Key Enhancements in Cycles
1. Adaptive Subdivision Improvements
- Adaptive subdivision now supports previously missing features like attribute subdivision, smooth UV subdivision, and motion blur.
- The subdivision modifier levels are now ignored, allowing more efficient handling of geometry.
- Fully multithreaded, significantly improving performance.
- Automatically reduces vertex and triangle counts when subdivision isn’t required.
2. Enhanced Bump Mapping
- Introduced bump correction to avoid washed-out areas near shadow terminators, preserving detail from normal and bump maps.
- A new Filter Width input in the Bump node (default 0.1) allows artists to emulate bevel-like effects on sharp edge textures.
3. Custom Cameras via OSL
- Users can now implement custom camera types using Open Shading Language (OSL)—independent of OSL shading—and supported on CPU and OptiX devices (where hardware allows).