Katana lighting and look development software has been in development at Foundry for about 10 years. The Foundry team has continued to make regular updates during that time, the most recent of which have been versions 3.5, bringing multi-threading, the Monitor Layer and support for USD 19.11, and 3.6 when snapping, the Network Material Edit tool, a dockable UI and support for 3Delight 2.0 were added.
In a recent interview with Digital Media World, Jordan Thistlewood, Director of Product – Pre-production, LookDev & Lighting at Foundry said that their upgrades to Katana tend to fall into three main themes – improving the underlying approaches to artists’ challenges, enhancing performance and refining the user experience.
He said, “Changes to the underlying functionality re-shape Katana in response to changes in the demands placed on artists over time, but do not change its fundamental architecture, which is very solid and robust. We are mainly adding more modern approaches to the programming. Performance upgrades take advantage of Katana’s ability to handle massive, complex projects across many shots – and expand on it as people’s understanding of a ‘really big show’ continues to grow.
“Examples of how Foundry addresses UX upgrades in Katana are the Hydra Viewport, the change to Qt UI plugins and the Network Material Create tool, which are the new shading nodes added in 3.2. Changes don’t always happen in one step. Ahead of the Hydra Viewport, for instance, an API was added in 2.6 that allowed users to add their own viewer and meanwhile allowed Foundry developers to add the Monitor Layer in v3.5.”
It’s also interesting to know that Katana’s API draws the Viewport in layers such as the 3D Open GL geometry layer, the handles and so on. It looks like a single Viewport to the user, but is in fact a series of layers.
Artists always have the potential to display complex workflows by visualising in the Katana UI anything or everything happening in the project. Jordan said, “That may sound useful, but would be overwhelming, and wouldn’t help lighting, look development or digital cinematography artists to do their jobs more efficiently or any better. Such artists need space to be creative on screen and need to see the image they are working on, larger and more clearly than anything else.”
This need has led to the development of a far less cluttered view in Katana 4.0, streamlined per user, with relevant information accessed through small HUDs, trimmed down for a specific purpose. Selection tools are available for portions of images, and users can interact with 3D objects, like lights – all functions are there close by, instead of spread across multiple monitors. Foundry also wanted to design the system to suit people currently working on Wacom tablets, or who plan to in the future, leading to UX combinations that would be easy both on a mouse and with a Wacom pen.
The Viewport improvements in Katana 4.0 concern the way artists interact with scenes. “Typically, you will see 3D models drawn up in a game-style system – this is a fairly quick approach and allows selections but does not scale well for complex crowded scenes, Drawing extensive geometry for OpenGL would bog the processor down. While raytracing cuts through the complexity and produces a beautiful result, it is slower.
Katana now supports both methods in the Viewport. But both still need a way for artists to interact with selections. So, Foundry took Katana’s ability to select items from a render, and moved it into the Viewport. Whether an artist is working with the OpenGL geometry OR a raytraced imge, he or she can interact and select parts of it natively without choosing a particular method, and both have the same workflow.
An example would be a large, crowded scene with, say, 100,000 characters. The artist can render and see the result in the Viewport – and can still select and work on a single character from that render in Katana. It isn’t necessary to track the separate elements from the hierarchy.
Katana 4.0 has an Artist-focussed Lighting Mode that allows artists to think and act like cinematographers do on set and to use the application as a digital cinematography platform. For example, cinematographers will put a lamp in a scene, calling for a light fixture that exposes correctly and looks lit. They then think of the way the lamp will light the characters and scene, and what other off-camera light sources may be needed to achieve the effect they want, while still looking as though the scene is lit by the lamp.
“This is a typical process on a real set,” said Jordan. “In Katana, artists have access to modes and HUDs allowing them to place lights according to either where they want the light to fall OR where a light source is located in 3D space. Once the locations are selected, Katana handles the scene lighting.
“When the environment light is designed correctly, the area lights can be defined. This means that a higher priority can be given to how light strikes, wraps around or otherwise affects an asset or scene, than where a lamp sits in 3D space. For all of this work, artists have the small, specific HUDs to control intensity, exposure, colour, spread and so on, similar to working at a lighting mixer on set. Artists can also still clone and duplicate lights as usual – with all relevant controls directly in front of them.”
You might also choose to create a light that hits the scene at a certain angle that will be seen through a given camera position. Given those parameters, Katana can place the light to match. It removes much of the mechanical work – that is, the steps needed to feed in precise values – so that you can light the way you think.
Jordan commented that meanwhile, render engines are also developing in a similar ‘on-set’ way. He said, “It’s no longer always necessary to break down and recreate the physics of a lighting scenario. Once you place a light, tweaking and adjusting it according to how the light bounces through the scene as you work is always possible, but Katana is taking advantage of what the new rendering developments can achieve.” Since Katana has always been renderer agnostic, supporting 3Delight, Arnold, Redshift, RenderMan and V-Ray, all the new tools likewise work with each renderer plugin as well.
A new Light and Shadow Pattern tool is based on a similar approach. When casting shadows in a scene, the user can select a point on an object to cast a shadow and then select where the shadow should fall, for example, sending a shadow across a character’s face. The light will be placed accordingly. A certain amount of interaction is still needed to refine the look, but each iteration is used more effectively to arrive at the ones that follow.
Foundry has developed Multiple Simultaneous Renders to make rendering more productive for lighting artists. Earlier, it was necessary to complete, or cancel, one full render before you could stop, look, adjust and then do another. But Katana has its own separate rendering program, which feeds the rendered images back to the main Katana program UI.
“That separation allows a greater flow of traffic back to Katana and supports simultaneous renders, which means you can compare two renders more readily and toggle between them while they are processing,” said Jordan. “You can have several tasks underway at once on files from the same project. Katana accomplishes this kind of work very well, keeping multiple jobs on the go from one project file, such as a number of shots or asset setups for an animation.”
To use simultaneous rendering at scale, Katana has a queuing system for controlling a series of renders and showing their status in resizable thumbnails. Instead of just waiting out the processing time, artists can watch progress under different lighting set ups, for example, or for grouped assets, when a change is made on one, Katana will allow it to affect the others in the group while the render carries on.
Also called Katana Foresight, the new workflows give artists the foresight to make the right choices, earlier in a project, and take a level of guess work out of rendering. It also makes use of all your processing cores while you figure out what to do next!
To help users follow the renders visually as they proceed, and make faster, better decisions, Foundry is planning to ship a Contact Sheet mode with version 4.1, similar to the contact sheet in 3Delight.
Scalable Interactive Network Rendering is another new workflow that helps artists make decisions earlier on with less iteration by giving them the option to use external machines to complete specific renders. At times, artists are constrained by lack of horsepower and the cost of rendering any single item. Now, they can connect those tasks, including a series of simultaneous renders, to a render farm where the work can be distributed across machines to access as much power per render as possible. Less waiting for results makes the connection between user, software and hardware more direct.
Into the future, further extension of the new rendering capabilities is high on the agenda for Katana. Foundry is now working on Multiple Live Renders, for which ‘live’ refers to making changes during rendering and letting the render refresh as it proceeds. “Currently, Katana supports only one live render at a time, but the architecture could support multiple renders at once. The artist would make a change and then watch how it looks in all versions, adjusting each one as it goes,” said Jordan.
“The upcoming contact sheet mode, as well as the access to render farm capacity, should help this process. Having immediate feedback gives artists a level of freedom when taking a project further. We’re also planning a number of smaller upgrades to Katana 4.1 soon, ranging from using streaming to optimise network traffic, interacting with Nuke and Mari, and exporting information to and from Katana. The goal for all of this is to upgrade the way artists interact with their production work.
Katana 4.0 is expected to be released in October 2020. Foundry has also created a page where artists and readers can register their interest in Katana 4.0. www.foundry.com/
Chaos Czech Corona Renderer 6 for Cinema 4D is a new update for Cinema 4D artists and designers who want to apply more realism to the objects and environments they create in a faster, more creative way.
A new Sky Model can now accurately depict twilight and dawn, producing realistic results when the sun is down to 2.85 degrees (5.4 sun diameters) below the horizon. Because the model is fully procedural, it is also simple to animate when creating time lapse sunrises and sunsets.
The new procedural Sky Model depicts dawn and twilight.
Multiple skies or suns can be also added to a scene, so artists can toggle through options like dusk and afternoon using LightMix. LightMix is used to change colours and intensities of lights after rendering, directly from the Corona VFB (Virtual Frame Buffer).
Artists can use the new Corona Distance Shader to create procedural materials that know how far they are from other objects in the scene, using a Distance Map. Instead of blending boundary lines, it is possible to create a precise coastline and add waves that move around it exactly, and to create wear-and-tear where objects meet, dirt along window sills and fog that hugs the ground.
The Distance Shader helps create fog that hugs the ground.
The Distance Shader map is also useful to control scattering via effectors such as visual effects or a visible or invisible spline. It can be used to drive scattering when you want to include, for instance, different grass lengths or twigs under trees, show displacement and work with 3D volumetric clouds.
The UVWRandomizer is also new and will automatically remove tiling artifacts to help make a scene more believable by avoiding repeating patterns that even seamless textures may have. Texture Randomization also works with procedurals, in UV space mode.
Randomising texture tiling.
The VFB can now be set to use the same colour space that Cinema 4D uses in the native Picture Viewer, which is good for when you are batch rendering or rendering an animation, because those elements always save from the Picture Viewer.
The new Adaptive Environment Sampler replaces the need to add skylight portals, which are time-consuming, and produces cleaner, more accurate environment lighting.
Propagating masks for reflection and refraction.
New lens effects give artists more control over bloom and glare, and include lens dust, scratches and for more realistic, creative results. corona-renderer.com
OpenVDB, an open source software project of the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF), has adopted NanoVDB to improve performance, ease development, and support GPU acceleration. Developed at NVIDIA by OpenVDB inventor Ken Museth, NanoVDB will be maintained by the OpenVDB community going forward.
OpenVDB is an industry standard library for manipulating, simulating and rendering the sparse dynamic volumes that VFX studios use to create realistic volumetric images such as water/liquid simulations and environmental effects like clouds and ice. OpenVDB creates VDB files, which are the volume database files containing data used to simulate these volumetric effects.
It has been used on films and television programs including ‘Frozen 2’, ‘Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald’, ‘Stranger Things’ and ‘How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World’. The library is maintained by the ASWF, a collaborative effort to advance open source software development in the motion picture and media industries.
OpenVDB is also highly customisable, designed for high performance, and has been adopted by Houdini 3D animation tools, Pixar RenderMan, Solid Angle Arnold and Next Limit Technologies RealFlow, among many other visual effects and animation applications and methods. The library includes a hierarchical, dynamic data structure and tools for efficiently storing sparse volumetric data on three-dimensional grids.
A LevelSet rendered using NanoVDB on CUDA. Level set methods are used to change voxel values, deforming the-surface for a specific result.
One of OpenVDB challenges is that it was not designed for use with GPUs. Its dependency on external libraries has made it difficult to access and use its VDB data on GPUs. “OpenVDB’s decade of success has always been limited by its inability to leverage the computational advantages offered by modern GPUs,” said Ken Museth, Senior Director in Simulation Technology at NVIDIA and Chair of the OpenVDB Technical Steering Committee (TSC).
The NanoVDB library, however, creates a simplified representation that is compatible with the core data structure of OpenVDB. Using a compact, linearised, read-only representation of the VDB tree structure that is suitable for fast transfer and traversal of the tree hierarchy, the data stream is aligned for efficiency and can be used on GPUs and CPUs.
NanoVDB allows GPU acceleration of OpenVDB workflows such as ray tracing, filtering and collision detection, while maintaining compatibility with existing pipelines. It has no external dependencies, works with different graphics APIs including CUDA, OptiX, OpenCL, OpenGL and DirectX, and supports both voxel and point data. Because NanoVDB grids produce a compact, read-only VDB tree, they work well for rendering tasks.
It is able to convert between the NanoVDB and the OpenVDB data structures, back-and-forth, and create and visualise the data. Ken said, “NanoVDB opens the door to real-time applications of certain VDB workflows. While the initial focus of NanoVDB is real-time rendering, we’re confident its adoption marks a new and exciting era for the OpenVDB project as it finally taps into the potential of GPUs.”
Cloud OpenVDB dataset rendered on the GPU using NanoVDB.
NanoVDB is open source and available for download on the OpenVDB GitHub.
"OpenVDB is a large part of our VFX pipeline. NanoVDB offers exciting new potential for asset storage, simulation and rendering. It allows us to design more GPU-tailored VDB tools for faster and more responsive artist workflows,” said Nick Avramoussis, FX R&D Programmer at DNEG and member of the OpenVDB TSC. “We're now investigating how NanoVDB can be combined with OpenVDB AX to provide an artist-friendly interface for customisable GPU kernels throughout our pipeline.”
The OpenVDB community has also released OpenVDB Version 7.1. The main updates include new fast sweeping methods that improve on existing techniques for computing signed distance fields as well as supporting velocity extension. The CMake build system, which configures the build files holding the commands and dependencies for OpenVDB components has been upgraded, and fixes applied to the core library and Houdini toolkit. www.aswf.io
Many thanks to everyone who has entered the AEAF 2020 Awards. All winners are listed below along with all finalists. It’s been wonderful to see so much terrific work from so many teams – judging is the challenge. The hard part this year is not being able to say congratulations and thanks in person. We are missing tremendously the chance to say hello, screen the showreel and have a drink with everyone at the Chauvel Cinema. It’s always a great event! We’re already looking forward to next year.
But - we hope you enjoy seeing the finalists and winners reel online. If your project is among the winners, although you won’t be able to pose for the camera and take your prize home with you, we will make sure your trophy is delivered as soon as possible. We will contact all winners shortly.
The Lion King - MPC Film - GOLD
Godzilla: King of the Monsters - MPC Film - SILVER
Jumanji: The Next Level - Weta Digital - BRONZE
The Addams Family - Cinesite - BEST FEATURE FILM - ANIMATION
Jumanji: The Next Level - Method Studios - BEST SEQUENCE
Ford V Ferrari - Rising Sun Pictures - SPECIAL MERIT
Lady and the Tramp - Weta Digital - SPECIAL MERIT
The Aeronauts - Framestore
Pokémon: Detective Pikachu - Framestore
Avengers: Endgame - Framestore
Lady and the Tramp - Framestore
Underwater - MPC Film
1917 - MPC Film
Lost in Russia - Fin Design and Effects
Call of the Wild - MPC Film
Terminator: Dark Fate - Method Studios
IT Chapter Two - Method Studios
The Invisible Man - Cutting Edge
The Aeronauts - Rodeo FX
Crawl - Rodeo FX
100% Wolf - Flying Bark Productions
His Dark Materials - Framestore - GOLD
The Witcher - Cinesite - SILVER
Stranger Things - Season 3 - Rodeo FX - BRONZE
Happy! Season 2 - Axis Studios
Operation Buffalo - Blackbird
The Commons - Blackbird
Lost in Space: Season 2 - Cinesite
Cosmos : Possible Worlds - Fin Design and Effects
The Witcher - Framestore
Watchmen - Dr Manhattan sequence - Framestore
Glitch: Season 3 - Future Associate
Reef Break - Future Associate
Miss Scarlet and the Duke - Screen Scene
The Time Shop - Psyop - GOLD
DICK's Sporting Goods - The New Kid - MPC - SILVER
Magic The Gathering - Throne of Eldraine - Axis Studios - BRONZE
AA Insurance - Dinosaur vs Unicorn - Alt.vfx
Teleflora - The Elf - Alt.vfx
Sounds Like Triple M - Cadre Pictures
Coca-Cola - Clay Dolls - Fin Design and Effects
Libresse - #WombStories - Framestore
Hug Insurance - Have a Hug - Hank Mango
King Living Innovation - MISTER
Samsung - Awesome Is For Everyone - MPC
Eurostar - You See More When You Don’t Fly - MPC
Kosciouszko - Beer with Altitude - New Holland Creative
Uniqlo Park - New Holland Creative
The Guardians - Passion Paris Productions
Football Federation Australia - Where Heroes Are Made - Passion Pictures
Erste Group - #HannaBumblebee - Passion Pictures
Wagamama - Bowl to Soup - Passion Pictures
ENI - PlusOne
Apple - psyop
Travel Oregon - psyop
Lamps - The Post Bangkok co.ltd.
Unionpay - VANDAL
EasyJet - Hide and Seek - MPC - GOLD
Toyota - Shortcut - Framestore - SILVER
Asus - Zenbook - Fin Design and Effects - BRONZE
RMA - The Search - Collider - SPECIAL MERIT
Living Innovation - Blackbird
Domuts - Blackbird
I Touch Myself - Collider
The Journey of Mankind is the Sea of Stars - Dans Digital
Adidas - Ozweego - Fin Design and Effects
TAB - Spotlight - Fin Design and Effects
Weltmeister - Maven - The Birth - Fin Design and Effects
LEGO - Drive What You Love - Framestore
WSJ - Read Yourself Better - Framestore
Apple - Bounce - Framestore
KIA - 7 years in 7 seconds - Glassworks Amsterdam
GMC Sierra - Juice
G2A - Juice
Lexus - LF30 - MPC
Postmates - When All You Can Pizza Is Think About - MPC
Lexus - Hybrid International - MPC
Argos - The Book Of Dreams - MPC
Kanebo Kate - New Holland Creative
Clear Vietnam - Smoke & Mirrors
Toyota Highlander - Heroes - Alt.vfx
Taco Bell - Xbox One - Alt.vfx
KIA Sorento - Black Edition - Heckler
SK-II - The Legend of Pitera - Heckler
Kraken - VANDAL
Nasonex - VANDAL
Raising Dion Season 1 - Rodeo FX - GOLD
Lego City Adventures - Season 1 - Passion Pictures - SILVER
Alphabet Street - Paper Moose - BRONZE
Are You Tougher Than Your Ancestors? - Sticky Pictures & Flying Kite Pictures SPECIAL MERIT
The Gamers 2037 - Game Master - Ambience Entertainment
Kiri and Lou - Sugar - Kiri and Lou
The Strange Chores - Media World Pictures Pty Ltd/Ludo Studio
Enlighten Canberra Architectural Projections - The Electric Canvas - GOLD
Victoria - Animism Studios - SILVER
Act V of the Exhibition Thierry Mugler: Couturissime - Rodeo FX - BRONZE
Yabarra - Dreaming in Light (2020 Adelaide Fringe) - Monkeystack - SPECIAL MERIT
NRL State of Origin In-Stadium Pre-Game Show Content - Hank Mango
Glastonbury 2019 - Heckler
City of Melbourne Christmas Festival Projections - State Library of Victoria - The Electric Canvas
Animal Planet - Into The Blue - MISTER
Sealy Haynes - MISTER - GOLD
Latitude - Let's - Heckler - SILVER
Zotac - MiniPCs - Jumbla - BRONZE
Save Freddo - Cadre Pictures
Tropeaka Protein Bars - Motion Lab
Art Gallery of NSW Japan Supernatural Exhibition Educational Primer - Hank Mango - GOLD
Sydney Living Museums: Surveillance - Collider - SILVER
Kids Helpline - Covid-19 and Isolating - Motion Lab - BRONZE
General Motors Next Generation Global Architecture - GM (Holden) Design
Synraysia Drain Relining - GRAMM
Batavia - Royal Australian Mint - Its Got Stealth
Project Firestorm - Jumbla
Anglo American - New Holland Creative
Dispute - Robert Grieves
Disorder - Robert Grieves
The Rest of My Days - Passion Paris Productions - GOLD
Khruangbin - Pelota - Glassworks - SILVER
Slipknot - Unsainted - Rodeo FX - BRONZE
Persian Empire - She Got Confused // He Wouldn't Sleep - Conlan Normington
Let's Pretend! - Jessica Edge
Australian Chamber Orchestra 2020 Season Launch Campaign - Substance - GOLD
Foxtel UHD Foxsports - VANDAL - SILVER
Spotify - Spotify - Passion Pictures - BRONZE
Foxtel UHD Movies - VANDAL
Aliens - Revolution - GOLD
PlusOne Manifesto - PlusOne - SILVER
Stella - Passion Pictures - BRONZE
CGI Interlinked - Catalysee
London Fox - Jumbla
Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered - Framestore - GOLD
World in Motion - Triada Studio - SILVER
The Unlisted - Kinetika - BRONZE
Standing Up For Sunny - Substance - BEST FEATURE FILM TITLE
The Gamers 2037 - Opening Titles - Ambience Entertainment
The Bush Years - Family Duty Power - David Penn
Perspective Shift - Taste Creative
Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blache - PIC Agency & Be Natural Productions
City of Melbourne - Christmas Compass - Red Cartel - GOLD
Mermaid - The Mysterious Pearl - Untitled Studios - SILVER
Subaqua - UTS Animal Logic Academy - BRONZE
WISE - Curiious
Bahrain NBN - New Holland Creative
Virtual Chicken - TAFE NSW - Poultry Hub - Red Cartel
Syngenta - Educational VR for corn growth and treatment - Red Cartel
Samsung Galaxy ExplorAR - Traffik and Chaos Theory
World Square - Golden Week - VANDAL
Bounty Hunter - UTS Animal Logic Academy - GOLD
Kino Ratten - Media Design School - SILVER
Tomorrow’s On Fire - Passion Pictures - BRONZE
SEALAND - Greenhouse Production
Magic: Legends - Plastic Wax - GOLD
Apex Legends - Crypto - Passion Pictures - SILVER
Boomerang Fu - David Smith Animation - BRONZE
DOLBY Vision - See The Unseen With Alexander Semenov - Juice - GOLD
YDT - Underwater Autonomous Mapping - Jumbla - SILVER
ANT Concept Vehicle - Cadre Pictures - BRONZE
Redflex - Hold the Red - Motion Lab
The Beauty - Pascal Schelbli - Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg - GOLD
Any Instant Whatever - Michelle Brand - Royal College of Art - SILVER
Chocolate Man - Murat E Gönültas - Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg - BRONZE
ALBI - Rory Hulme - AIT
Cleaning Time - Reece Mulley - AIT
Pen, ink, paper and inkstone - Cheng Lei
Plague - James Dickson - AIT
Patience - Andrea Supandi - JMC Academy
Malediction and Murder - Natalie Haig
Pixotope, the live photo-realistic virtual production system from The Future Group, now runs on version 1.3 software, updated to help creators improve interactions between their virtual environments and the real-world elements.
Pixotope forms the central production hub when creating mixed-reality (MR) content for broadcast and live events, and has tools that help producers bring together physical components, such as presenters, actors, props and free-moving cameras, effectively with virtually created assets such as backgrounds, graphics, animated characters or any other CG elements. Version 1.3 has new object tracking and lighting integration functionality, and more control over colour management.
The Future Group’s Chief Creative Officer Øystein Larsen said, “The success of a mixed reality scene depends on the relationship and interactivity between real and virtual components. Part of this success depends on technical accuracy, such as matching lighting, replicating freely moving cameras and precise, invisible keying. But there is also an emotional aspect which flows from enabling presenters and actors to freely express themselves through unrestricted movement, and interacting with virtual objects as they would real objects. Version 1.3 of Pixotope improves on results in both of these areas.”
A major advance is in the ability to integrate and use data from real-time object tracking systems. This allows Pixotope to use the positions of moving tracking locators in the real world environment and attach them to digitally created objects, so that those objects can be made to follow the tracked motion. This means presenters can pick up and rotate graphics or any other virtually generated asset in a natural, expressive manner, opening many more creative possibilities. From showing a 3D model in the palm of their hand, to controlling any aspect of a virtual scene with their own physical movement, presenters and actors become free to interact with the virtual world around them.
Another advantage of Object Tracking is that presenters themselves can be tracked, so that Pixotope is continuously aware of where in the scene they are. A challenge in normal virtual studios is that presenters must be careful about where they stand and when. Presenters cannot walk in front of graphics that have been composited over the frame, for example. However, when accessing an object's position and orientation through Pixotope’s Object Tracking interface, Pixotope recognises where the presenter is relative to the position of other generated items within three dimensional space and handles the occlusions accordingly. Actors are free to walk in front, behind or even through virtual objects.
Also new in Pixotope Version 1.3 is the ability to control physical lights using DMX512 over the Art-Net distribution protocol. This enables Pixotope to synchronise and control any DMX controllable feature of physical studio lights with controls from the digital lighting set-up used to illuminate virtual scenes. As a result, light shining on the real set will match the light in the virtual scene. Lights can then either be driven via an animation pre-set, or by using a new Slider widget available for user-created Pixotope control panels. These panels can be accessed via a web browser on any authorised device and be operated either by a technician or the presenter.
Pixotope Version 1.3 also further improves the results of chroma keying for green screen studios with new functions that help extract greater detail, like fine strands of hair and shadows. New algorithms process key edges to sub-pixel accuracy, improve colour picking and automate the reduction of background screen colour spill.
Colour Management control can now be accessed in Pixotope’s Editor Viewport to make sure that artists working in any practical colour space, including HDR, feel confident of the colour fidelity of the images they are creating.
Pixotope is natively integrated with the Unreal game engine, and in Pixotope 1.3 all the new functions in UE Version 4.24 are available to users. The changes include layer-based terrain workflows that help create adaptable landscapes, dynamic physically accurate skies that can be linked to actual time-of-day, improved rendition of character hair and fur, as well as increased efficiency for global illumination that helps to create photo-real imagery. www.futureuniverse.com
