Saturday, October 23rd, 2010 Posted by Jim Thacker

cebas releases finalRender R2 for Maya

cebas has released a new version of finalRender Stage-2 for Maya, adding a new toolset intended to make shader authoring accessible even to non-TDs.

The new ShaderGrind system – surely one of the best names for a new 3D technology in recent years – creates a kind of ’empty shader’ to which properties can be assigned directly from the Attribute Editor. The software then compiles and runs the new shader on the fly at render time.

cebas describes the process as comparable in difficulty to writing a MEL script, making the process of shader authoring accessible to non-technical artists. ShaderGrind is supplemented by a ‘building blocks’ system, in which complex shaders can be built up from smaller components. More details below.

PRESS RELEASE (Excerpts)
finalRender R2 for Maya is not only one of the best integrated rendering systems for Maya, with full support for Maya’s Hypershade Editor and many of the native Maya shader nodes, but also offers one of the easiest and most efficient integrated rendering pipeline systems for Maya.

What’s New
Renowned for being the workhorse Renderer for many bigger and smaller productions, finalRender R2 for Maya goes way beyond just being a “simple” rendering application, with its all new revolutionary ShaderGrind™ concept of writing shader code, right within the Maya user interface. ShaderGrind brings total access and control to finalRender’s raytracing core and represents the next evolutionary step of writing individual shaders in Maya. What was in the past, a task for highly skilled experts, can now be easily accomplished by any Lighting TD or Texturing Lead.

BuildingBlocks™ is another refreshing new approach to physically based shader creation in Maya – all based on the raytracing core of finalRender R2 for Maya. Building Blocks breaks down shaders to their very core and allows unlimited shader components, which are stacked on top of each other, to simulate real world properties of nearly every kind of material surface.

finalRender R2 for Maya incorporates the latest multi-core technologies and enhancements which leverage existing and future Hardware investments to the maximum possible extent. Scene translation times and rendering preparation times are easily reduced by half, or even more, depending on the hardware used and the amount of available cores in a system.

Key Features
finalRender R2 for Maya is an advanced rendering system, offering the latest state-of-the-art rendering technology based on the standalone rendering core of “finalRender Stage-2,” which enabled the same renderer to work with multiple applications including Maxon’s CINEMA 4D.

Here is a short list of key features:

  • Support for Maya 2009, Maya 2010 and Maya 2011, both 32 and 64 bit systems
  • Full Maya Stereo Camera Rendering support
  • Enhanced Multi Core Support for even faster translation times
  • Updated License model: up to 32 (16 local+16 remote) Cores per license
  • Real world Physical Camera Exposure Model
  • Supported objects are Polygons, Rendertime Subdiv, NURBS, Maya hierarchical subdivs without exceptions.
  • Many dedicated ready to render finalRender Materials
  • Particles, including support of per-particle data (even on particle-instanced geometry)
  • Advanced Texture Baking (multiple objects, multiple output in one pass)
  • Many custom shaders, including shaderGrind to develop your own.
  • Ultra Fast Flicker Free GI
  • Maya Shading Network support
  • finalRender Stage-2 Shader SDK (ships with the product)
  • True Distributed Network Rendering
  • High Resolution Bitmap Rendering, 20k and bigger
  • Support for several image file formats including OpenEXR, RPF and RLA
  • Photometric and Real Area Light support
  • True Area Shadow support
  • Standard Network Farm-Rendering through batch rendering is supported
  • Fast and efficient real world 3D-Motionblur
  • Advanced Caustic Rendering Effects
  • Highly Optimized Multi Layered Skin Shader included
  • Special Multi-Million Polygon Rendering Mode
  • Automatic and Scene dependent Raytracing Optimization
  • Multiple Real World Cameras to choose from
  • True Micro Triangle Displacement support
  • Advanced and Fast NURBS Tessellation
  • Efficient geometry instancing
  • Native support for ReelSmart Motionblur (2D)
  • Sub Division Surfaces at render time

View full product details for finalRender R2 for Maya