Change log

fresnel releases follow semantic versioning.

0.13.8 (2025-09-03)

Added

• Support pybind11 3.0.

0.13.7 (2024-10-29)

Added

• Support Python 3.13.

Fixed

• Edge case in ray-convex polyhedron intersection test.

Changed

• Improve the build instructions.

0.13.6 (2024-05-31)

Added

• Support Numpy 2.0.

Changed

• Provide support via GitHub discussions.

• Revise installation documentation.

• Add copy button to documentation code examples.

• Enable arrow key navigation in documentation.

Removed

• Support for Python 3.8.

0.13.5 (2023-02-22)

Added

• Support Python 3.11.

• Support for Embree 4.x.

Removed

• Support for Embree 3.x.

v0.13.4 (2021-11-17)

Added

• Support Python 3.10.

• Support clang 13.

v0.13.3 (2021-06-07)

Added

• Support Windows.

v0.13.2 (2021-05-11)

Added

• Support macos-arm64.

v0.13.1 (2021-03-11)

Fixed

• Add missing version module

v0.13.0 (2021-03-11)

Added

• Perspective camera.

• Depth of field effect.

Changed

• Reduce latency in interact.SceneView while rotating the view.

• Improve user experience with mouse rotations in interact.SceneView.

• [breaking] - Moved camera.orthographic to camera.Orthographic.

• [breaking] - Moved camera.fit to camera.Orthographic.fit.

Removed

• [breaking] - Removed “auto” camera in Scene. Use camera.Orthographic.fit

v0.12.0 (2020-02-27)

Added

• preview and tracer.Preview accept a boolean flag anti_alias to enable or disable anti-aliasing.

Changed

• preview and tracer.Preview enable anti-alisasing by default.

• Python, Cython, and C code must follow strict style guidelines.

• Renamed util.array to util.Array

• Renamed util.image_array to util.ImageArray

• Converted interact.SceneView.setScene to a property: scene

Removed

• preview and tracer.Preview no longer accept the aa_level argument - use anti_alias.

v0.11.0 (2019-10-30)

Added

• Added box geometry convenience class Box.

Removed

• Support for Python 3.5.

Fixed

• Compile on systems where libqhullcpp.a is missing or broken.

• Find Embree headers when they are not in the same path as TBB.

v0.10.1 (2019-09-05)

Fixed

• Restore missing examples on readthedocs.

v0.10.0 (2019-08-19)

Changed

• CMake >= 3.8 is required at build time.

• pybind11 >= 2.2 is required at build time.

• qhull >= 2015 is required.

• install to the Python site-packages directory by default.

• CI tests execute on Microsoft Azure Pipelines.

Fixed

• Improved installation documentation.

v0.9.0 (2019-04-30)

• Added support for linearizing colors of shape (4,).

• Improve examples.

v0.8.0 (2019-03-05)

• Documentation improvements.

• Add geometry.Polygon: Simple and/or rounded polygons in the z=0 plane.

• API breaking changes:

  • Remove: geometry.Prism

v0.7.1 (2019-02-05)

• Fix conda-forge build on mac

v0.7.0 (2019-02-05)

• Add util.convex_polyhedron_from_vertices: compute convex polyhedron plane origins and normals given a set of vertices

• Improve documentation

• Add interact.SceneView: pyside2 widget for interactively rendering scenes with path tracing

• Add geometry.Mesh: Arbitrary triangular mesh geometry, instanced with N positions and orientations

• fresnel development is now hosted on github: https://github.com/glotzerlab/fresnel/

• Improve light.lightbox lighting setup

• API breaking changes:

  • geometry.ConvexPolyhedron arguments changed. It now accepts polyhedron information as a dictionary.

v0.6.0 (2018-07-06)

• Implement tracer.Path on the GPU.

• Implement ConvexPolyhedron geometry on the GPU.

• Improve path tracer performance with Russian roulette termination.

• Compile warning-free.

• Fix sphere intersection test bugs on the GPU.

• tracer.Path now correctly starts sampling over when resized.

• Wrap C++ code with pybind 2.2

• Make documentation available on readthedocs: http://fresnel.readthedocs.io

• Fresnel is now available on conda-forge: https://anaconda.org/conda-forge/fresnel

• embree >= 3.0 is now required for CPU support

• Improve documentation

v0.5.0 (2017-07-27)

• Add new lighting setups

  • lightbox

  • cloudy

  • ring

• Adjust brightness of lights in existing setups

• Remove clearcoat material parameter

• Add spec_trans material parameter

• Add Path tracer to render scenes with indirect lighting, reflections, and transparency (CPU-only)

• Add ConvexPolyhedron geometry (CPU-only, beta API, subject to change)

• Add fresnel.preview function to easily generate Preview traced renders with one line

• Add fresnel.pathtrace function to easily generate Path traced renders with one line

• Add anti-aliasing (always on for the Path tracer, set aa_level > 0 to enable for Preview)

• API breaking changes:

  • render no longer exists. Use preview or pathtrace.

  • tracer.Direct is now tracer.Preview.

CPU-only features will be implemented on the GPU in a future release.

v0.4.0 (2017-04-03)

• Enforce requirement: Embree >= 2.10.0

• Enforce requirement Pybind =1.8.1

• Enforce requirement TBB >= 4.3

• Rewrite camera API, add camera.fit to fit the scene

• scenes default to an automatic fit camera

• Implement area lights, add default lighting setups

• Scene now supports up to 4 lights, specified in camera space

• Implement Disney’s principled BRDF

• Tracer.histogram computes a histogram of the rendered image

• Tracer.enable_highlight_warning highlights overexposed pixels with a given warning color

• Device.available_modes lists the available execution modes

• Device.available_gpus lists the available GPUs

• Device can now be limited to n GPUs

• API breaking changes:

  • camera.Orthographic is now camera.orthographic

  • Device now takes the argument n instead of limit

  • Scene no longer has a light_direction member

v0.3.0 (2017-03-09)

• Suppress “cannot import name” messages

• Support Nx3 and Nx4 inputs to color.linear

v0.2.0 (2017-03-03)

• Parallel rendering on the CPU

• Fix PTX file installation

• Fix python 2.7 support

• Unit tests

• Fix bug in sphere rendering on GPU

v0.1.0 (2017-02-02)

• Prototype API

• Sphere geometry

• Prism geometry

• outline materials

• diffuse materials

• Direct tracer