Foundry ships Colorway 4.0
Foundry has released Colorway 4.0, the latest version of its software for generating and visualising variants of product designs for use in marketing material and internal documentation.
New features include support for product rendering with mPath, Modo’s new render engine, new options for creating and applying colour gradients, and support for dynamic part linking.
Generate design variants for products without continually re-rendering
Launched in 2014 and released commercially the following year, Colorway is a “digital design assistant” for generating and communicating variations of product designs for marketing and internal communications.
The software is particularly used in shoe design – both Nike and New Balance have adopted it in their pipelines – with many firms using it alongside Modo, Foundry’s 3D modelling and rendering software.
Users export projects from a compatible 3D application – currently either Modo or Cinema 4D – by rendering them in Colorway’s DCI file format.
It is then possible to test different material and lighting combinations inside Colorway without re-rendering, simply by dragging new colours onto views of the model.
Colorway creates standard orthographic views of the finished designs and pulls in linked information to generate tables for manufacturing documentation and product marketing.
New in Colorway 4.0: mPath support, better colour selection and masking workflow
Colorway 4.0 strengthens workflow with Modo, adding support for the software’s new mPath renderer in the accompanying integration kit.
The release also adds the option to create and store 2D colour gradient swatches, then drag and drop those gradients onto the 3D model in the same way as solid colours, as shown in the video above.
Users can also link parts across multiple products, with each product updating dynamically when the material for the part is changed.
Other changes include new options for linking, grouping and merging SVG items, better handling of masks, and UI updates for the software’s colour palettes and colour picker.
Pricing and system requirements
Colorway 4.0 is available for Windows 10 and macOS 10.13+. Integration kits are available for Modo and Cinema 4D. The software is rental only, and is now priced on enquiry.
Read a full list of new features in Colorway 4.0 in the online documentation