Materials repository

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The materials repository is available

Dear users,

Our old collection of fryrender materials has been converted and adapted to the Arion 2 technology and its new file format, and is now available for download to registered users from our website. You can check it out at the following address:

www.randomcontrol.com/materials

If you’d wish to submit your own materials, you can do by email at: webmaster@randomcontrol.com.

In the process of restoration of the materials database from our old backups, the names of the authors of most materials were lost. We would like to apologize for that. If you identify a material of yours but your name is not displayed in the ‘author’ field, please let us know by sending us an e-mail at: webmaster@randomcontrol.com as well.

Thank you for reading!

Some new entries in the KB

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We have just added some pages to the Arion Knowledge Base. They affect some of the new features in v2.4.x, so they are probably worth reading:

Dicing, splatting, super-sampling and under-sampling:

http://www.randomcontrol.com/documentation?section=anti-aliasing

The AOVs:

http://www.randomcontrol.com/documentation?section=compositing-channels

Optimization toggles:

http://www.randomcontrol.com/documentation?section=performance-settings

Thanks for watching!

Some news

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Dear customers and DEMO users,

1- Compositing channels (AOVs):

We have added a new mode in the Alpha AOV, so transparent objects are displayed in gray. This saves one step in compositing if windows or windshields are involved, as they usually must be detached through an additional ObjID or MtlID AOV.

We have redone the normals AOV, so it follows the same mapping between axes and colors as other 3D apps. We have also added a selector to specify whether the normals must be displayed in World coordinates or Camera coordinates.

2- RCSDK v2.4.4:

In our way to complete MAX LIVE v2.4.x, the RCSDK has received some fixes, such as:

- The AOV improvements mentioned above.
- Fixed region-render (which works while the user navigates the scene now).
- Fixed support for instances generated with MAX LIVE v2.0.x.
- Fixed mouse-clicking if camera roll is used.
- Fixed QTVR output.
- Some other minor fixes.

We will re-compile and release Arion stand-alone and RHINO LIVE in the upcoming days, so there will be a new v2.4.4 version very soon.

3- MAX LIVE and MAX 2014:

As explained in previous blog posts, we’re still working on MAX LIVE v2.4.x, and it will still take some time to release it.

We can announce, however, that MAX LIVE for 3ds Max 2013 seems to run seamlessly in 3ds Max 2014, and that the upcoming v2.4.x version of MAX LIVE already compiles with the 3ds Max 2014 SDK.

Thank you for watching.

Arion stand-alone v2.4.3 and its DEMO are out!

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Arion Standalone v2.4.3 has been released

Dear RandomControl customers,

Arion stand-alone v2.4.3 has been released a few minutes ago.

We have also released a DEMO version of the stand-alone for those of you willing to try it out. Like ArionBench or the RHINO LIVE trial, you can download the DEMO from the Customer Area after logging in.

In the upcoming days we will sort out the changelog and make some adjustments to the website. We will also send out a mailing announcing the availability of Arion v2.4.3 for those of you not following us on Facebook/Twitter or reading this blog often. Right after that we will resume the development of MAX LIVE and will focus on it until MAX LIVE v2.4.3 is ready for release.

Thank you!

Preliminary v2.4.3 changelog

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As promised, here’s a preliminary changelog for the Arion core (RCSDK) and Arion stand-alone v2.4.3.

http://www.randomcontrol.com/documentation?section=product-changelog

We have shifted through several internal builds in the past weeks, so the changes since the latest public stand-alone are labeled as v2.4.1, v2.4.2, and v2.4.3. In particular, v2.4.1 is where most new features happened (as announced on this very blog in the past months), and v2.4.2/v2.4.3 have brought some critical fixes.

We expect to release the new Arion stand-alone this week as mentioned a few days ago.

Thank you!

Arion stand-alone v2.4.3 is about to be released

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Dear customers,

Development of RCSDK v2.4.3 is officially complete.

As of this moment, Arion stand-alone and RHINO LIVE are 100% compatible with the latest version of our core technology, so we expect to release Arion stand-alone v2.4.3 (plus a re-compiled RHINO LIVE and a re-compiled ArionBench) in the upcoming days (next week). Due to the complexities of MAXSDK, MAX LIVE v2.4.3 still requires some deep adjustments, and it will take us some more time to release it.

In the upcoming days we will post a summary of the new features in the v2.4.x Arion core. These features are common to all our products.

Right after the release of Arion stand-alone v2.4.3, we will focus on MAX LIVE v2.4.x until our three products (stand-alone, MAX LIVE, and RHINO LIVE) are levelled and up-to-date with the newest Arion core. After that, we will focus on the first release of XSI.

Thank you!

RHINO LIVE v2.4.2 has been released

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Dear RHINO LIVE customers and DEMO downloaders,

After the RHINO LIVE v2.4.1 release, we have resumed development of all our product line and the Arion Core, which is now RCSDK v2.4.2.

We have fixed a critical bug/crash in Kepler (sm_30) cards with CUDA 5 that used to affect scenes without any emitters. We have decided to recompile RHINO LIVE with this very important fix and release a new build, which you can download from the Customer Area already.

We will release the corresponding RHINO LIVE v2.4.2 DEMO in the upcoming hours.

This fix in Kepler cards is part of the current version of RCSDK (v2.4.2), so it will be featured in all our products in the upcoming 2.4.x release.

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IMPORTANT NOTICE:

Since RCSDK v2.4.x, our license generation system has changed slightly:

Now each new release of our software requires a new license file

This means that, from now on, when you download a setup for a new release of our software, you must also download and install the license file that matches the version number of the setup.

For example: Right now the Customer Area allows RHINO LIVE customers to download RHINO LIVE v2.4.1 and v2.4.2, plus a license for RHINO LIVE v2.4.1 and one for v2.4.2. The license for v2.4.1 doesn’t work in v2.4.2 and vice-versa.

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Thank you!

A little progress update

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After the release of RHINO LIVE, ArionBench, and some intensive work on many aspects of our website, we’re resuming the development of Arion stand-alone, MAX LIVE v2.4.x, and XSI LIVE.

As you know from ArionBench and RHINO LIVE, the Arion core (RCSDK) is already v2.4.1. We expect to release a matching v2.4.1 stand-alone and MAX LIVE as soon as we can, and that is what we’re focused on right now. After that release, we expect to focus on XSI LIVE until it is ready to ship.

We will keep you posted as the corresponding releases approach.

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For the time being, we have fixed some small imperfections in ArionBench using RCSDK v2.4.2:

- We have extended the duration of the benchmark while leaving the benchmark values unaffected. This makes the benchmark more stable in super-fast computers (we have received some really high benchmark entries this week).

- The counter of seconds overlaid in the final render was broken in the first release of ArionBench. The new one also overlays what build was used (32-bit or 64-bit).

- In software-only mode, ArionBench was (wrongly) leaving one CPU thread idle. That problem is fixed now.

The updated ArionBench will most likely be uploaded over the weekend.

Thanks for watching.

Fantastic news: nVidia TITAN

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TITAN

nVidia has released a new generation of video cards (TITAN). We’re still running tests to confirm, but our first impressions are extraordinary:

A high-end TITAN card is more than twice as fast as a Kepler 680.

If this wasn’t important enough, TITAN cards ship with 6GB. This, combined with the new features for RAM economy in Arion v2.4.1 make the old memory constraints that people used to associate to GPU rendering fade away.

This is great news to Arion users. Good job, nVidia!

Arion Benchmark

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ArionBench

We have just released ArionBench.

ArionBench is an Arion-based software tool designed to benchmark the CPUs and CUDA GPUs available to your system.

ArionBench is based in RCSDK (the Arion core), so it is guaranteed to squeeze each and every flop in the computing devices present in your system.

http://www.randomcontrol.com/arionbench

Special thanks go to Marco Podrini (podro), who gently contributed the ArionBench scene.

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In order to download ArionBench:

1- If you are a customer or a DEMO user and own an Account ID already, just log-in to our website and download ArionBench from the Customer Area.

2- If you don’t own an Account ID yet, create one and download ArionBench from the Customer Area.

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In order to submit your own entries, simply send the image(s) output by ArionBench to arionbench@randomcontrol.com.

Note that the listings in the ArionBench page are reviewed (manually) by our team to ensure their validity. This means that your submissions won’t be displayed immediately.

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We expect ArionBench to become a valuable resource for our customers, who often ask us what GPUs they should buy for optimal performance. But beyond this, we hope that ArionBench will become a reference in the GPU/CUDA world, as it provides a clean and reliable way to benchmark the ray-tracing capabilities of different hardware architectures.