Rendering
Turtle
Turtle Gallery http://www.illuminatelabs.com/gallery
Turtle Tutorials http://www.illuminatelabs.com/support/tutorial-folder
Complementary Turtle product information http://www.illuminatelabs.com/products/turtle
Official website http://www.illuminatelabs.com/
Whats new ??
Turtle now supports Maya 2010
User Interface
Render Settings Window
The Render Settings Window has been redesigned with a new separation of settings into different classes. The classes are:
- Sampling - Options for Anti-Aliasing, Ray Tracing and Motion Blur
- Global Illumination – All options associated with Global Illumination and Caustics
- Environment – All options associated with Environment and Image Based Lighting
- Options – Various options for Rendering Performance and Overrides
- Baking – The bake layer control with all options associated with baking
This makes it easier to find the option you want to change.
New Turtle Attribute Workflow
The handling of Turtle specific attributes has been redesigned completely. You will now add Turtle specific options to your Maya nodes only when you need them. This prevents Turtle from polluting your scene with Turtle specific attributes everywhere. It also reduces the scene file size and memory usage a lot.
There is support for adding, removing or changing the Turtle options on multiple nodes at once.
Render Type Selection
The Render Type selection box has been moved to the top of the render settings window for easier access. You now only choose between Rendering and Baking. The type of baking to do is now specified in each bake layer, see Baking below.
Unified Anti-Aliasing Controls
The anti-aliasing user interface has been unified for Super Sampling and the new Adaptive Sampling. The sampling density is set with a Min/Max Sample Rate control, where the exact number of samples to take is displayed below the control.
Rendering
New Adaptive Sampling
A new anti-aliasing scheme, Adaptive Sampling, has been implemented which supports adaptive oversampling as well as undersampling. The sampling scheme can go from every 256th pixel up to 256 samples per pixel. So this scheme can be used to render superfast previews as well as very high quality images.
3D Motion Blur and Depth of Field
The sampling scheme for 3D Motion Blur and 3D Depth of Field has been improved. You now get better quality with the same number of rays.
Ray Traced Soft Shadows
A new sampling scheme for ray traced soft shadows has been added. It gives better quality with the same number of rays and works adaptively for increased performance.
Geometry Instances
Geometry instances are now fully supported.
Improved Real-time Viewport Visualization
The hardware shader ilrHwBakeVisualizer now supports multiple UV-sets. It also supports floating point textures. A single hardware shader can now be shared between multiple geometry instances.
Global Illumination
New Final Gather Algorithm
The algorithm for Final Gather has been redesigned. The new method uses a progressive scheme where new samples are added based on contrast difference to neighboring samples. The new method is much better at handling sharp edges in the illumination and it is better at eliminating artifacts due to geometric discontinuities where the old method often failed. The old FG method can still be used if needed by enabling the Legacy checkbox.
Final Gather Attenuation
A new feature for attenuating FG rays has been added. Two type of attenuation is supported; Falloff Attenuation, where the light is decreased with distance, and Occlusion Attenuation, where the light is decreased for shorter rays, which enhances the occlusion and shadowing effect of final gather. Occlusion Attenuation is very useful for giving more contrast and depth to the lighting, especially if multi-bounce Global Illumination is used, where the result can look flat and washed out in areas of strong illumination.
Radiance Cache unified with Final Gather
The Radiance Cache light integrator has been integrated into Final Gather. In the Final Gather settings you can now choose what cache type to use. If you select RadianceSH a Radiance Cache will be used.
New Final Gather Mode
Final Gather has a new mode for brute force sampling. This is enabled by choosing None when selecting Cache Type. In this mode a new hemisphere sampling is performed for every shading point, which gives a very exact result. The render time is often long so it’s mostly suitable for rendering reference images.
New Monte Carlo Global Illumination
There is a new light integrator called Monte Carlo. It’s very similar to the brute force FG method but handles secondary bounces more efficiently, so a high number of bounces can be used without exponentially increasing the render time. This integrator can also be used as Secondary GI.
Cache Direct Light
Final Gather, Path Tracer and Photon Mapping have a new checkbox for Cache Direct Light. When enabled they will cache both indirect light and direct light from the light sources. This increases performance since fewer direct shading calculations are needed. This is an approximation so it can affect the quality of the result. For instance indirect lighting from specular highlights might be lost. Previously a similar method was used when selecting Approximate GI shading method. But now this can be controlled per integrator instead. Note that caching direct light is only valid when using Path Tracer and Photon Map as secondary integrators or when multi-bounce Final Gather is used.
New Method for Light Leak Problems
To eliminate light leak problems new functionality for checking visibility between cached sample points has been added. This makes sure that samples from different sides of geometry are not used together, causing light leakage. This is added to both Final Gather and Path Tracer. By enabling Check Sample Visibility all light leakage is removed. It comes with a small performance hit so make sure you use this only when you need to.
Improved Color Balance
The color balance system for Global Illumination has been unified and now supports color balance to every output, including Spherical Harmonics and RNM. Color balance now affects Global Illumination caches, previously it was just a post process. The Intensity and Saturation controls have been modified so that primary now affects the first bounce and secondary all other bounces, independent of what Global Illumination methods are selected. So for example if you use multi-bounce Final Gather you can now adjust the contribution from the first and the secondary bounces separately.
The override controls for Intensity and Saturation has been moved from the shapes in Maya and is now located on each shader instead. The shader local values are multiplied by the global values.
New color balance controls have been added. You can now modify the diffuse, specular and emissive contributions independently for Global Illumination. These controls are available both globally and locally on each material shader.
New Prepasses
The precalculation pass for Final Gather and Occlusion is now progressive and runs in a number of passes, each pass with a higher detail level. Under Anti-Aliasing -> Prepass you can set the min and max sample rate which controls the number of passes that will be rendered. Another difference is that the visualization of the prepass now shows the indirect lighting, instead of the full shaded result. This increases performance and gives a better visualization of the indirect lighting.
The Path Tracer prepass has also been modified to show the indirect lighting. It now shows a direct visualization of the path tracer cache, instead of the noisy path tracer solution.
GI Transparency Depth
A new control, GI Transparency Depth, has been added for limiting the number of transmissions a Global Illumination ray can do. This will affect rays spawned by Final Gather, Monte Carlo and Occlusion sampling.
Performance Improvements
Major performance improvement has been done with multi-bounce Final Gather. Previously there was a massive performance hit when using FG Depth higher than 1. But that has now been optimized.
Overall performance of global illumination has been improved and it now scales better on multi-core systems.
Baking
Workflow
The workflow for Surface Transfer and Texture/Vertex Baking has been united into a single Baking workflow. When adding objects to a bake layer you now specify if the object has any source surfaces (for Surface Transfer). An object without source surfaces will be baked with ordinary baking. So you can now mix Surface Transfer with ordinary Texture Baking as you like, in the same bake layer. The same thing goes for Vertex Baking, which also means that you can now do Surface Transfer on vertex level. This is useful e.g. for baking vertex colors for different LOD levels of a mesh. For each bake layer you specify if it should use vertex or texture baking.
Vertex Baking to File
Vertex Bakings can now save the result to point cloud files. This makes it possible to distribute vertex bakings. The resulting point clouds with vertex colors can then be imported back into Maya using a new MEL command ilrImportVertexColorsCmd.
New Vertex Bake Sampling
We have a new sampling system for Vertex Baking, where each vertex color is the result of multiple samples taken over its triangles. This gives much better quality and a softer result.
Conservative Rasterization
New Conservative Rasterization has been added to texture baking, for better handling of very small or thin triangles.
Transparency with LUA
Rays spawned by LUA baking scripts now handles transparency correctly. So you can now bake SH or other advanced baking passes in LUA and get correct illumination from transparent objects. This also works for LUA occlusion baking. In the case of occlusion the option gather.obeytransparency can be set to turn this feature on/off.
Performance Improvements
Vertex color filtering has been muti-threaded and can now utilize multiple CPUs.
Writing of baked vertex colors back into Maya meshes has been optimized and is much faster.
Brazil
BrazilBrazil r/s is developed for those who demand the highest quality from a renderer. Designed for use in Film, Broadcast, and Visualization, Brazil r/s' versatile toolkit integrates easily into existing production environments and empowers the artists to predictably and reliably create any look. Brazil r/s' advanced shading pipeline, extensible architecture, and natural workflow offers unprecedented control and flexibility, giving artists the freedom to focus on the Work, rather than wrestling with the "technology." SplutterFish offers two packages: an Artist Bundle and RenderFarm Bundle. Our license bundles offer individual artists the advantage of rendering over a small network with the same pricing scalability that's usually reserved for larger facilities that use "site licenses." Production facilities will find their renderfarms will be covered by the purchase of their Artist Bundles, effectively providing free network rendering. Renderfarm facilities can tool up with Renderfarm Bundles at fraction of the cost of other high-end renderers.
VRay
The newest build, V-Ray® 1.50 Service Pack 4a for 3ds Max®, is available from the download section of the Chaos Group site. The upgrade is free of charge for all current V-Ray for 3ds Max customers of Chaos Group.
Chaos Group also announce the availability of the new V-Ray for Maya 1.50 SP1: the first Service Pack after release with significant improvements and modifications, including support for V-Ray Fur and Maya Hair, also the V-Ray Light Dome texture and environment textures are now visible in Maya's viewport.
V-Ray for Maya now supports reflection occlusion in V-Ray Dirt texture. V-Ray for Maya 1.50 SP1 is compatible with Autodesk Maya 2011 and all current V-Ray for Maya users may upgrade to new Service Pack for FREE.
V-Ray has become the renderer of choice in big production studios across the world. Feature film productions, multi-million dollar game productions, large and small architectural visualizations have trusted their visuals to V-Ray.
Now, V-Ray for Maya enables the rendering of even larger scenes with greater complexity and artists can rely on a faster rendering process. The comprehensive list of features provided by V-Ray for Maya includes true 3D Motion Blur, Sun & Sky procedural lighting system, Physical camera for matching life footage, Environment Fog, a set of Sub-Surface Scattering shaders and many others. With official release of V-Ray for Maya in August 2009 V-Ray rendering solutions confirmed their image of indispensable tool that is always there help artists transform even the most ambitious creative visions into reality for both less time and lower cost without sacrificing quality.
Chaos Group would like to announce the availability of the new V-Ray for Maya 1.50 SP1: the first Service Pack after release to surprise with numerous new features, significant improvements and modifications.
Some of the new things in V-Ray for Maya: support for V-Ray Fur and Maya Hair, also the V-Ray Light Dome texture and environment textures are now visible in Maya's viewport.
V-Ray for Maya now supports reflection occlusion in V-Ray Dirt texture.
V-Ray for Maya 1.50 SP1 is compatible with Autodesk Maya 2011 and all current V-Ray for Maya users may upgrade to new Service Pack for FREE.
New features
• Support for V-Ray Fur
• Support for Maya Hair
• Reflection occlusion in V-Ray Dirt texture
• V-Ray Light Dome texture and environment textures to be visible in Maya's viewport
• Add a V-Ray Bump Mtl that allows to add bump to any other material
Core Architecture
Multi-platform object-oriented API Fully multithreaded core
Unified sampling system based on Schlick sampling Distributed rendering
Efficient shading system specifically optimized for raytracing Modular architecture - many components of the system can be replaced with custom ones
Geometry
Efficient geometry handling True instance rendering On-demand dynamic geometry creation (.vrmesh files, converter for .OBJ, .PLY, .GEO files included) On-demand geometry loading from disk files Displacement mapping Catmull-Clark and Loop subdivision surfaces Extensible with custom geometric primitives through the V-Ray SDK Particle rendering & particle instancer
Image Sampling
Three different image sampling methods
Full-scene anti-aliasing, Progressive path tracing Support for additional render elements (diffuse, reflection, GI, etc) Advanced color (tone) mapping controls Extensible with custom image samplers through the V-Ray SDK
Illumination
Physically accurate full global illumination solutions Different GI algorithms: path tracing, irradiance cache, photon maps, light cache
Reusable GI solutions for accelerated rendering of walk-through animations and animations with dynamic objects
Physically accurate area lights Efficient illumination from HDR environments
Procedural sun & sky models Extensible with custom lights through the V-Ray SDK
Shaders
Physically plausible materials Blurry reflections/refractions Accurate hilights Set of fast Sub-surface scattering shaders Support for efficient material layering Extensible with custom shaders through the V-Ray SDK
Camera Effects
Depth-of-field with bokeh effects ,Accurate motion blur ,Physical camera model Extensible with custom cameras through the V-Ray SDK
Extras
Extended matte/shadow capabilities Texture baking of any render element (GI, lighting, etc)
Frame buffer
V-Ray specific frame buffer with integrated color corrections and display of multiple rendering elements .Direct rendering to disk for extremely large images, either as OpenEXR files or as .vrimg files
Integration with Maya
All features accessible from within Maya (no external applications required) Standalone version included (10 licenses) Support for many of the standard Maya shaders, lights, materials, procedural and utility textures
learn2 currently an Autodesk ATC ,is also offering V-Ray training!!
V-Ray is one of the highest quality and fastest renderers available to the 3d market. It supports advanced features such as global illumination, caustics, depth of field, 3d motion blur, and much more.
VRay Features for 3ds Max
VRay offers its users a set of features that you would expect from a quality renderer. With its fast fully-multithreaded raytracing engine it takes the advantage of all the CPUs supported by your system throughout its pipeline - preparation and rendering. Capable of making accurate reflections and refractions clean or glossy and blurred it helps achieve astonishing realism in the computer generated realm. Simulation of focusing (Depth-of-Field) helps in simulating real-life cameras. Different methods of illumination simulation, caustics calculations help with per-object based property adjustments help artists achieve great rendering performance or fineart photorealistic images. Adaptive antialiasing based on color difference as well as G-Buffer channels is one of its advanced features. It includes sophisticated multipass methods as well as simple approaches.
VRay supports translucency which gives you the power to create true photorealistic materials like wax, smoked glass, jelly etc.
Networking
Very few can offer network distributed rendering. VRay does. It gives incredible power to the studios with many computer boxes to use all the CPU power connected to the network for rendering within a single frame. No limitations on the size amount type of your computers as long as 3D Studio Max can run on them. Various license bundles are offered for various number of render servers.
And all of these features packed into our fast raytracer engine that supports all the standard 3D Studio MAX materials, environments, atmospheres, effects etc.
"VRay not only gives us true physically accurate 3D motion blur but also provides the use of fast global illumination (GI) which is essential for producing high quality visual effects," explains Ben Girard, president of Digital Dimension. As a result, Digital Dimension plans on using VRay for their visual effects shots on the upcoming film Final Destination II. Girard continues, "The speed of VRay, its production-focused features, and the excellent support we received from the Chaos Group, will help our studio remain ahead of the cutting edge."
The Basic Package Supports the following features:
- True raytraced reflections and refractions
- Glossy reflections and refractions
- Translucency (with volume fog) for creating wax, marble, smoked glass
- Area shadows (soft shadows). Includes box and sphere emitters.
- Indirect Illumination (global illumination, global lighting). Different approaches include direct computation (brute force), and irradiance maps.
- Motion Blur. Includes stochastic sampling approach
- Depth-Of-Field camera effect.
- Anti-aliasing. Includes fixed, simple 2 level and adaptive approaches.
- Caustics (Radiosity)
- G-Buffer (RGBA, material/object ID, Z-buffer)
- G-buffer based antialiasing.
- Reusable irradiance maps (save and load support). Incremental sampling for fly-through animations.
- Motion blur with analytic sampling
- True HDRI support. Includes *.hdr, *.rad image loader with proper texture coordinates handling for both cubic and angular maps support. Map your images directly without distortions or cropping.
- Built-in area lights for physically correct illumination
- Built-in material for faster materials calculations
- Distributed rendering for utilizing all of your studios computers.
- Different camera types: fish-eye, spherical, cylindrical and cubic cameras
- Network license management for using our VRay system throughout your network with less licenses.
IMPORTANT! Distributed rendering is per BOX! This means we do not impose a limit on how many CPUs your computers have! Each Advanced Package supports up to 10(ten) computers. You can use more computers with the purchase of additional network licenses. The standard network rendering is UNLIMITED!
Please feel free to contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it if you need more info or would like to place an order.
Features:-
Architecture:
Object-oriented API
Fully multithreaded
Unified quasi-Monte Carlo sampling system
Distributed rendering
Efficient shading system specifically optimized for ray-tracing .
Geometry:
Efficient geometry handling
On-demand geometry creation
On-demand geometry loading from disk files
Displacement mapping
Catmull-Clark and Loop subdivision surfaces
Extensible with custom geometric primitives through the V-Ray SDK
Image sampling:
Different sampling methods.
Full-scene antialiasing.
Progressive path tracing.
Support for additional render elements (diffuse, reflection, GI etc). IV. Illumination
Physically accurate full global illumination solutions
Different GI algorithms: path tracing, irradiance cache, photon maps, light cache.
Reusable GI solutins for accelerated rendering of walk-through animations.
Physically accurate area lights.
Extensible with custom lights through the V-Ray SDK.
Shaders:
Advanced material
Blurry reflections/refractions
Accurate hilights
Sub-surface scattering
Extensible with custom shaders through the V-Ray SDK VI. Camera effects
Depth-of-field with bokeh effects
Accurate motion blur
Extensible with custom cameras through the V-Ray SDK
Extras:
Toon effect
Fur generator
Extended matte/shadow capabilities
Support for Render-to-Texture mode of 3dsmax VIII. Frame buffer
V-Ray specific frame buffer with integrated color corrections and display of multiple rendering elements.
Direct rendering to disk for extremely large images. Rendered images can be converted to OpenEXR files or imported back into 3dsmax.
V-Ray RT
V-Ray RT is a production-ready interactive raytracing technology. Created with the busy and rigorous 3D artist in mind, this topnotch raytracing technology allows immediate interaction between the user and the virtual environment.
V-Ray RT follows the user's actions while working on the scene and automatically and progressively generates a photorealistic preview of the scene. V-Ray RT fully supports: Interactivity, Animation, Illumination, Global illumination, Shading effects, Texturing, Camera effects, Color mapping, and Distributed rendering.
Please note that V-Ray RT is an "add-on" to the V-Ray Advanced package and NOT a stand-alone product. In order to take advantage of the rendering capabilities of V-Ray RT, the user must have a working installation of V-Ray 1.50.SP3 or later. The customer's existing V-Ray dongle can be reprogrammed to contain the extra
V-Ray RT license or they may purchase V-Ray and V-Ray RT and a license for both will be shipped on a single dongle for that order.
If you have any questions about the V-Ray RT or V-Ray Advanced package, please call Leigh on 082 926 0412 or 021 421 5501.
View the V-Ray Video
Pdplayer is an advanced image sequence player supporting multi-layered sequence playback for the 3D, CG and VFX industry. Its incredible speed and ease of use make it an exceptional tool for review and quality control. Additionally, Pdplayer is capable of displaying .VRIMG files with embedded render elements.
This way you can preview and composite your V-Ray renderers much faster and easier than before.
Save your money, save your time, increase your pipeline..
Mental Ray
The industry’s top rendering solution available as a standalone product for Autodesk 3D products.
mental ray® Standalone software is a high-performance rendering engine for generating photorealistic images. Although mental ray rendering technology is featured in Autodesk® applications such as Autodesk® Maya®, Autodesk® 3ds Max®, Autodesk® VIZ, and Autodesk® ImageStudio software, the standalone version is best suited when you have large volumes of data to process. It works independently of your 3D software of choice through a command-line interface. It can also act as the foundation of your distributed rendering solution when used with your Autodesk software. The choice is yours.
RenderMan
Pixar Animation Studios announced two major releases of its Academy Award-winning RenderMan software, RenderMan Studio 1.0 and RenderMan for Maya 2.0, together with a new licensing policy delivering major performance increases on multi-core computers.
