Iray Programmer's Manual

Preface
Getting started
- Release overview
- Example programs
- How to compile a program
- How to run a program
- Starting and shutting down the Iray API
- A first image
Library design
- API modules
- Shared library
- Naming conventions
- Include files
- Include file compile-time configuration
- Main API access point
- Version numbers and compatibility
- Interfaces
- Reference counting
- Handle class
- Resources
- Strings
- Error handling
- Database, transactions and scopes
  - Transactions
  - Database scopes
- Runtime configuration
Rendering
- Rendering overview
- Rendering and canvases
- Render mode selection
- Progressive rendering of a scene
- Own canvas class
- Asynchronous rendering
- Multiple render contexts
Iray Photoreal
- Introduction
- System requirements
- Limitations
- Matte objects and matte lights
- Refractive objects and IOR handling
- Progressive rendering
- Caustic sampler
- Architectural sampler
- Light portals
- Rendering options
- Mixed mode rendering and load balancing
- Timeout prevention
- Integrated noise reduction
- Integrated bloom
Iray Interactive
- Introduction
- System requirements
- Limitations
- Progressive rendering
- Lighting
- Rendering options
- Path space filtering
- Output format
- Global performance settings
- Comparison with Iray Photoreal
Iray Realtime
- Introduction
- System requirements
- Limitations
- Rendering options
Iray Blend
- Introduction
- Rendering options
Scene database
- Overview of the scene database elements
- Creating a scene programmatically
Geometry
- Creating triangle meshes
- Creating polygon meshes
- Creating on-demand meshes
- Creating subdivision surfaces
- Creating freeform surfaces
Materials
- Material Definition Language
- Measured materials
- Editing and creating materials
Decals
Sources of light
- Emission distribution functions
- Light distribution from scene elements
Environment dome and implicit groundplane
- Environment function
- Environment dome
- Implicit groundplane
Camera
- Tonemapping
  - Photographic tonemapper
  - Custom tonemapper
- Depth of field
- Virtual backplate
- Motion blur
Physically plausible scene setup
- Recommendations for geometry preparation
- Recommendations for lights
  - Using photometric lights
  - Using environment and sunlight
- Recommendations for materials
- Recommendations for cameras
Networking
- Networking overview
- Networking modes
- Iray Bridge
Delivering an image from server-based rendering
- Running an HTTP server
- RTMP server
- RTMP client
- Running an RTMP and HTTP server with mouse interaction
Customization
- Extending the database with user-defined classes
- Extending neuray with plugins
- Extending supported file formats with plugins
Appendix
- Supported file formats and URI schemes
- Result canvas names
- Light path expression grammar
Bibliography

Using Iray Bridge with Iray Viewer

Iray Viewer, which is available as a separate download, supports Iray Bridge. Assuming an Iray Bridge server is accepting clients at the address somehost:8998, the following steps needs to be performed to render using the remote cluster:

From Iray Viewer, open the dialog Tools > Remote > Server Address. Set the address to somehost:8998 assuming a cloud bridge server has been started on somehost and is listening on port 8998 (the default).
Load a scene.
Select Photoreal Cloud as the renderer. IView will automatically connect to the configured server and render using the remote cluster. The scene will be uploaded to the remote server as part of rendering the first frame. This can take considerable time, but data only needs to be uploaded once to the server and will then be loaded from a server side disk cache. So loading the same scene will be very quick next time, and also if scenes share resources like textures, hdr images, etc, they only need to be uploaded once.
The Iray Cloud video options can be found in the Properties window.

The first frame rendered with Iray Bridge may take a considerable amount of time because scene data that is not already in the server-side cache must be uploaded to the server. In Iray Viewer, right-click on the log window and enable verbose logging to get more information about the progress of the upload.