Digital Domain’s own software, EnGen (formerly Terragen), was used heavily on Stealth. “With planes flying around at Mach speeds and with no physical camera rig able to be attached to a plane to film that kind of terrain flying by, we had to create photorealistic computer-generated terrains that would hold up when seen clearly or when whizzing by,” Grant explains. “EnGen is the piece of software that we created to create and render those environments.” Grant adds that through a combination of inputs of real-world elevation maps and procedural texturing and shading, EnGen is able to recreate environments that look very similar to specific environments in the world or brand new environments. “Its unique tesselation techniques allow it to render worlds from 10,000 feet up down to 100 feet off the ground, all within the same scene.”

The new Maxwell Render utilizes Full Spectral Rendering. © tevin93.

Full Spectral Rendering (FSR)
If a key goal of rendering is to create lighted objects as realistically as possible, then how does Full Spectral Rendering (FSR) factor into the future? Not so long ago, global illumination simulation, which involves control over light scattering and the effects of indirect light in a 3D scene, was a research project rather than a regular effect.

FSR means handling full-frequency effects of light, rather than approximating the behavior of light with only red, green and blue channels. The renderer considers light as an electromagnetic wave and therefore images are computed using a frequency spectrum as opposed to conventional RGB color spaces. The result produces incredibly realistic images with physically accurate color tones that would, in most instances, have to be reproduced with the inclusion of colored lights.

Maxwell Render is among the first of this new breed of renderers. “Maxwell Render is a render engine based on the physics of real light; there are no tricks in Maxwell. We have been working on this project for three years and a half now. Once we decided to go forward with the project, we gathered together a developing team in order to create a new solution that the market was already demanding from some time ago,” suggests Oscar Monzon, sales & marketing manager, Next Limit Technologies, of Madrid, Spain. “We are now in the beta stage,” he says, “and the 1.0 full release version will come out by the end of October.”

Maxwell Render offers the interesting feature of being able to specify a render time in which the renderer will produce the highest quality image within that given amount of time. Called “unbiased rendering,” this means that given sufficient render time, the rendered solution will always arrive at the correct result without the introduction of any artifacts. The ability to specify a physically accurate sky means a render artist can select any country in the world, any latitude and longitude, any day and any time and Maxwell will compute the appropriate lighting conditions for that location.

“Maxwell Render has multiple applications in different areas as our customers have showed in the many works they have sent us,” Monzon adds. “We have already released plug-ins for 3ds Max, Viz, Maya, Cinema 4D, Solidworks, Rhino, LightWave, SketchUp and ArchiCAD, and have plans for many others.”

“There are lots of different types of rendering and I can see how it could be used for visualization and design work for, say, architecture and cars, where you need that photorealism,” offers Grant. “While you may need to exactly match a car paint for an auto design, creating visual effects for film and TV is still an art form. You’re trying to create a mood, not just ensure color accuracy.”

“FSR is analytically correct lighting, and is useful to lighting designers and architects who have to reproduce lighting exactly,” echoes Ford. “Traditional methods like using RenderMan are quite adequate for film render.”

Even if an animator had access to FSR, chances are studios currently do not have the capability to output the created image.

“We don’t really see this as an area of major importance to our customers, at least as we understand the definition,” comments Gritz. “There are comparatively few effects that require it, and currently nearly all output devices (CRTs, LCDs, film, digital projectors) are RGB-oriented and couldn’t display full spectral data even if the renderer computed it.”

“On the other hand,” Gritz continues, “High-dynamic range (HDR) lighting is a trend we see growing in popularity. We think it’s much more likely that people will be interested in HDR display. But most renderers work in floating-point anyway, so this is really a change in output devices, not in renderers themselves.”