Scene Description Language

Detail shadowmaps introduce several new statements to light blocks: shadowmap detail, shadowmap detail samples, shadowmap accuracy, shadowmap color, and shadowmap alpha. Also, shadowmap bias was added for biased, non-Woo shadowmaps.
ILM's OpenEXR 1.1 image file format is now supported. It is installed as an external library that is part of the mental ray distribution. The BW/A variant of Alias IFF image files is now supported. RGBE frame buffers are no longer gamma-corrected.
Double-quoted strings may now contain the sequence ", which denotes a literal double quote. This makes it possible to put literal double quotes inside strings, which can be useful for system commands.
Added conditionals to the language, such as $ifdef and $ifeq.
Added an offscreen flag to approximations to disable coarse tessellations outside the viewing frustum.
Added a touch statement to mark objects for re-evaluation.
It is now possible to attach multiple finalgather file names to the options block.
Shader parameters of type light now accept instances of light groups, in addition to instances of lights. The light group contains instances of lights that will be treated as if they were a single light.
Added namespace support, using namespace ... end namespace brackets. Elements inside a namespace N can be referenced by prefixing their name with N ::. Inside a namespace, a global symbol S can be referenced as :: S.
Hair geometry can now be rendered in rasterizer (formerly called Rapid Motion) mode.
Numerical non-array shader parameters may be declared with defaults using a default keyword in the declaration block.
The hard max limit of 7 for approximation subdivision has been removed for displacement approximations.
Materials can omit the material shader, and objects and instances may specify the new flag shadowmap off. Both are useful for hull objects that are not visible themselves but enclose volume effects such as visible light cones.

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