Arion 1.6.0

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Arion 1.6.0 unlimited

RandomControl is very proud to announce the immediate availability of Arion 1.6.0!

A few weeks only after the release of 1.5.1, RandomControl strikes again with amazing technical and workflow improvements.

Unlimited objects, textures and materials is here!

This version is a free of charge upgrade for all v1.x customers.

Please take a breathe and enjoy this presentation.

The whole RandomControl team wishes you a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year 2012! We'll see you next year for even more!

Bigger, better, stronger

We have improved so many things in Arion 1.6.0.

We have completely rewritten the memory management to make it stronger, better, more reliable and before all: unlimited.

That's right, Arion 1.6 can now render an unlimited number of objects, materials and textures.

Welcome to yet another era of hybrid rendering, coming to you this month.

Unlimited objects

Unlimited objects in Arion 1.6.0 opens the doors of massive physics simulations, crowds, vegetation... And everything you can think of!

And if you cannot make your scene to fit in your GPU memory, you can still render it on the CPU at a very nice speed - Arion's speed.

The image above was made in 3D Studio Max using MassFX and features over 30,000 copies of the rigatone pasta model, all with Sub-Surface Scattering!

Click on the image to display it full size in another window.

Unlimited materials

What would unlimited objects be without unlimited materials! You can now use as many materials as you want in your scene.

Arion 1.6.0 lifts all the limits and sets your imagination free. If it fits in the RAM, it'll render.

We can't wait to see in what creative ways you'll be taking advantage of this feature, we'll be expecting your renders!

Unlimited textures

Arion 1.6.0 has absolutely no limit in terms of number of textures or their size. The only limit here is the available memory to render.

These new features comes also with a set of remarkable memory consumption improvements that are explained in details in another paragraph below.

Direct Quicktime VR export

Arion 1.6.0 comes back with an integrated Quicktime VR exporter!

All you have to do is to place a panoramic camera in your scene, let it render, press the 'Save QTVR' button and you're done!

With this feature you can quickly create a 360� lightweight file that you can send to your client, show off more efficiently small spaces like a boat hull and so many other uses.

This nice 'little' addition comes for free with Arion 1.6.0.

Click on the 360� panorama to see the full size tonemapped render.

Great memory improvements

Not only we have removed all the barriers to your creativity by setting all the objects, materials and textures counts free, but we have also vastly improved the memory used by bitmaps.

25% memory saving in RGB map channels (Ref0�, Ref90�, Absorption color etc.)
75% memory saving in grayscale map channels (Roughness, bump, opacity etc.)
Up to 50% memory saving on non-square textures

Click on the thumbnail on the right to watch a full size comparison of a real case memory usage improvement.

Camera roll

Among the most requested features, is the camera roll. This is now available in Arion 1.6.0.

The camera roll function is available as a camera property, along with other properties like shutter speed, f-stop...

This featue is indeed very important to make creative shots and bring some sharpness and motion to a render.

Wavefront OBJ

The Wavefront .OBJ format importer has been improved and integrated to the application, you can now open that format just like the .RCS or the .FRY.

The .OBJ importer is now faster and stronger and can import the large majority of .OBJ files coming from various modeling applications.

You can click the banner image to display the full resolution render.

Demo version

The release of Arion 1.6.0 will set the date for an upgraded public demo version.

Shortly after the customers release, we will upload on our website a brand new demo of the latest flavor of Arion with all the fancy features included.

The demo is fully functional, you can render any amount of polygons, materials or textures just like the full version.

The only limits are: Resolution is limited to 800x600, a watermark is applied and you cannot export data to .OBJ

NVIDIA CUDA 4.1

We have kept our pace and stay up to date with the newest CUDA technology, embracing fully the new CUDA 4.1 version already

CUDA 4.1 comes with a nice little gift, a 10 to 15% speed boost!

This version of CUDA is embedded in our software and requires no more action from you. Of course keeping your video drivers up to date is important to ensure the best compatibility and performance.

Softimage LIVE plugin

A completely new line of plugins is coming: The RandomControl LIVE.

RandomControl LIVE is a line of products that fully integrate our technology in the modeling package.

The first animation package that we are proud to support is Autodesk Softimage. Our plugin supports Render Region, native rendering of animations, native Softimage frame buffer as well as a cool RandomControl LIVE viewport with realtime feedback.

We also have fully integrated our material system into Softimage interface, with nodal support for BSDF layers, bitmaps etc. Everything is Softimage-like and straightforward to use!

And the best part is that these plugins are free or charge for owners of a fryrender or Arion license.

Click on the image to see it full size.

And all the new features from 1.5.1

Faster speed, better noise

Sub-Surface Scattering

Single Sheet Sub-Surface Scattering (S5)

Participating media (fog)

Mapped emitters

Real world emitter units

Coated reflections

Integratable rough dielectrics

Improved UI: Scene tree

Scenes repository

Exclude from camera (hide)

Decal mode shows emitters by color instead of power

Dispersion ON/OFF switch

Emitters and 'others' (like physical sky) ON/OFF switch

Color maps ON/OFF switch

Bump maps ON/OFF switch

Explicit material ID: Make your custom MatID channel

Explicit object ID: Make your custom ObjID channel

Improved physical sky

Draft engine

State of the art BRDF

Dielectrics improvements

Stereoscopy

Falloff

Material override

New compositing channels

Wireframe override

Better fresnel

LUA scripting

Emitters and Sun are now working together

Caustics ON/OFF flag

Ability to rename objects, camera, materials

Aspect ratio is saved in the file

FOV is now horizontally docked

Smoother navigation noise (antialiased)

Editable emitters in realtime

Check out the 1.5.1 announcement here

...and more to come soon!

Special thanks

We would like to thank all our customers for their amazing works using Arion.

We are also specially grateful to the people who have helped us during the testing and the production of this fine release of Arion:

NVIDIA, Fran Davey, John Strieder, Johnny Butcher, Pawel Filip, Marco Podrini, Rapha�l Aguirre, Roman Vrbovsky, Shaun Keenan, St�phane Moya, Luis Morillo and H�ctor P�rez.