We have just released RealityServer 4.4 which includes the new NVIDIA Iray 2016.0. We will periodically release updated versions as new improvements and Iray updates become available. We’ll cover some of the highlights of this release here but users are strongly encouraged to read both the RealityServer release notes (relnotes.txt) and the Iray releases notes (neurayrelnotes.pdf) provided with the release. Let’s take a look at those new features, some of which many of our users have been asking about for some time.
migenius is pleased to announced we are one of the launch partners for the Onshape App Store which has just entered private beta. We are making RealityServer available as an integrated application within Onshape running entirely in the cloud. Check out our dedicated RealityServer for Onshape product page for further details. Our integration with Onshape is still in beta at the moment however it is already very usable. You can request early access to the Onshape App Store private beta from this link. If you want to know more please contact us.
So you have obtained RealityServer and installed your license server, what now? We frequently get questions about the best place to start learning about RealityServer and how to use it. As RealityServer is a large, very generalised platform it can be difficult to know where to start. This article provides some pointers on where to start and the best way to learn the basics.
Trove is democratizing the design of jewelry and RealityServer is providing imagery to make it happen. Trove is an online platform for discovering, sharing and customizing 3D printed jewelry designs. Their website (www.troveup.com) enables clients to design, visualize and create beautiful pieces of jewelry from their smartphone or tablet without the need for any special tools or training and, importantly, encourages them both to share and to be inspired by the designs of others in the Trove community. All this is enabled by the innovative application of new technologies throughout the creation process.
Within a single quarter of launching its online presence (www.mycs.com) mid-2015, mycs (pronounced “mix”) was already taking orders in excess of $100k per month. Ikea famously disrupted the furniture market by inviting customers into the supply chain and selling them furniture they could assemble themselves; mycs has now ignited the latest wave of disruption in this sector by offering customised, quality furniture online and at speeds previously unheard of.
Black Mana Studios (www.blackmana.com) is an unusual business. Conceiving and popularising a “top ten” app isn’t unique, after all, there are always going to be 9 others in the list, but repeating that success time and time again is. Particularly when you consider how many other companies dream of top ten status.
KAN Design & Brand Management (www.kandesign.com) is a leading crossmedia branding and design agency. Based in the heart of Europe, KAN has been at the forefront of the branding business for almost 30 years and recently opened offices in New York to serve its increasingly global clientele. Read More
Floorplanner has been helping people create accurate floor plans to sell, design and decorate their homes and offices since 2007. Headquartered in Rotterdam, they have over 10 million registered users in 161 different countries and offer their online service in 14 languages. Over 20 million floor plans have been created via their website and the number keeps growing. Here we explain how Floorplanner has used real-time 3D rendering not only to enhance their on-line design service, but also to create a unique, innovative tool for in-store customer engagement. Read More
We have just released RealityServer 4.3 which includes the new NVIDIA Iray 2015. There are some great new features included and we will be adding several more to incremental releases in the future based on new additions to Iray. We’ll cover some of the highlights for you here, there are also a lot of smaller additions so we encourage users to take a look through the release notes for both RealityServer and Iray. Here is a taste of what’s new, starting with something we have been waiting a very long time for and are very glad to say has been included in this release. Read More
As any retailer or product marketer knows, it is almost impossible to sell a product without a photograph. The prospective purchaser gains reassurance and essential detail from these images regarding useability, suitability, attractiveness, size, functionality, etc., that cannot be communicated by words alone. And these images have been proven to do the job significantly better if they are of high resolution and show the product in context, enabling the buyer to see exactly how their specific product will look in their own environment. Read More
It’s MDL Monday again and this week I am going to show you how to put together a simple material for simulating diamonds, including dispersion based on an Abbe number. Now, I’m not a 3D artist by any means, but MDL allows me to create a material like this based on the real physical properties of diamonds rather than trying to tune abstract parameters. This material is very simple but very useful if you need to simulate jewellery. You can build on it easily to simulate other gemstones, glasses and similar substances without much effort. Today I’m just going to start with a basic, colourless diamond and cover some concepts which are important for creating physical materials.
NVIDIA Iray 2015 will introduce some great new features, including the ability to write your own procedural functions for use in materials. This is fantastic for creating resolution independent effects which can cover large areas without noticeable tiling artifacts (unless you want them of course). Iray is built into our RealityServer product so I love to test out its latest features. To put procedural functions through their paces I decided to try to emulate something procedural from my childhood, the now famous 10 PRINT program. This little one liner, originally designed to demonstrate the capabilities of the Commodore 64 prints a maze by randomly alternating between two diagonal characters. Iray uses the NVIDIA Material Definition Language (MDL) both to define materials as well as custom functions, if you haven’t tried it out this little tutorial is a great way to get started.
It sounds like such a simple question and it is asked by almost every new customer we engage. In reality, answering this can get complex quickly, however there are a few basic ways to get some quick estimates. What we are really talking about here is Capacity Planning. As a more general reference on the subject of planning for scalable websites you could take a look at many of the books out there, one now older but still great reference is Cal Henderson’s Building Scalable Websites.
Before setting out we should clarify that at migenius we are typically working with websites and applications with very different compute requirements to your average website. Normally servers are used for serving pages, database operations, perhaps running search engines and other tasks that would occupy only a small portion of any servers resources when servicing a single users requests. Read More
Mass Customisation, if you have not experienced it, is the ability to tailor a retail product to your own tastes and have it manufactured to order. Many well known brands such as Reebok and The North Face are now offering configurable products to their customers and it is catching on in many industries, not only apparel but also furniture, jewellery, automotive and many more.
To enable Mass Customisation two key problems had to be solved. First to be solved was the manufacturing processes. How do you make a customised product quickly enough and for a low enough cost to offer it in the same way as mass produced products? This has been an area of considerable research and development in recent years and brands have already started to roll out successful examples of this type of manufacturing. Read More
Melbourne, Australia, and Potsdam, Germany, July 9, 2013 – Laubwerk’s line of highly detailed 3D trees is now available in the Cloud directly from migenius Bloom Unit, giving users of Trimble® SketchUp® instant access to the German company’s photorealistic CG trees.
Bloom Unit lets you create interactive photoreal scenes using the power of cloud computing. Users create their design using low-res proxy objects. It is then automatically uploaded to the powerful migenius servers, where the photorealistic final image is rendered, saving the user time and memory on his personal computing device.
Designed with both detail and performance in mind, each expertly crafted and botanically accurate Laubwerk Plant will work seamlessly with SketchUp, one of the most popular 3D modeling tools in the world. Read More
Melbourne, Australia (December 14, 2011) – migenius, creator of custom enduser 3D web applications for rapid and improved design decision making today announced that it is taking forward the ongoing business and development related to the RealityServer® product for 3D Web Services, following an agreement with NVIDIA®, the company that had acquired mental images GmbH who had previously released this product.
Going forward, migenius has the rights to enhance, release, license and support the RealityServer technology, along with providing the necessary rights to continue the RealityServer business. The rendering framework used by RealityServer, and the commercial renderers it hosts (including NVIDIA iray®) will continue to be developed by NVIDIA, with migenius receiving ongoing updates to ensure the RealityServer product it offers maintains state of the art rendering capabilities. Existing RealityServer customers will transition to migenius for ongoing support related to 3D Web Service development. Read More
