Aqsis is a cross-platform photorealistic 3D rendering solution, adhering to the RenderMan interface standard defined by Pixar Animation Studios.

Focusing on stability and production usage, features include constructive solid geometry, depth-of-field, extensible shading engine (DSOs), instancing, level-of-detail, motion blur, NURBS, procedural plugins, programmable shading, subdivision surfaces, subpixel displacements and more.

The Aqsis tools provide a comprehensive list of features that are considered necessary for production use, the following list details some of the important high level capabilities.

• Programmable Shading
• High Level Primitive Support
• Sub-Pixel Displacement
• Motion Blur (MB)
• Depth of Field (DoF)
• Shadow Mapped Ambient Occlusion
• Arbitrary Output Variables (AOV)
• Subdivision Surfaces (SDS)
• High quality texture mapping
• Level of Detal (LOD)
• High Dynamic Range (HDR) Output
• Extensible through plugins (DSO/Procedurals)

For more detail about supported features, see the features page of the manual.

• Roadmap - Where is Aqsis going, what needs to be done.

• Aqsis 1.x Manual - Home of the latest documentation for the development version of Aqsis. (ToDo)
• Aqsis 1.4 Manual (Beta) - Home of the stable documentation for the previous release (PDF snapshot).
• Tips & Tricks - Useful information when using Aqsis.
• FAQ - Frequently asked questions.
• Contributing - How to contribute to the Aqsis documentation.

• Tutorials - Aqsis tutorials and related documentation.
• Recipes - Mini-howtos.

• Aqsis Development Guide - Details of Aqsis internals, testing, white papers and design drafts.
• Release Cycle - A description of the official Aqsis release process.
• Project Metrics - Area where developers can see various project stats.
• Roadmap - Details of current release schedules and features.
• Events Calendar - A central place to see all important Aqsis related calendar events.
• Support Library Documentation - Details of the support libraries provided as part of Aqsis, and how to use them.
• ToDo Lists - Area where developers can set themselves targets and keep track of things.
• Developer Meetings - Weekly IRC developer meeting (archive).

• Summer of Code (2010) - Details of our involvement with Google Summer of Code 2010.
• Summer of Code (2009) - Details of our involvement with Google Summer of Code 2009.
• Summer of Code (2007) - Details of our involvement with Google Summer of Code 2007.

• New Website - Proposed website overhaul.
• Giselle - Procedural animation system.

A list of development projects that encompass focussed areas of development follows. These projects follow a set of common guidelines and are usually headed and managed by one of the primary developers.

• Beaker - Aqsis performance project, headed by Paul Gregory.
• Animal - Aqsis innovation project, headed by Chris Foster.

There are two ways to get help from Aqsis users and developers:

• The Aqsis Forum - Registration required.
• IRC - Join #aqsis channel on irc.freenode.net (Logs are available at http://irclogs.aqsis.org).

Please see the bug reporting guidelines before reporting bugs. All bugs should ultimately be reported via SourceForge's Bug Tracking System.

• Contributors Matrix

Developer and user biographies.

• Paul Gregory - Project manager & lead developer.
• Leon Tony Atkinson - Greasemonkey.
• Bobby Parker - Professional Weirdo.
• Michel Joron - Developer.
• Tristan Colgate - Non-graphics infrastructure developement, and loud mouth.
• Tobias Sauerwein - Teaboy.
• Chris Foster - Code jockey.
• Matthaeus G. Chajdas - Developer
• Stefan Gustavson - Noise freak
• Malcolm Humphreys - Error handler
• Daniel Walters - GSoC Student (2009)
• Rafael Campos - GSoC Student (2009)
• Trevor Lovett - GSoC Student (2009)

• User Information - Area for users to share their thoughts with the team.
• Survey 1 Results - The results of the first Aqsis user survey.

Aqsis Wiki is a project by the Aqsis Team to help better maintain information relating to the Aqsis 3D rendering solution, by allowing people to not only view but login (using their Aqsis user account) and edit/submit content in a similar vein to community projects like Wikipedia.

Before editing/submitting any content, be sure to…

• Read the documentation guidelines.
• Take a closer look at the current pages within this wiki to get a better understanding of our use of language and layout/style.
• Read-up on DokuWiki's syntax.
• Test your skills in the playground first.
• Treat this wiki with the respect it deserves and help make it the definitive Aqsis resource.