Luxology SIGGRAPH 2008 Wrap-Up
Updated August 20, 2008

Steampunk Speakeasy Social Event

The modo tribe gathered in a jam packed event at the visually stunning LA nightclub, The Edison.  Click here for event pictures.
 

Special Thanks to Our Gold Sponsors!

Special Thanks to Our Press Sponsors!

Nexus Logo

Key Luxology announcements were made at SIGGRAPH 2008 to the press and the user community during the Steampunk Speakeasy event at The Edison. Nexus 4, the newest version of the underlying architecture that powers modo stepped to the forefront, as Brad Peebler demonstrated new Nexus capabilities. For those of you unable to attend SIGGRAPH in person, or if you wish to view these Nexus demonstrations again, they are provided here:

Replication

QuickTime Movie 5.7 MB

Replicating a Herd of Rhinos
A method for rendering large numbers of like objects at render is introduced. “Replicators” can be created by a variety of methods including mesh paint and shaders. They are useful for adding details like grass, fur, leaves on trees or for repeating mechanical objects like welds.

Poly Tools Eye Candy

QuickTime Movie 9.4 MB

Poly Tools Eye Candy
Andy Brown created this video to show off new modo enhancements for constraining polygons to complex surfaces. He builds a polygon constrained to a highly complex head surfaces, then slides the polygons across the surface; they stay constrained to surface in real-time. Then he constrains a flat surface onto the head and it updates as bends and falls across the head surface. Finally, he rapidly draws an architectural-style orthogonal drawing then extrudes it into 3D a model.

Car Render Preview

QuickTime Movie 7.6 MB

Car Preview
Enhancements to the speed and quality of the Preview Renderer are shown in this technology demo. The Preview window is more interactive, even on large datasets such as a car model. A simplified user interface has been mocked up to show how material assignment and placing a model in pre-built environments can be handled via an intuitive workflow.

Grass (Painting with Fur)

QuickTime Movie 20.8 MB

Grass (Painting with “Fur” Material)
This “fur” material technology preview shows how flexible the concept is... it’s most definitely not limited to what we think of as “fur.” Here is just one application: create a scene of grass on a beach dune. Here modo’s paint and sculpting tools come into play; watch as the grass leaves are manipulated with the air brush using Fold, Tangent Pinch, Emboss and Inflate sculpting tools.

Series of Fur Renderings

QuickTime Movie 22.5 MB

A Peek at “Fur” Renderings
A series of samples of the range of materials that the “fur” system is capable of producing. Here, “fur” is used to create grass, fur, hair, palm fronds, excelsior, towel nap, brush tips, fiber optics and a dandelion seed. The name “fur” doesn't really do justice to this new fiber creation and rendering system.

Nexus Technology Licensing

It was announced at SIGGRAPH 2008 that Luxology has licensed some of its Nexus technology to two leading CAD companies: Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp. and Bentley Systems.  Check out the press releases below:
 

Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp. Licenses Luxology’s Nexus Rendering Technology Luxology® LLC, developers of modern, artist-focused 3D software, today announced that DS SolidWorks has entered into a technology licensing agreement to utilize Luxology’s Nexus® rendering technology. As one of the leading 3D mechanical CAD software vendors worldwide, DS SolidWorks selected Nexus for its modern architecture and superior rendering capabilities. View Press Release Download PDF Version Access Media Content

Bentley Systems Taps Nexus Architecture to Provide Enhanced Microstation Rendering Luxology® LLC, developers of modern, artist-focused 3D software, today announced Bentley Systems, the global leader in software for sustaining infrastructure, has licensed its Nexus rendering technology. Bentley chose Nexus for its overall performance and plans to use it for enhancements to Bentley’s MicroStation product line and many more applications in Bentley’s comprehensive portfolio of products. View Press Release Download PDF Version Access Media Content

Keith Bentley of Bentley Systems comments on the significance of the Bentley - Luxology announcement for MicroStation users on his blog: (entry reproduced below)

Great news for MicroStation users - the Luxology announcement

Earlier this week, we announced this exciting news about our agreement to distribute the rendering engine from Luxology LLC in MicroStation.

I am personally very excited about this agreement and I expect it will be extremely welcome news for MicroStation users everywhere. 3D visualization, photo-realistic presentations, and animations, have become a mainstream part of nearly every AEC project. And, as everyone whose ever been involved in the process knows, you can never have too much realism in your presentations, nor too much speed to create them. We're convinced that the Luxology engine represents the state-of-the-art on both fronts.

Why Luxology?

When we started the process of looking for a rendering engine, we created a “shopping list” of features and performance criteria based on what we’ve heard from our users about their rendering needs. We placed the highest priority on the various aspects of, and approaches for, quality and realism. Simply put, we were looking for the tool that every MicroStation user can use to create stunning images from their designs. The goal was to integrate a second-to-none rendering toolset so that there should never be a need for a MicroStation user to have to resort to a disconnected, external, rendering program to create a higher quality image. In our evaluations, we placed a lower emphasis on performance, since there’s no point in getting a result quickly if the quality is sub-par. On the other hand, faster is always better, particularly on large data sets as is common in our user projects. Our third criteria was the quality of the company and the potential for a long term collaboration.

We evaluated 10 possible candidates. On our tests, the Luxology product scored the highest on nearly all of the “quality metrics.” Imagine how pleasantly surprised we were when we also determined that Luxology scored the best on almost all of the performance metrics - by far. Along with just being a well-designed program, one big reason for that is the multi-threaded architecture of the product. When running the Luxology renderer on computers with dual cores, quad cores, 8 cores, etc., performance increases nearly linearly. Finally, the folks at Luxology were eminently reasonable in our negotiations and were genuinely eager to earn our business. We have the utmost confidence in the trajectory in the product and the company, since the three founders of Luxology are leaders - legends really - in the CG industry.

When, How?

Our plan is to seamlessly integrate Luxology’s rendering engine into MicroStation, allowing users to easily take full advantage of its advanced features like displacement mapping and volumetric lighting through familiar MicroStation dialogs like Render Settings and Light Manager. Though it will be possible for an advanced user to tweak their rendering options, materials and lighting to the same extent seen in Luxology’s modo, existing MicroStation materials and render settings will also translate to this new render mode with spectacular results. The upshot is that this will be a valuable addition for any user with even a passing interest in MicroStation visualization.

In the short term, the technology preview of our Luxology integration contained within our upcoming MicroStation Athens release will be on a slightly smaller scale (unfortunately, it won’t be possible to retrofit the Luxology engine into earlier versions of MicroStation). Users will be able to get a taste for the power and speed of Luxology’s rendering engine, but the full integration into our existing visualization tools will be a process that plays out over the coming year. A key part of this process will be incorporating the features suggested by our users’ comments on the BE Community site. We look forward to hearing from you!

More Luxology News Announced at SIGGRAPH

modo Keyboard Shortcut Card

Get your modo keyboard shortcut card right here courtesy of 3D World magazine.

Terry Calen modo Gallery

We were fortunate that Terry Calen let us show some of his fine art at the Luxology Steampunk Speakeasy event. Terry is a famous CG artist who has won many awards and has had countless exhibitions.  He is also a really nice guy and lives not so far from Bob Bennett in Seattle.

Steampunk Speakeasy and SIGGRAPH Photo Gallery

Updated Wednesday August 20
We have a few snapshots from Monday night’s Luxology Steampunk Speakeasy posted by McKay Hawkes of The Pixel Box, plus some new Siggraph photos taken by Bob Bennett.

ImageSynth2 is coming! 

imageSynth2 features speed improvements, multi-threading and will be accompanied by a new standalone version.  Upgrades from imageSynth1 will be available. Estimated ship date: September 2008.

Over a Trillion Polys Rendered in Less than 6 Minutes

modo users have been trying to estimate how many polygons were processed in this Luxology provided rendering that contains untold numbers of sculpted heads. It is certainly millions, but how about billions? One guess was a trillion.

Here is the the final tally: 1.1 trillion polys, rendered in just under 6 minutes.

Free Rhinoceros and Google SketchUp Tools

The Rhino3D (3DM) translator for modo and the Google SketchUp importer for modo will soon be available for FREE for registered modo users. Available: September 2008.