Caustic Graphics: In viewport ray tracing for Max, Maya, Rhino

[Nick Nakadate]

I didn't see any news items on this, so I thought I would post. Lemme know if I missed an article!

 

https://www.caustic.com/visualizer/index.html

 

Works with standard max and maya shaders, mental ray shaders, and hopefully more. Also in Rhino.

If people are interested, lobby for V-Ray support in Max and Maya too!

[Nic H]

looks a bit rubbish

[willanielewicz]

Hi nicnic,

 

I happen to have been involved in creating the Caustic Visualizer for Maya.

I sure would appreciate a bit more detail about your impression that it "looks a bit rubbish".

 

Will

[Valtiel]

I have to admit, my own impression is a bit reserved, too, if not sour as I count myself among current Max/Brazil users quite disappointed with the EOL announcement of Brazil. I anticipated something like this would develop out of OpenRL which I was/am quite excited for, but I always expected it to be in support of a production renderer that leveraged both the CPU and GPU compute for raytracing (ie Brazil 3). After years since the first interesting demos and subsequent acquisition of Caustic by Imagination, this is less than what many of us Brazil 2 users hoped would come of it; it doesn't even seem like it will support our existing Brazil 2 let alone B3 which seems to be scrapped. I don't mean to level criticism against you as a developer, Will, or the merits of this plugin in and of itself; I understand there are some reputable names on the team. I am, however, disappointed with the broader movements of your company.

 

That said, I do hope it's a quality product and releases for Max so I could begin to consider it. I do have a few questions for you, Will, if you'll indulge.

 

1: As it doesn't seem to be part of a production renderer then if, and how well, could one expect it to work with the materials, lights, etc. of production renderers like Maxwell, Brazil 2, and VRay?

 

2: Assuming good compatiability from the above, for users of VRay or out-of-the-box Max which already have Quicksilver and VRayRT, what would be the benefits of using the Caustic viewport raytracer over these alternatives? What are the primary differences?

 

3: This is more about OpenRL in general than the product in focus. From the early conception of OpenRL, it seemed that Caustic's work would find its way into other parties' efforts to leverage GPU/other hardware in rendering so we'd have an accelerated environment without vendor lock-in (ie CUDA). However Autodesk, Chaos Group, or Mental Images have only mentioned DirectX, OpenCL and CUDA as API's for their solutions. I'd really like to see it succeed, but I'm curious why I'm not seeing more of this open standard for raytracing in the market. Would you be able to shed some light on that?

 

Thanks kindly. Again, I hope I didn't come across as harsh towards you, but Caustic has been making it hard to get excited over their work.

 

Riley

[Nick Nakadate]

Just posting some video links:

 

http://www.youtube.com/user/CausticGraphics

[Umesh Raut]

Your website only mentions Maya. I think that majority of viz community is heavily MAX+VRay biased (and why not) and to think of learning anything new, when the normal cookie gets it done pretty fine, is a new headache to take on.

[Nick Nakadate]

No, if you see the video links you can watch Max running the Caustic Visualizer. It is also mentioned on the Caustic site, aside from several press releases on Caustic and Imagination technologies websites.

 

Caustic Visualizer in Max is much more flexible than Quicksilver and Vray RT. Check out the videos to see. No waiting or special scene export or file types. Just open your max file and go--all interactive even while objects are animated, translated, modified--even on the vertex level.

[Valtiel]

From what I can gather, these don't use GPU API's. An earlier comment on the videos (which I cannot find again) is stating exclusive compatibility with CPU and PowerVR hardware. I'm reminded of the Caustic One board. While a new toy is always exciting, will the commercial release of these visualizers leverage GPGPU or will users need to purchase an (expensive?) add-in card to get decent raytracing performance?

 

Nick: I do like the small UI footprint. But I didn't catch any mention of which renderer and material/lighting models they were using. Is it agnostic of different ones or does it need to be updated constantly to work with them properly?

[willanielewicz]

Sorry for the long delay in replying. I cant answer all your questions.

I am biased, but seeing raytraced previews this fast makes it fun to light and render again. Even area lights are fast.

Its not perfect, it doesnt emulate every renderer. Currently in Maya the Caustic Visualizer previews Maya Software and Mental Ray.

There are a lot of features still to be implemented. Its going to get better with feedback from you folks.

 

In my opinion(I use it everyday) "looks a bit rubbish" is not even slightly an accurate description.

 

Again in my opinion as a lighter this the best 3rd party plugin for Maya ever. It out performs any similar product and its free.

The many engineers behind Openrl and the Visualizer are some of the most savvy rendering scientists in the world.

To me its an exciting leap for the industry ... Ill stop.

 

Will

[Valtiel]

That's fair. It is an exciting leap, you're right. I think that, in lieu of Brazil 3 happening, V-Ray support is what it will take to score a lot of points in this industry. If your team can make this happen, I'd definitely be piqued.

 

Riley