AMD Radeon ProRender Supports AxF, X-Rite’s Appearance Exchange Format
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., August 1, 2017 – X-Rite Incorporated, a global leader in color science and technology, and its subsidiary Pantone LLC, today announced that AMD Radeon™ ProRender for 3ds Max, Maya, and Blender natively support the Appearance Exchange Format (AxF™). Developed by X-Rite, AxF is a vendor-neutral format that enables the communication of all aspects of a physical material’s appearance – color, texture, gloss, refraction, transparency, translucency, special effects (sparkles) and reflection properties – in a single, editable file to improve design virtualization. AxF integration allows Radeon ProRender users to leverage the most accurate physical material representations to achieve a new level of realism in virtualization while streamlining design and approval cycles. X-Rite and AMD will showcase the AxF integration in Radeon ProRender at SIGGRAPH 2017, July 30 – August 3 in Los Angeles.
AxF is the foundational component of the X-Rite Total Appearance Capture (TAC™) ecosystem, a solution that brings a new level of accuracy and efficiency to the capture, communication and presentation of physical materials in the virtual world. Traditionally, the capture and rendering of complex materials such as special effects paints, meshes and fabrics have been a time-consuming and manual process. TAC addresses this challenge with a new level of precision in material scanning coupled with an ability to share the resulting data, via AxF, across an expanding set of rendering tools such as Radeon ProRender.
“The ability to accurately capture and digitize physical materials is critical to the creation of a truly lifelike virtual experience,” says Dr. Francis Lamy, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, X-Rite and Pantone. “With the adoption of AxF, Radeon ProRender offers access to the most sophisticated tools for digital material capture. Radeon ProRender users can now achieve an entirely new level of accuracy, creativity and realism.”
“AxF allows Radeon ProRender users to create visually stunning materials which are indistinguishable from their real-world counterparts,” said Ogi Brkic, General Manager, Radeon Pro Professional Graphics. “When combined with ProRender’s physically based rendering, photorealistic digital representation of captured materials makes workflows effortless!”
Radeon ProRender is a powerful physically-based rendering engine that enables creative professionals to produce stunningly photorealistic images. Built on highly efficient, high-performance Radeon™ Rays technology, Radeon™ ProRender’s complete, scalable ray tracing engine uses open industry standards to harness GPU and CPU performance for swift, impressive results.
TAC Captures Physical Material Appearance at SIGGRAPH
SIGGRAPH 2017 attendees can see a demonstration of X-Rite’s award-winning Total Appearance Capture (TAC) ecosystem and the AxF integration with Radeon ProRender at the X-Rite booth 1104. Attendees will see how AxF files can be used within Radeon ProRender and applied to their renderings and animations.
The TAC ecosystem is comprised of the TAC7 scanner, PANTORA™ Material Hub desktop application, and Virtual Light Booth (VLB). Physical material samples are scanned using the TAC7 scanner, which captures appearance properties digitally to create AxF files that store appearance data. The files are stored, managed, viewed and edited in the PANTORA desktop application. The AxF files can be shared with Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Computer-Aided Design (CAD), and state-of-the art rendering applications including Allegorithmic Substance Designer, AMD Radeon™ ProRender, Autodesk VRED™ Professional 2017, Lumiscaphe Patchwork 3D, Luxion KeyShot® Next Limit Maxwell, and NVIDIA Iray®.
The Virtual Light Booth is the industry’s first immersive 3D visualization environment for evaluating material appearance. It allows users to accurately and efficiently visualize and compare 3D digital material renderings side-by-side with physical samples. The VLB combines X-Rite’s SpectraLight QC professional light booth technology with a high-brightness, color-calibrated, LCD display; color management technology; and motion tracking sensors. This allows the VLB viewing environment to control parameters that influence the perception of appearance from illumination to contextual to observational factors. With the VLB, design teams can easily verify these conditions to see changes in material performance. This helps ensure consistency between digital prototypes and final physical products and empowers designers to make more informed material selection decisions reducing approval cycles and accelerating time to market.
For more information regarding the TAC ecosystem, please visit us at http://www.xrite.com/categories/Appearance/total-appearance-capture-ecosystem.
About X-Rite
Founded in 1958, X-Rite Incorporated is a global leader in the science and technology of color and appearance. With its wholly owned subsidiary Pantone, X-Rite employs more than 800 people in 11 countries. The company’s corporate headquarters are located in Grand Rapids, Mich., with regional headquarters in Europe and Asia and service centers across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas. X-Rite Pantone offers a full range of solutions used by manufacturers, retailers, printers, photographers and graphic design houses to achieve precise management and communication of color and appearance throughout their processes. X-Rite Pantone products and services are recognized standards in the printing, packaging, photography, graphic design, video, automotive, paints, plastics, textiles and medical industries. For further information, please visit www.xrite.com. For the latest news, information and conversations, connect with X-Rite on LinkedIn, Vimeo, Twitter, and Facebook.
About Pantone
Pantone LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of X-Rite, Incorporated, has been the world’s color authority for nearly 50 years, providing design professionals with products and services for the colorful exploration and expression of creativity. Always a source for color inspiration, Pantone also offers paint and designer-inspired products and services for consumers. More information is available at www.pantone.com. For the latest news, trends, information and conversations, connect with Pantone on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.
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©2017 X-Rite, Inc. All rights reserved. X-Rite, TAC, AxF and PANTORA are registered trademarks of X-Rite, Inc. PANTONE® and other Pantone trademarks are the property of Pantone LLC. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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