Hello, founder of appleseed here!<p>Being the top story on Hacker News tonight was completely unexpected, but it's a good surprise and definitely appreciated publicity!<p>appleseed has been in active development since june of 2009. It predates a number of other open source renderers by quite a few years, including Cycles (another fantastic project!).<p>I'm a production rendering engineer (e-on software, mental images, NVIDIA, Jupiter Jazz...). I've started this project out of personal interest for rendering, and as a platform for learning (there's always tons of new stuff to learn), research and experiments. All other team members are professionals currently working in the industry.<p>appleseed is one of the few open source renderers designed for production rendering and targeted at animation and VFX. In addition to fully programmable shading via OpenShadingLanguage, strong support for motion blur and many other specific features, it supports accurate spectral rendering, which is quite a unique combination.<p>We still have a ton of work ahead to make it a truly competitive renderer but we're making regular progress: we're improving the core renderer every day, and lately we've been putting massive efforts in improving our integration with DCC apps and in achieving a comfortable workflow for artists. Loads left to do !<p>Let me finally add that I'm blessed to work with such a great team. Top quality work, persistently. We're a small but welcoming community, and contributions are most welcome!<p>Feel free to ask me anything!