V-Ray for Softimage

Yep. You read right. Chaosgroup announces Vray for Softimage beta. You can sign up for the beta here.


Audi R8 Spec Commercial from LemonGood on Vimeo.

The V-Ray for Softimage Public Beta Program will run for a period of approximately 2 months, starting on September 28th.

Softimage supported features

• ICE support support - render geometry produced by the award-winning Softimage ICE system, including particles, strands, hair, ICE-managed color arithmetic, all fully animated.
• Animated parameters - V-Ray will efficiently render Softimage objects with animated parameters and an arbitrary number of keyframes. All geometry modifications and many color-oriented animatable parameters are supported.
• Strong render tree support - V-Ray supports dozens of the procedural shader node types for the Softimage render tree, and new ones are added on a regular basis and made available through service packs.
• Weightmaps - apply transformations to geometry or color attributes of a scene on a per-vertex basis with full support for Softimage weightmaps.
• V-Ray Sun and Sky - create realistic outdoor scenes with physically accurate lighting and atmosphere effects, while maintaining control over rendering times.

V-Ray supported features

Shading

• Support for efficient material layering.
• VRayCarPaintMtl.
• Support for PTex textures.
• V-RayToon shader.
• Support for dispersion in refractions for VRayMtl.

Lights

• Physically accurate lights.
• Efficient illumination from HDR environments.

Camera

• Lens distortion through Nuke displacement maps.
• Option to turn off camera motion blur.
• Shutter efficiency for motion blur.

Render output

• Support for additional render elements.
• Output of multi-channel scanline OpenEXR files with data-window.

Effects

• Depth of field with bokeh effects.
• Accurate motion blur.

Scene translator

• Support for .vrscene output for rendering with V-Ray Standalone.

Supported platforms

Softimage 7.0
Softimage 7.5
Softimage 2010
Softimage 2011
Softimage 2011 ASP
Softimage 2012
(64-bit supported on all platforms)

Exocortex Momentum 3.0 Trailer

Exocortex Momentum 3.0 Release Trailer from helge mathee on Vimeo.

Momentum is finally maturing into something really special now.

Exocortex Technologies and Helge Mathee are pleased to announce that Exocortex Momentum 3, the latest iteration of the high speed multiphysics simulator, is now immediately available for Autodesk Softimage 2010, 2011 and 2012 for both Windows and Linux.

Building upon the Bullet -based broad feature set of Momentum 2, Momentum 3 adds massive new features in the area of fracturing , simulation control , quality rendering and workflow.

Flexible Fracturing
Exocortex Momentum 3 introduces fracturing to its already extensive multiphysics engine. The fracture engine, developed from the ground up by Helge Mathee, is designed around providing Softimage artists and TD's with full control over where and when objects will fracture. Thus, the fracturing engine supports dynamic collision-based fracturing, static user-specified pre-fracturing, real-time shatter filtering as well as self-shattering. The process of fracturing as well as its results is both controlled and queryable via ICE nodes, thus providing a familiar and powerful interface for the deep customizations often demanded during production.
Simulation Control
Momentum 3 provides four new means of controlling your simulations, providing Momentum 3 users even better control over their multiphysics solutions. All of these features come out of user feedback.

1. ICE Controls for all Simulation Elements. It is now possible to provide ICE-based per element live control via ICE trees over all Momentum 3 simulations elements, thus letting artists most easily realize their creative potential.
2. "Force Sculpting." Developed by Fabricio Chamon, force sculpting is an easy and intuitive way to direct explosions through ICE. The key concept is that forces can be sculpted via the specification of a deformed mesh whose dimensions represents the various forces in each direction. One can simply modify the mesh’s deformation the area you want to change the explosion’s forces in that direction.
3. "Copy Motion." The copy motion modifier allows for one to copy the motion of one object, usually an explicitly animated object, onto portions of a simulated object. This allows artists and TDs to quickly and easily drive portions of a simulation when needed.
4. Time Warping. It is now possible to rapidly editing the playback timeline for a plotting simulation simplifying the creation of slow motion “Bullet Time”-like effects, or even allowing for time to run backwards.

Quality UVs, Normals and Motion Blur Having great fracture simulations is nothing if it is a pain to render them. Momentum 3 has been designed so that its simulation results, even the fracturing results with changing topologies, are easily rendered. This is achieved first via robust support for flexible UV generation on newly created interior faces during fracturing. Secondly, Momentum 3 provides quality user normals that accurately capture the original object's surface, while crisply transitioning to the interior face normals. Lastly, Momentum 3 provides 3D and 2D motion blur even in situations of changing topology.

Revamped Plotting One of the most oft-used features of Momentum 2 was its ability to plot out simulation results for later use. Momentum 3's plotting engine has been completely revamped to be more robust and to support plotting to file. Having the ability to plot to files means that even if you have complex changing topology or tens of thousands of objects, you will only be limited by the disk space you have on your servers. Plotting to files also is very useful in large VFX studios where simulation is done in a separately separate division from rendering.

 Get more info here.

Music Track 1

Memories of Something Good by jasonio

Something I made over the last few days. Delicate but melancolic, I hope.

Made with Reaktor and Reaper.fm.

Shiva <> Kinect Plugin Test

Quite a cool plugin for Shiva being developed by luizpestana on the Shiva Forums.

Discuss the plugin here: http://www.stonetrip.com/developer/forum/viewtopic.php?f=76&t=23597&p=37954#p37954

Source code available here: http://shivakinect.sourceforge.net

Softimage 2012.5

It's September time again which means Softimage is getting its point 5 update. In fact it's probably out already. Essentially, it looks like the modelling toolset is being brought up to date now that ICE encompasses all the main fields in general 3d.

New features list below:


Selection

• Quick Loop – double-click or shift+double-click on an edge, point, or polygon to define a loop or range.
• Double-click on a polygon to select the polygon island
• Polygon Selection to Outline - converts the selection to edges surrounding the polygons
• Loops from Selection – creates loops (not rings) from existing selection
• Loop from Selection (around corners) - this can be used to easily select Border Edges for example
• Grow Loops
• Shrink Loops
• Island from Selection – selects all the components in the island
• Selection Preferences now exposed in the MCP>Selection menu

Modeling

• Apply Thickness
  • With bevel options
• Cap Hole
• Extrude Along Normal
• Add Smooth Edge Loop Tool (uses the tool SDK)
  • This interactive tool adds edges while continuing the contoured shape of the object
  • Move edges while adding
  • Use MMB for 50% insertion
• Spin Edges
• Apply Slice Between Two Vertices

Navigation

• Zoom on cursor (Prefs>Tools>Camera)
  • For all 3D and 2D views
  • Includes Scroll Wheel preference

ICE

• Bullet Physics
  • New “Simulate Bullet Rigid Bodies” node (now the default in the ICE module)
  • Same options as Simulate Rigid Bodies Node with added option to collide using exact shape of obstacle.
  • Support for “cone” native shape
  • Instance Shape node now support Convex Hull (Bullet only)
• Rigid Bodies
  • Supports sub-frame sampling (PhysX and Bullet)
  • Faster simulation when using constant reference shapes
• PPG logic
  • RMB>Compound Properties>PPG Logic
  • OnInit and value changes can be trapped inside compounds with PPG logic script
  • Only available for non-private compounds
• Add Group section
  • Inside compound - RMB on exposed input port name>properties. You can specify a group name instead of adding in XML file
• Compounds
  • Create Extrusion Along Strands.2.0
  • Deform Strand Extrsuion (together these can make for fast simulated hairs)
  • Cap Hole
  • Apply Thickness
  • Apply Slice Between Two Vertices

Model Meshes

• Human male, car, T. rex, bull, fish, lizard, horse
  • These come we predefined UVs

 
ICE Modeling Sample Scenes

• Modeling Building Grids
• Modeling Cylinder
• Modeling Materials
• Modeling Simple Copy Merge
• Modeling Texture Projection

Animation

• Viewport Autokey Border
  • When turning on Autokey there is now more visible feedback. The active viewport shows a color – which can be changed in
  • Prefs>Animation to turn on/off or change color
• Ability to include animation layers when creating mixer clips
• New option for non-normalized weight painting

Scene Management

• Annotation objects
  • Get>Annotation creates a null like object which shows a speech bubble in the viewport
• Get/Set memo cams access in the SDK

Rendering

• RTS - Added support for automatic RTS shader updates

Snapping

• Prefs>Tools>Snapping - New preference to control display of snap targets

FBX:

• Integrated new drop of FBX SDK

Changes:

• Selection:
  • Rectangle raycast respects XRay settings etc.
  • Raycast backfacing enabled by default (fixed issues with accidentally selecting backfaces on silhouette edges)
• ICE:
  • Default value for GetTopology changed to "No Transform"

Feature videos can be found here:
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/marks/good_grief_has_it_been_a_year_already_softimage_2012_5_is_here

Damn I wish I still had subscription!