Autodesk Softimage 2011 software introduces innovative new rendering, animation, and simulation tools that help artists and technical directors (TDs) create more complex, high-quality characters and effects in less time. With new support for kinematics in ICE (Interactive Creative Environment), TDs can use the intuitive, node-based interface to more rapidly create and troubleshoot advanced character rigs, while artists can quickly generate lip-synced facial animation based on an audio file in Face Robot facial animation toolset. Meanwhile, an advanced new shading architecture and editing environment automatically hosts external shaders and renderers without the need to build custom shader UI.

Top Features and Benefits

Rendering Sandbox
Technical directors, shader writers, and third-party developers can now take advantage of a completely new shader authoring environment that automatically hosts external shaders and renderers without the need to build custom shader UI or any other tools. Shaders and renderers automatically get access to the powerful Softimage rendering features—Render Passes, Render Region, Shaderballs, Render, Tree and Material Manager—and can be exposed in Softimage via a single .dll. For example, simply drop a cool new NVIDIA shader into Softimage and begin using it immediately.

Automatic Face Robot Lip-Syncing
Quickly generate facial animation based on an audio file with new automatic lip-syncing in Face Robot. A new dedicated view for controlling the phonemes and visemes offers function curves to help modify their contribution. With this new functionality, the Face Robot toolset delivers a more complete, automated solution for facial rigging and animation.

Face Robot Lip-Syncing in Softimage 2011

100 New ICE Compounds
Select from up to 100 new ICE compounds to more easily create a vast range of effects. Compounds can be used directly as presets, or as starting points or learning tools for artists creating their own ICE effects. The new compounds cover several areas: Kinematics, Arrays, Curves, Debugging, Deformation Effects, Hull Deformers, Skinning, Verlet Integration, Execution, Geometry Queries, Math, Particle Emissions, Particle Getters and Setters, Testers, Strands and Strand Dynamics.

100 New mental ray Shaders
Enhance rendering creativity and productivity with up to 100 new mental ray shaders: .mi and .mip production shaders, that enable artists to simulate a wide range of materials.

PhysX 2.83
More easily create meshless deformation simulations in ICE with the latest NVIDIA PhysX rigid body library. With new support for springs and dampers, artists can more easily achieve a wide range of effects such as jelly-like and plastic deformation. The new library also offers accelerated performance, enabling artists to focus on the creative process when creating and refining dynamic simulations. Even faster performance is possible with the optional addition of an NVIDIA CUDA enabled GPU.

ICE Kinematics
More easily and rapidly drive the movement and behaviors of characters and scene elements using the flexibility of ICE (Interactive Creative Environment). With ICE kinematics, TDs can more easily create advanced rigging elements: custom inverse kinematics, constraints and dynamic tails. The visual graph-based structure of ICE helps remove trial and error for technical directors, and enables them to more easily examine the construction of other users’ rigs, and to troubleshoot and debug rigs. And, using ICE kinematics helps remove the need for intermediary objects as references, helping reduce complexity and speeding up the rig’s evaluation.

ICE Kinematics in Softimage 2011

Camera and Render Slate
Show useful information in the viewport or renders: scene name, camera, render pass, and frame numbers with the new Camera and Render Slate functionality.

Multi-Camera rendering
Save time when rendering passes from multiple cameras. Now each pass can render a sequence for all cameras, eliminating the need to setup a separate pass or scene in order to render from another camera.

mental ray 2011
Take advantage of a more robust production environment, together with an overall increase in stability, and faster renders due to enhanced performance in BSP2, with the new mental ray 2011 renderer.

UV Unfold Enhancements
Create symmetrical results when unfolding, and unwrap local UV islands in the Texture Editor, with enhanced UV Unfold technology.