Category: News

Produce content faster and raise the bar of high-quality visuals with new capabilities in Maya.

This release brings support for LookDevX, an agnostic material editor that allows you to share materials seamlessly across the pipeline and includes a new, modern, node-based environment for authoring material graphs like USD, MaterialX, and Arnold.

Maya also offers you more artistic control with updates to modelling tools like Retopologize and the Boolean toolset, while animation and rigging updates keep you in the creative zone. These updates and new features are also available in Maya Creative.

Create photoreal scenes with powerful look development tools.

LookDevX

LookDevX is an agnostic material editor that enables standardized, portable material workflows. It allows you to share materials freely and accurately throughout a pipeline and includes a new, modern, node-based environment for authoring a variety of materials like USDShade, MaterialX, and Arnold.

LookDevX Graph

The LookDevX graph is an agnostic material graphing environment that currently supports material editing and authoring of USDshade graphs. Features like compounds, multi-level automatic node zoom, duplicating graphs, dedicated property editor, colour-managed colour pots and colour picker, direct material assignment, authoring UI are just some of available toolsets that will you to handle complex USD workflows.

USD Direct Material Assignment

The Outliner and LookDevX now support the assignment and removal of USD materials to one or more selected Prims in the USD stage. You can create new materials under the “mtl” scope list and control naming using environment variables. Material Subsets are functional and exposed in the USD Stage, but don’t currently support direct material assignment. Additionally, you can add materials to any selected material scope and move materials between scopes.

Attribute editor USD Material Support

The Attribute Editor can accurately compose USD materials with regard to UI groups and attribute names. A dedicated Material tab allows you to easily find and manage materials and shader properties. Custom authored materials and their UI groups are synced and are accurately represented between the LookDevX Property Editor and Attribute Editor.

Outliner USD Material Workflows

The Outliner has been enhanced to enable a comprehensive material workflow for artists. When performing direct material assignment, materials are created under a standardized or user-desired material scope name and are listed with regard to their compound organisation. You can move materials between scopes, add materials directly under your desired scope, and rename or delete selected materials. Multiselected actions are also supported for material assignment and for graphing materials from the Outliner to LookDevX.

Loading USD Material Graphs in to LookdevX

You can easily send USD materials from the Viewport and Outliner to LookDevX for any additional adjustments. Multiselect actions for graphing materials are enabled from the Outliner. You can also organize your LookDevX canvas by loading or clearing one or more selected materials.

Supporting different material libraries

LookDevX supports USD Shade, MaterialX and Arnold graphs giving you the flexibility to use various material libraries. Nodes are clearly illustrated using dedicated icons and prefixes on node types. LookDevX is designed and engineered as an Open Render plugin.

Material authoring workflow

LookDevX is a comprehensive material authoring workflow enabling look development artists to express themselves creatively and give them the ability to experiment with complex shading networks that can used by other artists down the pipeline. You can control minimum and maximum attribute range, customize the UI or selectively hide ports.

Produce high-quality visuals with interactive lighting and rendering tools.

Standard Surface

The Standard Surface shader is now the default shader for new objects in Maya. This offers a better out-of-the-box experience with quick access to a higher quality, physically based, flexible uber-shader that can represent a wide range of looks in the viewport as well as renderers such as Arnold. This includes metals, paint, clay, plastic and more.

Better default lighting in the Viewport

The default lighting in Maya has been improved to give better results with the new default Standard Surface shader. This will enable you to create new objects as well as default materials and lighting more easily. Additionally, new settings have been exposed for tuning default lighting.

OCIO 2.2 Integration

New updates to OpenColorIO 2.2 include several notable features including new ACES configs with improved accuracy and user-experience. Added support for config archives will enable make sending configs between collaborators more reliably. Built-in configs will allow convenient access without the need to download a config.

Create CG assets seamlessly with a robust modelling toolset.

Retopologize Improvements

• Feature Preservation: Preserve features like hard edges, edges by angle, and user-defined edge Component Tags during the retopologize process. New feature preservation options allow you to maintain specific areas of detail on input mesh and control or guide the resulting edge flow of a retopologized output mesh.
• Symmetry support: Retopologize meshes that require symmetrical topology using controls for axis and direction, take into account world and object space, as well as orientation and pivot offsets. This is useful for things such as characters and creatures, as well as any hard surface objects that require mirrored topology on two sides, for example, a chair or a mechanical part.
• Mesh Pre-check: A new option called “Scan input mesh for issues” warns you about potential problems with your mesh or about certain options that may cause undesirable results with a given mesh. Tips will also be provided to help you troubleshoot.

Make Live

• Multiple object support: Make Live now supports multiple objects at a time and provides visual feedback in the UI to help you identify which objects are live, including colored highlighting in the Outliner. You can target as many objects as you want in the viewport for things like snapping and constraining objects or components, as well as supporting Quad Draw workflows.
• Quad Draw Improvements: Quad Draw has been updated to work with multiple Make Live objects as well target meshes that have been set to Smooth Mesh preview mode. You can use Quad Draw to create new, simplified geometry on top of more complex collections of target meshes such as full characters that are made up of many individual pieces like clothing, armour, gear, and more.

Unsmooth Mesh

This new feature allows you to reduce the number of subdivisions of any catmul-clark smoothed, high-res mesh. You can now reverse the subdivision of more complex meshes while maintaining the overall shape and volume. This can be useful for creating low-resolution versions of meshes that have been smoothed and subdivided during the sculpting process.

Boolean Toolset

Improvements to the Boolean toolset give modellers more control when adding and editing new input objects in the Boolean Stack. Additionally, a new Interactive Update option provides a way to improve boolean performance while working with complex dense meshes.

Produce life-like performances with modern animation workflows.

Time Slider UI/UX Improvements

The Time Slider and its associated tools have been redesigned to provide a more intuitive and modern experience. This includes improvements to key, waveform and bookmark display, as well as interaction modes for moving and scaling keyframes, setting time ranges and more. You will be able to navigate and manipulate the timeline more intuitively and edit your animations more easily, directly in the Time Slider.

Animation Curve Brushes in the Graph Editor

New brush-based curve editing tools in the Graph Editor let you intuitively shape groups of keys. Using the Grab, Smooth and Smear tools, you can now interactively sculpt and refine the shape of curves to adjust or clean up existing animation. This is particularly useful for working with dense animation curve data such as motion capture or baked simulations.

Key and curve editing utilities

Several new key and curve editing features including offset curves, clamp curves and remove keys let you quickly modify the time and/or value of selected keys, ranges of keys or whole curves.

Interactive Key Scaling Improvements

A new key scaling widget removes the guesswork from the Scale Keys tool by introducing a manipulator as an alternative to the traditional gestural method. It will also display a value for your keys as you drag, or let you enter a percentage directly in the numeric value fields. This makes scaling curves and keys more intuitive and allows animators to control scale with more precision.

Unreal Live Link for Maya

Stream animation data seamlessly between Maya and Unreal 5.1.

Work with precision using enhanced rigging tools.

Reorder Rotation

The new Reorder Rotation feature lets you change the rotation axes of a selected object and also evaluates and shows the likelihood of gimbal lock for each. You change the rotation order of a control after it has been animated or when you don’t want to change the object pose.

Skin Cluster / Component Editor – Multi Skin Clusters

You can now have more than one Skin Cluster on a single piece of geometry, opening the door to many new possibilities for riggers. Artists will have the ability to easily layer deformations like creating a layer for squash and stretch, a layer for kinematic motions, and another for fine details. This also opens up possibilities for alternate weighting for a variety of needs, both technical and artistic.

Paint Skin Weights – Numeric Deformer Weight Visualization

A new Weight Visualization setting in the Paint Skin Weights Tool lets you display weight influence numerically in the Viewport. Animators and riggers can view and edit the influence of weighting on surrounding joints and influences more precisely.

Other Rigging Improvements

• Rigging Math Nodes: A robust set of math nodes have been added to the suite of utility nodes that riggers can leverage for complex character rigs. This includes nodes such as sin, pi, cos, log, lerp and many more. The nodes allow riggers to combine simple math operations into node graphs that make up complex rig components.
• aimMatrix and blendMatrix improvements: A new matrix setting has been added to both the aimMatrix and blendMatrix nodes. SpaceMatrix is a set of Pre and Post Matrix floats that multiply inputs and outputs. This will allow riggers to create setups without the need for extra multMatrix nodes.

Artist-friendly updates.

Mac M1 architecture support

Artists on the Mac platform will now be able to run Maya on modern systems with the latest M1 architecture.

Viewport Panel Filter UI

In the Show Menu of the Viewport, menu items are now sorted into categories in alphabetic order. You can also save custom filter presets allowing you to quickly switch between filters in any given viewport to focus on your work.

Hydra for Maya

This first look of Hydra for Maya enables you to use Pixar’s Hydra rendering framework as a viewport inside Maya. This plugin is part of the USD for Maya and is open source. With Storm, you get Hydra’s primary rasterization render engine which is highly scalable, multi-pass and includes OpenSubdiv mesh rendering support. With the render delegate system, you also have the ability to use the renderer of your choice.

Buy Maya

To purchase, visit the Maya product page.

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Bluegfx is delighted to be working with Hammerspace, a ground-breaking technology that is transforming the way the visual effects, animation and post-production industries approach storage and data management.

Hammerspace has the potential to revolutionise the industry by streamlining the production process and freeing up valuable time and resources for creative endeavours.

It can be deployed to drive the need for remote workforces, metadata-driven workflows, hybrid cloud storage and burst render, maximising your usage of personnel and varied infrastructure worldwide.

It is fully integrated with Autodesk ShotGrid and many other industry standard creative tools and is already adopted by many studios worldwide including, Jellyfish Pictures and Mathematic Studios .

Find out more

Visit: Why Hammerspace? 

Contact Us

Call us on +353 (0)1 526 6717 or email sales@bluegfx.eu

In the Media & Entertainment industry, there is an ever-increasing need for remote deployment of people and infrastructure.

If you need a remote working studio environment and are looking for business continuity, you should take a look at the virtualised platform from Simple Animation. Designed specifically for the visual effects, games and design visualisation markets, their cloud-based platform lets you create and manage your digital content creation in a secure cloud environment. You can scale easily and reduce your overall long-term costs, maximising the flexibility of your budgets and only paying as you need to.

It fully supports all the typical software tools that you use including Adobe, Autodesk, Chaos and many more, check out this short video that explains how simple it is:

Powered by IBM Cloud, facilitating connectivity to remote teams located anywhere; you can be operational quickly and easily, all you need is a thin client and internet access to connect to powerful virtual workstations and it only takes about an hour the first time to set up your studio or project.

Business continuity is critical, SimpleCloud solutions provide you with a simple and flexible cloud-based platform, where you will instantly access powerful virtual machines and share secure projects and workflows with colleagues around the world.

Contact Us

To find out more about purchasing a Simple Animation subscription or to arrange a virtual demonstration contact a member of our sales team. Call us on +353 (0)1 526 6717 or email sales@bluegfx.eu

The Substance suite of tools is the leading software solution for 3D materials. Discover how Substance apps can bring your creations to life—whether you work in games, film, architecture or design.

Take your designs beyond 2D by hand painting your 3D models. Substance Painter has smart materials that adjust to any model to show realistic wear and tear. Experiment with mask presets that adapt to any shape and paint with customisable brushes from Adobe Photoshop.

Paint and texture your 3D models in real-time.

Work with a premium library of 3D materials.

Select from thousands of fully customisable materials created by our specialists and with the help of some of the industry’s most influential artists. Generate infinite texture variations to fit all types of creative applications. The parametric materials can be used with the most popular content creation apps and game engines like Unity and Unreal.

Digitise and author 3D material collections.

Your definitive scan processing resource, powered by AI.  Modify existing materials or make new ones from photographs and high-res scans. Alchemist is an ideal go-to for workflows that require real-world references, as well as creative explorations. Do it all with a speedy and easy-to-use UI.

Create your own realistic 3D materials.

Craft customised materials with full authoring control. Start from scratch in a non-destructive, node-based environment and create tileable textures and patterns and edit complete texture sets. Substance Designer also features ever-expanding scripting capabilities. Design materials with precision and achieve your creative vision.

Your new favourite workflow.

Substance files play well with other Creative Cloud apps and 3rd party apps for modelling, rendering and game creation. Import, tweak and export Substance SBSAR files directly within Adobe Dimension, Cinema 4D, Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, Unity, Autodesk’s Maya and 3ds Max and many more.

Contact Us

To find out more, call us on +353 (0)1 526 6717 or email sales@bluegfx.eu

iToo Software has announced the release of Forest Pack 8, the latest version of its advanced scattering and scene assembly plugin for 3ds Max. Version 8 cements Forest Pack’s reputation as the most robust and flexible scattering option with the addition of Forest Sets, linked areas, Effects improvements and much more, offering users completely new and efficient workflows to populate scenes.

Forest Sets is a brand new helper plugin used to create a multi-purpose container for scene objects. A Forest Set object can be added to a Forest object as a collection of geometry, surfaces, references or areas. Multiple Forest Objects can share a Forest Set, making it simple to add or remove areas, geometry or surfaces and update several scatters from one easy to edit location. Even better, the contents of a layer can be dynamically linked to a Forest Set, making it easy to update scatters using familiar scene organisation tools.

To further improve the options for creating interdependent scatters, Forest Pack 8 adds the ability to link to areas referenced in another Forest Pack object. Using this approach you could have a single parent Forest Object that controls all of the areas for several children. Combining Forest Sets and linked areas makes it easier than ever to create huge flexible interlinked ecosystems.

Forest Pack 8 also introduces some often-requested features to Surface UV mode – making it much more powerful. In previous versions, to use surface UV mode you’d have to sacrifice the ability to use any other types of areas. In version 8, you can now use Spline, Object, and other area types in combination with UV surfaces by projecting them along one of 3 axes using the new Area->Projection Axis parameter. Edge mode is even supported when using spline areas.

Other features in Forest Pack 8 include:

Availability:

• Autumn Leaves – A new preset library of high quality photo-scanned leaves for those chilly autumnal renders. The presets are logically organised by colour and supplied as both individual leaves for detail work and patches for filling large areas.
• Forest Effects improvements – Updates include the ability to use splines that are independent from distribution areas, opening up to a whole new way to work. Using these features it is possible to modify just the parts of a larger scatter by enclosing them inside a path that has no impact on distribution areas. It is also now possible to read the material ID from the surface and splines.
• New Forest Effect presets – To illustrate the benefits of the new Effects improvements, several new sample presets are available, including: the ability to rotate objects to follow splines, tilt objects to follow splines, scale by proximity to splines or within an area, limit by spline material ID and much more.
• Filter Forest Effects – Forest Effects can now be filtered so that they only apply to a subset of the geometry list, allowing you to refine individual types of plants using the powerful effects system.
• Scatter linked hierarchies – An alternative to groups, this new option means it is now possible to scatter child objects of source geometry, maintaining their hierarchy. Hierarchical objects can be animated, and Forest Pack can even control or randomise their playback just like a normal mesh!
• Randomise Position – When using path mode, it’s now possible to shuffle the position of objects while still following the spline – great for breaking up regular patterns for a more believable distribution of plants or other objects.
• Easier Error Identification – Save precious time by identifying issues at a glance. Forest Pack’s icon now changes colour depending on three different error states.
• Paint Areas UI – The brush size parameter is now available in the main interface for easier access.
• User Properties – V-Ray CPU users will be pleased to know user properties are now retained making it possible to use advanced texturing workflows.
• Vertex Colour – Arnold users can now take advantage of vertex colour in their materials and be confident that Forest Pack will retain the final look.

For a detailed overview, visit the Forest Pack 8 page on the iToo Software website. A full changelog of all the features, fixes and improvements can be found in the documentation.

Forest Pack 8 is available to download now for users with an active maintenance plan.

Forest Pack 8 Lite is also now available which includes all of the new features mentioned above.

Buy Forest Pack

To purchase Forest Pack, visit their product page here.

Get in touch

Contact us on +353 (0)1 526 6717 or email sales@bluegfx.eu

When you’re ready to create photorealistic renderings and animations, V-Ray does it all. And now, V-Ray 6 for SketchUp lets you do even more.

Powerful new tools let you create detailed geometric patterns and beautiful custom skies. New and improved materials boost rendering speeds and realism, and cloud collaboration and Enscape compatibility bring teams together like never before.

Next level collaboration

V-Ray and Enscape compatibility – Introducing the most powerful visualization workflow in the AEC industry. With V-Ray 6, you can transfer your real-time scenes from Enscape and continue building on your work to take it to the highest possible level of photorealism. With support for Enscape materials, lights and compatible 3D models, V-Ray ensures that all design decisions are kept throughout the project. No dead ends. No starting over. A fast and easy design process.

Chaos Cloud collaboration – Share your work and collaborate with internal and external stakeholders on the cloud. With Chaos Cloud Collaboration you can upload your images and image panoramas straight from the V-Ray Frame Buffer and significantly speed up the approval process. 

For the full list of V-Ray 6 for SketchUp improvements, check out Chaos’ documentation page > .

V-Ray 6 for Rhino

V-Ray 6 enables you to take advantage of powerful new ways to collaborate with colleagues and clients. Now, bring an Enscape scene inside V-Ray and take it to photorealism. Share your work and get feedback with Chaos Cloud Collaboration. Add custom clouds and create breathtaking time-lapses with the new procedural cloud system. Create more complex and more realistic materials with just a few clicks. And more. 

 Next level collaboration

• V-Ray and Enscape compatibility – Now, you can take your real-time Enscape scenes into V-Ray’s photorealistic rendering engine and unlock AEC’s most powerful visualization pipeline. We’ve worked together to ensure Enscape 3D models, lights and materials are fully supported by V-Ray, so your projects develop smoothly with effortless collaboration between designers and visualization specialists.
• Chaos Cloud collaboration – Get feedback the easy way with Chaos Cloud Collaboration. Share your images and panoramas directly from the V-Ray Frame Buffer to colleagues and clients anywhere in the world.

For the full list of V-Ray 6 for Rhino improvements, check out Chaos’ documentation page > 

Buy V-Ray 6 for Sketchup

To purchase visit the product page here.

Buy V-Ray 6 for Rhino

To purchase visit the product page here.

Contact Us

Call us on +353 (0)1 526 6717 or email sales@bluegfx.eu

Empower your creative team to take their ideas further. 

From designing to 3D prototyping to sharing creations across multiple formats and platforms, the Adobe Substance 3D Collection offers a state-of-the-art, end-to-end* workflow for Creative Professionals. The intuitive features enable designers to easily model, texture, stage and publish 3D content. You can also bolster your team’s 3D expertise by leveraging our brand-new Adobe Substance 3D Learn online videos and strengthen your in-house capabilities.* Modeler currently in Private Beta

Get started with ready-to-use parametric assets.
Experiment with ready-to-use parametric models, lights, materials, and environments. Explore and use thousands of high-end assets made by 3D specialists and world-class guest artists – all of which are included within the Substance 3D Collection plan. Plus, with modifiable parameters, there are infinite variations.

Integrate Substance effortlessly.
Substance allows you to have one unified parametric material library across all your apps. The non-destructive workflow seamlessly integrates not just with Creative Cloud apps but also with all major third-party 3D software in the market.

Contact Us

Contact us on 01 483 410370 or email sales@bluegfx.com.

Maya Creative offers modelling, animation, and rendering tools for artists and teams looking to scale up their workflows or access professional tools.

Unlike Maya, Maya Creative comes without API access and the extensibility needed for larger production workflows and will only be supported on Windows and Mac.

The Bifrost plug-in will be available on Maya Creative as read-only.

Customers can only access Maya Creative with Flex, a pay-as-you-go option for daily product use. 

Compare

Compare the features of Maya v Maya Creative.

Contact Us

Call us on +353 (0)1 526 6717 or email sales@bluegfx.eu

V-Ray 6 for Maya packs in a number of powerful, new tools that enable users to create without limits. They can now generate complex surfaces for stunning close-up shots at no extra memory cost. Craft just the right sky for their environment in just a few clicks.

Take their product design and HDRI renders to the next level, and more. With V-Ray 6, users can also make use of Chaos Cloud Collaboration to fast-forward their projects’ reviews and approvals, as well as easily monitor and manage rendering performance with V-Ray Profiler. Plus, they can experience a number of other workflow enhancements including identical results from IPR and the production renderer, enhanced USD support, faster and more efficient rendering, background Chaos Cloud Rendering submissions and much more.

Key features in V-Ray 6 for Maya

Create without limits.  Powerful, new tools allow you to build anything imaginable.

V-Ray Enmesh. Create complex surfaces with lots of detail for stunning close-up shots. With Enmesh, you can repeat geometry across the surface of an object at no extra memory cost. Start treating geometry like a texture, creating intricate chain mails, car grilles, metal grids, panels, fences, fabrics, and so much more.

Finite Dome light mode. Elevate your product design and HDRI environment renders with the new, more flexible ground projection capabilities of the V-Ray Dome Light. Set the scale of your light, and have full control over blend settings with the new Finite Dome mode.

Procedural clouds. Craft just the right cloudy sky for your environment in just a few clicks with V-Ray Sun and Sky’s new procedural clouds system. No need to settle for a static HDR or a cloudless sky. Now you can easily simulate a variety of cloud types and weather conditions, from partly cloudy to overcast. Render realistic stills or dynamic time-lapses.

V-Ray Decal with Displacement. You can now use V-Ray Decal to add displacement to any surface for even more realistic cracked walls, rocks, scratched and rusty surfaces, embossed lettering, and more.

Streamline your workflow. Fast-forward your project’s reviews and approvals.

Chaos Cloud Collaboration. Get rapid, consolidated feedback on your work’s progress. Upload your renders to Chaos Cloud Collaboration right from V-Ray’s Frame Buffer, and share your work with colleagues and clients to add comments and annotations, see panorama views and more — from anywhere in the world.

Easily monitor and manage rendering performance, and so much more.

V-Ray Profiler.  Get reports on the time spent calculating shaders and volumes in your scenes. Locate all hot spots in your scene and optimize pipelines for even faster rendering. Pair V-Ray Profiler with the Memory Tracker, and you now have everything you need to monitor and optimize your projects.

Light Cache in IPR. Make better decisions while iterating on your designs with V-Ray’s Interactive Production Renderer (IPR) output now being identical to the production renderer.

Background Cloud Cloud submissions.  You now have uninterrupted access to Maya when submitting to Chaos Cloud Rendering, so you can continue working.

Enhanced USD support. Experience a USD workflow that’s smoother than ever. We’ve added support for the latest MayaUSD version as well as included new enhancements for OpenVDB volumes and V-Ray material exports, promoting an easy exchange with Solaris and USD-powered pipelines.

Faster rendering.  V-Ray Environment Fog now renders up to 30% faster. Translucent material rendering is also up to 2x faster thanks to V-Ray Material’s brand-new Illumination mode. Plus, scenes featuring thousands of instances now render more efficiently.

Shade faster and better. Speed up shading and create even more physically accurate materials.

Thin Film layer.  Create realistic soap bubbles, oil spills and more with the new Thin Film option available in the V-Ray Material.

Enhanced V-Ray Material energy preservation. Render even more physically accurate rough metals and other reflective surfaces with enhanced V-Ray Material energy preservation.

Composition Guides Layer in VFB. Fine-tune your scenes’ compositions without going to a separate application. With customizable overlays, the new composition guides layer in the VFB allows you to easily experiment and enhance your image compositions.

VFB Panorama Viewer.  Now you can preview your spherical panorama renders while rendering, right from your V-Ray Frame Buffer.

What’s new

 V-Ray is the renderer that does it all, allowing users to create without limits. No need to switch applications and interrupt your creative process. Users can easily create complex surfaces with lots of detail for realistic close-up shots at no extra memory cost.

V-Ray 6 speeds up shading and allows users to create even more physically accurate reflective materials.

V-Ray 6 for Maya also enables users to easily monitor your scene’s shaders and volumes rendering performance and locate hot spots for optimization.

You now have a fast and efficient way to share your renders, collect feedback and collaborate with your team or customers. You can also create custom skies for their environments in just a few clicks and render powerful timelapse videos.

V-Ray 6 introduces a number of enhancements that streamline users’ workflows, including consistent results between IPR and the production renderer, enhanced USD support, faster and more efficient rendering, and more.

V-Ray 6 adds even more functionality to the V-Ray Frame Buffer and enables you to further streamline your workflow and make better decisions as you review your work.

Users can now render with V-Ray in any host application and benefit from the powerful suite of Chaos products and services with just a single license.

Buy V-Ray for Maya

To purchase visit the product page here.

Get in touch

Call us on +353 (0)1 526 6717 or email sales@bluegfx.eu