Spot the difference

Look closely at these two screenshots, and see if you can see what's changed between the current version 1.0.3 and the upcoming 1.0.4 release, which is currently going through final QA. (You may find it easier to click on the images and view them larger.)

Version 1.0.3

Version 1.0.4

Nope?

OK, look at the shadows under the two chairs. In the 1.0.3 version, you'll see nasty little lines. They don't look too bad in stills, but when you shoot actual footage, especially if you have moving cameras, they really look horrible. They flicker and flash, and they're seriously annoying and distracting. In the 1.0.4 version, you just have the shadows you'd expect, without the artifacts.

For the non-technical among you, this is a phenomenon called "z-fighting". What's happening is that the ambient shadows cast onto the floor by the chairs and the sofa end up in the same plane. This confuses the renderer, because it has two things in the same place. We've already eliminated a lot of the z-fighting issues, but clashing between ambient shadows is one we'd missed, as it only happens when you put things like furniture too close together.

And now it's fixed. From 1.0.4. onwards, your sets should look much nicer. It's a small fix, but one which has a huge effect on the look of your films.