Thursday, March 31, 2011

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!

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

V-Ray 2.0 for Maya Beta now available!

Chaos Group Releases V-Ray 2.0 for Maya Beta Version.
V-Ray, hailed by many as the most robust and versatile rendering engine on the market, is about to see a significant upgrade for all Maya users. The 2.0 upgrade for V-Ray began its much-anticipated Beta test on March 30th, 2011.

V-Ray 2.0 for Maya is a complete rendering solution developed by Chaos Group, now with interactive rendering on GPU and CPU. This robust and highly trusted engine is the perfect tool for the 3D professionals, working in the film and VFX industry. With this new version users can expect many new improvements and updates to the existing one.

Exciting new features are now available in V-Ray 2.0 for Maya like: V-Ray RT and V-Ray RT GPU, Faster rendering of dynamic geometry (displacement, fur, proxies, hair etc), Faster rendering of render-time subdivision surfaces, VRayFur and Maya hair, VRayCarPaint material, VRayToon shader and a lot more. Detailed information and a full feature list for V-Ray 2.0 for Maya can be found here >>



The beta program will be open to all customers who already own a license of V-Ray for Maya (purchased V-Ray 1.5 for Maya) or pre-ordered V-Ray 2.0 for Maya.



Join the V-Ray 2.0 for Maya Beta Program and be among the first to test this advanced rendering technology for all Maya users. It's your help and feedback that will make this product much better.

Release plans have been set for the end of April. Get ready for the official start and share the V-Ray experience with us!

 


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

Friday, March 25, 2011

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!

Thursday, March 24, 2011

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.

 

 

 

Blackmagic Design Software Updates



 

 

 

Blackmagic Design releases software upgrades for their Decklink and VideoHub products.

Software Updates

Videohub 4.6.4 has just been released.  This update fixes an issue with the USB not being recognized when an SD reference is connected.

DeckLink 7.9.6 is available.  This release fixes an SD-SDI issue with Sony HDW 700 cameras on DeckLink Studio, DeckLink SDI, DeckLink Duo, and DeckLink Optical Fiber.

These updates can be downloaded here:

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/support/software/

Purchase a Decklink or Video Hub at your online Shop

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!

 

 

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

STORM UPDATE COMING SOON:



The Foundry gives us a tease of things to come this week with STORM.
STORM's release has been really well received, but at The Foundry we are not standing still. A STORM update will be made available this week. There will be information coming your way soon.

Learn more about STORM - We have  started an on-going video series to highlight STORM Features.

For  complete details of the STORM blast above Click Here.

Get The Foundry’s Storm Now from Motion Media’s online shop.

Try the FREE 15 day trial!  You can try any of The Foundry products FREE for 15 days, click to learn more.