New Plugin Eliminates CG Pipeline Bottlenecks and Accelerates Rendering
Auckland, NZ (January 24, 2012) – CoreCG, a New Zealand-based research and development (R&D) company that specializes in creative solutions for CG animation and visual effects, today announced the release of MentalCore - a cross-platform, standalone plugin designed to help artists achieve maximum creativity and efficiency while using NVIDIA® mental ray® with Autodesk® Maya®. The release follows two years of extensive use at Oktobor Animation, a year of beta testing by high profile film, television, and game companies, and a soft launch in December 2011.Â
MentalCore allows you easily solve many rendering problems such as Ambient Occlusion transparency.
"We saw an overwhelming response to our beta phase and are excited to introduce an off-the-shelf solution that answers such a huge community need. Eliminating common CG pipeline bottlenecks can require dedicated R&D and often complicated workarounds," said Jason Adams, creative director, CoreCG and Oktobor Animation. "We built MentalCore to simplify workflows and expedite rendering, so artists spend less time troubleshooting and more time on the quality of their work. It's truly an efficient, reliable solution for artists made by artists."
The MentalCore environment shader allows you to control the environment for different stages of rendering (reflections, finalgather, etc)
MentalCore, developed by Supervising Technical Director Corey Frew at Oktobor Animation, animation studio for several high-profile Nickelodeon series, is production-proven and provides enhancements to the standard rendering workflow using Autodesk Maya with NVIDIA mental ray. Suitable for any size studio, MentalCore supports Maya 2011 and Maya 2012, and hosts a user-friendly interface and robust feature set, including:Â
· Render Globals Interface - Quick access to
all global settings and render passes
· Node Based Render Pass System - Reliable render
pass system that eases linking to objects, materials and lights
· Shader Library - Achieve desired looks with new
material, texture and utility shaders
· Color Management System - Easily adopt a linear
color workflow
· Preview Render Passes - Preview render passes
in the renderview without the memory overhead of rendering all
other passes in one go
· Ambient Occlusion Transparency - Support for
ambient occlusion transparency
· Python API - Easily integrate MentalCore into
any pipeline
· mental ray Compatibility - Compatible with
mental ray standalone renderer
A complete list of features is available here.
Dominic Alderson, 3D supervisor and lead technical director, The Mill TV and Film, London, shared, "You can tell a great deal of time and thought went into MentalCore; it's a reliable product, with a great price tag, that can save studios both time and money. The ability to work across multiple scenes and carry your render setup with MentalCore makes life a breeze. I no longer have to build render layers over and over again or use custom scripts. It provides me with a better option for generating a clean, fast render pass system - allowing me to spend more time on creative development and less time fixing technicalities."
Create and preview render passes at the click of a button. MentalCore makes working with render passes simple, straightforward and simple.
"CoreCG has successfully written one of the best integrations with mental ray yet," said Mark Wallman, a Freelance Technical Director and Senior Lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire. "MentalCore is easy for any artist to pick up quickly, and it's got fantastic features like unified sampling and simplified shaders that take on a large bulk of shading work. Its UI is clean and efficient, which can save artists and studios a significant amount of time."Â
MentalCore comes with a wide range of material, texture and utility shaders, making it even easier and faster to achieve the look you desire.
David Trenear, studio manager, Game Labs Apps, is purchasing 18 floating licenses of MentalCore for use in future game development. He shared, "High-quality game design poses its own set of unique technical challenges, especially when factoring in tight deadlines and budgets. MentalCore helps remove those challenges with an easy-to-use interface and practical features that expand our lighting and shading functionality. It simplifies our shading workflow by removing the time-consuming process of creating custom shaders. We've seen what MentalCore can do and how it can accelerate our day-to-day operations, and truly believe it will enhance the quality of our games."Â
Working with subsurface scattering in MentalCore is easier then ever. You can also output front, mid and back scattering layers to render passes to further tweak the look in compositing.
"MentalCore is a great development and lighting tool with a well designed interface and time-saving features – the ability to preview render passes, ambient occlusion transparency and Python API," said Alexander Morano, supervisor of pipeline research and development, Nickelodeon Animation Studio. "The speed of iteration through a scene to get layers set up for lighting is amazingly quick; you can achieve looks that would normally take three to five times longer by hand without the overhead of setting up shaders and layers."
Pricing and Availability
MentalCore is now
available for purchase on the CoreCG
website as a node locked license at an introductory price
of US $189, or a floating license for US $199. Modified pricing is
available for educational institutions, contact sales@core-cg.com for more information. A free
30-day trial of MentalCore is available on http://www.core-cg.com/.
About CoreCG
Core CG Ltd., headquartered in Auckland, NZ, is
a research and development company specializing in creative
solutions that drive innovation and productivity in the fields of
CG animation and visual effects. Incubated in a real-world
production environment at Oktobor Animation, Auckland's largest CG
animation studio with credits on several high-profile Nickelodeon
series, and developed with support from the New Zealand Ministry of
Science and Innovation, CoreCG's technology is production-proven.
The company provides artists with efficient, affordable pipeline
solutions. Its flagship product is MentalCore, a standalone plugin for NVIDIA® mental
ray® and Autodesk® Maya® designed to enhance the lighting,
shading and rendering workflow. For more information
visit:http://www.core-cg.com/
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