I’m proud to present to you the Prizes & Sponsors for this blog’s Architectural Visualization Challenge II – HOVER. I would like to thank all the sponsors who kindly joined in and donated prizes that value just a little under 23,500$ 28,645$ in total! Information about all the sponsors will follow the prize list below
| Award | Prizes |
|---|---|
| Grand Prize |
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| 1st Runner-Up |
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| 2nd Runner-Up |
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| 3rd Runner-Up |
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| 4th Runner-up | |
| 5th Runner-up |
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New Open Categories
| Category | Prizes |
|---|---|
| Modeling |
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| Texturing |
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| Lighting |
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| Design |
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Prize & Sponsor Information
Disclaimer: Prizes are subject to change.
Sponsor: Procedural
Procedural Inc. is an innovative software company located in Zurich, Switzerland, and is creator of the worlds foremost procedural urban modeling technology. With CityEngine, Procedural Inc.s has developed a radically different 3D application that allows professional users in urban planning, architecture, GIS and entertainment to efficiently create smart 3D cities.
Sponsor: Stack! Studios
FELIX is new tool designed for architects, designers, engineers, and whoever needs high quality renderings in record time. With FELIX the calculations are done in a cloud computing facility dedicating 40 to 160 cores to every user. FELIX drastically reduces costs. It doesnt require any powerful hardware. FELIX works on a pre-paid credit system, so the user pays only for the completed renderings.
Key features:
- Hardware independent performance.
- from 40 to 160 cores per user.
- Eliminates continuous hardware and software investments.
- 100% non-destructive workflow.
- unlimited online storage.
- 256 bit data encryption and redundant online storage.
- Easy to learn.
FELIX includes a huge constantly growing professional library of textures, materials, environments and even objects! In fact users can share 2D and 3D data from within the system at real-time. Setting up cameras and lights is extremely intuitive, just like the whole application. Another major feature is the 100% non-destructive workflow which allows for endless and well organized changes to the projects at any stage.
In the words of Hani Rashid from Asymptote Architecture:
“Felix has become an integral part of Asymptote’s design process – a game changer in fact – as renderings are no longer seen as the end result but continuously generated and therefore a vital tool in our iterative design approach. With Felix, Stack! Studios has once again raised the bar for those of us interested in advanced architectural design solutions.”
Sponsor: VBvisual
VB Exterior 3D Plants
VB Cut Out Plants
VB Textures
VBvisual is a software company located in Düsseldorf. 10 years ago we started developing 3d trees and other plants. coming out of an architectural group, we can work in our developement with our experience from these roots. We offer high quality 3d plants and textures for visualizations and layouts. The 3d objects are high quality, but have a very small number of polygons. Our newest product is a collection of more than 2000 high quality cut-outs of hi-res plant photographs.
Sponsor: Craft Animations
Founded in 2006 and based in Gothenburg, Sweden, Craft Animations AB is a leading developer of a new era of professional real-time 3D animation technology, Craft Director Tools.
Based on cutting-edge research in artificial intelligence and autonomous control systems, Craft Director Tools simulate the complex physical behavior of cameras and 3D vehicles such as helicopters, cars, airplanes, boats and motorcycles.
Utilized by high-profile companies world-wide such as Pixar, Digital Domain, Lockheed Martin, Nasa, Digital Dimension and Toyota; Craft Director Tools streamline production, enhance realism and increase creativity for users in the visual effects, game development, forensic reconstruction and architectural design industries.
Sponsor: Exlevel
GrowFX is a system of modeling and animating plants for Autodesk 3ds Max.
Now you can recreate digitally a lifelike 3D model of any plant, from grass and trees to woodland. GrowFX lets you create broadleaf trees, conifers, palm trees, flowers, ivy and many other vegetational compositions. Its unique model building tools will help you create creeping plants, entwining scene objects, and shearing plants of any shape. Plants may bend around different objects. GrowFX is fully compatible with 3ds Max. All parameters can be animated. You can, for example, create a wind animation, plant growth animation and other kinds of animation you can imagine. There is also an opportunity to edit the parameters using MAXScript.
Sponsor: ASGVIS
VRay for SketchUP
VRay for Rhino
Rhino and SketchUP users in all fields depend on the ASGVIS V-Ray plug-in as a quick, easy and cost-efficient way to render their most cutting-edge images. Developed with Chaos Group, V-Ray works with Google’s SketchUP and Robert McNeel & Associate’s Rhino 4.0, two of the most popular 3D modeling tools available today.
V-Ray’s robust ray-tracing engine and vast array of materials give designers the ability to generate photo-realistic images of outstanding quality. Top studios all over the world use V-Ray because of its rendering capabilities, making it the only rendering solution that will allow them to Render in Design-time.
Sponsor: e-on Software
Vue 8.5 xStream
Carbon Scatter
E-on software is the leading developer of solutions for the creation, animation, rendering and integration of natural 3D environments. Offering a wide array of Digital Nature products and applications, e-on software provides solutions adapted to every project and budget. E-on software products are used worldwide by the film, television, architecture, game, science, educational and entertainment industries.
E-on software products were used in features film such as “Pirates of the Caribbean 2”, “Indiana Jones 4”, “Australia”, “Terminator 4”, “Land Of The Lost”, “KungFu Panda”, “Monster Vs Aliens”, “The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus”, “The Proposal”, “GI Joe – The Rise of The Cobra”, and TV series such as “Battlestar Gallactica”, “Stargate Atlantis” and more. Read more on these stories in e-on software’s Spotlights section: www.e-onsoftware.com/spotlight. The company has achieved worldwide reputation for its award winning 3D scenery generator Vue.
For HOVER, E-on software also adds Carbon Scatter as a prize. It is a set of plug-ins that allow the creation of complex populations using the native instancing technologies of leading DCC applications. The Carbon Scatter plug-ins integrate e-on’s patented EcoSystem algorithms directly inside your host application, allowing you to populate native scenes with millions of instances, and render them with your renderer of choice.
Sponsor: Design Connected
At Designconnected we are all about delivering the best quality 3d digital content for the interior design professionals.
It’s a shame that we can now offer only 2700+ ready-to-rock 3d models from 440 manufacturers and 815 designers but we really have just started and
it’s such a fun…
Sponsor: Refractive Software
Refractive Software LTD (TM) is a New Zealand based company that develops user-friendly real-time, physically accurate rendering solutions for digital content artists.
Our main product, ‘Octane Render(TM)’ is the worlds first fully GPU based, un-biased, physically based renderer that runs entirely on the GPU using Nvidia CUDA technology, and offers the same precision and quality as other spectral un-biased render engines while offering a completely interactive scene setup interface and render speeds up to 50x faster than traditional CPU based un-biased engines depending on the GPU used.
Sponsor: Next Limit
Maxwell Render is a rendering engine based on the mathematical equations governing light transport, meaning that all elements, such as emitters, materials and cameras, are derived from physically accurate models. Maxwell Render is unbiased, so no tricks are used to calculate the lighting solution in every pixel of a scene; the result will always be a correct solution, as it would be in the real world. Maxwell Render can fully capture all light interactions between all elements in a scene, and all lighting calculations are performed using spectral information and high dynamic range data.
Due to its very nature, Maxwell Render enables users to create accurate and extremely realistic images. Maxwell Render is a recognized standard in architectural visualization, product design, jewelry, film production, scientific research and other high-end rendering markets, and the leader in render quality.
Maxwell Render is a rendering engine that accepts models and scenes created in 3D or CAD applications. Several of these applications are directly supported through a Maxwell Render plug-in; others can be used in conjunction with Maxwell Render by importing the geometry into Maxwell Studio, a component of the software.
Sponsor: Informatix
No matter what the creative process, the first presentation of your ideas to potential clients is vitally important. Efforts to get the client to see, and ultimately approve, the concept as a whole (rather than focusing on the detail) can often result in the delivery of a loose and rather impressionistic visualization of the finished building, landscape or product.
Piranesi 2010 excels at turning your conceptual 3D models into wonderfully atmospheric, stylish and (most importantly) persuasive visualisations. Imbued with a whole host of effects that guide the focus of the clients eye and attention to the key elements of your design, it can truly be a difference maker in the decision process.
Sponsor: Luxology
modo 401 from Luxology (which shipped in June 2009) is the 4th major release of this modern 3D modeling, animation and rendering software for the Mac and PC. modo has been adding features to its software at a rapid clip and modo at 401 is now an end-to-end solution that encompasses modeling, sculpting, painting, animation and rendering in an artist-friendly user interface. More than just features, modo is a truly elegant integration of technology, raw horsepower and refined workflow.
The modo community is one of the most active 3D communities on the Web and is populated by many artists and designers working in design visualization and related fields. An extensive Gallery of rendered images and animations from modo users is maintained on the Luxology website and a free iPhone Gallery Viewer has recently been made available.
Sponsor: Chaosgroup
Chaos Group provides state of the art rendering solutions for architectural, VFX, film, media and entertainment, automotive design, television and other industries. V-Ray became rendering solution of choice for many 3D production houses due to its capability to deliver high quality photo-realistic images in the shortest time. In June 2009 Chaos Group officially released V-Ray RT – the first interactive renderer of its kind for 3ds Max. The power of this interactive ray-tracing technology changes the way 3D artists and visualization specialists approach the lighting and shading setup. Now they can use the V-Ray RT intuitive, time saving and highly interactive features to completely enjoy the creative side of the rendering process.
Our portfolio includes the following outstanding products: V-Ray for Autodesk®3ds Max®, V-Ray RT for Autodesk®3ds Max®, V-Ray for Autodesk® Maya®, SimCloth, and Pdplayer the production oriented image sequence player and viewer for the CG industry.
Sponsor: Solid Iris
Thea Render is now available, after 2 years of intense research and development, as a unique rendering solution containing both biased and unbiased state-of-the-art engines and a rich feature set. Thea materials are truly physically-based, with a breakthrough layer system that supports multiple coatings/stacks/substrates, delivering all visual cues and highest realism.
Due to its advanced light simulation framework, Thea can accurately solve hard problems, such as unbiased sun-pool caustics, participating media and sub-surface scattering without resorting to tricks.
Thea Render is a versatile standalone solution for 3d rendering, animation and architectural design, product visualization and illumination analysis. It comes with a highly aesthetic all-in-one studio, integrated material editor, real time viewer and advanced tools such as interactive render and instancing brush. Plugins are available for various modeling applications.
Sponsor: Materialwerk
Materialwerk was founded on October 15, 2009 and develops innovative tools for 3d artists and studios. Our passion for 3D computer graphics and our need for easy to use solutions to create better images and animations with less effort led to the first product Brix. By combining intelligent software with detailed textures, we believe that it is necessary to go the next step in texture creation for 3D computer graphics. Our goal is to provide artists and studios with tools that save time, make work life easier and improve quality of the images and animations.
BRIX is an innovative texture plugin for 3Ds Max and Maya that creates brick wall or wood parquet textures based on individual tile bitmaps. It includes a huge texture library and hundreds of brick and panel photographs for authentic and detailed walls and floors. With easy to understand parameters, each preset can be changed and adjusted in color, position, rotation and size. Though using highly detailed bitmaps for each brick, each texture is very memory efficient. And with random algorithms it is possible to create seemless and non-repeating textures of any kind.
Sponsor: Itoo Software
Forest Pack is a plugin for 3d Studio Max, designed to give a complete solution for creation of vast surfaces of trees, grass and plants. Forest enables you to combine billboards, high poly meshes and proxies, and using Mental Ray and V-Ray native shaders, create scenes with virtually unlimited number of objects and polygons.
Some of its features are: camera clipping, tint maps, clusters, tree editor, falloff curves, animation support, integrated library browser and much more. Working as an advanced scattering tool, Forest can be used not only for plants, but for any scene that include vast distributions of objects as: rocks, buildings or crowds.
Forest Lite, the free version of the plugin can be used for any personal or commercial project. Download it now and take advantage on the challenge!
Sponsor: Motiva
Motiva is a small spanish company that makes 3D content and 3D related software for 4 different markets: architecture, civil works, advertising and simulation. Motiva works were nominated in the 2009 and 2010 editions of the Architectural 3D Awards.
Motiva COLIMO is a GPU based realtime postproduction tool that allows the changing of materials and lights over pre-rendered images, taking in account physical accurate reflections, refractions and GI bleeding.
Sponsor: ArtVPS
Shaderlight for 3ds Max
Shaderlight for SketchUP
ArtVPS leads the way in the development of photorealistic rendering solutions. Its revolutionary flagship rendering technology, Shaderlight, is a physically based, progressive ray-tracer that enables interactive changes to be made at any stage of the rendering process. Shaderlight has been developed as a plug-in for both 3ds Max and now Google SketchUp and is set to transform 3D visualisation workflows in 3D design, architecture and education.
Shaderlight for 3ds Max ($450) – Shaderlight for 3ds Max redefines traditional rendering workflows, giving artists the creative freedom to change every detail, right up to deadline.
Shaderlight for SketchUp ($199) – As an interactive, photorealistic renderer for Google SketchUp, Shaderlight lets you render great images quickly and simply.
Sponsor: asai
The American Society of Architectural Illustrators (ASAI), is a non-profit international professional organization of architectural illustrators, whose goals are to foster communication among architectural illustrators, to raise the standards of architectural illustration and to acquaint the public with the importance of such drawing as integral to the practice of architecture.