New CityEngine 2009.2 Version Available Now for Download!

Significant improvements in performance allow for the design and modeling of megacities with over 500'000 buildings.



Procedural Inc. today announced the CityEngine 2009.2, the latest version of its groundbreaking software for the fast creation, visualization and analysis of large 3D cities. The software is used by high-profile companies such as Foster+Partners, Microsoft, Navteq, Boeing, IBM, Thales, Blizzard, Square Enix, etc. and was awarded Killer Technology 2009 by 3D World magazine Procedural Inc., an innovative software company located in Zurich, Switzerland, is creator of the world’s foremost procedural modeling technology. With the CityEngine, Procedural Inc.’s graphics experts have developed a radically different 3D application that allows professional users in entertainment, architecture and urban planning to efficiently design cities. "CityEngine 2009.2 introduces significant improvements in performance and overall stability", says Pascal Mueller, CEO Procedural Inc. "Furthermore, with the integration of map projection standards and corresponding accuracy enhancements, the CityEngine is now, together with its unique reporting functionality, the perfect tool for sustainable urban planning such as accurate simulation and evaluation of new city developments."


Key Highlights of the CityEngine 2009.2

• Large Data Set Support (over 500'000 buildings on 64bit)
• Map Projections (over 80 projections are supported)
• Accuracy Enhancements (enabling high-precision at global scale )
• 3DS Export (plus advancements of Collada and FBX export)

Other improvements of the CityEngine 2009.2 include selection-sets handling, interactive editing extensions, GUI refinements, better ATI-support, advanced python scripting and many more details providing a good user experience. For more information, please visit: http://www.procedural.com/cityengine/whats-new.html

Pricing and Availability
A free 30-day trial version is available for download. The software can be purchased via Procedural Inc.’s website, or by telephone order at +41 76 720 3303. The CityEngine retails from a starting price of $ 3’450.

Tags: Modelling, Procedural, Software, Visualizations, 3D

3D Terrain Printing
by Albert Kiefer

The summer holidays are coming to a close for most of us. Some will have spent some unforgettable days, or weeks, in a fantastic location like the Swiss or French Alps, the Grand Canyon. Some will even have scaled the Mount Everest (although these might be few and far between...).
Most of you will have taken tons of digital photographs, others take a small bottle of soil or a flask of water but now there’s a new way to grab hold of a piece of your holiday locations. A 3D print!

With the advent of commercially and economically viable rapid prototype printing solutions a number of 3D printing services are quickly becoming available to the public. A very interesting niche is now being presented by Terrainprint in the UK.

UK based Terrainprint.co.uk has a 3D printing service hooked up to a kind of Google Earth type of application that quickly allows you to travel to you location of choice, make a selection and press print. After being presented with a 3D preview of the textured terrain you can order it and presto: your holiday memento extraordinaire will be on its way.

These items which have a very clear pricing structure and there should be no surprises with models that are unexpectedly pricey.

There are several types of overlay graphics that you can color your 3D terrain model with, although at the moment the full range of options is only for the USA area. But still, the continents texturemapping will have a great realistic projection of the terrain for you and should be the general choice for the holiday snap memento.

I can well see applications for terrain printing in the fields of location or prototype planning or scouting for motion picture production (although these companies might already have 3D printers hanging around their own facilities), location and site planning and presentation for architects, a special relational gift for traveling agencies, mementos for tourists that want to document and tell about their journeys, etc.

It will be well worth checking out Terrainprint.co.uk and play with the application a while. Have a test print in the smallest footprint and see how that works out.

Tags: 3D, Textures, 3D printing, Exclusive Gift

Maxon Releases Cinema 4D Release 11.5
by Albert Kiefer



Maxon has just released Cinema 4D R11.5 to the general public.

Key Highlights of CINEMA 4D Release 11.5

• Superior Rendering Performance Including New Bucket Rendering
• Enhanced Picture Viewer
• Improved Interoperability and Integration

• Numerous improvements have been made to CINEMA 4D's highly praised connectivity to Adobe® After Effects®, including support for additional object types.
• Support for Apple® Motion now includes the export of 3D data.
• Support for Autodesk® FBX® 2010.0 allows for quick and easy interchange between a variety of 3D applications.

Powerful New Motion Graphics Capabilities

Release 11.5 promises a tighter integration with Apple’s recent Final Cut Studio upgrade, more specifically with Apple Motion3 from that package with its strengthened 3D capabilities.

Support For the New Generation of Operating Systems

• Apple - R11.5 is fully compatible with Mac OS X Snow Leopard, including access to up to 64GB of virtual memory. This is a great relief since it’s always a wait-and-see if a new OS is supported by current products.
• Microsoft - R11.5 is fully compatible with Windows 7, including enhanced file dialog.

Apart from their flagship product Cinema 4D they have also release a new specific version of the product called Cinema 4D Broadcast Edition which, like the Architecture Edition and the Engineering Edition caters to a very targeted market for animation in the broadcast industry.

Tags: 3D, Animation, Modelling, Textures

Indigo renderer
fantastic rendering engine to drive mainstream software
by Albert Kiefer

Hadn’t it been for my colleagues at VizWorld I would not have heard from this nice little gem of a renderer. But everything that spans all mainstream platforms and plugs into the general 3D software packages has my immediate interest. It is always a good idea to be flexible with the images you can generate and having an alternative renderer, and a great one too, is a good addition to the toolbox of any visualization artist.


image credit Filippo Scarso

What it is
Indigorenderer is a rendering engine. As such it’s always going to be dependent on software that exports files in a format it can read in order to generate an image. Obviously there are already some really great engines out there like VRay (my main workhorse) Brazil, Mental Ray, Maxwell Render and of course one of the mainstay long time studio favorites: Renderman. So why even look at Indigo? Well, for one thing there’s the quality of the images. Looking at the galleries on their website you can get a sense of what this renderer is capable of. But more importantly is what software packages it supports and what platforms. This is obviously a two way benefit since the more software and platforms are supported, the wider the target customer base will be.

Working with Indigo Renderer
I downloaded the software a few days ago and installed it without any problems. There are some test scenes avaialable to get that first ‚accomplisment’ factor going but that was a bit of a let down because most of the files in that folder were technical and esoteric scenes that a layman can’t make any sense of. I’d encourage the New Zealand developers of Indigorenderer to pack some great example files that will immediately show any prospective client what this renderer can do.
Since this is a stand alone rendering engine the next step is to install the plug-in for your particular package. In my case I downloaded and installed the Mac version of plug-ins for Sketchup Pro and for Cinema 4D.
The first thing I noticed is that the Cinema 4D plug-in is not 64bit so I had to start my software in 32bit mode to test it (normally, when I work with very heavy scenes this is obviously an impossible scenario which would prevent me from even using Indigo as a viable production renderer).
The Sketchup Pro installation was as straightforward as the Cinema installation and it was really exciting to see how fast you can get really great images out of Sketchup this way. So right here and now a very powerful forte for Indigo is the connection to Sketchup that enables architects to produce some great imagery without knowing much of the rendering process involved behind the scenes of Indigo.
When I tried to dig deeper I stumbled on things that are obviously still under developed issues of their plug-ins.

Plug-in or Break
Any external renderer is made or broken with the success of integration into their host package. This is no different for Indigo. And it’s here where the company will still need to do serious work. The plug-ins that I have worked with (for C4D and Sketchup) were very basic (with the Sketchup version a little ahead of it’s C4D cousin in terms of features). It’s great to have a powerful renderer at one’s disposal but if all this power is hidden behind a wall of technical knowledge, only very die hard artists will work with it and create winning images. If, on the other hand, the technology is made available in a user friendly way there is a whole host of people that could employ this renderer and make incredibly convincing images direct from the most unexpected packages like Sketchup, which normally doesn’t do more than do a nice flat shaded version of a 3D scene.

One example is the image I saw on the indigo site from an Italian artist that shows how Sketchup can turn into a deadly weapon with Indigorenderer as rendering ammunition. You can see that one in the opening of this review.

It is vital that Indigorenderer becomes more sophisticated in the way it allows users to easily set up materials and lights in their host packages. This will sometimes mean better integration into the host workflow (Cinema 4D, Blender, Max, etc. which already have a very well established material and lighting workflow in place) or create an elegant and easy to use new workflow for packages that have none, or underdeveloped workflows in place (like Sketchup in this case).

Image Quality
The image quality can be quite superb if you let the renderer either work long enough (think in multiple hours here) or make use of the network capabilities of the renderer that allow you to grab processors on your local network. If the renderer is given too little time the images can be on the noisy side. You can also send your project to a renderfarm for the final high res rendering and get it back at a fraction of the cost in time it would take on single or small number of local machines.

What’s Up Doc?
The documentation for both renderer and plug-ins is very sparse. There are some nice Sketchup step by steps wich will get you up and running fast but for serious work and people trying to understand more of what’s going on and how to control the software it’s vital to have a bit more material to document themselves with.

Conclusion
All in all this is a great renderer, especially for users of a package like Sketchup that has a very barebones system in place Indigorenderer will blast yoou to much more succesful presentation quality images. For Indigorenderer to compete with the likes of VRay and Maxwell Render, two of the competing brands it has to put a but more pollish and beef on the plug-ins and documentation, create a better material editor that works together with the host and allows for easier material exchanges (the Cinema 4D mac plug-in crashed several times on importing materials from the web database) and keep development equal on the platforms (Mac 64bit!).

Tags: Software, Rendering, 3D

CityEngine
Incredibly powerful urban habitation modeling tool
by Albert Kiefer



Both in Architectural visualizations, in certain games situations but also in archeologic reconstructions it is sometimes inevitable to create or recreate an urban environment. A habitated area that shows human presence. Historically this habitation grows from a number of conditions present at a certain geographic location such as a path, a road, a river, etc. People will start settling in places like these and build houses and streets along trading routes that establish themselves in a village that evolves into a town and than maybe into a huge metropolitan city.

Swiss company Procedural have developed a software specifically for this purpose and it’s doing a fantastic job at it. However it’s not your regular easy drag and drop type of software. Obviously CityEngine does provide a great drag and drop functionality. It supports this by dragging rules based procedures to pre-selected surface areas. But it is by no means a software for the casual user. Obviously at its price point starting at 3450 US Dollars (there is an educational license for just 695 US Dollars), this software is not intended for the casual user but for professionals in the architecture, games, film, archeologic and general visualization companies for which the seemingly steep pricing is not a problem since the software will earn itself back very quickly.

Procedurally Structured
So how does CityEngine work its magic? Well it starts more or less the same way a city develops over time. So basically it starts from simple road network. You can for example import xml, dxf data from any source (like openstreetmap.org) and start building from these street networks, or you can have CityEngine generate a network for you based on a series of procedural rules.

After the network is generated you can command CityEngine to draw lots between those streets. These can be subdivided further in smaller lots. After this process of subdivision is complete (you can, by selecting areas, constrain the generation of lots to areas you like) CityEngine can start drawing buildings onto each individual lot or to sets of lots that you pre select. This process is very straightforward and in no time you have created a very convincing urban area with lots of different buildings.


from basic street network to elaborate lot subdivision is just a simple three click process

Now generating networks of streets and subdividing the areas between these streets with small lots of ground is nice. But obviously there, where the houses start to build themselves is where the real CityEngine magic starts to work. CityEngine does this by a procedural modeling language and they have called this modelling structure the Shape Grammar. In the shape grammar of a particular building they write down a set of rules that geometry, and even texturemaps, will behave to depending on a specific situation. This way you can create stunningly adaptive buildings that seems to just know how to behave under certain conditions.


a section of shape grammar code next to a building (might not be the building for this code)

Make a building taller and it automatically adds new floors to compensate for the extended height. Make it wider and the structure adds more windows to avoid large blind walls.
In their free 30 day demo version they have a set of shape grammar scripts to recreate the Petronas Towers, the Parthenon and the Candler building. That way you can start to dissect how to work with this procedural scripting language.


by selecting subdivided lot sections each can be assigned instructions via shape grammar rules

CityEngine is very powerful for games development too because it can simultaneously generate different levels of details (for instance for distant buildings in relation to a player, or for a simpler collision detection geometry model). And it can export in a variety of formats for popular games engines.

All in all CityEngine is a very powerful package for modeling and simulating urban civilizations. They have even done a great job of rebuilding ancient Pompei (take a look at that movie here). It’s even a great conceptual tool for quickly investigating different massing and shape strategies by architects. But it is certainly not for the casual user. They have now expanded their terrain to include a Mac version as well but I have had serious issues with both the graphics engine and professional Mac video card (ATI Radeon X1900 XT with 512Mb Vram) and also Mac formatted xml files exported from open streetmap (it just does not read them because of a different file naming structure. In my case I had to disable the CityEngine shader on my MacPro 8 core Xeon system because it basically stopped interacting with even a one house shaded setup.

I can even very well see a lower cost version being developed that will sell based on selling rules sets for buildings and simulated streets and lots in a more consumer oriented way wich will certainlly find its way to broader user base.

Tags: Modelling, Software, Procedural, 3D

by Albert Kiefer

Axceleon, a leader in high performance distributed computing solutions for render farms and clusters today announced that EnFuzion is the first commercial product on the market today to enable seamless rendering with major 3D applications in the Amazon EC2 Cloud.
more on Axceleon’s website

Tags: 3D, Distributed Rendering

by Albert Kiefer
Pixologic have just released version 3.2 of their flagship product Zbrush. This release currently is only for Mac OS X.

The new version which is available for immediate download here contains the usual optimizations and bug fixes but more importantly contains some core functionality of the new goZBrush which is going to improve te workflow beteen ZBrush and Maya, Modo and Cinema 4D (I think the PC version will obviously support 3DS Max when it is released).

more information about goZbrush can be found here

Also great new is that with the new release come two plug-ins that were supported by earlier versions (PC) of ZBrush but now are available to Mac users too. They are decimation master, a plug-in for simplifying the very heavy meshes that ZBrush can generate for use in production packages like Maya, Cinema 4D, and Modo. Not that it’s impossible to work with heavy meshes in the programs but often times it’s just not that practical in a production envirnoment to animate these very heavy files.





these plug-ins can be picked up right here

Tags: 3D, Modelling, Software

Filter Forge
an indispensible tool for the graphic and 3D artist
by Albert Kiefer

Recently I received a message via one of my feeds that Filter Forge was finally released for Mac OS X.
Previously only availbe for windows systems I have long eyed the special application with envy. The sheer possibilities of this seemingly small application are endless. As a visual designer this enables me a lot of freedom building up images.

Stand Alone and Photoshop Plug-In
Filter Forge is a procedural texture generator and Image manipulator in one app (or Plug-In) that has a tremendous flexibility. The advantage of the Plug-In is that you can apply filter effects directly to any image you are currently working on in Photoshop without having to resort to pointing Filter Forge to an image explicitly. The other advantage is that you can apply the effects to a selected area.

The advantages of the stand alone version are that you are not bogged down by Photoshop and several windows and that you can start to create your own filters from scratch.

Image Correction and Manipulation
Filter Forge can either do basic to advanced color correction or abstraction on any of your images (just create a workflow and save it with several presets) or it can combine the image information with very complex procedural calculations that turn images into fantastic pieces of abstracted, grunged up or plain funny works of art.




Incredibly powerful texture engine
For me however the most incredible power lies in Filter Forge’s ability to create stunning and versatile seamless textures that are very, very handy to apply as texturemaps in 3D software. The thing is that produral textures are a common sight in any 3D software nowadays but they sometimes generate such complex textures that rendering an animation slows down to a crawl due to time and time again calculating these complex procedurals every frame.

With Filter Forge you can create the same, if not much more complex and convincing textures and, once they are rendered to a tileable image file, you have a file that renders like lightning and even will behave better with anti-aliasing than some procedural noises ‚in app’ tend to do.

But Filter Forge does not simply spit out an image file. It even presents you with the options of generating normal maps, bump maps and specular maps and alpha channels of that same file. This way you have a complete package of images to put to use in you texturing project.



All of the above images are procedural without any additional image input.

Library Magic
When you get Filter Forge and open it up for the first time you cannot even start to comprehend how powerful this app actually is. So first thing I would advise is to rus over to their very extensive on-line libraries and grab presets from several categories. You can spend hours and hours just marveling at the incredible images and textures that are being generated by a very active user community and wich are free to download (you can even do that directly into you running Filter Forge app!)

Multi-core enabled
The node based system that Filter Forge uses to create its magic can bring down a modern computer if things get really complicated (but remember: it’s only once to render the image and then the resulting image renders blindingly fast in your 3D package of choice). So the developers have enabled multi-core rendering. If you happen to have more than one processor driving your machine you can put that extra power to great use here.


The node based system lays out steps in clear iconic building blocks.

Variations to go
Filter Forge comes in several flavors tailored to your specific preference or budget.

• Filter Forge Starter-1 Edition Mac ($ 9.-)
• Filter Forge Starter-1 Edition WIN ($ 9.-)
• Filter Forge Starter-3 Edition Mac ($ 19.-)
• Filter Forge Starter-3 Edition WIN($ 19.-)
• Filter Forge Starter-7 Edition Mac ($ 29.-)
• Filter Forge Starter-7 Edition WIN ($ 29.-)
• Filter Forge Basic Edition Mac ($ 99.-)
• Filter Forge Basic Edition WIN ($ 99.-)
• Filter Forge Standard Mac ($ 199.-)
• Filter Forge Standard WIN ($ 199.-)
• Filter Forge Professional Mac ($ 299.-)
• Filter Forge Professional WIN ($ 299.-)

Tags: 3D, Textures, Procedural, Graphic Design, 2D, Plug-In

Yesterday Grid Iron Software released version 1 of the asset tracking software for Mac and PC. Flow is a fantastic piece of software for keeping track of items that designers and illustrators, who use packages from the Adobe range of products and Apple’s and Microsoft. The one thing for me as a visual designer working in 3D that clinched the deal was compatibility . You can now even see the files, xrefs and everything a Cinema file is referencing. Great stuff.

I will add a review here soon...

In the meantime check out some clear introductory tutorials on their site.

Tags: 3D, Graphic Design

Luxology has just released Modo 401

In this latest incarnation Modo has broken the animation barrier and added lots of really cool features for both still and animated imagery.

A quick run down the feature list reveals some solid new possibilities.



Fur
Fur in Modo is much more than just some simple strands that can be turned into hair or grass or, yes, furry coats for animals. The system has been expanded to allow you to create many types of fiber based materials or organisms like roots, anemones, textured rugs, etc. The fur can be brushed into shape very interactively. Check out the demo video here

Volumetric Lighting
New to 401 is the ability to apply volumetric lighting to a scene. With volumetric light shadows will even cast onto air, much like beams of light that shine against objects in a haze. The really great thing is that you can check out volumetric effects right in the preview renderer. Demo video here



Replicators
Fantastic for adding just tremendous amounts of detail that would normally kill any renderer are the replicators. With these you can add the proverbial sand to the desert, the fish to the ocean and the leaves to the trees. You have to see this to believe it. You start out with just a single source element and then spread this across a designated area using wieght maps to add variation to density, placement, rotation, scale, etc. And they preview really really fast in the editor. Check them out here



And there’s more!
There’s a lot more in the new Modo and for people who use it for more than just modelling this is a very worthwhile upgrade that has a lot going for it.

You can download a demo of Modo here.

Modo lists for $ 995
Upgrades start at $ 395 for the download version.

Tags: 3D, Visualizations

I have recently upgraded my Piranesi license to 5.1. Piranesi is a tool for very flexible ways of visualizing a 3D project. It does this by reading a specially prepared 2.5 D version of a scene from any of the supported 3D software packages, and allowing you to quickly add textures on the [almost] 3D canvas.

Apart from allowing you a very flexible way of working with just a fraction of the rendering penalties involved in normal 3D rendering, it also give you ways to explore more non-photorealistic ways of presenting your material. And in this day and age, where phenomenal photorealistic simulations are possible and have become commonplace, the more loosely rendered styles are a welcome diversion that add a new sprak of life to visual presentations.

Tags: 3D, Visualizations

Just finished some cool conceptual visuals for KPN Glasvezel. I had the freedom to approach this project from only the brief of a given set of containers really was a lot of fun to work on.
Images will follow soon...

Tags: KPN glasvezel, 3D, Visualizations, Concepts