Create and render OpenVDB volume grids with Softimage and Redshift renderer
Note: a detailed tutorial is now available.
Since current version of Redshift requires OpenVDB-compliant voxel grids for its volume rendering, we need to somehow generate and export .vdb files from Softimage (not everybody has access to Houdini, you know).
Thanks to user Mr.Core from SI Community we have a set of ICE-compounds to do just that.
Mr.Core provided compounds to voxelize particles and geometry as well as perform actions on .vdb grids and polygonize them.
Here's an example on how to make a vdb cloud in Softimage, export it to a file and render with Redshift:
Redshift v2 demo available
After a long period of beta-testing version 2.0.44 of Redshift has finally been made available for everyone to try and play with.
If you don't know what Redshift3D is, it's a biased GPU renderer unlike many other GPU path tracers out there. To put it simply - it's like a supercharged VRay with all biased goodness like irradiance caching, photon mapping and precalculated SSS. Together with the new OpenVDB support it all makes Redshift a blast to work with.
Literally.
Here's what's new in 2.0 VS 1.3:
All V1.3 features PLUS:
- New “Redshift Material” which more closely follows the PBR paradigms (“metalness”, etc)
- New specular BRDFs (on top of the Ashikhmin-Shirley): GGX and Beckmann (Cook-Torrance)
- Nested dielectrics
- Multiple dome lights
- Baking
- Dispersion (part of the Redshift Material)
- OpenVDB Support
- Improved multiple-scattering model (part of the SSS, Skin and Redshift Material)
- Single scattering (part of the Redshift Material)
- Support for alSurface shader
- Linear specular glossiness/roughness response
- Improved photon mapping accuracy for complex materials
- Physically-correct Fresnel for rough reflections
- New SubSurfaceScattering and SubSurfaceScatteringRaw AOV types
- AOV improvements for blended materials
- NVidia Pascal GPU (GTX1070/1080) support
- Automatic memory management
- Better importance sampling of bokeh images
- Texture reference object support (Maya)
You can join the discussion on the official Redshift forums.
Softimage hotkeys mapping infographic
Since Autodesk officially EOL'd Softimage, XSI blogs and discussion groups have been gradually vanishing from the web which is a shame.
As a tribute to the great piece of software that Softimage is I will try to consolidate the most useful XSI-related stuff from the net.
Today we have a Softimage hotkeys infographic originally posted at XSIBase which is now non-existent. It's just too good to just perish so here are cleaned up versions in glorious PNG.