Thu 26th Jan 2012 | News
CoreCG launches MentalCore, optimising the Maya and mental ray workflow and and accelerates rendering.
CoreCG has announced the release of MentalCore, a cross-platform, standalone plugin designed to help artists achieve maximum creativity and efficiency while using NVIDIA mental ray with Autodesk Maya. CoreCG is a New Zealand-based R&D company that specializes in creative solutions for CG animation and visual effects. Mental Core has had two years of extensive use at Oktobor Animation, a year of beta testing by high profile film, television, and game companies, and a soft launch in December 2011.
"We saw an overwhelming response to our beta phase and are excited to introduce an off-the-shelf solution that answers such a huge community need. Eliminating common CG pipeline bottlenecks can require dedicated R&D and often complicated workarounds," said Jason Adams, creative director, CoreCG and Oktobor Animation. "We built MentalCore to simplify workflows and expedite rendering, so artists spend less time troubleshooting and more time on the quality of their work. It's truly an efficient, reliable solution for artists made by artists."
MentalCore, developed by Supervising TD Corey Frew at Oktobor Animation, is production-proven and provides enhancements to the standard rendering workflow using Autodesk Maya with NVIDIA mental ray. MentalCore supports Maya 2011 and Maya 2012, and hosts a user-friendly interface and robust feature set, which includes:
· Render Globals Interface - Quick access to all global settings and render passes;
· Node Based Render Pass System - Reliable render pass system that eases linking to objects, materials and lights;
· Shader Library - Achieve desired looks with new material, texture and utility shaders;
· Color Management System - Easily adopt a linear color workflow;
· Preview Render Passes - Preview render passes in the renderview without the memory overhead of rendering all other passes in one go;
· Ambient Occlusion Transparency - Support for ambient occlusion transparency;
· Python API - Easily integrate MentalCore into any pipeline;
· mental ray Compatibility - Compatible with mental ray standalone renderer.
Dominic Alderson, 3D supervisor and lead technical director, The Mill TV and Film, London, shared, "You can tell a great deal of time and thought went into MentalCore; it's a reliable product, with a great price tag, that can save studios both time and money. The ability to work across multiple scenes and carry your render setup with MentalCore makes life a breeze. I no longer have to build render layers over and over again or use custom scripts. It provides me with a better option for generating a clean, fast render pass system - allowing me to spend more time on creative development and less time fixing technicalities."
David Trenear, studio manager, Game Labs Apps, is purchasing 18 floating licenses of MentalCore for use in future game development. He shared, "High-quality game design poses its own set of unique technical challenges, especially when factoring in tight deadlines and budgets. MentalCore helps remove those challenges with an easy-to-use interface and practical features that expand our lighting and shading functionality. It simplifies our shading workflow by removing the time-consuming process of creating custom shaders. We've seen what MentalCore can do and how it can accelerate our day-to-day operations, and truly believe it will enhance the quality of our games."
MentalCore is available for purchase on the CoreCG website as a node locked license at an introductory price of US$189, or a floating license for US$199. A free 30-day trial of MentalCore is also available.
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