With images on Pressreader (but some editorial errors in the text) ->
Clarisse can easily be described as the
digital counterpart of a shooting stage
in a model workshop. When every asset
is ready, you can lay them down there and do
the lighting, composition and all the look
development work. Clarisse is famous for its
quasi-unlimited geometry handling capabilities
– and that’s why some of the biggest VFX
studios use it. You can put as many models
on the stage as you want, they can be static
or animated geometries, results of dynamic
simulations, made in other software. You can
even spread them with the new paint tool,
which was introduced in version 3.5.
However, there are limits. For example, the
rendering of the volumetric effects is similarly
slow as other CPU based renderers. There are
workarounds to speed up but nothing can beat
the fog machine in the workshop – not just in
terms of rendering speed, but also the realism of
light scattering. This is just one reason why
filmmakers still use practical effects, or at least
rely on them. Good examples are the trash mesa
and city scenes in Blade Runner 2049 or most of
the effects scenes in Dunkirk – however, VFX
artists used Clarisse in both films.
And with a new release comes new features.
As usual with updates to Clarisse, the new
shadow catcher shader has additional
functionality beyond the original purpose. It can
now not only receive shadows on the
background image, but also catch the indirect
illumination from the other objects, so this is the
correct physically based approach.
We can’t find the new outline shader in the
materials list because it is a subpixel filter. Thus
we can use any material and lighting setup, then
use this filter to convert our physically based
renderings to the realm of cartoon-looking
images. With this feature, anime studios are
now able to have the same level of geometry
complexity as we’ve seen in just as advanced
VFX shots before.
Shading variables were accessible for special
users of Clarisse, like DNeg, but now every user
can have the significant advantage of variable
based shading differences. Instead of having
different node networks for each variant of a
material, we can now utilise variables in almost
every input of the shading nodes and use just
one material network, then attach these variable
names with different values to the geometries,
shading groups or rules of a shading layer to get
different material effects for each.
The new Alembic bundles are for smoother
workflow because in contrast with the original
import/reference alembic functions, it imports
an Alembic file as a single Clarisse object, similar
to OBJ import, but with all the extra Alembic
features like attached object properties. It’s like a
black box – it doesn’t flood the internal Alembic
hierarchy into Clarisse.
The free PLE version of Clarisse now has the
ability to save images three times in a day without
watermarks, which can be a great opportunity
for artists who want to express themselves with
Hollywood’s visual portal gun.
The founders of Isotropix made Clarisse to
overcome the software-related frustrations of
VFX artists. Well, they pushed the technical
boundaries of VFX work beyond the horizon,
literally, so we can create interactive, highly
detailed 3D landscapes without compromise.
However, in some cases there are frequent
crashes with Clarisse, too, as with other VFX
software. The lucky thing is that the developers
encourage your work and Clarisse automatically
saves a backup of the project every 30 seconds,
which is a huge advantage.
VFX professionals may learn that the only
real anti-frustration thing is to go away from the
computer frequently and have breaks, even if it
is a deadline period. A few minutes away –
especially if you have the opportunity to get
some fresh air and catch some sunshine – can
give you some extra energy and fruitful ideas.
This can’t be compensated with any sort of
software voodoo magic, even if Clarisse does
achieve that.
Greg Barta