Tuesday, February 19th, 2013 Posted by Jim Thacker

Motiva releases Thea for 3ds Max

Motiva has released a commercial beta of Thea for 3ds Max. The new plugin integrates Thea Render, Solid Iris Technologies’ hybrid unbiased/biased renderer, inside Max.

The two developers had previously worked together to integrate Colimo, Motiva’s innovative software for adjusting pre-rendered images in real time, with Thea Render.

Support for Particle Flow and advanced modifiers
The demo video above begins fairly conventionally, but gets more interesting from around a minute in, where Thea is shown rendering a 3ds Max Particle Flow particle system.

According to Motiva, Thea for 3ds Max supports “all kinds of geometry”, including deformable meshes, renderable splines and compound objects.

The plugin can render any native modifier that can be converted to an Editably Poly, including Hair & Fur.

Animation is also supported, as well as instances and external references, with a Random Material option to add variation to replicated objects. The plugin also supports iToo Software’s Forest Pack vegetation system.

Interactive preview – but not the GPU-based version yet
The plugin also provides an interactive render preview via 3ds Max’s ActiveShade window, supporting “preview exposure, DOF or any tonemap settings applied from darkroom tab”.

According to Motiva, the preview is currently CPU-based, but a GPU-accelerated version, previewed last year, will be released “as a free upgrade”.

Final-frame renders can be sent via Max’s Backburner network render system “without special considerations”.

Pricing and availability
Thea for 3ds Max is available now for 3ds Max 2009 and above at a beta price of €320 (around $425).

Thea Render is also available as a €295 ($395) standalone application, with import plugins for 3ds Max, Blender, Cinema 4D, modo, Rhino, SketchUp and Softimage. Each costs a further €30-70 ($40-95).

Read more about Thea for 3ds Max on the Solid Iris website
(Includes download link to the trial version)

Read more about Thea for 3ds Max on Motiva’s website