Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1030364
www.postmagazine.com 13 POST SEPTEMBER 2018 SIGGRAPH 2018 location-based entertainment centers. They can deliver precise player tracking for VR and produce high quality motion capture data without the need for specialized suits and long setup times. IMUs have also been added to OptiTrack's stan- dard-sized Active Pucks, and both will be shipping in the fall. OptiTrack Active Pucks provide positional tracking data with errors of less than 0.2mm, even across very large tracking areas, as well as rotational data derived from active LEDs and the IMU. Pucks will provide tracking for any object to which it is applied, including HMDs, set pieces, weapons and end effectors for full body tracking. The pucks are powered by a rechargeable battery and can run up to 10 hours on a single charge. All OptiTrack Active technology can be tracked by both Active and Passive camera systems, so custom- ers with existing Ethernet-based systems can inte- grate Active Pucks into their workflows immediately. EPIC GAMES RELEASES UNREAL ENGINE 4.20 CARY, NC — Epic Games launched Unreal Engine 4.20 (unrealengine.com), enabling developers to build realistic characters and immersive environ- ments across games, film and TV, VR/AR/MR and enterprise applications. Unreal Engine 4.20 combines the latest realtime rendering advancements with improved creative tools. Artists working in visual effects, animation, broadcast and virtual production can take ad- vantage of the latest enhancements for digital humans, VFX, cinematic depth of field and more to create sophisticated images across all forms of media and entertainment. Key features within Unreal Engine 4.20 include: Niagara VFX (early access): Unreal Engine's new programmable VFX editor, Niagara, is now available in early access. This new suite of tools is built from the ground up to give artists unprecedented control over particle simulation, rendering and performance, for more sophisticated visuals. This tool will eventu- ally replace the Unreal Cascade particle editor. Cinematic Depth of Field: Unreal Engine 4.20 delivers tools for achieving depth of field at true cin- ematic quality. This new implementation replaces the Circle DOF method. It's faster, cleaner and provides a cinematic appearance through the use of a proce- dural bokeh simulation. Cinematic DOF also supports alpha channel, dynamic resolution stability and has multiple settings for scaling up or down on console platforms based on project requirements. Digital Humans Improvements: In-engine tools now include dual lobe specular/double Beckman specular models, backscatter transmission in lights, boundary bleed color subsurface scattering, iris normal slot for eyes and screen space irradiance to build the most cutting-edge digital humans in games and beyond. Mixed Reality Capture Support (early ac- cess): Users with virtual production workflows now have mixed reality capture support that includes video input, calibration and in-game compositing. Supported webcams and HDMI capture devices enable users to pull real world green-screened video into the engine, and supported tracking devices can match your camera location to the in-game camera for more dynamic shots. Robust AR Support: Unreal Engine 4.20 ships with native support for ARKit 2, which includes features for creating shared, collaborative AR expe- riences. Also included is the latest support for Magic Leap One, Google ARCore 1.2 support. AMD INTROS RADEON PRO WX 8200 SANTA CLARA, CA — AMD (www.amd. com) announced a high-performance addition to the Radeon Pro WX workstation graphics lineup with the AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 graphics card, delivering advanced workstation graphics performance for under $1,000, for realtime visualization, virtual reality (VR) and photorealistic rendering. AMD also unveiled a new alliance with the Vancouver Film School. The new AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 graphics card allows professionals to accelerate design and rendering. It is intended for design and manufac- turing, media and entertainment, and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) workloads at all stages of product development. Based on the advanced "Vega" GPU architecture with the 14nm FinFET process, the Radeon Pro WX 8200 graphics card offers the performance required to drive increasingly large and complex models through the entire design visualization pipeline. With planned certifications for many of today's most popular applications — including Adobe CC, Dassault Systmes Solidworks, Autodesk 3ds Max, Revit, among others — the Radeon Pro WX 8200 graphics card is ideal for workloads such as realtime visualiza- tion, physically-based rendering and VR. The Radeon Pro WX 8200 graphics card is equipped with advanced features and technolo- gies geared towards professionals, including: High Bandwidth Cache Controller (HBCC): The Radeon Pro WX 8200 graphics card's memory system removes the capacity limitations of traditional GPU memory, letting creators and designers work with much larger, more detailed models and assets in realtime; Enhanced Pixel Engine: The "Vega" GPU ar- chitecture's enhanced pixel engine lets creators build more complex worlds without worrying about GPU limitations, increasing efficiency by batching related work into the GPU's local cache to process them si- multaneously. New "shade once" technology ensures only pixels visible in the final scene are shaded; Error Correcting Code (ECC) Memory: Helps guarantee the accuracy of computations by correcting any single or double-bit error resulting from naturally occurring background radiation. The Radeon Pro WX 8200 graphics card is now available for $999 USD. AMD also announced a new alliance with The Vancouver Film School (https://vfs.edu/) to open a tech innovation lab and hub for Vancouver's profes- sional VFX community. Powered by Radeon Pro and Ryzen technologies, the AMD Creators Lab, which features AMD-based workstations, will inspire the creative tech community and advance the field of VFX, game design and VR/AR development. MAXON ANNOUNCES CINEMA 4D RELEASE 20 FRIEDRICHSDORF, GERMANY — Maxon (www.maxon.net/en-us) unveiled Cinema 4D Release 20 (R20) at SIGGRAPH, which introduces high-end features for VFX and motion graphics art- ists, including node-based materials, volume model- ing, robust CAD import and a dramatic evolution of the MoGraph toolset. Key highlights in Release 20 include: Node-Based Materials, which provide new possibilities for creating materials from simple references to complex shaders in a node-based editor. With more than 150 nodes to choose from that perform different functions, artists can combine nodes to easily build complex shading effects for greater creative flexibility. For an easy start, users new to a node-based material workflow still can rely on the user interface of Cinema 4D's standard Material Editor, creating the correspond- ing node material in the background automatically. Node-based materials can be packaged into assets with user-defined parameters exposed in a similar interface to Cinema 4D's classic Material Editor. MoGraph Fields offers new capabilities in this procedural animation toolset, giving users an entirely new way to define the strength of effects by combining falloffs — from simple shapes to shaders or sounds and objects and formulas. Artists can layer Fields with standard mixing modes and remap their effects. They can also group multiple Fields and use them to control effectors, deformers, weights and more. ProRender Enhancements — ProRender in Cinema 4D R20 extends the GPU-rendering toolset with key features, including sub-surface scattering, motion blur and multi-passes. Also included are an updated ProRender core, support for Apple's Metal 2 technol- ogy, out-of-core textures and other enhancements. Cinema 4D 20 is available this month. Also, Maxon announced that its three original founders and serving managing directors of the company, Uwe Bärtels, Harald Egel and Harald Schneider, will retire after 32 years serving the com- pany. Maxon has appointed former Adobe execu- tive David McGavran to the role of CEO at Maxon Computer GmbH. [For full SIGGRAPH coverage, visit us online at www.postmagazine.com]