cebas ships moskitoRender for 3ds Max
Cebas has released moskitoRender, its much-anticipated GPU-based production renderer for 3ds Max, targeted at both visualisation and VFX work, and offering “next-generation movie-quality rendering”.
The new render engine is an unbiased path-tracer, offering physically based spectral rendering – and has the unusual selling point that it is largely workflow-agnostic, supporting 3ds Max’s standard materials and lights.
Unusual material- and light-agnostic workflow
Rather than shipping with its own set of materials, like V-Ray, moskitoRender is designed according to the philosophy that scenes should not have to be created specifically for a particular render.
It supports “most of” the standard 3ds Max and mental ray materials, and all the materials in the Autodesk Material Library, meaning that it should render AutoCAD and Inventor files without conversion.
Most of Max’s lighting effects are supported, including the Daylight system, Volume Light effects and photometric lights; and camera effects and exposure controls are handled via a standard 3ds Max camera object.
The renderer also supports instancing, with the “first true variation shader on GPU that can change the material based on individual elements of an instance or per whole instance”.
Rendering is physically based, and offers interactive depth of field and motion blur controls, with the effects of parameter changes being shown in Max’s ActiveShade view and moskitoRender’s physical camera in real time.
A step on the way to a GPU-enabled version of finalRender
Cebas is positioning moskitoRender as a step on the way to the long-delayed finalRender 4 GPU, the GPU-enabled version of its flagship 3ds Max renderer, which was first demoed in 2011.
The firm says that it is using the moskitoRender technology “to transform finalRender 4 into something the industry has not seen before”.
Users of finalRender 3.5 SE who buy a moskitoRender licence will be able to upgrade to finalRender 4 GPU on its release and pay only the difference in price – although when that will be, cebas hasn’t said yet.
Competitively priced, with unlimited network rendering
moskitoRender is available now for 3ds Max 2013 and above. It’s CUDA-based, so you’ll need an Nvidia card, and supports two GPUs: cebas recommends “one dedicated CUDA card for rendering for best interactivity”.
The pricing is competitive: at €295, moskitoRender comes in €60 under the price of Otoy’s OctaneRender standalone edition and Max plugin, including installation on as many render nodes as you want.
Updated 3 June: Cebas tells us that the dollar price of moskitoRender is also $295, making it an even stronger financial proposition for North American readers.
Read more about moskitoRender in cebas’s official announcement
Watch demo videos of the key features in moskitoRender
(Includes download link for trial version)