Montreal - Softimage Co., a subsidiary of Avid Technology Inc., has announced the availability of the 3Delight (DNA Research) integrated production renderer for Softimage|XSI professional 3D modeling, animation, character creation, and rendering software.
The 3Delight plug-in brings the quality and speed of the 3Delight render engine, as well as the power and flexibility of RenderMan rendering standards and practices as established by Pixar, to the Softimage|XSI user base. Softimage introduced an open application programming interface (API) for its rendering environment in Version 6, and caught the attention of third-party rendering partners.
Highlights of 3Delight for XSI include:
· Render Tree Support - Complete integration means the capacity to work with Softimage|XSI shaders, without additional setup. Shading networks are automatically converted to RenderMan shaders that are suitable for 3Delight. Third-party RenderMan shaders can also be assigned to geometry if necessary.
· Geometry support - All Softimage|XSI geometric primitives are supported. Includes hair and subdivision surfaces. 3Delight renders all surfaces smoothly, no tesselation settings are required.
· Fast 3D Motion Blur and Depth of Field - The speed of 3Delight's motion blur is as fast as postprocess 2D motion blur while being more accurate. Depth of field is equally fast.
· Fast Displacements - 3Delight will render displacements at almost no additional rendering time. Displacement maps imported from 3D paint packages, such as ZBrush and Mudbox, will render efficiently and accurately.
· Subsurface Scattering - Easy to set up sub-surface scattering enables artists to render the subtleties of light scattering inside translucent objects.
· RIB export and import - Many RIB writing and reading functions are available for advanced pipelines. This includes binary and compressed RIB export, delayed RIB archives, scene caching and RIB boxing.
· High-end quality, speed, and robustness
3Delight for Softimage|XSI software is available now in the following configurations:
· 3Delight For Softimage|XSI - Studio $1450, includes full feature complete package. Each license runs a maximum of 4 threads.
· 3Delight Softimage|XSI - Artist $495