Wednesday, September 25th, 2013 Posted by Jim Thacker

DNA Research releases 3Delight for Softimage 4.0


Particle tests rendered in 3Delight for Softimage by YouTube user bareijo. Developer DNA Research says that version 4.0 of the renderer boosts performance on large particle clouds by up to ten times.

DNA Research has released 3Delight for Softimage 4.0, a “major evolution” of its RenderMan-compliant production renderer, adding support for real-time relighting, and some significant performance boosts.

The renderer supports the majority of Softimage’s native features, including all of the geometry types and material nodes, and the majority of ICE features. A separate version of the software is available for Maya.

Fast path tracing and interactive rendering
The release’s headline feature is a new “blazingly fast” path tracing rendering system.

DNA is claiming a considerable speed boost for the technology, particularly for multi-bounce GI and complex scenes: “It is not uncommon for images to render ten times faster compared to the previous major release.”

Coupled with the path tracer, a new progressive rendering system means modifications to lights, materials and cameras are immediately visible in the render region, making it possible to relight a scene without reloading.

The subsurface scattering and image-based lighting algorithms have also been improved, resulting in faster, less noisy renders – without the need to blur environment maps in the case of the latter.

Better performance, new preset materials
Workflow has been simplified, with image-based lighting now supported by default, and overall performance has been improved: the developer quotes a speed boost of up to ten times on scenes with large particle clouds.

There are also three new preset physically plausible materials: two intended to mimic glass and skin, and one general-purpose dual-layer material intended to recreate metals, plastics and a range of other surfaces.

Free quad-core licence for any freelancer or studio
3Delight for Softimage 4.0 is available now for XSI 7.0 to Softimage 2014, running on Windows or Linux. A quad-core licence costs $400; a multi-core licence costs $900.

DNA Research also provides a free licence of 3Delight to anyone wanting to test the renderer, and licensed for use in commercial work. Previously this was capped at two CPU cores; it has now been upgraded to four.

Read a full list of new features in 3Delight for Softimage 4.0

Visit the 3Delight for Softimage website

Download a free copy of 3Delight for Softimage 4.0
(Limited to one per artist or studio)