Changelog

v0.5.0 (9th June 2026)

This release is the first to feature a full list of changes. It also contains significant upgrades on our specific tooling and documentation, including a new, Eradiate-specific docs site deployed to Read The Docs.

We introduce a first, experimental implementation of variance reduction methods targeted toward cloudy scenes. All of these changes are subject to change in the few next versions.

New features

  • eovolpath integrator: A new volumetric path tracer that replicates and extends the upstream volpath integrator. Introduces the DDIS (Detector Directional Importance Sampling) method for improved variance reduction in participating media, as well as residual ratio tracking for transmittance estimation during emitter sampling. (PR #25, #27)

  • Extremum plugin family: This new plugin family that provides majorant/minorant bounds for a medium, enabling distance sampling using local majorants rather than a global majorant. Three implementations are provided:

    • extremum_global — spatially invariant extremum.

    • extremum_grid — grid-based extremum tracking.

    • extremum_spherical — spherical-coordinates-based extremum tracking.

    (PR #24)

  • Stokes-moment integrator: This new integrator plugin combines the moment and stokes integrators into a single implementation which retrieves both the second moment and Stokes vector components of radiance samples simultaneously. This addresses a limitation that would constrain the nesting moment and stokes to a configuration that would not allow getting the second moment of all Stokes vector components (only the intensity). (PR #29)

Improvements

  • Volume interface: Added a min() method to the Volume interface, propagated to VolumeGrid and Texture, as required by the extremum plugins. (PR #27)

  • Medium analytical transmittance API: Renamed sample_interaction_real to sample_interaction_analytical and eval_transmittance_pdf_real to eval_analytical_transmittance, which now return the full unpolarized spectrum. Reworked the piecewise medium to compute transmittance and PDF correctly in spectral mode, with new spectral unit tests. (PR #31)

Bug fixes

  • tabphase_polarized: Fixed out-of-sync node handling that could produce incorrect results for polarized tabulated phase functions. (PR #26)

  • piecewise_volpath: Fixed the integrator to work with non-spectral media. (PR #31)