AAA Studio, (Art And Animation Studio) has recently released a beta for FurryBall 2, a realtime GPU renderer with Maya integration. Version 2 beta includes support for Maya 2012 but also Muti pass multi sampling anialiasing, support for layered textures, support for fluids and fluid shadows, a new hair system and instancing to name a few. Check out more information on Furryball realtime GPU renderer for Autodesk Maya here.
“FurryBall is the first unique real-time GPU renderer in production quality implemented directly into Maya. No more time-consuming exports, waiting and tuning in new applications!! You can see your render in real-time hairs, Maya Fluids, with bumpmaps, textures, soft shadows, reflections and refractions, ambient occlusion and color bleeding, depth of field and many other features directly in Maya viewport. No more waiting for render!”
New features in version 2.0 (trial beta)
- Multi-pass multi-sampling antialiasing (less memory consuming, faster, almost unlimited number of samples) – HOT
- Layered textures – up-to three layers of 2D textures + alpha textures – HOT
- Fluids – complete support of Maya Fluid with real shadows – HOT
- Mutli-GPU selector – (launch two Maya instances and render with a different GPU on each) – HOT
- Stereo Support – all display modes in realtime (anaglyphs, interlaced, side-by-side) – HOT
- NEW hair system – new features, style, save and (re)connect with Maya dynamic hair – HOT
- Instancing
- Maya 2012 support
- Much more efficient DAG traversal for large scenes
- New subdivision/displacement algorithms (Catmull-Clark)
- OpenEXR HDR file output – supports several layers (RGB(A), Depth, SSAO)
- Enhanced hair softness, minimum hair screen size
- Enhanced transparency – supports colored transparent shadows
- Point light shadows
- Cascaded shadow maps for directional lights (for large scenes)
- Deep opacity maps and Fourier opacity maps for transparent fluid and hair shadows from spot lights – HOT
- Light color textures (IBL)
- Shadow intensity curves
- Velvet (sillhouete) shader for all materials
- Fake translucence from multiple lights, for all materials
- Gamma correction
- Support for forced texture mip-map levels
- Texture size visualization of texel to screen pixel ratio
- Lower memory consumption for subsurface scattering
- Subsurface scattering seam fix texture
- Light and render linking via Maya sets
