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Paint your Maya renders in Light

Posted on May 8, 2013 by SprayTrace

SprayTrace supports LightPaint

Holomatix SprayTrace 1.5.20 adds support for HDR Light Studio 4

Users of HDR Light Studio 4, by Lightmap Ltd, can now take advantage of native LightPaint support from directly within the SprayTrace 1.5.20 viewport. It’s the ultimate combination of Maya plug-ins for those looking to quickly and easily light their MentalRay shots to perfection.

HDR Light Studio offers 3D artists a fast and efficient alternative to placing light sources within the scene. Instead all lighting can come from a single interactive HDRI map containing unlimited subtlety and complexity. Image based lighting is particularly suited for those looking for very realistic results on shiny and reflective materials – such as those found in cars and consumer products.

Use HDR Light Studio with Maya to:

  • Use a HDRI map as an alternative technique to placing CG lights
  • Create a HDR environment as a lighting foundation adding extra CG lights
  • Create professional studio lighting with real studio lighting captures
  • Make precision lighting & reflections for perfect shots of cars, products, jewelry and more!
  • Create convincing HDR lighting for CG objects on photographic backgrounds
  • Control existing HDRI maps with local adjustments to exposure, color and saturation
  • Place additional lighting into existing HDRI maps
  • Increase the dynamic range of LDR maps

Easy Perfect Lighting Workflow
Simply run HDR Light Studio from within Maya and then launch SprayTrace. SprayTrace is now in a Live connection with Maya providing a Live rendered preview of your scene lit with the interactive HDRI map from the HDR Light Studio Live session. You can now press CTRL and click on your 3D model in SprayTrace to precisely position the active light. It’s an intuitive and fast method to achieve perfect photo-real lighting results. You can even zoom into the view within SprayTrace to light the smaller details using LightPaint.

Light details by zooming in
Lighting a detail by zooming into the SprayTrace view

That’s not all – Updated Maya Compatibility
Additional features in SprayTrace version 1.5.20 includes:
Autodesk Maya 2014 support, plus a wide range of minor fixes

Pricing and Availability
SprayTrace 1.5.20 is available immediately for £299 at www.spraytrace.com. It’s a free update for existing SprayTrace customers. HDR Light Studio 4 is available immediately from £299 at the Lightmap online store or through any Lightmap Authorized reseller – visit www.hdrlightstudio.com for more details.

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SprayTrace 1.5 is launched

Posted on March 5, 2013 by SprayTrace

SprayTrace 1.5

Holomatix release SprayTrace 1.5 for Autodesk Maya with major new features for a faster and smarter workflow with Maya and mental ray

Holomatix announce the immediate availability of SprayTrace version 1.5 for Autodesk Maya on Windows and Mac OS X. The SprayTrace plug-in for Maya provides a real-time progressive preview for mental ray scenes. With a single button press, SprayTrace launches a live connection to Maya, providing users with the ability to make informed decisions throughout the materials, texturing and lighting process.

New Features in SprayTrace 1.5 include:

• Faster Render Engine – SprayTrace is even faster than before with more scene properties now updating in an instant.

• Render Snapshot Buffer – Keep and compare test shots and save the stack of snapshots to disk with a single click.

• Instant Final Gathering – New smoothed final gathering provides fast high quality images at low sample levels. For example, using mental ray physical sky and sun, users get instant feedback whilst positioning the sun, including the live final gather results.

• Material Overrides – Replace scene materials with clay or plastic. Material overrides help in understanding the lighting within the scene without the complication of interacting with the final scene materials.

• Lighting Overrides – Override the lights to use SprayTrace as a superior viewport, to do texturing work for example, but with results that will match the final mental ray mapping.

 

 

Todd Pilger, Head of 3D Visual Development, Sony Pictures Animation says “SprayTrace has changed the way I approach character design for the better. Because the feedback is instant I am free to explore and iterate without interrupting the design process watching the wait cursor. SprayTrace lets me see a complex image in seconds, so I can tweak the final look right in camera, simplifying my workflow and saving me hours.”

Compatibility
SprayTrace uses CPU only, no special graphics card or drivers are required. SprayTrace is compatible with Autodesk Maya versions 2008 upwards and supports virtually all mental ray and MentalCore shaders.

Pricing and Availability
SprayTrace is available immediately for £299 plus VAT. Purchase online at the SprayTrace secure web shop. Existing SprayTrace customers can download the latest installers from their store account today.

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SprayTrace 1.3 – Mac & MentalCore!

Posted on July 12, 2012 by SprayTrace

SprayTrace 1.3 has arrived. Now Mac users can enjoy live interactive rendering previews whilst working in Maya on their MentalRay scenes. Get more done with the super fast feedback in SprayTrace!

But it’s not just good news for Mac users – version 1.3 also adds support for MentalCore.

“MentalCore has rekindled my excitement of MentalRay for Maya. It’s simply a joy to use and I can now focus more of my time on rendering and lighting instead of troubleshooting and workarounds. Its integration with Maya is seamless and the features are wicked. I can’t work without it!” say’s Mark Serena, Senior Lighting TD at GamesLab. He adds… “SprayTrace on its own is a powerful tool, with its sole ambition is to help you produce better results and faster! In combination with MentalCore, the two tools provide a potent mix. I have so much fun now experimenting and designing my shots, and can be sure I’m getting the best possible results from my lighting while staying within my deadlines…. that’s an essential for any artist!”

SprayTrace 1.3 for Maya is available today from our store for Windows64 or Mac OS. Current SprayTrace customers can update to the latest version by downloading the up to date installers from their account.

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SSS shaders now supported

Posted on March 12, 2012 by SprayTrace

Holomatix are pleased to announce the full and proper support of the SSS shaders within the latest build of SprayTrace, version 1.2.12. You can now use the power of SprayTrace to preview and make interactive changes on your Maya scenes that include these lovely SSS shaders.

SSS shaders are probably one of the most tricky to set up with lots of settings to tweak, so having this real-time feedback as you play with the sliders and properties is a must for any Maya artist. With feedback this fast on your shader tweaks…. you’ll rediscover and fall in love with the amazing SSS shaders all over again!

Please note, there is one exception to this, the less used and slower to render misss_physical shader is still unsupported.

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SprayTrace 1.2 – adds HDR Light Studio support, native environment lighting and improved final gathering

Posted on February 20, 2012 by SprayTrace

20th February 2012 – London

Holomatix Ltd are proud to announce the launch of SprayTrace for Maya version 1.2 – which includes support for HDR Light Studio 3 live. Continue reading →

Posted in General, Press Releases, Videos | 1 Comment

SprayTrace vs Maya IPR

Posted on February 20, 2012 by SprayTrace

This video perfectly shows exactly why our users are loving SprayTrace. We show Maya IPR in action with a simple MentalRay scene and then open up SprayTrace for a direct comparison. See the difference – imagine how much faster you could set up your scenes with the blazing fast SprayTrace feedback. Also this video is made on a low cost 4 core machine – nothing fancy, no special GFX cards.

The main SprayTrace advantages over Maya IPR for MentalRay scenes are:

  • Changes to the lighting, materials, textures and camera settings happen really really fast in SprayTrace. Once your scene is loaded it’s held in memory and SprayTrace only updates changes, meaning most of the time the change occurs instantly – no need to re export the scene in any way.
  • Material updates only refreshes the parts of the image that have changed, SprayTrace doesn’t start the whole render again from scratch like IPR.
  • SprayTrace renders fast using progressive updates – giving maximum useful feedback for the artist in the shortest time possible, whilst refining to a high quality result over time. So no need to pre-decide the quality of the preview – just give it time and it gets better and better.
  • SprayTrace doesn’t choke Maya interaction – dragging on sliders and making changes in SprayTrace isn’t obtrusive, you won’t find the SprayTrace session slowing you down or making sliders jerky.
  • SprayTrace is very stable and in the unlikely event it crashes, 99% of the time it will not crash Maya. This is the advantage of it running outside of your Maya session.
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Waiting for iray for Maya?

Posted on February 15, 2012 by SprayTrace

Some may say: “Why do I need SprayTrace? iray is on the horizon (maybe?) for Maya users. iray could provide the real-time feedback that SprayTrace offers, and it will be free. So I’ll wait for that”… Continue reading →

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DEMO SCENE COMPETITION – 10 seats of SprayTrace to give away!

Posted on February 9, 2012 by SprayTrace

Here at Holomatix we are fed up with the same old demo scenes we use for SprayTrace, showing our Audi car and Stanford Dragons. We need some nice looking scenes that show how cool SprayTrace really is for fast previews… so we are looking for your help! Continue reading →

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New features in SprayTrace 1.1

Posted on January 23, 2012 by SprayTrace

A new update of SprayTrace has just been released and brings with it some key new features for for faster ways to preview your Mental Ray scene.

Watch the videohighlights of SprayTrace 1.1 below

New features include:
Priority render region
Under cursor priority rendering
Zoom to region
Pause/Resume rendering
Save image
Linear workflow is now supported
Beta SSS shaders support Continue reading →

Posted in SprayTrace Development, Videos | Tagged | 5 Comments

Holomatix launches SprayTrace for Maya

Posted on December 20, 2011 by SprayTrace

SprayTrace provides an instant preview of a Maya MentalRay scene: providing real-time feedback on shaders, textures lighting and camera adjustments

London, England – 20th December 2011 – Holomatix today announced immediate availability of SprayTrace for Maya on Windows OS – a configuration free, add-on tool providing real-time preview for the hugely popular Maya MentalRay offline renderer.
With just a single button press, SprayTrace provides users with the much-needed real-time functionality to make MentalRay an interactive experience: it provides users with the ability to make informed decisions throughout the materials, texturing and lighting process. Continue reading →

Posted in Press Releases, Videos | 3 Comments