What's New In Brazil r/s V2?

In addition to all of Brazil r/s' base features, Brazil r/s V2's most anticipated new features include:

• Overall Speed Improvements
• 3D Motion Blur Support *
• Displacement Support *
• New Render Features
• Brazil r/s V2 Materials: New Features and Improvements
• New Brazil r/s V2 Texture Maps
• New Brazil r/s V2 Objects
• Brazil r/s V2 Camera Improvements
• Brazil r/s V2 Light Improvements
• Improvements and Additions to Photon Map rendering and workflow
• New Brazil r/s V2 Shadow Map
• Bonus Tools
• Easy to Use Windows Installer
• Updated and Extended Brazil r/s V2 Manual
• Miscellaneous
• New! Beta features *

* see details below for differences between what's available with the Basic Edition and the Professional Editions

Overall Speed Improvements

• V2 supports 32-bit, and 64-bit for improved memory performance
• Focus on performance improvements on realistic production scenes, including complex interior GI and massive instanced data handling
• Aggressive multi-threading - Brazil r/s V2 is unaffected by the 3ds Max r7/8/9 cpu affinity issues
• New large-dataset-accelerator which effectively replaces the need for the old ray server accelerators
• New Quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) Sampling Core
  • Prevents render times from spiraling out of control in scenes that combine multiple oversampled and blurry effects, such as skylight, GI, subsurface scattering, glossy/blurry reflections, DOF, etc.
  • Keeps noise amount and appearance consistent when QMC effects interact, such as skylight visible in glossy reflections
  • Controls flicker during animation, maintaining consistent noise appearance across frames and different computers.

3D Motion Blur Support

• Camera movement and rotation blur
• Object movement and rotation (transform) blur
• Deforming mesh blur
• Particle blur, including PFlow* support - (*WIP & Pro Version Only)
• Flexible shutter controls for manipulating shutter bias as well as opening/closing speed

Displacement Support

• Built in Displacement for the new implicit Brazil r/s V2 primitives (BzSphere and BzPlane)
• Rendertime displacements on any object via the Brazil r/s Displacement modifier (Pro-Beta Version Only)
• Multiple displacement types supported
  • Analytic - easy to use, with very little memory overhead. Great for very shallow displacement, or distant objects
  • Heightfield - faster than analytic especially in ray tracing heavy scenes, or close to camera.

New Render Features

• Unlimited number of render presets, independent of the 3ds Max preset system which was introduced in 3ds Max 6
  • All presets are accessible via trackview, making it easy to copy tracks from one preset to another
  • Entire parameter sets (for example all Luma Server settings) can be instanced (shared) between presets
  • Extensive descriptive text can be entered for each preset
• New z-depth and surface-normal adaptive antialiasing tests
• Improved antialiased image filtering and texture filtering quality
• Many additions and improvements to the render pass system -- more fine-grained control of exactly what goes into each renderpass and more customizability added to pre-defined passes
• Atmospheric visibility in camera views, reflections, refractions, GI and Sub-Surface Scattering can all be determined independent of each other
• Texture baking is now supported
• Luma Server (illumination/GI engine) changes:
  • Many new GI-adjustments added - e.g. saturation, basic black/white point, multiplier, gamma adjustment, and tinting
  • Light portals are now supported - speeds up skylit interiors by magnitudes!
  • Skylight 'Receiver' excludes - exclude objects from receiving Skylight.
  • Irradiance Render Cache - Fast. Very fast. Add Auto-Occlusion or Retracing for some fast addition of detail in nooks and crannies and/or next to bright objects. Works well with motion blur, reflection, refraction, and all other ray traced effects
  • Improvements in GI sampling -- combats the problems where objects previously had to be exploded apart to force edges to show up
• Support for 3ds Max 8's Floating Point Frame Buffer (in 3ds Max version 8 and later only)

Brazil r/s V2 Materials: New Features and Improvements

• Glass Material - improved Dispersion shading
• Toon Material
  • All new inker - same basic concept, but higher quality -- works well with non-standard camera lenses
  • improved Gooch shading - better results when using multiple light sources
• Utility Material
  • Sub-Material overrides for different ray types - camera, reflected, refracted, shadow, and sub-surface scattering. Can be used for passes and to create special material FX.
  • New Saturation controls for GI send and receive
  • New, separate photon-affecting GI override controls, including material, tint, and saturation.
• Advanced Material
  • Area light specular highlight support
  • Sub-surface scattering (wax "deep scattering" and skin "sub-dermal scattering") code has been improved

New Brazil r/s V2 Texture Maps

• Raytraced Reflect/Refract Map with all the controls from the Glass and Chrome material allows adding advanced reflection and refraction effects to any 3ds Max material.
• Occlusion Map - useful for Ambient and Reflection occlusion passes, dirt, and other special effects. Implements surface normal, reflection, and refraction directed occlusion, along with focus controls and attenuation.
• Subsurface Scatter Map - add subsurface scattering effects to any 3ds Max material. Includes focus controls and the option to scatter along the refracted direction for many different material looks, from marble, to soft wax, or even urethane.

New Brazil r/s V2 Objects

• Implicit CSG sphere -- mathematically/visually perfect sphere, no geometry
• Implicit CSG plane -- replaces Brazil r/s V1's ground plane -- can be placed/aligned anywhere and can be finite or infinite in size.

Brazil r/s V2 Camera Improvements

• Multipass camera effects supported
• The lens types' parameters now appear nicely in a new rollout, rather than a separate dialog.
• Depth of Field moved entirely to the cameras
  • Includes per-camera sampling values, bokeh settings, f-stop/focus distance.
  • DoF hugely improved to be super fast and cleaner, especially when combined with effects like glossy reflection and GI thanks to the new quasi-monte carlo core.
• All new viewport and controls UI

Brazil r/s V2 Light Improvements

• Improved area light sampling with optional automatic quality control
• Extensive projector light controls
• Greatly simplified photon UI
• Largest support of IES libraries in any 3D product - over 30,000 files tested - many of which 3ds Max can't even support!
• Custom curve controls for focus and attenuation are now RGB based, allowing complex gradients
• New light shader driven architecture allows freely mixing light shapes with different focus shapes, and easy expansion of light capabilities
• All new viewport and controls UI - easily hide/unhide rollouts and features
• Creation modes updated - easily set hotspot/falloff for a 'spot' light while creating the light.

Improvements and Additions to Photon Map rendering and workflow

• Overall general improvements in speed
• Improved lighting behavior in animated scenes
• New Photon Viewport Datascope - for photon and render cache debugging, setup, and 'impress the clients during project reviews!'
• Photon precomputation - dramatically speeds up regathering of photon maps
• Storing of direct illumination - for scenes with lots of lights, or complex lights (area lights, lights with area shadows, etc.) Further improving regathering speed
• Global photon count multiplier values and methods
• Photon Map-specific energy filters (saturation, gamma, tinting, etc.)

New Brazil r/s V2 Shadow Map

• New native Shadow Map - supports rectangular mapping, map tiling with memory limitation options, and a host of new filtering types (avoid stair stepping with low-res shadow maps)
• Supports non-polygonal implicit objects like the BzSphere and BzPlane and render time displacement

Bonus Tools

• Checks for new versions of Brazil r/s without logging into your Account
• "Pick next bucket" to choose the next bucket rendered in a frame
• Render a single image across multiple computers with far more control than what you have via backburner
• Lighting control panel with full support for Brazil V2 lights
• Move scenes back and forth between Brazil r/s V1 and Brazil r/s V2
• List of thousands of IORs (Index of Refraction)
• Compare map speeds
• Write render times, resolution, disk space, etc. into your temp folder, or on your render with an...
• Extremely flexible overlay script
• Save rendering and rendering-related settings in preset files or in internal storage, and load selectively
• ... and more

Easy to Use Windows Installer

• Simply click through and be done
• Or choose your own options
• Or dump the files to a folder along with an instructional file for techie folks with custom network deployment software
• Check for updates from the Installer

Updated and Extended Brazil r/s V2 Manual

• Bigger, full of detailed descriptions, illustrations, notes, tips and sample imagery in both rendered and explanatory schematic form

Miscellaneous

• Extensively Production Tested
  • Superman Returns (2006) was the first major motion picture using Brazil r/s V2
  • Ruby Tuesday's 2005 super-bowl commercial with 4 photoreal Cooper minis -- earliest known production use
  • Many more productions since these.
• Runs side-by-side with, does not replace, Brazil r/s V1.2 - conversion scripts included to moving scenes between the two

New! Beta features (Pro Version Only)

• Use Brazil r/s V2 in the Material Editor
• New Domelight for even faster skylighting (ambient occlusion)
• New Advanced Global Fog atmospheric that works like a regular fog, occluding itself with density, etc. and -can- take illumination from picked lights.. or all lights in the scene
• New analytic bump mapping which gives highly accurate bump map rendering without the shading artifacts from regular bump mapping, especially on high contrast detail maps such as seams, paneling, etc.
• Sub-surface scattering improvements, including Bi-Directional scattering
• Rendertime Polygonal Displacement Modifier -- This has been in V2 for a long time now, but it's still having some issues when used with animated, deforming meshes (it works with static meshes and animation, just has problems when you start bending the meshes during animation), so we've kept it "beta" for now

Professional Edition Annual Subscription Program

The Professional Edition annual subscription program is designed for professionals who want to keep up with the latest new features, while having a cost-effective, predictable annual expenditure. Professional subscribers can also take comfort in knowing that our highly-regarded, experienced support staff will be there for them when they need it.

Brazil r/s V2 was carefully redesigned at the core level to provide an open, solid, extensible foundation for all future versions of Brazil r/s. We also streamlined our development process--a very big deal--enabling us to produce very stable code, very fast, much faster than before. Laying this new groundwork took a long time, but is really paying off. We expect Brazil r/s to explode with new features going forward, and we are thrilled to be able to release them to you as they are developed! With the Professional Edition, you no longer have to wait for the "next big release"!

Professional Edition Includes:

• Frequent, early access to the latest updates, new features, enhancements, and major version upgrades at no extra charge.
• Access to all maintenance (bug-fix) updates.
• Floating licensing
• Per-machine, rather than per-cpu licensing -- ONE license covers ONE computer with up to EIGHT cpus
• Professional Edition members-only forum for priority support with SplutterFish staff.
• Opportunity to participate in beta-testing of future Brazil r/s versions
• Professional Edition members-only special offers
• Participation with our development wishlist, roadmap and bug-tracking

Professional Edition benefits (updates and support) expire after ONE year, after which it may be renewed to continue the same great benefits. The annual Professional Edition subscription cost will be approximately $300 per Workstation license.

All Brazil r/s V1 upgrades include ONE year of Professional Edition benefits at no extra charge!

Basic Edition

We know that some artists would prefer a more economical version of Brazil r/s in exchange for feature updates and high-end support. So we are now offering the same great Brazil r/s software but without all the extras.

Basic Edition Includes:

• Access to 2.0.x versions of Brazil r/s; this includes bug-fix updates, but no new features
• Node-locked licensing -- Brazil r/s will operate on ONE specific authorized computer
• Access to members-only web-based support forum, but no priority by SplutterFish support staff.
• Access to limited priority support during the first 90 days after purchase for help with installation and "getting started" with Brazil r/s

Artists may upgrade from the Basic Edition to the Professional Edition at any time.

Basic Edition artists will have the opportunity to upgrade and get new features at major version updates, e.g. upgrading to Brazil r/s V3.

Purchasing Info

This page describes the purchase process in detail. If you have any questions about this process that are not answered here, or about Brazil r/s' capabilities, please email us with your questions at contact@splutterfish.com and we will be happy to assist you.

Purchase Options

Brazil r/s may be purchased either through our international nework of resellers or directly through our secure online SplutterFish Market. Our online store accepts Visa, MasterCard, and American Express. If alternative payment arrangements are required, such as check or bank wire transfer, please contact SplutterFish, and we will be happy to accommodate you.

Pricing

Our current price list may be viewed here. Product eligibility, special offers and bulk discounts will be calculated in real-time as you browse the store.

NOTE If you are an existing customer, please be sure to log in to make sure that all of the options you qualify for are available!

For complete details on pricing and terms of sale for schools, students and faculty, please contact the SplutterFish sales team directly.

End-User License Agreement

Please take a moment to review the End-User License Agreement before you purchase. By using SplutterFish software, you are agreeing that you have read and accepted the End-User License Agreement.

Setting Up Your Account

Once the sale is completed, you will be directed to your personal SplutterFish online account on splutterfish.com, where you view instructions for licensing Brazil r/s. After you run the license software on your designated computer, you will receive a license key within 48 hours (usually much faster). You will then be able to download Brazil r/s, and receive access to the Brazil r/s documentation and support options for which you qualify. We encourage you to join the Brazil r/s registered users web forum, accessible through your SplutterFish online account as well.

If you are a Brazil r/s V2 Professional Edition client, you will have access to feature updates and bug-fixes, which are conveniently distributed via your SplutterFish online account.