formZ RenderZone Plus 6.5 (Software only) £116.53

Licences Type: Student / Teacher Educational Box
Time Limit: 12 Months
Proof of Staff/Student/Educational Status: ID Required

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formZ RenderZone Plus (v. 6.5), is a new product that represents a major evolutionary step in global illumination (GI). GI is now supported by different techniques, including final gather, ambient occlusion, and improved radiosity. These can be used separately or they can be combined to complement one another. formZ RenderZone Plus becomes the all inclusive and highest level of built-in rendering formZ offers. RadioZity will be retired as a separate product, but its features are incorporated in the new rendering software. It should also be noted that while the focus in v. 6.5 is on rendering, there are a number of additional improvements and enhancements.

formZ RenderZone Plus
GI in formZ RenderZone Plus offers two new techniques final gather (FG) and ambient occlusion (AO), and also incorporates a revised version of the previously existing radiosity. All three techniques are now offered through simple interfaces that allow the user to produce better images with significantly less set up effort and in less time than in previous versions.

Ambient occlusion
Ambient occlusion is a technique that is based on the assumption that all scenes have omni-directional ambient light of uniform intensity. For a given pixel, it finds if there is any object close by that occludes the surface of the pixel and, consequently, keeps some of the ambient light from reaching it. Ambient occlusion effects are easy to control and significantly enhance the realism of a rendered image.

Final gather
Final gather calculates a one bounce indirect illumination that occurs at rendering time. Once calculated, the illumination is maintained, unless changes are made to the scene. It computes secondary illumination just like radiosity, but without its complexity. It handles atmospheric and environment lights very efficiently and can make good use of even a quick radiosity solution.

Radiosity
Radiosity's primary role is support for final gather. Whenever desirable, it can be added to FG directly from the RenderZone Options dialog. It can also be used as a pure radiosity analysis based rendering method, as in previous versions, but with a much simpler interface.

More rendering enhancements

• Exposure correction, a post rendering process of RenderZone that has been available in previous versions, has been enhanced with two new methods, which automatically adjust under and overexposed images.
• New shaders have been introduced. Most of them are intended to support architectural renderings and they include shingles, brick pavers, road and sidewalk paving, and frosted glass. Also, a new gradient shader can generate a variety of color gradients in a surface.

• Shadows from point and cone lights are now supported and shadows can now be shown with accurate intensities.
• Procedural textures generated by RenderZone are now also rendered.
• Transparent and bump textures, both map based and procedural, are now rendered.

• CPU: PowerPC
• Disk space: 400 MB
• Memory (RAM): 0.5 GB
• Operating System/s:
• Mac OS X 10.4 or higher

• CPU: Pentium IV
• Disk space: 400 MB
• Memory (RAM): 0.5 GB
• Operating System/s:
• Windows XP SP2
• Windows VISTA