FurryBall GPUMAN

Furry Ball GPUMAN

Art and Animation Studios readies v1.1 of their software Furryball. This GPU renderer exists totally inside the Maya framework and offers realtime hair dynamics, reflections, refractions, ambient occlusion and more. Their feature list includes: 

• Fully GPU accelerated rendering
• 30 - 300 times faster than software renderers
• Fully integrated into Maya - any change is immediately visible in viewport
• Efficient polygonal geometry handling and caching
• Hierarchy of settings nodes
• limited particle support
• Powerful hair system engine
• Dynamic hair and fur using Maya dynamics
• Hair geometry creation entirely on GPU
• Very fast and effective hair/fur rendering
• Millions of hairs rendered interactively with real lighting 

Comments

[Jericca Cleland]

I am very interested in hearing what people think about FurryBall. We've downloaded a demo and are trying it out ourselves too, but if anyone has started playing with this, do let the rest of us know how it's going!

[Brian Pohl]

We've been playing with the demo of FB over here at POV for a little while now. We are comparing and contrasting it to Mach Studio Pro. Mach is a considerably more mature product, but there is certainly something nice about being able to see improved visual feedback in the Maya viewport. The two products basically support two different pipeline approaches.

The biggest drawback to FB that I can see is its price. Current prices range $1300 for FB Design and $2200 for FB Master. If one were to deck out a typical studio, it could get pretty pricey, pretty fast. And what about Autodesk? They're bound to improve the Maya viewport eventually. Is it worth shelling out the bucks, if Autodesk eventually includes this kind of technology in 2011 or 2012? One's investment could become obsolete rather quickly.

EDIT: BTW, those prices ended Jan 31st. If they go back to original prices its $1950 for Design and $3,250 for Master.

[fatur satu]

i 've been playing FB. Cool !

[Brian Pohl]

Furryball has just announced new prices.

Furryball LIght: $299
Furryball Design: $899
Furryball Master: $1,399

Considerably better prices.

[Jericca Cleland]

For sure, that's way better. But Mach is pretty pricey-- well above those numbers.

One of the advantages I imagine with FurryBall (or Maya itself, obviously, if Autodesk went this route) is that you can work with the far more sophisticated camera tools in Maya and visualize the lighting at the same time, instead of working through staging and blocking in Maya and then lighting in Mach. I don't mind moving over to the other package so much, but I DO mind not being able to see the lighting while operating the camera.

Mach also handles lights very differently, which we find somewhat problematic. That being said, we are able to integrate light into our workflow which is of tremendous benefit.

[Brian Pohl]

Yes.. we're testing Mach out on a new project and finding a few bumps in the road too. But it sure gets it right on a number of things. I could see the allure of Furryball though. No dramatic changes in "pipeline" to accommodate this technology.