New Shadow Catcher

Happy end of summer to all of you, Maverick users.

We are proud to announce Maverick 2021.4 (Studio and Indie)!!

You may have noticed that this release has been spaced out from the previous one more than usual. The reason is that we have been paving the ground for new key features that will be released during the second half of 2021. So a lot of work is going underway that won’t shine in this release yet.

However, 2021.4 comes packed with strong improvements that address some recurring requests we receive at customer support. The main one being a re-engineered Shadow Catcher system that makes it possible (finally!) to get constrained and alpha-embedded shadows/reflection while keeping the background perfectly unaltered. This is a top request for everybody who wants to overlay a render on a website or a document.

As proven by the amount of feedback we’ve received, the Shadow Catcher is fundamental to users doing product visualization. As such we have put a lot of attention into the subject for this release. The main aspects we have addressed in the new Shadow Catcher in Maverick 2021.4 are:

Ability to produce quality mirror-like reflections regardless of the background.
Ability to keep the background unaffected, regardless of shadows/reflection. e.g., 255,255,255 background.
Perfect alpha-embedded shadows/reflection in one shot. e.g., drop the render on your website and you’re done.

Plus some other less obvious but equally important features:

GI override for extreme cases such as pitch black background.
Ability to constrain to the interior of the frame the effect of shadows/reflection.

This is for example what you get in Photoshop if you use PSD + Render Sets + Detach shadows/reflection. As you can see, the 3 main layers (model, shadows and reflection) are detached, and each one has its own (unpremultiplied) alpha.

Maverick also outputs a composite with the 3 layers which you can drop onto any background and transport shadows/reflection in one shot.

Below are typical product shots over flat colored backgrounds.

This video below will guide you through these new features, using the mountain bike as a real use case:

Region Of Interest (SC)

More often than not, and specially when the output image is meant to be integrated into a brochure document or a website, you want the shadows/reflection to “stay within the image” and not bleed outwards. Otherwise the shadows/reflection will look “cut”.

The new Region Of Interest feature allows you to define a disc outside which the Shadow Catcher no longer has effect. By keeping this disc within the frame you guarantee that the output image won’t let shadows/reflection bleed outside.

Below you can see the R.O.I. in action in the mountain bike scene. The R.O.I. also works for turntables, as depicted in the rotating piece of jewelry below.

Note: The Region Of Interest feature is Studio-only.

Practical example: Jewelry over a white background

We are confident that this video below will be celebrated by jewelry designers. The video will guide you through the process of rendering a piece of jewelry with alpha-embedded shadows/reflection that won’t bleed outside the frame:

New Orbit modes

Navigating a 3D scene can become troublesome as soon as objects are modeled away from the origin, with their pivots away from the geometry, if objects are huge, or if their orientation is slanted.

For this reason we have added a selector to choose between three orbit modes:

Pivot. Orbits around the selection’s xform.
Centroid. Orbits around the selection’s center of mass.
Surface. Orbits around the point where you clicked.

The animation below illustrates a situation where you would want to focus work on a sticker on the side of a floating, slanted object. The Surface orbit mode is being used here, allowing you to move around that particular spot.

This videotutorial will guide you through the new orbit modes:

Turntable axis

We have extended the turntable feature by allowing you to select an orbiting object and the axis of rotation. This way you can create more dynamic animations by combining, for example, horizontal and vertical fly-bys over the model.