From BlenderWiki

Feature ToDo

Long term ideas for features to add.

Smaller Features

• Temperature to RGB color node
• Ambient occlusion color node
  • For specifying custom AO normal and using it as shader color
• Point/vector space transformation node (world <=> object <=> camera)
  • These matrices are available, just need node implementation
• Diffuse and Phong ramp BSDF
• Gabor noise node
  • Can generate many interesting patterns, might need good UI for parameters
• Better anisotropic BSDF (ashikhmin, D-BRDF?)
• Light Groups
• Per-object ray offset bias, to deal with terminator problem
• Split/Combine XYZ node
  • Currently is done with RGB, seems a bit hacky
• Add native shader combining glossy, diffuse, transparent
  • The one described in this presentation looks good
• Per object multiplier for motion blur shutter time
• OpenColorIO integration
• Option to clamp BSDF reflectivity by e.g. 0.8 (for faster convergence/correctness)
  • Transparency and refraction might need exceptions?
• Use render visibility when selecting render layer preview in viewport
  • Needs depsgraph fixes
• Add Ray Depth to control the number of bounces from a shader
• Add Ray Roughness to manually control roughness filtering tricks
• Fresnel node should get a Normal input.
• Add back worley weights to voronoi node.
• Access to object color and other object properties from nodes (support RNA paths?).
• Option to include environment lighting in shadow pass.

UI

• Node link menu in properties editor has become too big, needs to get submenus
• Properties editor UI should be improved, perhaps:
  • Add outliner like alternating lines
  • Some better indication of hierarchy that doesn't take up much horizontal space
• Better auto position when adding nodes (with multiple inputs nodes overlap)
• Auto sync BSDF color and viewport color
  • Needs some algorithm to deal with mix shader hierarchies, to find the good diffuse node
• Decouple lamp size for hemi/sun lamp and point/spot/area, the units for the former are wrong
• Show watts, watts/m^2 units in the UI
• Hide color component for node sockets in the UI

Performance

• Indirect light influence control
• Image cache for CPU (OpenImageIO)
• SIMD for BVH/triangle intersection
• Performance test script
• Multiresolution shading cache
• Per lamp option for number of samples (progressive integrator)
• Light portals
• Adaptive sampling

Big Features

• Displacement (incomplete)
  • Fix mixed displace/bump
  • Fix displace viewport update
  • Object space displacement
  • Global strength value
  • Vector displacement
• Hair
  • Hair BSDF
  • Efficient lighting (dual scattering?)
• Lazy Loading / Cache
  • Images
  • Geometry
• Deformation Motion Blur
  • BVH build and trace support
  • Fluid simulation motion vectors
• Volume Rendering (some interesting tests)
  • Integrator
  • Point density texture
  • Voxel data texture
• Distributed rendering

Workflow

• Pause rendering when 3d view gets hidden
• Progressive Animation Rendering (details)
• Render pause button
• Node editor support for new active texture workflow
• Command line option to switch on/off GPU rendering
• Keep scene in memory and sync between F12 render (avoid image/mesh/.. reloading)

On Hold

• OpenCL support for AMD/NVidia GPU rendering is currently on hold. Only a small subset of the entire rendering kernel can currently be compiled, which leaves this mostly at prototype. We will need major driver or hardware improvements to get full cycles support on AMD hardware.