Maxon ships Redshift 3.5.17
Maxon has released Redshift 3.5.17, the latest version of the CPU/GPU-accelerated production renderer.
The update adds a new MatCap Shader node that Maxon describes as a first step towards support for non-photorealistic rendering, plus a Jitter node for generating colour variations between objects.
The new version was released as part of Maxon’s July product updates, along with Forger 2023.4 and Trapcode 2023.4.
New MatCap Shader node lays the groundwork for non-photorealistic rendering
Arguably the most significant change in Redshift 3.5.17 is the new MatCap Shader node, which Maxon describes as “lay[ing] the foundation for non-photo-real materials in Redshift”.
At the minute, it’s rather more limited, but enables users to create simple stylised materials by mapping an image onto a mesh relative to the render camera, as shown in the image above.
New Jitter node, CPU rendering improvements, and support for Blender on macOS
Other new features include the Jitter node, which makes it possible to generate colour variations across large numbers of objects that use a particular material.
Suggested uses range from generating variation in environment assets like foliage or rocks to creating more stylised motion-graphics-style effects.
Performance improvements include better scaling of CPU rendering performance across multiple CPU cores, or across multiple CPUs in a system.
In addition, the Blender plugin now supports macOS; and Maya users get support for Maya 2024 on macOS and Linux, support for the Windows version having been added in the previous release.
System requirements and price
Redshift 3.5.17 is available for Windows 10, glibc 2.17+ Linux and macOS 11.5+.
The renderer’s integration plugins are compatible with 3ds Max 2015+, Blender 2.83+, Cinema 4D R21+, Houdini 17.5+ (18.0+ on macOS), Katana 3.0v1+ and Maya 2016.5.
The software is rental-only, with individual subscriptions costing $45/month or $264/year.
Read an overview of the new features in Redshift 3.5.17 on the Redshift forum
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