting many production features.

= Building =

== Requirements ==

Crucial dependencies:

• OpenGL
• GLEW
• Boost (version at least 1.48).
• OpenImageIO (plus all the libraries which OIIO depends on).
• PugiXML unless OpenImageIO is compiled with embedded version of this library.

Optional dependencies:

• OpenShadingLanguage

== Precompiled libraries ==

It is possible to use precompiled libraries for OSX and Windows The libraries could be checked out from Blender's library repository:

https://svn.blender.org/svnroot/bf-blender/trunk/lib/

Currently the full checkout of platform libraries is required. This means, i.e., to use OSX libraries this folder is to be checked out:

https://svn.blender.org/svnroot/bf-blender/trunk/lib/darwin-9.x.universal/

Build system expects precompiled libraries to be stored in the lib/ folder next to folder with Cycles sources.

== Compilation Options ==

• WITH_CPU_SSE // Enable SIMD instruction if they're detected on // the host machine.
• WITH_CYCLES_STANDALONE_GUI // Build standalone app with GUI.
• WITH_CYCLES_OSL // Build with OpenShadingLanguage support.
• WITH_CYCLES_LOGGING // Build with logging support.
• WITH_CYCLES_DEBUG // Build with extra debug capabilities.

== Compilation ==

Once all the requirements are met, either invoke cmake with all desired parameters from a build folder, or simply type make in the root directory of Cycles repository.

== Extra Dependencies ==

Depending on how the dependencies were compiles it is possible that manual tweaks to the linker are required.

For example if OpenImageIO is compiled as a static library it'll be required to pass all the OIIO dependencies to the linker using CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS CMake variable.

Dealing with such kind of dependencies is not really possible automatically, so we can't reduce entropy of a hassle here.

It is possible to pass CMake configuration arguments to GNU Makefile, i.e.:

make BUILD_CMAKE_ARGS="-DBOOST_ROOT=/opt/lib/boost"

= Examples =

The repository contains example xml scenes which could be used to test Cycles render engine.

Example usage:

./cycles scene_monkey.xml

You can also use optional parameters (see ./cycles --help), like:

./cycles --samples 100 --output ./image.png scene_monkey.xml

For the OSL scene you need to enable the OSL shading system:

./cycles --shadingsys osl scene_osl_stripes.xml

= Known TODOs =

• Installation target is not tested and would need more work.
• Compiled .oso files are not put to the final location, so manual copy is required for now.

= Problems =

If you encounter problems, please mail the blender's mailing list bf-cycles:

http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-cycles

or ask for help on

irc://irc.freenode.net/blendercoders