Aqsis 1.8 testing
The Aqsis team has officially gone into Phase 1 of the upcoming 1.8 release, this means that they have solidified the feature set and goals, now they are in the process of fine tuning it as well as fixing any bugs. It will only be a matter of months before the next release is available for download, however for us it is only a matter of compiling the source (not that nobody could not before) and giving it a test run. Since 2009 we have been using the latest source of Aqsis for our rendering, this serves many purposes and one of them is the testing and feedback. This release is a very special one though is that it has the GI code in it, which means that rendering takes on a whole new turn and lighting will have to be redone in order to take advantage of the new code.
Point Based Global Illumination
Point Based Global Illumination is a method of using points on a surface to calculate lighting effects such as ambient occlusion and color bleeding. This means that the film will take on a new look, as well as process, since we will be using the new rendering code, however it also means a lot more work has to be done to the pipeline as shader code needs to be updated and the existing lighting will need to be reviewed and most likely changed.
Chris wrote a blog post here http://blog.aqsis.org/2011/06/point-based-global-illumination.html , which explains more from the person directly responsible for this addition to Aqsis.
RIBMosaic testing
Jeff Doyle has joined Project Widow’s support team to help with the technical issues related to RIBMosaic, this makes it easy for him to work out problems that we are having with it. Being on the support team he can devote more time to the things he needs to do in his own way, while at the same time being notified of issues via Shotgun, this also allows him access to the private SVN server that hosts our assets.
One of the main issues so far is how RIBMosaic is not able to work with Linked files, in our case this means everything in every shot. So this has been a major block in that area, however since we are in the animation phase we do not need to worry so much as it would be if we were in the rendering phases.
Sorry for the lack of progress updates, the last few months were quite stressful, with a death in the family and the subsequent dealings and a move, things were put on the backburner. Now as daily life gets more stable and smoother progress is starting again. Stay tuned for more updates 
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