Reprogramming your New or Existing V-Ray Dongle

The V-Ray licensing system is not an automated setup.

There are some steps required to obtain your license,  before V-Ray can render out those beautiful images.

You should have already received your Chaos Group account login information and hardware lock (Dongle) from your Motion Media account representative.
Download your V-Ray version for either 3ds Max, or  Maya.
Install the software and also the WibuKey drivers.
Right then lets head over to the V-Ray licensing video for the complete steps.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiMDvsKutP0

Once complete you will receive a file with the extension *.RTU within 24 hours.
Unzip the *.RTU file to your desktop.

Close the V-Ray licensing service,  if it is running. You can do this either by right-clicking
the V-Ray license service icon in the Task Bar and selecting Exit,  or if it is running as a
service - from the Control panel > Administrative tools > Services applet.
Double click the *.RTU file to reprogram the V-Ray dongle, and restart the V-Ray service.

Ready set Render!

Luxology Modo Summer training special

Until August 30th Luxology are offering all of the Modo downloadable training videos at 50% off.

modo Training Videos

 

Learn modo with innovative projects

 

Learning modo with the included on-line documentation is really just a starting point. Luxology has brought together a diverse collection of learning materials in video form that modo users can work with individually or in a classroom setting. These videos are step-by-step screen capture movies of carefully designed projects to help you learn to use modo for a specific industry or for specific result. Relevant content is included. It’s like having a modo instructor helping you achieve the results you want. Save 50% on selected Training Videos between now and August 30th.

 

Get started with modo 501 and the training videos at the Motion Media online Shop.

Realistic Facial Animation & Motion Tracking

Check out this video of a facial animation from a company called Janimation. Pretty cool stuff.

NVIDIA Customer Spotlights

If you weren’t able to make it to NAB last month, you wouldn't have made it to the NVIDIA booth.

Please check out these handy video vignettes that summarize some of the on-air graphics, film/video editing, color correction, and 3D video processing solutions they are providing.

There were several solutions for the broadcasting, video/film production, and digital content creation communities, all utilizing NVIDIA Quadro GPU technology. - CGSociety CGNews

Read the complete story and see the client videos at CGSociety CGNews

Quadro Graphics cards available at the Motion Media online Shop.

recoil Rigid-body Dynamics Plug-in for modo 501

The new recoil Plug-in from Eric Soulvie lets you perform rigid-body dynamics simulations right inside of modo. Now objects can collide, fall, slip and slide automatically within your modo scenes.

Full details and video demonstrations of Recoil here.

Get modo 501 at the Motion Media online Shop.

Meet Eric Soulvie

Creator of the recoil Rigid-body Dynamics Plug-in for modo 501

Eric Soulvie is an experienced 3D tools programmer based in Seattle, Washington. Eric has worked for Foundation Imaging (Roughnecks), ESC (The Matrix 2, 3), Blizzard Entertainment, Weta Digital (Avatar, Jumper, et. al. ) and many other production houses. Eric was also one of the original programmers on modo and used the modo Plug-in SDK to create the recoil Plug-in.



 

 

Autodesk Maya 2012 Hot Fix 1

 

 



 

Maya 2012 Hotfix 1 includes enhancements to Python scripting with the new Maya Python API 2.0. This new API performs better and faster, offering programmers a more idiomatic experience of Python. The new Python API is similar in structure to the original Python API, making transition easy. To offer the most flexibility, programmers can use both Python APIs in code, respectively, to extend and customize Maya.

For supporting documentation, see www.autodesk.com/developmaya.

In addition, Maya 2012 Hotfix 1 also includes an updated DMM™ (Digital Molecular Matter) plug-in for Maya from Pixelux Entertainment™ that lets you solve up to 2500 tetrahedrals. On Mac OSX and Linux systems, DMM now supports performance improving multithreading. The update also includes the following fixes:

• DMM no longer stops unexpectedly on Linux systems.


• The DMM shelf item no longer disappears after a Maya session is restored.


• Issues with Passive Regions has been fixed on all platforms.

Get the Hot fix 1 for Maya 2012!

Purchase Maya 2012 at the Motion Media online shop.

Sitni Sati Updates plug-ins for 3ds max 2012

Sitni Sati updates FumeFX 2.1c and AfterBurn 4.0d for use with 3ds Max 2012.

Current customers can download the updates from their Members login below.

http://www.afterworks.com/MEMBERS

Get your FumeFX and AfterBurn plugins at the Motion Media online shop.

 

Chaos Group Phoenix FD in Action! New Videos by Michael McCarthy

A series of short videos show simulation of water, smoke and more using the Phoenix FD plug-in.

Phoenix Fluid Dynamics combines a grid based simulator with outstanding rendering capabilities that accurately reproduce fluid behavior. It’s the solution to rendering waves breaking along a shore, a lit candle, or an explosive cloud of smoke – just to name a few. The plug-in’s many features, which can imitate processes like pressure decay, thermal radiation cooling and mass-temperature dependence, have been captured in a series of videos created by VFX Technical Director and Autodesk Certified Instructor Michael McCarthy.

 

McCarthy, whose background includes work in the broadcast, feature film and gaming industry, introduces Phoenix FD with a set of tutorials that walk you through the basics of flames, fluid maps and liquids. He then demonstrates examples of possible simulations in sixteen short video clips. Such simulations include the liquid simulation of a fountain, liquid fuel to flames, and particle flow from an explosion.

To watch all McCarthy’s videos and receive updates on Phoenix FD, please register here

Get Phoenix FD for 3ds Max at the Motion Media online shop!

Autodesk 2012 Product Launch

 



 

 

 

 

On April 20, 2011, Autodesk will host a live virtual event, showcasing the entire line of 2012 Autodesk products.

Accelerate your film, television, or game projects. Find new ways of exploring, refining, and presenting your ideas. Discover a range of world-class new creative tools.

It all starts when you Register for the Autodesk Virtual Event.

Date: April 20, 2011

Time: 8:00 am – 2:00 pm PT

See how the new Autodesk Digital Entertainment Creation (DEC) solutions – including the comprehensive Entertainment Creation Suites – can help you create and deliver your most innovative work. You’ll have the chance to hear how leading Autodesk customers such as LOOK Effects, Eidos-Montréal, and SWAY Studio use Autodesk Digital Entertainment Solutions to take their work to the next level.

At the Autodesk Virtual Event, you attend sessions right from your desktop. These presentations will help you:

• Position yourself for your next big opportunity


• Explore the tools used by leading artists and animators


• Take advantage of hardware advances to finish projects faster

Don’t miss this chance to learn how Autodesk Digital Entertainment Creation solutions can help you bring your best ideas to life.

Get the NEW Autodesk Media & Entertainment 2012 products at the Motion Media Online shop.

Chaos Group Customer Success Story :: Method - Halo: Reach "Deliver Hope"

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Chaos Group gives us another customer spotlight. This time its Method Studios and their work on Halo:Reach"Deliver Hope" .

click the link above to read the full interview.

"Here at Method we have been using V-Ray for Maya since the beginning of its development. It has had huge success in house for feature and commercial work large and small. Having multiple renderer support inhouse it's a head to head vs match to final only the best images."

Scott Metzger, VFX Artist at Method Studios

Based in Los Angeles, with locations in New York and London, Method Studios is a leading post production facility providing a full range of visual effects services including conceptual design, look development, on-set supervision, 3D animation/CGI, matte painting, compositing and finishing.

Get V-Ray for 3ds Max or Maya at the Motion Media online shop!

Chaos Group Customer Success Story :: Blur Studio

Chaos Group gave us a spotlight on BLUR STUDIO and their use of V-Ray.

If you missed it click the link above.

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With the coming of the E3 Expo in June, we  went back in awe of the visually stunning work from BLUR and interview with Kevin Margo CG Supervisor at Blur Studio.

"V-Ray is a supremely brilliant rendering engine with mind bending approaches to visualizing 3 dimensional form that encourages philosophic ontological discussions about the nature and observation of reality itself."

We at Motion Media can't wait to see what  BLUR is working on for this year's E3 Expo!

BLUR STUDIO has been creating award-winning visual effects, animation and design, applying its creative skills across various mediums. We produce 3D character animation, motion design and visual effects for feature films and television, game cinematics & trailers, large format films, location-based entertainment, commercials and integrated media. Located in Venice, California, we combine the passion and excitement from our directors, animators, designers, concept artists, and writers with our clients into a collaborative creative approach that results in compelling visuals and storytelling.

Order your V-Ray for 3ds Max or Maya at our online shop!

Package Design and Construction Kit for modo 501

 

 

Luxology releases a  new PACK Kit for modo, you can quickly create bags, wrappers, boxes, bottles, cans, cartons, tubes, tubs, and non-destructively develop new packaging concepts.



 

Popcorn family image by Gene Dupont.

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the core of PACK is a collection of more than 200 presets, images and assemblies, which together form a large library of packages and components such as container seals that can be modified and brought together to both visualize existing packaging and to create totally new package designs.



 

Customize your packaging with pre-built container seals like these.

 

The new PACK Kit is one more great reason to use modo! Get modo 501 at our online Shop.



 

 

More detailed information and videos of the pack in action here.

 

 

 

V-Ray 2.0 for Maya Features!

The long anticipated V-Ray 2.0 for Maya is on its way to be officially released on 25th of April.

V-Ray for Maya ADV 1.5 is still in Beta. V-Ray 2.0 for Maya will be available after 25th of April.

Starting March 25th 2011 customers can purchase V-Ray Maya 2.0 pre-release and get started right away with V-Ray Maya 1.5. Customers who purchased the pre-release or upgrade will receive V-Ray for Maya 2.0 on its release April 25th.

 

Order your V-Ray Maya 2.0 pre-release, or Upgrade at our online shop!

 

Below is the list of new features of V-Ray 2.0 for Maya.

• Python callback for access to and modification of the translated V-Ray scene before rendering – this powerful feature allows you to directly modify the V-Ray scene before rendering to fit V-Ray seamlessly into your production pipeline; to access the full features of the V-Ray rendering engine and its plugins, even if they are not exposed in the user interface; to add your own custom V-Ray plugins without the need to code Maya plugins and much more.


• Support for the Substance textures in Maya 2011.5 and Maya 2012 - use the new V-Ray 2.0 with the Substance textures in Maya 2011.5 and Maya 2012 to create a wide range of procedural shaders for your projects.


• V-Ray RT and V-Ray RT GPU - the new interactive technology running both on CPUs and GPUs speeds up the shading and lighting stages of your production. With the new V-Ray 2.0 you can take full advantage of our state of the art interactive renderer. It can also be used for fast off-line rendering with support for motion blur on both CPU and GPU, and displacement, subdivision surfaces, hair and fur on the CPU.


• Faster rendering of dynamic geometry (displacement, fur, proxies, hair etc) - new internal optimizations have led to even faster rendering of dynamic geometry like displacement, proxies, fur and hair etc.


• Faster rendering of render-time subdivision surfaces, VRayFur and Maya hair - the new improved core of V-Ray 2.0 can render VRayFur, Maya hair and render-time subdivision surfaces much faster.


• VRayCarPaint material - create realistic car paint shaders complete with "Base",  "Flakes" and "Coat" layers. Full mapping support allows for amazing flexibility and a wide range of effects.


• VRayToon shader - add amazing cartoon-like feeling to your renderings.


• Support for dispersion in refractions for VRayMtl  - this option uses the new capabilities for wavelength-dependent raytracing of the V-Ray core and allows you to create stunning close ups of refractive objects with caustics that dazzle the eye.


• Automatic support for both Mari- and Mudbox-style tiled textures - V-Ray 2.0 can automatically load the correct texture bitmaps depending on the UV tiles of the rendered object.


• PTex textures - with V-Ray 2.0 you can stop worrying about UV coordinates and use PTex textures instead. This state of the art technology allows the artist to be absolutely free in his or her creative process and skip the boring UV unwrapping.


• Lens distortion through Nuke displacement maps - the VRayPhysicalCamera can use displacement maps from Nuke to completely mach the distortion of your real cameras.


• Option to turn off camera motion blur - V-Ray 2.0 gives you a separate control to enable or disable the motion blur coming from the movement of the camera.


• Support for rendering of Maya fluids - the new V-Ray 2.0 recognizes and renders Maya fluids directly, with full support for GI and light scattering inside the volume.


• Support for the Maya stereo camera in batch render mode - render your stereoscopic animations with V-Ray 2.0 and Maya batch render mode.


• The ply2vrmesh tool can convert RealFlow .bin files to .vrmesh files - with the new version of the ply2mesh tool V-Ray 2.0 users can render very large RealFlow simulations as VRayProxy objects with significantly improved memory efficiency


• Extended irradiance map viewer tool – allows the incremental merge of irradiance map files to avoid redundant information; preview of light cache files; manual deletion of unwanted samples, and usage of OpenGL display lists for more interactivity.


• Img2tiledexr tool - for mass conversion of many common image formats to tiled OpenEXR files


• Output of multi-channel scanline OpenEXR files with data-window - removes the need to manually convert the multichannel OpenEXR files produced by V-Ray to scanline-based OpenEXR files for efficient processing by compositing applications.


• Shutter efficiency for motion blur – render more realistic motion blur with manual control over the camera shutter efficiency.


• and many other fixes and improvements...

Order your V-Ray Maya 2.0 pre-release, or Upgrade at our online shop!

 

 

Autodesk Special Media Event Webcast March 21 -TODAY!

 

 

Learn about Autodesk’s new products for the design, engineering, and entertainment industries by joining Senior Vice President Amar Hanspal for Autodesk’s 2012 Product Launch webcast.

Date and time: Monday, March 21, 2:00 PM PDT / 5:00 PM EDT

Action: Register in advance at www.autodesk.com/webcast.

Looking for a seat of Autodesk Media & Entertainment products? You can  Click Here to Purchase.

 

cebas Visual Technology and Cyber Radiance Enter Hair Farm cooperation

cebas Visual Technology Inc. announces an initiative for close cooperation with Cyber Radiance to enhance the speed and effectiveness of their core software products, finalRender and Hair Farm. The latter is now available from the cebas website.

The two independent software developers intend to optimize their respective offerings through their new partnership. This will ensure that these industry leading tools will work hand-in-hand to get the best possible performance for their customers.



Rendering made with finalRender and Hair Farm
cebas CEO Edwin Braun stated: “It’ll be great to optimize both systems for our current and future user base. Hair Farm is an amazing product and we are happy and proud to promote it in the future.”

“finalRender is an extremely powerful rendering system for using Hair Farm and I’m excited to integrate our products more closely," said Dr. Cem Yuksel, creator of Hair Farm. "It will yield optimal performance and enhanced workflow for all 3ds Max users. Most importantly, it will help us extend the capabilities of our solutions and go beyond the limitations of today's technology.”

This agreement marks the second such software development deal, after cebas announced the cooperation with Sitni Sati and their leading CG fluid dynamics simulation system, FumeFX, last year.

The announcement clearly shows the commitment by cebas to offer the most efficient and best rendering solutions to its customer base. By covering and enhancing complex rendering effects, such as fire, smoke and now hair, finalRender strengthens its position as the number one choice for serious motion picture and game production professionals.

While Hair Farm users agree that it is undoubtedly the best hair rendering software for CG professionals, the announcement affirms that Cyber Radiance is determined to go beyond this achievement and continue improving its ultimate hair solution with new ground-breaking technologies.

*  *  *

About Hair Farm

Hair Farmwas designed and developed by Dr. Cem Yuksel. When he first started developing Hair Farm, the available CG technologies for modeling, animating, and rendering hair were very limited and under-developed. Therefore, Dr. Yuksel began developing various novel technologies required for a solid hair modeling, animation, and rendering software. After six years of R&D, the last piece of the puzzle was solved with his invention of hair meshes, as first presented at SIGGRAPH Asia 2009.

Hair Farm is not just another tool for producing hair for virtual characters. It is a completely new design that combines state-of-the-art technologies with an artist-friendly user interface and flexible workflow. Within a year of its release, hundreds of studios and artists have begun using Hair Farm for their projects, such as the upcoming motion picture "Sucker Punch" (rel. March 25, 2011).

Contact

Cem Yuksel, Founder & CEO
Cyber Radiance LLC
cem@cyberradiance.com
www.cyberradiance.com

3ds Max, Motion Builder Kinect Workflow and Kinect SDK

 

Louis is a Technical Specialist in 3D Animation and Visual Effects for Autodesk.

 

 

Louis Marcoux from Autodesk gives us a rundown of 3ds Max and Motion Builder in an animation pipeline.

Part 5 goes into the use of the Kinect unit and Motion Builder with the tools from http://www.brekel.com.

Read and watch the videos here.

Things are looking promising since my initial Kinect post last year.

Hopefully with the release of  the Kinect SDK from Microsoft this Spring Motion Capture on your favorite animation program will become ubiquitous.

More information on the Microsoft Kinect SDK announcement at the official Microsoft blog .

 

What’s New in Autodesk Softimage 2012

Autodesk Softimage 2012

Autodesk^® Softimage^® 2012 software delivers innovative new creative toolsets; enhanced interoperability with Autodesk® Entertainment Creation Suite Premium products; and new tools that embrace recent technology trends.

Follow the link for more information on Softimage 2012 and the new New features video.

What’s New in Autodesk Maya 2012

Autodesk Maya 2012

Autodesk^® Maya^® 2012 software delivers powerful new toolsets for previsualization and games prototyping; offers extended simulation capabilities; and better pipeline integration.

Follow the link for more information on Maya 2012 and the new New features video.

What's New in Autodesk 3ds Max 2012

Autodesk 3ds Max 2012

Autodesk^® 3ds Max^® 2012 3D animation software delivers inspiring new creative toolsets, enhanced iterative workflows, and an accelerated graphics core that together help significantly increase overall productivity.

Follow the link for more information on 3ds Max 2012 and the new New features video.

Autodesk at GDC 2011

The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is  here!

GDC will be held at the Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA from February 28th thru March 4th 2011.

Autodesk will be attending the show floor at GDC and have posted their Theater schedule .

View the Autodesk GDC 2011 theater schedule

If you can't make it the show floor, Autodesk will also be streaming their theatre online.

Autodesk GDC information and online theater

Game Developers Conference

Autodesk Game developers tools