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Bullit
06-02-2009, 09:13 PM
ArtVPS launches Shaderlight heralding new age in interactive rendering

1 June 2009

ArtVPS has made Shaderlight, its revolutionary new interactive rendering technology, available for free download. Shaderlight promises to deliver massive productivity and creativity improvements over traditional ray-trace rendering engines. Shaderlight 0.1 is a plug-in for 3ds Max, the leading 3D modelling tool from Autodesk, and is free to download at www.artvps.com. Early adopters of the technology will be encouraged to help shape the software by becoming part of the Shaderlight online community (www.artvps.com/content/discuss) and providing valuable feedback during the key final phase of product development.

Shaderlight is a physically based ray-trace renderer that for the first time enables 3D artists and visualisation specialists to make changes to key image attributes at any stage of the rendering process – even on production quality images – without having to restart the render. Providing a greater level of creative freedom than traditional rendering techniques, Shaderlight enables users to not only see the progressive refinement of a scene when objects or camera angles are altered but also allows them to make interactive changes to materials, environments, lights and textures (the MELT elements) on full quality 3D images. Shaderlight also includes a new approach to global illumination (GI), which enables light, colour and intensity to be updated on screen without the need to re-render.

"As a CG artist I often have to work with clients who have no real idea of how long even the slightest change to an image can take to re-render," says Olaf Finkbeiner, CGI operator at Mainworks GmbH Germany and a member of the Shaderlight Product Steering Committee. "The ability to make changes to materials or environments on a final image would save us days of re-rendering and in this industry time is money."

Michael Lawson, CTO at ArtVPS adds: "This is an exciting time for everyone at ArtVPS. After 18 months of hard work we are delighted to launch Shaderlight 0.1. Shaderlight stands to fundamentally change the way 3D artists and visualisation specialists go about generating images. At the heart of the development has been the user’s experience and we believe that the time and cost savings that Shaderlight will bring are invaluable in terms of improving efficiency and project turnaround. CG professionals need never compromise on the quality of their final output again."

Shaderlight 0.1 is available now as a free download from www.artvps.com, where users can also share feedback, both with each other and with the ArtVPS development team.


http://www.artvps.com/content/news/news?newsID=53

Didn't tested it yet.

Szos
06-03-2009, 01:58 AM
That is actually pretty darn cool. It actually seems to work better than the built-in RT renderer in MAX 2010.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2vsYZb_AZg&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.artvps.com%2Fcontent%2Fshaderlight%2Fwhat-is-shaderlight&feature=player_embedded

I am wondering what the "catch" is with this free version. nothing ever is truly free.

duke
06-03-2009, 04:37 AM
I think the catch is that you won't truly have the fastest solution without one of their cards.

katem
06-03-2009, 09:30 AM
I think the catch is that you won't truly have the fastest solution without one of their cards.

Hi - it's Kate here from ArtVPS

There is no catch!
Shaderlight is completely separate from the old ArtVPS hardware solutions and will not be accelerated by PURE card or RenderDrive. It doesn't even have any specific graphics card requirements.

As an early release we're keen to get users involved so if users download Shaderlight v0.1 will remain free for them until the release of v1.0.

protograph
06-03-2009, 11:24 AM
ARTVPS have moved on from hardware development to my knowledge, so this is going to be for standard PCs, not dedicated hardware. It does look very exciting - changing the HDR and seeing results change in realtime is pretty awesome.

I don't think there's a catch - it's just not a final product, so I don't think it will be as fast and stable as the final release will be. I look forward hearing feedback once a few users are using it in anger and to see some final renders.

Szos
06-04-2009, 03:51 PM
Hi - it's Kate here from ArtVPS

There is no catch!
Shaderlight is completely separate from the old ArtVPS hardware solutions and will not be accelerated by PURE card or RenderDrive. It doesn't even have any specific graphics card requirements.

As an early release we're keen to get users involved so if users download Shaderlight v0.1 will remain free for them until the release of v1.0.
Nice to see someone from the "inside" able to post up about their own products.
So you mean to tell us there are no "watermarks" or time/size limitations? Does it work with all/most standard geometry (like hair and others)??

Are the renderings in the viewport (if allowed the proper amount of time) as good as if someone hit the Render icon?
I have always found it rather bizarre/frustrating that no matter how good these RT viewport renders come out, at the end of the day you still have to waste all this time rendering out a scene the old fashioned way to see the final end result.

katem
06-04-2009, 04:10 PM
Hi Szoz - thanks for your post!;)

Shaderlight is an interactive renderer designed to render a final image - not just a viewport preview.

The current release does have some limitations - due mainly to where we are in the development process. Images aren't watermarked but RAM requirements may limit the image size you can render for now. Shaderlight will render most standard geometry (but not hair at the moment unless it's converted to polys).
http://www.artvps.com/content/shaderlight/technical-specifications

We've release the software at this stage because we want to get your input. We want Shaderlight to work for you so we've created our own forum so users can give us feedback and share ideas on what they'd like to see.

http://www.artvps.com/content/discuss (http://www.artvps.com/content/discuss)

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