VizWorld.com

A pair of press releases from StudioGPU, creators of MachStudio Pro, this morning announce two big deals.  The first is that they’ve now added support for using Pixar’s Renderman for high-end ray-tracing visuals, if you aren’t amazing enough by the built-in GPU visuals.  It’s a seamless workflow moving directly from authoring and modeling into the final rendering.

“We are pleased that StudioGPU has closely integrated RenderMan inside of MachStudio Pro,” said Chris Ford, RenderMan business director at Pixar Animation Studios. “The ability to preview renderings before the export of final shots to RenderMan helps streamline the creative process in a way that benefits everyone.”

In addition to this, they’ve announced new options for Student Pricing that make it more attractive for educational uses.  Now a student can get MachStudio Pro and a working ATI FirePro V7800 for $999, or just the software for $499, a substantial savings from the full prices of both.

“Students should be encouraged to explore creativity however possible,” says Rob O’Neill, director of the Digital Arts Research Lab at Pratt Institute and partner at Kickstand in New York City. “By offering MachStudio Pro at educational pricing for students, StudioGPU is helping to remove the production barriers that can easily stifle a student’s access to cutting-edge tools. Now with MachStudio Pro, students can focus on the art of animation instead of the workflow limitations of long renders.”

Good news for students and experts alike.  Full press releases after the break.

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Graphics machstudio, software, studiogpu

Silicon Valley has long been the home of many a startup in the tech sector, but recently several other areas have arisen as similar hotbeds of innovation and technology. Robert Cringely is holding a public contest to allow visitors to nominate these “Not in Silicon Valley” Startups for inclusion in a US tour.

Starting next month I will be accepting from readers nominations for interesting startup companies in six general categories — biotech, energy, entertainment, information technology, materials, and transportation. Over the course of about six weeks we will examine and discuss as a community these nominated companies of which I am hoping there will be hundreds, primarily not from Silicon Valley or any other tech hotbeds. I’ll have some assistance in this process from the Kauffman Foundation.

Together we’ll whittle the number down to 24 then come June I will set off with my family in our RV to visit all 24. We’ll camp in the parking lot or in the driveway of the CEO and spend a couple days at each startup, learning about the company, the people, their technology and their market. I’ll take with me a small camera crew and we’ll produce what will begin with a summer of blogging and end with a 13-part TV reality series

Tony DeYoung of FireUser rightfully suggests that we should nominate StudioGPU, creators of the fabulous MachStudio Pro rendering suite.  You can head on over to Cringely’s Voting Site and see it’s faring pretty well against the competition.

Who do you think should be added?

via I, Cringely » Blog Archive » The Cringely 2010 (Not in Silicon Valley) Startup Tour – Cringely on technology.

Graphics contest, machstudio, studiogpu

Fans of the real-time nonlinear rendering and modeling suite MachStudio Pro have a new version to look forward to, boasting several new feature and enhancements.   A short list of just some of what you have to look forward to:

- Export rendered images directly into Adobe Photoshop while maintaining all render passes as independent, editable Photoshop layers.

- Vertex animation compression greatly reduces the size and overhead of animation files that are being exported from 3D modeling packages into MachStudio Pro.

- Multi-threading improves speed and responsiveness of MachStudio Pro by separating the user interface (UI) and rendering into separate threads.

- Procedural ramp texture generation for projected lights allows for the creation of stylized lights from within MachStudio Pro without the need for imported textures.

- Transparency depth peeling boosts the accuracy of transparency sorting and the quality of opacity attributes.

And more, including some fancy Python scripting capabilities.  Available in the US now for $3,999 ($4.999 when bundled with the ATI Radeon card).

See the full press release after the break.

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Graphics ati, machstudio, software, studiogpu

The StudioGPU blog is showing off some of the new rendering features mentioned in a recent Renderosity review, and even goes so far as to show some of the results and how they compare to MachStudio 1.2.

Now if you’ve followed the recent Renderosity review, you know StudioGPU is actively working on additional rendering styles including ray-tracing. Well this image, using some StudioGPU radiance pass secret sauce is an early example of what you can expect. This is just a prototype, but you can see that the quality of light and color is cranked up even further.

Oh by the way, this new “In the StudioGPU Labs” image took about 60 sec. to render at 980 X 1200 with with x6 AA samples (36 samples per pixel).

Be sure to hit their site for the full-resolution version of the new rendering image.

via StudioGPU Blog: What’s cooking in the StudioGPU Labs – Feb 2010.

Graphics machstudio, software, studiogpu

Tony DeYoung frequently extolls the virtues of MachStudio Pro on his FireUser.com blog, and points to a review of the product on Renderosity which contains a few tidbits of what we’ll see in the upcoming new version:

• Raytracing using DX11 Compute Shaders – “I had a first-hand demonstration of what looks to be the first DirectX 11 “compute shade” raytracing prototype, which looked fantastic. I believe Yoni told me that this will be the first time raytracing will be applied using the GPU only.”
• Hair – “anything you can do in ‘Shave and a Haircut’ you can do in MachStudio Pro's hair mode.

While I’m happy to see some nice GPU-accelerated raytracing support, I’m disappointed to see it based entirely on the DirectX11 Compute systems.  This means that you won’t be seeing a Linux or Mac version of MachStudio anytime soon (no DirectX support), and that you won’t be using it on Windows XP or Windows Vista either.

via Renderosity reviews MachStudio Pro on the FirePro V8750 – the future of real time rendering | FireUser Blog.

Graphics machstudio, review, software, studiogpu

VFX studio Weta has just announced that they’ll be integrated StudioGPU’s MachStudio Pro into the production line for their television work.

“Improving 3D workflow throughout our facility is an ongoing priority at Weta Workshop,” says Andrew Smith, Business Advisor for Weta Workshop Ltd. “MachStudio Pro will fit nicely into our television pipeline, giving our team more tools to keep pushing the limits of creativity. The ability to work together with StudioGPU to continue developing MachStudio Pro with respect to our specific pipeline needs will allow us to continue improving efficiency and content delivery for future Weta Workshop television projects.”

This is interesting in that MachStudio has a strong partnership with AMD, but Weta just wrapped up an impressive new product with NVidia called PantaRay.  Maybe the Weta deal will allow for some hybridization of the two technologies.

Read the full release after the break.

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Tony DeYoung pointed me to an interesting post on the StudioGPU blog showing off work from Chad Wanstreet, Technical Director at Speedshape Detroit.  In the post he shows some architectural renderings made with Machstudio Pro, after modeling with 3dsMax, that were rendered in 5 separate passes in a total of 5 minutes.

“Machstudio provides me with a quick feedback loop for my concepts, and the ability to create animations very quickly, which I love. Too many of the tools which designers and architects use for quick concept work focus only on volumes and materials, and miss out on light, time and the relationship of the two.” (bold is my editorial)

It was all done on a single PC, rather than the traditional farm.  A great example of what GPU acceleration will mean in the near future.

via StudioGPU Blog: Too many of the concept tools for architects miss out on light, time and the relationship of the two.

Graphics 3dsmax, architecture, machstudio, studiogpu

The Third Floor, well known previsualization experts, recently turned to StudioGPU’s real-time 3D workflow features in MachStudio Pro for their recent work in stereoscopic 3D production.

“Finding MachStudio Pro was like finding the Holy Grail,” says Chris Edwards, founder and CEO of The Third Floor. “You can literally convert previs assets or final assets and port them to MachStudio Pro to create a real-time light sculpting experience. As the previsualization pipeline evolves people are trying to figure out how to compete in a global marketplace,” continues Edwards. “We see MachStudio Pro playing a key role in the future of virtual cinema.”

Stereoscopic films, in particular, require much more planning than traditional films.  Some of this is due to inexperience in the field, but largely it’s due to the additional requirements brought on by working in an environment where the relative depth of objects suddenly becomes much more important.  Full release after the break.

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The new kid’s movie “Playmobil: The Secret of Pirate Island” from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment takes the lovable kid’s building block toys and brings them to life in a CG adventure.  The animation was done entirely in MachStudio’s StudioGPU and in a new press release they tout the advantages of the real-time aspects of the tool:

“Thanks to MachStudio Pro, we could see when there was too much bloom in one shot or not enough blur in another. We didn’t have to wait 40 minutes to see the glow on a treasure chest full of coins,” said Quinn Tetterton, executive vice president at XLT and creative producer overseeing the project. “It’s a great asset, because you can actually experiment during crunch time and get away with it. We could not have done The Secret of Pirate Island in the limited amount of time we had without MachStudio Pro.”

Extra Large Technology (XLT) did the work, and they too love the time savings:

“MachStudio Pro basically skips the entire software rendering process,” says Zeth Dubois, CG supervisor at XLT. “Normally, lighting and rendering is a torturously long process. In a typical workflow, artists approximate lighting with their desktop software, make low-quality or regional test renders, then cross their fingers and send their files to a render farm, waiting hours or longer to see results.” Dubois continues, “But with MachStudio Pro, artists quickly get the feedback they need to make meaningful creative choices without getting bogged down in trying to figure out the technical issues.”

The the 90-minute film was completed in 18 months, and is available now.  See some great pictures of the movie, after the break.

via StudioGPU MachStudio Pro Streamlines Creation of First Playmobil Entertainment DVD for Sony Pictures.

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Graphics machstudio, movie, sony, studiogpu, vfx, xlt

Recently there has been some discussion about the abilities of MachStudio Pro in photo-realistic renderings.  StudioGPU took it as a challenge, and have a new blog post discussing the possibilities.

I’ve read several comments in which, although artists were amazed by the performance and quality of MachStudio Pro, they were specifically searching for a solution to replace their offline photo-realistic rendering engines. A typical comment was something like: “Well V-Ray/Mental Ray/Brazil renders this architectural/automotive/product image like this. How close can MachStudio Pro get to this kind of photo-realistic render?”

In the image above, one image is from MachStudio Pro and the other is from V-Ray.  Can you tell the difference?  Read their post for the answer, and to see some great movies of architectural fly-throughs rendered with MachStudio Pro.

via StudioGPU Blog: Photo realistic rendering in MachStudio Pro?.

Graphics architectural, machstudio, photorealistic, studiogpu