PlayblastVR is a new renderer for Maya that creates hardware rendered panoramic images using OpenGL or DirectX. The PlayblastVR renderer allows you to create immersive previz renderings of Maya scenes in fulldome, latlong, and cubic panorama formats.

The PlayblastVR renderer can render previews of elements like animated polygon and NURBS geometry, lights, fluid effects volumes, FumeFX volumes, paint effects strokes, sprites, particles, nParticles, nHair and fur, cloth sims, procedural generated shading networks, etc...

PlayblastVR supports rendering output to Google PhotoSphere spherical panoramas and YouTube 360 Movies with automatic metadata embedding.

After a PlayblastVR panoramic rendering is complete it can be sent automatically to a panoramic viewing program or a video playback tool like DJV Viewer, Adobe SpeedGrade, Kolor Eyes, Assimilate Scratch and Scratch Player, Domemaster3D DomeViewer, Whirligig, VLC, VLCwarp Player, RV, FCheck, or IMF Display.

PlayblastVR previz renderings will save you time & money because hardware based panoramic renderings make better use of the artist’s time. Using PlayblastVR will also free up your render nodes from having to use a slower software based production renderer to output your animation test renderings into a panoramic format.

Panoramic Formats

• Angular Fisheye
• Angular Fisheye With 4:3 Ratio Background
• Angular Fisheye with 16:9 Ratio Background
• Equirectangular / LatLong / Spherical
• Cube Map 3×2
• Cylindrical
• Quadsphere (Starglobe)
• Perspective
• Vertical Cross Cube
• Horizontal Cross Cube
• Vertical Tee Cube
• Horizontal Tee Cube
• Vertical Strip Cube
• Horizontal Strip Cube
• Mental Ray Horizontal Strip Cube1

The PlayblastVR for Maya renderer is available today starting at $99.95 USD. For more information about the software check out:
http://www.andrewhazelden.com/blog/downloads/playblastvr-for-maya/