Solid Angle To Launch Arnold for Houdini at SIGGRAPH 2014
MADRID, 31 July, 2014 – SOLID ANGLE, maker of Arnold, the industry leading global illumination ray tracer, will launch Arnold for Houdini (HtoA) at SIGGRAPH 2014 in Vancouver, Canada, with the support of Side Effects Software, an industry leader in 3D animation and visual effects software.
HtoA provides a bridge to the Arnold renderer from within the standard Houdini interface. Having been in beta for several months, the plugin has already been used in production by many studios, including Prime Focus World for Hercules and Vampire Academy, Milk VFX for the Sherlock and Doctor Who TV series, and Framestore NY for the Captain Morgan commercials.
Solid Angle senior software engineer Frédéric Servant will be providing demos on the Side Effects booth (#901) at the following times: Tuesday August 12, 1:00pm; Wednesday August 13, 12:30pm; and Thursday August 14, 10:30am.
Solid Angle founder and CEO Marcos Fajardo said: “Arnold for Houdini is a major step forward in unifying lighting across the pipeline. We have been blown away by our customers’ enthusiasm, and are very excited to see the reaction once it becomes publicly available in the next couple of weeks.”
“We love Arnold, MtoA, and HtoA,” said former Prime Focus World senior shader writer Ramin Kamal. “Even though it doesn't show up in 90% of our output, having HtoA available means that we can solve the 10% of problems that would give us enormous headaches. If it weren't for HtoA, that 10% would probably take 90% of our time. And of course, Houdini/HtoA is an excellent combo for rapid experimentation.”
Milk VFX head of FX James Reid said: “Since the early alpha stages of development, HtoA has proved to be an invaluable tool in our effects pipeline at Milk. HtoA gives us the freedom to create effects in Houdini and fully integrate them into environments and lighting scenes in Maya. With our feedback always heard and feature requests speedily implemented, it is an exciting and reliable product to work with.”
“Houdini is being used more and more as a key lighting and rendering tool,” said Kim Davidson, Side Effects president and CEO. “With Arnold for Houdini working side-by-side with our Mantra renderer, customers can choose the best look for each shot.”
Arnold for Houdini is due for release in the SIGGRAPH timeframe and will be available free-of-charge to customers licensing the Arnold core renderer.
Contacts:
For Solid Angle
Barbara Marshall
marketing@solidangle.com
For Side Effects Software
Bill Self
bill@sidefx.com
Solid Angle (www.solidangle.com) is the technology company behind the Arnold rendering software. With offices in Madrid and London, Solid Angle’s customers include ILM, Framestore, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Rodeo FX, Luma Pictures, Image Engine, The Moving Picture Company, Digic Pictures, The Mill and Psyop. Arnold was designed to efficiently process the complex geometric datasets required for feature-length CGI animation and big-budget visual effects, while at the same time simplifying the pipeline. This unique renderer has been used to create the VFX seen in “Guardians of the Galaxy”, “Elysium, “Gravity”, “Pacific Rim”, Marvel's “The Avengers”, and “Alice in Wonderland”, to name just some. Marcos Fajardo is the founder of Solid Angle and lead architect of Arnold. The software is now available as a standalone renderer, as a C++ API and as a set of plug-ins for leading 3D applications such as Maya, Softimage and Katana on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.
Side Effects Software is a world leader in the development of Houdini, our advanced 3D animation and special effects software for use in film, commercials and video games. Side Effects Software has been recognized three times with Scientific and Technical awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Houdini family of animation software offers digital artists an unprecedented level of power, flexibility and control based on award-winning procedural technology. The comprehensive feature set includes: modeling, rigging, animation, particle effects, dynamics, compositing, integrated rendering, and more. All Houdini applications work together seamlessly and are available for the Mac OS X, Linux and Windows operating systems.
