redmotion: September 2010

27 September 2010

Exocortex Technologies releases trial version of Slipstream VX for Softimage 2010/2011


Fast Smoke and Fire Simulation (SlipstreamVX by Exocortex) from Exocortex Technologies, Inc. on Vimeo.

Thiago has been a busy little bee!

Fluid simulation specialists Exocortex Technologies, in collaboration with Thiago Costa of Lagoa Technologies, today announces the public release of the innovative "SlipstreamVX" smoke, air and fire simulator for Autodesk Softimage 2010 and 2011. SlipstreamVX introduces a new method of simulating fluids to the VFX artist community. Rather than employing a voxel simulation method that uniformly divides up space whether or not anything interesting is happening, the patent pending SlipstreamVX focuses on the interesting aspects of the fluid, the turbulence, wherever it is and it represents in explicitly.

This innovative approach to fluid simulation gives SlipstreamVX two unique and powerful benefits:

First, SlipstreamVX does not limit its fluid simulations to any type of bounding box. Fluid simulations are free to go where they want. You can have detail where you want it. You can have multiple centers of details and interaction between originally disparate areas of interest with ease. SlipstreamVX efficient representation of turbulence means that you don't run out of memory.

Second, SlipstreamVX can simulate the complex and detailed fluid dynamics of smoke and fire in real-time and near-real-time. Voxels are not only memory consuming but they are slow. SlipstreamVX explicit turbulence representation is simply much more efficient. Having a real-time simulation makes it easier for an artist to refine a simulation's look and feel.

As demonstrated on the exhibit floor of SIGGRAPH 2010, SlipstreamVX is fully multithreaded to take advantage of Intel's Xeon and Core i7 CPUs. SlipstreamVX along with Intel's technology increases the speed of simulation creation and iteration beyond artists current expectations.

Lastly, SlipstreamVX is being distributed with Exocortex's new GPU-accelerated "Fury" renderer. Fury was designed to compliment SlipstreamVX's near-real-time simulation with real-time rendering of simulation-centric atmospheric effects. The rapidly evolving Fury renderer already supports depth of field, motion blur, a density integrator and matte objects.

The SlipstreamVX simulation and Fury renderer bundle along with support for the first year is available now for $399.99 CND. A time limited trial version of SlipstreamVX and Fury is available from the Exocortex website:

http://www.exocortex.com/simulation/slipstreamvx

Fast Shot Setup and Turnaround

Nothing in the market compares with SlipstreamVX's speed. When you create a simulation scenario and press play for the first time, the SlipstreamVX simulation often plays back at better than real-time speeds, even with detailed simulations.

Deep Softimage ICE Integration

Exocortex co-developed SlipstreamVX with famed Softimage TD Thiago Costa. As a result, SlipstreamVX is designed from the start as an ICE-based simulator that both leverages the power and the flexibility inherent in ICE. SlipstreamVX isn't just a black box simulator that has been made into an ICE node.

Simulation Boxes are Obsolete

SlipstreamVX brings to VFX artists a fundamentally new method of fluid simulation, a method that no longer requires the otherwise ubiquitous and limiting "simulation box." SlipstreamVX simulations can be anywhere in your scene and go anywhere. You can now focus on achieving the simulation behavior rather than how you should place and update your "simulation box."

GPU-Accelerated Rendering

We understand that a great simulator is nothing if you can't easily render the results. We decided to go further than just providing a render, we made a lightning fast GPU-accelerated renderer so that you can render your simulation results as fast as SlipstreamVX can simulate them. Our new renderer, Fury, can render luminous simulation as well as do near instantaneous density integration. Hassle-free self-shadowing is on the way.

First Class Product Support

We believe in our products and want to help you make the most of them. In service of that goal, we have made available video tutorials, quality documentation, a user discussion mailing list as well as rapid response email-based support.

If you are having problems trying to create a particular scenario, give us a shout as we can likely help you attain your goals.

This technology is patent pending.

10 September 2010

Softimage 2011.5

2011.5 (subscription advantage pack) features lots of nice improvements including:


 Lagoa Materials Multiphysics Simulation Framework





• ICE for artists — a new ICE module menu toolbar facilitates building common ICE effects: particles, deforms and kinematics. Using the menu structure, artists can see nodes and compounds connect automatically in the ICE Tree, and create or modify Lagoa Multiphysics materials and other preset effects.



• Stereoscopic 3D support — new stereo camera rigs for stereoscopic productions and in-viewport stereoscopic viewing of 3D scenes
• Softimage Composite — a high-performance, high dynamic range (HDR) compositor with support for stereoscopic production pipelines; Autodesk Softimage Composite will include advanced keying, color correction, tracking and 3D compositing tools and will be compatible with Autodesk Maya 2011 Composite and Autodesk 3ds Max 2011 Composite.
• Polygonizer operator — will help create smoother polygon meshes for liquids
• Maya nCache — Maya nCache format reading and writing will be supported in Softimage
• Autodesk MatchMover toolset— a high-quality professional camera tracker
• Other enhancements: new shader compounds, ray traced shadows for infinite lights, improved OpenGL sprites, the ViewCube functionality and two new real-time shader wizards

Demonstration videos:

http://www.the-area.com/blogs/marks/introducing_softimage_2011_5_with_lagoa

Expected to ship on or after September 29, 2010.

07 September 2010

ICE Walking system


ICE Walking System from LAVISH on Vimeo.

The walking system itself is demonstrated about 12 minutes into the video (I recommend viewing in HD). An extremely impressive work of modelling and rigging. This is precisely the sort of work Softimage needs to showcase its ICE rigging abilities (implemented in 2011). Considering Softimage 3d had a procedural walking system built into it in 1998, I think it's about time XSI was shipped with multiple rigs of many different types (an auto rig building system which could cover about 90% of all rigging requirements if done well) and multiple (production ready) ICE-based procedural walking systems, out of the box. These could be installed as a workgroup users could plunder and explore.

05 September 2010

SketchUp 8 released

Kind of drifted beneath my radar this one! Very busy last week. Will be pushing my office to upgrade to v8 next week.

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What it also highlighted for me was a new online application for Google Earth called BuildingMaker which SketchUp8 allows you to import models directly from allowing you to place new buildings into context.

01 September 2010

No Pets Allowed (possible upcoming sixbirds/studioNEST feature)


NO PETS ALLOWED (Animation feature film) from Josep Pozo on Vimeo.

NO PETS is the second animation feature film in development at SIX BIRDS. CGI process was
done in our daughter company StudioNEST.

It's 100% Softimage + Arnold render + StudioNest (Brigks + Melena)