Archive notice: This article was originally published on July 9, 2012. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
In version 1.5, procedural rendering is intended to enable direct rendering and immediate viewing of a crowd simulation in the Maya render window. Artists are also now intended to be able to see the results of experiments with the shader configurator directly.
Previously, users first had to export the baked geometry of the characters, which cost a great deal of time and storage space. Instead, through procedural rendering, Golaem Crowd is now intended to export a substantially smaller particle cache by reconstructing the character geometry during rendering time. The plug-in is compatible with the Mental Ray, V-Ray, and RenderMan rendering systems for Maya.
The 1.5 update is the last in the 1.X family – the major 2.0 update is intended to be presented in August at Siggraph 2012 in Los Angeles. Golaem Crowd 2.0 was already used for a crowd-simulation scene in the new Asterix film "Asterix & Obelix – God Save Britannia," the first film in the series in 3D. We hope to be able to present a detailed report in one of the next DP issues on the production of the film, which will be released on October 18, 2012.
Further information can be found here: www.golaem.com
