San Francisco, CA -- Imagination Technologies [1] announced availability of its Caustic Series2 OpenRL PC boards and accelerating Caustic Visualizer viewport plug-ins for Autodesk Maya and 3ds Max at Autodesk University (Booth #416) in Las Vegas, Nevada (November 27-29 2012).
Both the Caustic Series2 ray tracing accelerator boards and Caustic Visualizer for Maya plugins will be available for purchase from January 2013. The production version of the 3ds Max Visualizer will be available in Q2 2013, with beta trials from February 2013.
The Caustic R2500 OpenRL PC board, including a copy of one Caustic Visualizer, will be priced at US$1495, targeting the latest high-end workstations. The Caustic R2100 board, including a copy of one Caustic Visualizer, will be priced at an aggressive US$795, intended for upgrading a wider range of mid-range and higher workstations. Both Caustic boards will ship with a copy of the Caustic Visualizer for Maya at launch. The software-only version of the Caustic Visualizer for Maya will be priced at US$299. Imagination will be accepting pre-orders for these products from early December at www.imgtec.com/caustic_sales [2].
HP (booth #120) and AMD (booth #735) will both be showcasing Caustic Visualizer for Maya running with Caustic R2500 boards on their booths throughout the event. Imagination will be demonstrating Caustic R2500 and R2100 boards, working with the Caustic Visualizer for Maya and a pre-beta version of the Caustic Visualizer for 3ds Max in HP and Boxx systems at the show.
Imagination’s hardware accelerated Caustic Visualizer family of plugins brings the world's first fully interactive real time ray tracer to the working viewports of the industry's premier 3D design and animation packages. Thanks to Imagination’s unique high performance OpenRL-based ray tracing hardware and software technologies, the Visualizer photorealistic viewport provides far higher visual quality than 3ds Max and Maya's normal rendering viewports, including globally accurate lighting, reflections and shadows within a 3ds Max, Maya or mental ray scene. It enables artists to identify and resolve potential problems within their final renders from the earliest stages of modeling; minimizing the need for time-consuming preview renders and radically streamlining the look development process.
The Caustic Visualizer viewport renderer interactively updates and responds to all edits in 3ds Max and Maya including geometry, lighting and shading characteristics while preserving their powerful interactive workflows. Selected objects in the Maya viewport continue to have fully editable wireframes and manipulators overlaid on the real-time ray traced shaded preview.
The Caustic Visualizer for Maya 1.0 Trial Version is now available and can be downloaded from the Caustic Professional web site at www.caustic.com/visualizer/maya [3]. This is a fully functional release that is free-of-charge until January 31, 2013. It will be replaced with commercial and education editions that can be purchased for US$299 and US$199 respectively. The beta version of Caustic Visualizer for 3ds Max will be available in Q1 2013, with pre-registration to begin in early December at www.caustic.com/visualizer/3dsmax [4].
Source: Imagination Technologies
Links:
[1] http://www.imgtec.com./
[2] http://www.imgtec.com/caustic_sales
[3] http://www.caustic.com/visualizer/maya
[4] http://www.caustic.com/visualizer/3dsmax