Features

While the feature list of Meridian is still in development and will remain confidential during the beta process, the following is a preview of some new and recently added features:

• Paint FX and Hair. Render any Paint FX as a collection of perfectly smooth ribbons or tubes, including dynamic hair systems. Sunfish has independently developed a unique solution so that even the finest geometry is accurately rendered into perfectly smooth curves or surfaces. No tessellating into polygons. No explosions of memory usage. No flickering or “missing” geometry. Just a perfect image, every time.
• Tube Shading. Fine Paint FX geometry such as hair requires special shading techniques. The Meridian for Maya plugin automatically applies a special anisotropic tube shader to all Paint FX geometry in the scene for outstanding results.
• Smooth Mesh Preview. Meridian provides direct support for the new Smooth Mesh Preview feature in Maya 2008. If this feature is enabled, the smooth mesh is automatically rendered instead of the base mesh. No explicit conversion is necessary.
• Emitters and Instanced Geometry. Meridian automatically handles emitters and instanced geometry. No special intervention is required by the user.

All this in addition to the core features of the meridian rendering engine:

• Automatic and Guaranteed High-Quality Rendering. Meridian represents an evolutionary leap forward in the arena of computer graphics rendering by using a process that completely eliminates the problems of creasing, cracking and tessellation errors common to traditional methods.
• Constant Memory. Meridian operates in a small and constant memory footprint. This guarantees the most efficient use of RAM in any old or new computer hardware. No more crashes, no more spikes.
• Large Scenes. Meridian is capable of processing the largest of scenes. Given its limitless capacity, Meridian is ideal for use in visual effects for film or other scenarios where scene complexity often pushes the limits of available computing resources.
• Spectral Transparency. Patent-pending technology provides high-quality spectral transparency effects in a constant memory footprint. Even with a million overlapping transparent objects in your scene, Meridian will never slow down or run out of memory.
• Motion Blur. Other patented and patent-pending technologies in Meridian provide spectacular 3D motion blur. Most commercial products approximate motion blur with linear segments or simple interpolation formulas, but Meridian is the first to provide truly nonlinear interpolation of motion blur in 12 degrees of freedom. Fast and accurate, Meridian easily renders motion blur for even the largest and most complex of scenes.
• Displacement. Meridian always renders displacements perfectly the first time. No additional approximation parameters or settings are required. Even the most extreme displacements are rendered automatically and will never cause cracking, creasing, faceting or any other undesirable artifact. Period. Always automatic, always perfect, Meridian renders displacements fast and efficiently, even on the most complex and demanding scenes.
• Double Precision. From start to finish, all calculations are performed in double precision. This is ideal for scientific visualization or scenes with large magnitudes of scale.
• Non-Proprietary Format. Meridian uses a non-proprietary and royalty-free file format developed by Sunfish Studio specifically for our rendering engine. Open access to this format allows third parties and production studios to customize a Meridian production pipeline.

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Micropolgons

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Point Sampling