RandomControl launches Maverick Indie
RandomControl has launched Maverick Indie, a new edition of its Maverick Studio renderer aimed at entertainment artists rather than CAD professionals.
The Indie edition includes most of the key features from the physically accurate spectral GPU renderer, bar support for CAD file formats, but is available at half the price.
A physically based render engine balancing ease of use and modern GPU rendering features
Developed by Arion renderer creator RandomControl and launched earlier this year, Maverick Studio is a streamlined new renderer aimed at product and automative visualisation.
It provides a drag-and-drop workflow for assigning PBR materials and setting up lighting and a render camera, plus a physically accurate full-spectral render engine with built-in denoising.
The software is CUDA-based, and supports modern GPU rendering features like out-of-core rendering.
Maverick Indie: a half-price edition without the CAD-specific features
Described as the “baby brother” of Maverick Studio, Maverick Indie is a new edition of the software aimed at entertainment and general-purpose visualisation work.
At €249.99 (around $275), it’s roughly half the price of its sibling, a saving made possible by stripping out all of the CAD-specific functionality.
As well as support for CAD file formats like STEP and IGES, and plugins for applications like Rhino, that includes NURBS and cross-section rendering.
In addition, Maverick Indie lacks support for command-line rendering – which isn’t exactly CAD-specific, but which does fit the broader theme of features more important to studios than individual artists.
One-click import for assets created in Substance Painter, Substance Designer and ZBrush
What you do get in Maverick Indie is “one-click support” for three other key DCC tools: Substance Painter, Substance Designer and ZBrush.
In the case of assets created in Substance Designer, importing any texture will automatically pull in and configure the remaining texture maps: a workflow that also applies to more general PBR texture sets.
Similar support is provided for any asset exported using ZBrush’s Multi Map Exporter.
Maverick Indie also includes a wizard-driven system for creating turntable animations of models, both as viewport previews and as final-quality animations.
That puts it into a similar part of the market to Marmoset’s Toolbag: a more explicitly games-focused tool, but one also used for quick test renders and asset turntables.
Toolbag has well-developed baking tools and can render skeletal animations – something that RandomControl has said that Maverick Indie will not support.
Instead, RandomControl is banking on workflow and its track record in developing GPU production renderers being selling points in Maverick Indie’s favour.
Pricing and system requirements
Maverick Indie is available for 64-bit Windows Vista and above. It’s CUDA-based, so most Nvidia cards less than four to five years old should be compatible.
A perpetual licence costs €249.99 (around $275); rental starts at €19.99/month (around $22/month).
Read a feature comparison between Maverick Studio and Maverick Indie on the Maverick Render blog