mine-weird

I am only praying all rigs don't break again???

Greetings everyone! In this dev update, I'll be covering a handful of new features I've been working on for Mine-imator 1.3.0.
However, before we dive into the following eye candy, I want to mention that due to the sheer size of this update, its official release is not in the near future-- and doesn't have an ETA. Unlike the past two updates, 1.1.0 and 1.2.0, this update includes a variety of goals. This includes an effort to improve rendering, animation workflow, and the interface along with adding new features that may come with them. Though during development, I'll be posting dev updates more often to give insight on how development is going. With that being said, this post will highlight a couple of the first big improvements to come to the update. Renders used in this dev update were made by @Hozq.
 
Lighting improvements
The way lighting is applied to objects has changed in 1.3.0. Before, ambiance only affected dark areas, but now, ambiance is applied more accurately to the scene by being applied additively to pre-existing lighting in the scene. This allows for brighter scenes and improves the appearance of dark areas such as areas with AO.
 
Changes to shadows
Shadows are getting a significant upgrade in 1.3.0. Previously, shadows used a method that would blur all shadows in the scene. Now, shadows are rendered multiple times determined by a new samples setting that scatters the shadow maps of lights around, allowing for shadows to be harder near its caster, and softer the further away it is. (Also to clear up a misconception, this is not PCSS. )
An improvement was also made to the way sun shadows are cast, allowing the sun to act as a proper directional light in the scene.
 
Volumetric rays
This feature has been requested many times over the past few years, and is finally being added to 1.3.0. However due to (technical) restrictions, the rays are only available for the sun. These rays are not rendered in screen-space and will appear even if the sun is not in-frame.
 
As mentioned before, rendering isn't the only aspect of Mine-imator that will be getting improvements though however, that's the first part of this update I'll be tackling so it may be a while till other features are shown off. Until next time!