5 tools updates you may have missed in November 2021

While CG Channel tries to write about all of the major new versions of CG software that get released each month, sometimes there are smaller updates or useful plugins that we don’t manage to cover.

Rather then letting those releases slip past unnoticed, we’ve put together a round-up of five updates to visual effects, feature animation and architectural visualization tools that didn’t get full stories in November 2021.

Below, you can find summaries of what’s new in the Enscape 3.2, Redshift 3.0.60 and RenderMan 24.2 renderers; in scan retopology tool Wrap 2022.11; and in Pulze’s Render Manager 2 for 3ds Max.

Enscape 3.2

Overview
Fast becoming a staple of architectural visualisation pipelines, Enscape’s real-time ray tracer gives users a quick way to create photorealistic renders of CAD and BIM models, further extended by this point update.

New features

• Dynamic asset placement
  Place and edit assets right in the rendering window and have changes reflected in the CAD/BIM model.
• Green building assets and materials
  Over 250 new assets, including 150 ‘green buildings’ like wind turbines and solar panels.
• Batch rendering of panoramas
• Panorama tours
• Better upload management
• Ray traced sun shadows in the real-time view
• Vulkan ray tracing for AMD GPUs
• Windows 11 support

System requirements
Windows 10+. Compatible with Archicad 21+, Revit 2018+, Rhino 6.0+, SketchUp 2018+, Vectorworks 2020+.

Price
Rental-only: node-locked licences cost $69.90/month or $478.80/year; floating licences cost $814.80/year.

Read a full list of the new features in Enscape 3.2 on the Enscape blog

Redshift 3.0.60

Overview
Maxon’s GPU production renderer for 3ds Max, Blender, Cinema 4D, Houdini and Maya continues to evolve, following the public beta of Redshift RT and the release of Redshift for Mac earlier this year.

New features

• Support for OSL shaders when running under Metal on macOS
• Performance improvements in scenes with many lights or materials
• Blender plugin: Cryptomatte support
• Houdini plugin: Support for texture baking in Solaris, packed crowd deformation motion blur

System requirements
Windows 10, Linux and macOS 11.5+. Compatible with 3ds Max 2014+, Blender 2.83+, Cinema 4D R21+, Houdini 17.0+ (18.0+ on macOS), Katana 3.0v1+ and Maya 2016.5.

Price
Now available rental-only. Individual subscriptions cost $45/month or $264/year

Read a full list of new features in Redshift 3.0.60 on Maxon’s forum (Registration required)

Render Manager 2

Overview
Pitched as “the first render manager for arch viz” on its release last year, Pulze’s Render Manager provides streamlined tools for managing a render farm running 3ds Max and its key third-party renderers.

New features

System requirements
Windows only. Compatible with 3ds Max 2014+ and Arnold, Corona Renderer, FStormRender, Redshift, V-Ray.

Price
Rental-only. Subscriptions now cost $8/month or $69/year.

Read a full list of new features in Render Manager 2 on Pulze’s blog

RenderMan 24.2

Overview
The latest point release of Pixar’s heavyweight animation and VFX production renderer following the major RenderMan 24 update in June, which added long-awaited hybrid CPU/GPU render mode RenderMan XPU.

New features

• Aggregate Volumes
  A new, more efficient technique for rendering overlapping volumes without boundary behaviours, like overlapping clouds. Currently supported in the PxrPathTracer and PxrUnified integrators.
• New control parameter for Volumes
• Support for Path Guiding in the PxrPathTracer and PxrUnified integrators
• Support for the OSL raytype() function
• hdPrman (Hydra render delegate): Consume MaterialX through hdPrman.  Pattern networks are compiled to OSL.  BxDFs are transcoded to PxrSurface.
• Houdini plugin: Support for Houdini 19

System requirements
Windows 10, CentOS/RHEL 7.2+ Linux and macOS 10.13-10.15. Compatible with Blender 2.83+, Houdini 17.5+, Katana 3.1 and Maya 2019+.

Price
New node-locked or floating licences cost $595. There is also a free non-commercial edition.

Read a full list of new features in RenderMan 24.2 in the online release notes

Wrap 2021.11

Overview
Russian3DScanner/R3DS’s popular tool for transferring topology from an existing model to a 3D scan gets its first update this year, improving performance and support for FACS-based facial animation workflows.

New features

• FastWrapping
  Works “up to 20 times” faster than a regular Wrapping node, especially on high-poly base meshes.
• PointDetector
  Automatically detects facial markers on FACS scans.
• UnsubdivideGeom
  Restores previous subdivision levels for meshes produced using Catmull-Clark subdivision
• MatchTopology
  Matches the vertex order of a model with a given reference
• FindTransform
  Computes transformation between two models with the same topology
• DeltaMush
  Moves mesh details from reference geometry to target geometry
• New ImageToVertexMask,LoadPoints and VertexMaskToPolygonSelection nodes

System requirements
Windows 7+ and Linux.

Price
Node-locked Indie licence, available to users with revenues under $100,000/year, cost $370. Node-locked Professional licences cost $670; floating Professional licences cost $970.

Read a full list of new features in Wrap 2022.11 in the online changelog