NURA Rendering Architecture
What is NURA? #
For 1.0 we’ve introduced our unified rendering model called NURA - the Notch Unified Rendering Architecture. NURA is the new rendering architecture that powers Notch Builder 1.0 and future versions. It is the world’s first architecture to bring consistent results across diverse renderers without changes to your materials, lighting, or render settings.
Go from super fast real-time to path tracing perfection and back again as needed - just by switching render nodes. NURA also brings an order-of-magnitude leap in scalability for Notch rendering. It now allows you to break into the billions of polys, thousands of lights all with a bedrock of determinism to power the future of distributed rendering.
The case for each Renderer #
Your choice of Renderer is entirely dependant on your content, your performance targets (frame rate and resolution), and your available hardware. Each renderer offers unique quality vs performance trade-off while maintaining the lighting & material intent in your scene, so you just need to pick and choose the renderer appropriate for your usecase.
2D workflows #
For 2D workflows, such as video or 2D shapes, the Standard Renderer is everything you will need. 2D content doesn’t need the advanced 3D lighting systems that the other renderers provide, so you can use the simpler rendering approach.
Offline 3D workflows #
For rendering 3D content where real-time performance isn’t required, the Path Tracer or the Smart Tracer are the best choice. These offer the highest quality lighting, and interactive content editing.
Real-time 3D options #
For real-time 3D, the options are a little more varied, and dependant your goals and available hardware.
If you require high frame rates, high resolutions, or low end hardware, the Standard Renderer is a capable renderer for 3D projects.
If you need a more dynamic scene, then the Hybrid Renderer can offer great lighting quality at very high speed, but on very low end hardware or extremely high resolutions, high frame rates may not be achievable.
If you have high-end hardware and are looking at HD content, the Smart Tracer offers exceptional quality and speed.
The Renderers #
NURA features four renderers with properties tailored to modern graphics workflows, which you can switch between seamlessly:
Path Tracer #
Our native GPU-powered path tracer. Designed to give the most accurate and high fidelity result, underpinned by unbiased rendering algorithms and fully interactive within the viewport.
Great for: when you need the absolute best quality render, when you need massive scalability and determinism is critical.
Smart Tracer #
Our accelerated Path tracer, built on the latest raytracing research. It takes many of the same lighting calculations from the Path Tracer, but accelerates them using spatio-temporal path guiding & reuse via RESTIR.
Great for: when you need a high-quality render but don’t have time for a full path traced render, when wanting to work more interactively with a path traced scene.
Hybrid Renderer #
Packed with cutting-edge real-time raytracing techniques to simulate everything from global illumination to multi-bounce reflections and refraction. From fast real-time, to a fast, high-quality offline render.
Great for: When you need rendering features the Standard Renderer can’t provide (reflections, ambient occlusion etc), scaling across multiple machines or GPUs.
Standard Renderer #
The fastest renderer for real-time content, with complete support for Notch’s materials and shaders, a full range of light types, with a reduced feature set to ensure that rendering runs with instant response on modern GPUs.
Great for: video effects, 2D workflows, interactive installations on a single GPU, static 3D content.
