RiPR | LightWave

Introduction

RiPR (Real-time Path Rendering) is a viewport plugin for Lightwave 3D that provides real-time path tracing capabilities directly in your viewport. Built on NVIDIA OptiX 8.1.0, RiPR leverages GPU acceleration to provide interactive path tracing directly within LightWave's viewport system with physically accurate lighting and materials while you work.

Key features include:

Real-time path traced rendering in the LightWave viewport
HDR environment lighting with customizable maps
Animation rendering and playback
Deep depth of field controls
GPU-accelerated rendering with memory monitoring
Special material options including global glass rendering
Support for instancing, deformation and LightWave materials

Common Workflows

Interactive Scene Visualization

Set the RiPR viewport to "Preview" mode
Adjust the "Preview Render Scale" based on your GPU capabilities
Work interactively with your scene while seeing real-time path traced results

Rendering a Scene

Set up your scene with proper lighting and materials
Configure your render settings as needed
Enable "Use time stamped sub folder" to organize outputs
Click "Render" to process the scene
RiPR will render each frame sequentially
Use the Playback tab to review the rendered frames once complete. You will need to set the Import folder to where your frames have been rendered.

Creating Glass Visualizations

In the Options tab, enable "Turn Scene to Glass"
Adjust "Glass Absorption" to control transparency
Set "Glass IOR" to match your desired material (1.52 for standard glass)
Choose between "Thin-walled" or "Solid" based on your needs
Render normally using either Preview or Render mode

Preferences

Access the RiPR preferences using the cog icon in the viewport title bar.

Render Mode: Two choices. Preview is for while you are working, Render is to putput a rapid preview of your scene.
Preview Render Scale: Four choices. 1x outputs images at the same size as the value you have set in Camera Properties.
Bounces: Ghosted unless in Render Mode. The maximum number of light bounces for the path tracer. Can be between 0-100.
Passes: Ghosted unless in Render Mode. The number of rendering passes used, between 1-1000. The more passes you employ, the slower your render will finish but also the more accurate the render will be.
Width: Ghosted unless in Render Mode. This field is purely informational. If you wish to change your frame width, do it in Camera Properties.
Height: Ghosted unless in Render Mode. This field is purely informational. If you wish to change your frame height, do it in Camera Properties.
Downsample: Ghosted unless in Render Mode. The output frame size as a proportion of the size set in Camera Properties. A range of 1-100 % is available
Render / Abort: Ghosted unless in Render Mode. The Render button starts rendering the scene and writing to disk. Other than the playhead advancing, there is no other feedback.
Use time stamped sub folder: Ghosted unless in Render Mode. If you don't use this setting, files will overwrite without warning.
Root output folder: Ghosted unless in Render Mode. RiPR output is named render_[frame number].exr.
GPU Memory Used: How much of our graphics card's memory has been used. This field is purely informational.
GPU Memory Free: How much remains. This field is purely informational.
GPU Memory Total: How much your card has. This field is purely informational.

Playback: Two choices. Begins or ends playback of rendered frames.
Playback direction: Three choices. Forward, Pause, or Reverse playback direction.
Playback rate (fps): A field for FPS control (1-30 fps).
Loop playback: Toggle. When enabled, playback will loop continuously.
Input folder: Directory containing rendered frames for playback.
Screengrab Format: A choice between EXR, PNG or JPG
Grab it!: The Grab it! function captures the current viewport content. Click to save the current viewport as an image in the format chosen above.
Screengrab folder: Directory where screenshots will be saved. Screengrabs will be in the format chosen above.

HDR Intensity: Brightness control for the environment light (0-500 %)
HDR rotation (degrees): Use this control to swing your HDR-generated light around the scene.
HDR rotate speed: Controls the rotation speed of the environment map (between 0-10).
HDR rotate direction: Three choices giving the direction of environment map rotation. Counterclockwise (CCW), Stop and Clockwise (CW).
Show HDR: Toggle visibility of the HDR environment map
Background Color: When HDR is disabled, you can set a custom background color using the color picker.
HDR image: The HDR image you want to use.

Focal distance: Controls the distance at which objects appear in focus.
Aperture: Similar to the Lens F-Stop in Camera Properties, this controls the amount of depth of field blur (larger values = more blur). The range is 0-20, but depending on your scene scale can rapidly become an undifferentiated blur, so start with low values. 0 means there's no blur at all.

Use GPU resizing: Toggle. When enabled, uses GPU for viewport resizing operations.
Turn scene to glass: Toggle. When enabled, renders all objects as glass.
Glass absorption: Controls the distance light travels through glass before being absorbed.
Glass IOR: Index of refraction for glass material; the default is 1.52.
Glass type: Choose between "Thin-walled" or "Solid" glass.