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An update for RealFlow4 (version
4.3) has now been released. The update is more than just a bug
fix and brings a faster stacking procedure in the rigid body solver,
several new tools and command line options, more stability, better
pipeline integration and much, much more. For further details, please
download the release notes from the RF4 download area at
www.realflow.com.
The Cinema4D plug-in for RealFlow has also been updated for both
Windows and Mac. The plug-in is compatible with versions 8.5, 9.6 and
10 for Windows and 8.5ppc, 9.5ppc, 9.6ub and 10ub for Mac.
The RealFlow development team is
working hard on a new toolkit for shading RealFlow particles in large
quantities through RenderMan renderers. These tools
solve meshing issues and the related problem of creating very heavy and
hard-to-handle files. The new toolkit offers two different approaches
to render a scene in RF4 without having to make a mesh. The first
approach, called FlowTracer, is a ray-marching
technique that samples part of the fluid to construct information about
the whole, at render time. The second approach covers FlowParticler
and FlowMesher,
which both generate various types of geometry (polygonal meshes,
sprites, points) at render time. A whitepaper which will further
explain these new techniques will be presented at Siggraph 2007, booth 1537.
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An update for Maxwell Render 1.5 was released
last month.This update is for MXCL, MXST and MXED and affects Win
32 and 64 and OSX. The patch focuses on bug fixes, improvements and
stabilizations. Some of the highlights include: an added control to
choose the camera view from the UI; various network enhancements; the
possibility to select and edit multiple UV sets on an object; and the
possibility to import more than one material at the same time through
MXM multiselection. The OBJ importer now accepts quads, so it is no
longer needed to triangulate OBJ files before importing; importing 3ds
and DXF files has been improved; and more. For further details, please
download the release notes from the customer download area at
www.maxwellrender.com
The Maxwell Render development team does not only continue to work
on bug fixes and improvements, but is also preparing the next update of
Maxwell Render. This update will bring the long-awaited Maxwell
displacement. Next Limit’s proprietary displacement method goes a step
beyond micro poly displacement (MPD). One of its main advantages is
that even very fine or large displacements require very little extra
memory. For example, you can easily create very sharp, fine details,
something that would be difficult to do with MPD without using hundreds
of megabytes of ram. Maxwell’s displacement uses a new technology which
is not triangle-based (which increases memory usage); the only limit is
the detail in your displacement map. Furthermore, the technology behind
Maxwell’s displacement opens the door for other related features which
will prove to be very useful in many rendering situations. We are
confident that we will see some incredible new renders with the soon to
be released Maxwell Displacement.
Here are some impressive results from our testers (click images to
enlarge):
From this simple
map...
... To this image:
Unlimited detail:
Displacement and Multilight :
Impressive results:
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Pattern by Brigittte Wirion
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Close up
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Siggraph 2007:Next Limit Technologies will be
exhibiting both Maxwell Render and RealFlow4 at Siggraph 2007, held in San Diego from
August 7 to August 9. If you are attending Siggraph, please come by our
booth #1537 to have a chat with one of our experts. If you haven’t
booked your ticket yet, we have Guest Passes available to give away to
our clients, partners and other contacts. If you would like to get a Guest Pass,
please send an email stating “Siggraph Guest
Pass” in the
subject line to
Email Contact. We’d love to see you in San Diego!
www.siggraph.org/s2007
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Vismasters 2007: Next Limit Technologies is sponsoring
this year’s Vismasters DMVC in San
Diego. We will hold a 30 minute Case Study
Presentation with speaker and Maxwell Render expert Mr. Mike Verta on
August 10. Didn’t book your Vismasters ticket yet? We have secured a
discount rate for anyone registering via
http://dmvc.vismasters.com/Registration.cfm using the promotional code:
MaxwellDMVC. Don’t miss it!
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THINK! website: THINK!, the Maxwell Render
Resource Center, is online now! This
website is entirely dedicated to Maxwell Render tutorials, with input
from Maxwell Render users as well as the Next Limit Team. Do you want
to upload your tutorial or are you looking for tips on how to use
Maxwell Render? Go to
http://think.maxwellrender.com.
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20% off for RF upgrades: It’s been over a year now since
the release of RealFlow4, and many RF4 customers are now enjoying the
new features. Next Limit is offering an exclusive discount of 20% to
all customers with previous versions of RealFlow. The discount applies
to all RF4 full commercial licenses, and if your previous RealFlow
license was the Gold pack edition, we’ll also upgrade the command lines
for FREE! To take advantage of this offer, please upgrade to RF4 before
September 30th 2007. You can contact us directly at
http://www.nextlimit.com/sales_support.htm quoting this promotion code: RF4PRE00207
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MXM Gallery competition: Get your motor running! We are
going on a roadtrip with the MXM Gallery Automotive competition. The
first prize is an impressive Dell Inspiron 1501 notebook, with Apple
iPod Shuffles for the three runners-up. To win, upload an original,
automotive-related material to the MXM Gallery before the end of
August. For further info, see
http://mxmgallery.maxwellrender.com. Good luck!
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MXM Gallery 1550 x 1 campaign: To celebrate James Clerk
Maxwell’s birthday, we ran an offer to download all the MXM Gallery
materials at once. More than 250 people uploaded a material and took
advantage of the campaign. We will continue to run similar offers, so
keep an eye on the MXM Gallery website.
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New RF training DVD out now: Digital-Tutors, a Next Limit
Certified Training Partner, has announced the availability of “Dynamic
Simulations with RealFlow4” - the latest release in a growing library
of interactive training for emerging digital artists using RealFlow4.
“Dynamic Simulations with RealFlow4” is an intermediate-level DVD
providing over three hours of project-based training, techniques for
creating realistic simulations and interactions, and a step-by-step
approach to learning creative uses for RealFlow4. Please visit
http://www.digitaltutors.com/store/product.php?productid=3334 for further info!
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New RealFlow website: The official RealFlow website has
had an “extreme makeover” and is now easier to use and better organized
with new and exciting contents. Check it out at
www.realflow.com.
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RealFlow forum competition: The unofficial RealFlow forum
is giving away a full RealFlow license worth $2700 in their “Washed
Away” competition. Get started on a cool RealFlow scene and enter it in
the competition before August 15. Check
www.realflowforum.com
for more info.
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Maxwell Render & formZ bundle: AutoDesSys and Next Limit
Technologies have teamed up to offer formZ RenderZonePlus users a
special discount for Maxwell Render. This offer runs until the end of
September 2007. For more info or to purchase, visit
www.formz.com or contact your local formZ
dealer.
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Maxwell license give-away: The Japanese magazine CGWorld
is giving away one Maxwell Render license in its current issue, which
was out on July 29. Readers should simply send a note to CGWorld Japan,
where they will draw the winner from all entries.
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Maxwell Render discount Japan: CGWorld Japan
has reviewed Maxwell Render 1.5 in its current issue, which was out on
July 29. Official Maxwell Render reseller Oak has teamed up with the
magazine to offer a discount for Maxwell Render! CGWorld readers should
contact Oak, quoting the campaign code from the magazine’s review pages
to take advantage of the discount. Also see
www.oakcorp.net.
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Printed Maxwell manual: The Maxwell Render 1.5
high-quality printed manual is now available for purchase from Solid
Publishing. The manual is available in colour and B&W, with either
coil/ spiral bound with a plastic spiral or perfect bound with a glued
spiral. The colour manual costs �34.84. Visit
www.solidpublishing.com for further info.
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RealFlow in Meet the Robinsons: For Disney’s new animated film,
the crew at Disney Feature Animation used RealFlow for various fluid
effects and simulations, for example to create volumes of smoke and
smog, to create water, jelly and even peanut butter. Go to
www.realflow.com
for more information.
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RealFlow in Primeval: This season’s hottest horror hit
about a murderous croc used RealFlow in all its water and fluid
interaction scenes. Next Limit spoke to Luma Pictures about the more
than 80 VFX shots they took care of. Read the interview at
www.realflow.com.
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RealFlow in new With a Twist spot: Digital creative studio With a
Twist (
www.withatwiststudio.com) used RealFlow on the liquid
VFX in a new television spot for Amp’d mobile phones. To see the stunning
spot and to read the case study, visit
www.realflow.com.
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BigRock Training Center in Verona, Italy
is the first training center to offer officially certified courses
for Maxwell Render. BigRock offers 2-day courses of 8 hours per day,
covering the very beginnings of Maxwell Render, starting with theory
of light and photography, and going into further detail with advanced
processes such as Multilight and SimuLens. The 2-day courses are
available in Italian and English and open to students from all around
the world.
Dates: 23 August (English) // 24 September
(Italian) // 29 October (Italian)
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There is also a more extensive course available,
covering Maya and Maxwell Render. This is a 5-day course of 8 hours
per day, covering modeling in Maya and rendering in Maxwell Render from
beginning to end. This course is offered in Italian only.
Dates: 24 September (Italian) // 29 October
(Italian)
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Next
Limit spoke to Cristina Beschin from BigRock Training
Center about
their Maxwell courses.
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Next Limit: “What kind of Maxwell Render
training does BigRock offer? Is it available to everyone?”
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Big Rock: “Our Maxwell Render Training is at a
basic level. In the first part of the course we go over introductory
subjects such as basic knowledge of lighting systems (Light Theory)
and basic knowledge of photography (Functions of a Camera). Therefore
the course is suitable for everyone, even with no specific knowledge
or background.”
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Next Limit: “Is there a lot of interest in
the Maxwell Render training?”
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Big Rock: “Yes, there is a lot of interest. We
schedule at least two Maxwell Render courses per month, one of which
is always and International course.”
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Next Limit: “What does a normal training
session look like?”
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Big Rock: “We provide our students with written
learning material. Throughout the course, they can either work on
their own models or with the BigRock models we provide.”
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Next Limit: “How have the Maxwell Render
training program and the cooperation with Next Limit helped to
increase attention and applications for your course?”
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Big Rock: “The cooperation with Next Limit is
excellent and a big support for our courses. We are currently waiting
for Next Limit to issue customized certificates for us to give to our
students at the end of the training, together with the BigRock
certificates we normally use.
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For more information visit:
www.maxwellrender.com //
www.bigrock.it or email
Email Contact
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Better Bump Maps
For:
Maxwell material editor
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Do
you get a jaggy look with your bump maps when making water surfaces and
subtle bumps? This is the ultimate painkiller!
1: Open
your map in Photoshop and take a look at the histogram. Often, the
range of the bump map is poor. So first narrow the range of your map.
2: Normalize your bump map: Image> Adjustments> Auto Levels.
3: You can now zoom in and see that the gradient of your bump map is
not smooth enough and has steps. Go to Filter> Blur> Gaussian
Blur and change the Radius to approx 1.6 pixels to make it smoother.
4:
Now the map looks better, but it might still show artifacts with high bump
values because of the 8-bit range. Go back to the unblurred version you
started with and turn it to 16-bit: Image> Mode> 16 Bits/Channel.
5: Re-apply blur; this time the transitions will be more precise. Now,
we can make more contrast because we can easily diminish the bump by
using the low bump value. So, a good bump map must be normalized as
much as possible: Image> Adjustments> Brightness/ Contrast. Put
Contrast +100 and click OK.
6: You can see the difference between the original map and this one.
Where the original map shows stepping, the new map is sooooo smooth!
Check
out the entire video tutorial by Tom at
http://think.maxwellrender.com
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Animations
For:
Maxwell for Maya
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When
you render animations, you continually need to export the large MXS
sequences, which can take up too much space on your hard drive. To
avoid this, you can use the Maya command line, using the command
“render –r maxwell –p low name of scene”, etc. When you do that, all
frames are temporally exported to your hard drive but they are deleted
when Maxwell finished rendering the frame. To learn more about the use
of commands in Maya& Maxwell Render, type “render –r maxwell –help”
in your command line.
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Bright/ dark materials
Maxwell
material editor
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We
cannot mention it often enough
. In Maxwell Render, do not make very
bright materials, especially if that material will cover large areas.
Try to keep the RGB values under 225. Do not worry if your walls appear
too dark; white matte paper for example has an RGB value of 218. There
are rarely any materials brighter than this, except for specialized
diffuse reflective materials. If your walls appear too dark, increase
the ISO of the camera instead. The Refl90◦ colour can be left at 225.
The sequence below shows the effect of varying the RGB values and
emitters in your image. The wall RGB values are adjusted, and each
image has rendered for 30 minutes. From left to right: an RGB of 250
with sphere emitters; an RGB of 215 with sphere emitters; and an RGB of
215 with plane emitters.
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Artist details: Hervé Steff -- 47 years old -- Currently
living in Luxembourg
-- Gardener, chef, and Maxwell maniac -- Current project: Ultra
realistic 3D food models in MXS format.
“As
an ex-student with a diploma from the French "Lycée Hotelier de
Metz" (1977), I felt I had to combine my cooking skills with my
passion for Maxwell Render. The result was a series of realistic,
ready-to-render food models, available from my website
www.insideko.com.
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About the image: “A real roast cockerel was first
photographed with a Nikon D200 under 55 different angles. From the
resulting photos, I built the model using an image modeling
application. The textures were also extracted from the original photos
of the chicken. In Modo 202 Paint, I re-worked the textures, removing
all imperfections and highlights, to have a pretty flat, clean color
map. I also made the specular and normal maps using the same process.
The dish was modeled and UV-ed in Modo 202, and the greasy sauce was
made from the cockerel’s skin texture. Some weight maps also served the
transparent/ non-transparent areas. There are four emitters to light
the scene. Multilight was ON."
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More: “Other highly realistic food models,
such as bananas, lamb cutlets and French pastries, are also available.
Many models are still in the oven but will follow soon... stay tuned!”
Please
visit
www.insideko.com for more information or to
purchase the models.
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If you have any ideas or suggestions, or
if you would like to contribute something to the Next Limit
newsletter, please
Email Contact
If you would like to subscribe/ unsubscribe from the Next Limit newsletter,
please send an email to
Email Contact stating "subscribe" or
"unsubscribe" in the subject line.
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