Tuesday, January 29th, 2013 Posted by Jim Thacker

Golaem releases Golaem Crowd 2.2


Mikros Image Montréal’s crowd simulation shots on Astérix and Obélix: God Save Britannia were rendered in Arnold. Support for SolidAngle’s renderer has now been built into the commercial release of Golaem Crowd 2.2.

Golaem has released Golaem Crowd 2.2, the latest update to its Maya crowd-simulation system.

The software lets animators create crowd shots using familiar tools such as particle systems – as opposed to the AI-based approach of packages like Massive – and is in use at studios including Zoic and Mikros Image.

Arnold support, easier deployment, automatic texture variation
The latest release adds support for SolidAngle’s Arnold renderer: rapidly becoming a staple of medium-to-large animation and VFX studios. Golaem Crowd already supports RenderMan, 3delight, mental ray and V-Ray.

Golaem 2.2 also adds new procedural shaders and support for multitextures, making it possible to automate the process of assigning variant textures to the characters that make up a crowd.

Golaem has also created a new Golaem Crowd Render package, which encapsulates all of a studio’s Golaem Crowd rendering proxies in a single installation package for easier deployment on renderfarms.

Golaem Crowd 2.2 is available now for Maya 2011 and above on Windows and Linux. A permanent licence costs $6,599, including one year’s maintenance and unlimited render nodes.

Read more about Golaem Crowd 2.2 on the Golaem blog

Read the full Golaem 2.2 release notes