SIG: Pictures from the SIGGRAPH 2013 Show Floor – Part 1

Continued from page 1

Next Limit of Spain is one of the most innovative software companies in the world, with cutting edge technology now wrapped in three product lines: XFlow, RealFlow and Maxwell Render. The company also does research.

Like Graphisoft, Next Limit has been recognized as a leading innovator by the European Business Awards program in the EU. At SIGGRAPH Akiko mentioned that Next Limit was showing the next version of Maxwell Render. Version 3.0 of the popular rendering engine and program are coming. There are now many plugins for Maxwell Render for various CAD and DCC packages, including the bonzai 3D, ArchiCAD, modo, Rhino and Lightwave. These were all released in 2013.

05 – Victor of Next Limit of Spain. Maxwell Render 3.0 is coming soon, says the company, and is one of the global leaders in high-end rendering technology. (courtesy Akiko Ashley, All Rights Reserved.)

Maxwell Render comes in three versions now. There is Maxwell Render Suite and Maxwell Render LE (Learning Edition). And there is Maxwell for SketchUp. The growth of Maxwell Render is actually quite remarkable, as the field for high-end photographic rendering technology is remarkably competitive and crowded.

And speaking of competition, LightWorks made one of the biggest announcements at SIGGRAPH 2013 about its new iRay+ API technology and partnership with NVIDIA. We have written about this in a fuller report here. In essence, Lightworks will be the exclusive partner in bringing NVIDIA’s iray GPU-based rendering technology to a rendering engine (API) for incorporation into hundreds of applications used worldwide.

06 – Lightworks introduced Iray+ for incorporation in its API packages for ISVs in the CAD and 3D markets. (image courtesy Akiko Ashley, All Rights Reserved).

NewTek introduced a new 3D application called ChronoSculpt. This is a stand-alone application but does have very strong connections to the Lightwave 3D sister package. This is “time-based cache sculpting for every 3D software pipeline” says the company.

NewTek Lightwave also has a new product called NevronMotion but that’s a plugin for Lightwave that does motion retargeting and works with support for the Microsoft Kinect device. Rumors are floating that Apple is going to buy the Israeli company behind the Kinect’s technology.

07 – ChronoSculpt is a new 3D application by NewTek’s LightWave group that revolutionizes the way one works with animation and dynamic simulation cache files. (courtesy Akiko Ashley, All Rights Reserved)

We will go into more about what ChronoSculpt is in a future report. Currently the application is available for Windows 64-bit operating systems only but a Mac OS X and Linux version is coming soon, says the company. We are pretty happy to see the Lightwave group reinvigorated with the latest Lightwave 11.6 release and these new focused products.

We will have more pictures soon.