Holomatix, creators of the SprayTrace plugin for Autodesk Maya which provides real time progressive previews when using Mental ray, recently released version 1.5 adding a faster rendering engine and Final gathering tweaks which allows for quality images even at low sample levels.

Holomatix announce the immediate availability of SprayTrace version 1.5 for Autodesk Maya on Windows and Mac OS X

Sadly missed from the Maya / Mental Ray toolset is a modern interactive preview render, and this is where SprayTrace steps up to fill that need. 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.

Interestingly, SprayTrace operates on the CPU, not the GPU so it requires no special graphics cards, making it compatible with Autodesk Maya versions 2008 upwards. SprayTrace also supports most all mental ray and MentalCore shaders.

SprayTrace is available immediately for £299 plus VAT, around $450.00 and can be bought online at the SprayTrace secure web shop. Existing SprayTrace customers can download the latest installers from their store account today.