Announcing Reality 4 {Commercial}

pcicconepciccone Posts: 661
edited November 2014 in The Commons

Santa Cruz, California. Nov. 18, 2014.

Today we are happy to announce the upcoming release of Reality 4: the next version of our rendering solution for Poser and DAZ Studio artists!

Reality 4 is a stand-alone program that seamlessly integrates with either Poser or DAZ Studio, providing physically-accurate rendering for those applications. Reality 4 converts materials and lights to physics-based versions, and renders 3D scenes using LuxRender, the benchmark of physical accuracy in the 3D world.

Reality 4 is a major update and it provides a unified User Interface for users of Poser and DAZ Studio. With Reality 4, artists using Poser and DAZ Studio can retain the exact same workflow and tools when rendering their scenes. Same lights, same props and same User Interface.

Artist-friendly
Reality is the simplest way of achieving astounding realism right in your app of choice. No need to use cumbersome export/import tools and work outside Poser or DAZ Studio. Do everything inside the app you know and love and obtain results that rival the ones provided by tools that cost thousands of dollars.

Reality seamlessly and automatically converts the scene’s materials and lights to provide you with physics-based versions.

You need real metal for a hero’s blade? Just right-click and convert the material to Metal. Select a preset and you’re done. Photo-realistic metal at your fingertips.

It’s just as easy to create photo-realistic glass. Just right-click and select Glass. No need to work with biased shaders that never get close to the realism that you deserve.

You know how hard it is to create believable water in 3D. Not with Reality: right-click on a material, select Water and you’re done.

Fun to use
Reality materials are easier to use than either the Poser Material Room or the Studio Surfaces tab. Lights in Reality work like real-life lights, so that you can use them to create spectacular lighting effects. Rendering via Reality does not block Poser or Studio and you can work on other scenes while the render works in the background.

Reality’s material editor gives you the power to create amazing textures without the complexity of a node system.

Powerful
A library of hundreds of Automatic Presets for popular characters and objects is included with Reality. For example, add Victoria 6 to your scene, and the Reality materials for the figure are set automatically. Just add light and render. The same is for V4, M4, Rio, Charlie-Neve, Alyson, Dawn, Dusk, Domina and many others. You can create your own presets and share them or sell them. Reality also provides support for the Gen3 figures (V3, M3, A3 etc), injecting new life into content that still has a lot to offer.

In addition to the Automatic Presets, the new Universal Presets can be applied to any material in your scene. You can save any number of presets and use them at any time with just a click of the mouse.

LuxRender, the renderer used by Reality, can use all the CPU cores in your computer. You can also add any number of render nodes either in a local network or via Internet.

Reality and LuxRender are compatible with 32- and 64-bit processors, allowing you to access all the memory in your system.

New features for Studio users
- New Skin material with SSS (sub-surface scattering)
- Light Emitting Materials
- Non-blocking interface: keep Reality open while you work in Studio
- Procedural textures: unleash the power of LuxRender to new levels
- Bricks
- Wood
- Checkers
- Clouds
- and more!
- Mix textures together for astounding effects
- Six Water ripple presets and the ability to create your own
- Automatic Presets library with presets for V6, M6, V4, and many others. Presets work between Studio and Poser.
- Material library with presets for Metals, Jade, Latex etc. Make your own and reuse any time. Share them with other Reality artists.
- User-defined volumes that can be assigned to any shape
- Cloth material
- Glass caustics
- Material synchronization
- Easy export-import of material presets
- SmartIBL direct support
- Simpler light editor
- Support for Studio instances
- And much more

New features for Poser users
- Support for Genesis, Genesis 2, and every DSON-imported model
- Automatic Presets library with presets for V6, G6, M6 and many others. Presets work across Poser and DAZ Studio.
- Preset manager allows you import and export any number of presets with ease
- Material library with presets for Metals, Jade, Latex etc. Make your own and reuse any time. Share them with other Reality artists.
- User-defined textures with the Cloth material
- Material synchronization
- New look, which integrates perfectly with Poser
- New Mesh Light with Snoot (to control light spill), and Gobo (to create special lighting effects)
- Faster, more responsive UI
- Support for International versions of Poser
- Improved editing of procedural textures
- Improved conversion of Poser materials
- Automatic Installer
- And much more

Pricing and availability

- Reality 4 will be released on December 1st 2014.
- There will be two versions of Reality 4:
* Reality 4 – Poser Edition
* Reality 4 – DAZ Studio Edition
- For each edition, the price for new users will be just $49.95. Special discount pricing will run for a limited time at the launch of the product.
- Reality will be available for purchase at this site and also through DAZ 3D
- All previous users of Reality 1, 2, and 3 will be able to upgrade to Reality 4 for just $19.95.
- Registered customers who bought Reality in November will be able to upgrade for free.
- Reality works with Poser 9/Pro 2012 and above and DAZ Studio 4.6 and above.
- Reality runs on both OS X and Windows.

More details at our website.

Post edited by Chohole on
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Comments

  • michaeltoomichaeltoo Posts: 219
    edited November 2014

    Whoohoo just can't wait to get my hands on it! Thanks for all the hard work to get it ready!

    Post edited by michaeltoo on
  • pcicconepciccone Posts: 661
    edited December 1969

    Thank you for saying it, I really appreciate it.
    It's been a tough task to make a program that works on two hosts, Studio and Poser, two OSes, Mac OS and Windows, and that works with bot 32 and 64-bit computers. All in all there are seven versions of Reality to cover all the combinations and it's been really tough. But I'm happy that it's done and I can't wait to see what you all will be doing wit i :)

    Cheers.

  • Gothic ShadowGothic Shadow Posts: 35
    edited November 2014

    Sweet I can't wait. This may seam kinda dumb question but to pick it up will we need to go to your site or will it be on the Daz store?

    Post edited by Gothic Shadow on
  • pcicconepciccone Posts: 661
    edited December 1969

    Incy said:
    Sweet I can't wait. This may seam kinda dumb question but to pick it up will we need to go to your site or will it be on Daz store?

    Good question.

    If you have bought the previous version of Reality at DAZ then you will need to buy the upgrade from DAZ, which will be offering it at the date of release.

    Cheers.

  • Gothic ShadowGothic Shadow Posts: 35
    edited December 1969

    Pret-A-3D said:
    Incy said:
    Sweet I can't wait. This may seam kinda dumb question but to pick it up will we need to go to your site or will it be on Daz store?

    Good question.

    If you have bought the previous version of Reality at DAZ then you will need to buy the upgrade from DAZ, which will be offering it at the date of release.

    Cheers.

    So we will be able to get the standalone version from DAZ as well? Anyway sounds like good news to me. Thank you.

  • SlimerJSpudSlimerJSpud Posts: 1,453
    edited December 1969

    Question: There are a couple of limitations of Reality 2.0 that I'd like to know if they are fixed in 4.0. It does not handle meshes that have been converted to sub-D in Daz Studio. Some figures render a lot better in Studio with sub-D. Will Reality 4.0 handle this? The behavior in 2.0 is to remove the mesh.

    The other one is about displacement maps. Those do not seem to convert well. The Vladimir character for M4 makes extensive use of displacement maps for veins and such. They don't work in Reality 2.0. Are these fixed?

  • vwranglervwrangler Posts: 4,880
    edited December 1969

    Just out of curiosity, what happened to Reality 3?

  • pcicconepciccone Posts: 661
    edited December 1969

    Question: There are a couple of limitations of Reality 2.0 that I'd like to know if they are fixed in 4.0. It does not handle meshes that have been converted to sub-D in Daz Studio. Some figures render a lot better in Studio with sub-D. Will Reality 4.0 handle this? The behavior in 2.0 is to remove the mesh.
    This is actually incorrect. Reality 2.5 handles the subdivision of Studio 4 just fine, it has done that for years now. The behavior that you described happened with Studio 3, which had a completely different, undocumented, version of subd.

    SubD in Reality 2.5/Studio 4 works and it keeps working in Reality 4. Keep in mind that Reality 4 only works with Studio 4, there is no version for Studio 3.


    The other one is about displacement maps. Those do not seem to convert well. The Vladimir character for M4 makes extensive use of displacement maps for veins and such. They don't work in Reality 2.0. Are these fixed?


    Displacement maps work in Reality 2 as well and they continue to work in Reality 4. I don't know about that character but disp maps have no issue in Reality 4.

    You might refer to the issue that with some characters, the disp maps cause the boundaries of the map to show the seams. That is how LuxRender handles subdivision and there is nothing that Reality can do about it. You can try using the micro-facet version of displacement in Reality. That should not cause the issue.

    Other than this specific case, displacement works just fine. Another possibility is to use the HD characters, which don't employ disp maps.

    Cheers.

  • SlimerJSpudSlimerJSpud Posts: 1,453
    edited November 2014

    Pret-A-3D said:
    Incy said:
    Sweet I can't wait. This may seam kinda dumb question but to pick it up will we need to go to your site or will it be on Daz store?

    Good question.

    If you have bought the previous version of Reality at DAZ then you will need to buy the upgrade from DAZ, which will be offering it at the date of release.

    Cheers.
    I bought Reality 1.25 from Daz, but I upgraded to 2.0 through your site. Daz only shows 1.25 in my product library. If the same upgrade price applies, it may be a moot point.

    And thanks for the info on sub-D and displacement. You're right, it is a DS3 issue.

    Post edited by SlimerJSpud on
  • pcicconepciccone Posts: 661
    edited December 1969

    vwrangler said:
    Just out of curiosity, what happened to Reality 3?

    Nothing, the amount of changes is just so large that we decided to go call this release version 4.

    The same codebase is used for both the Studio and Poser editions, which are now completely synchronized. The Poser version was set at 3.1 already. We could have called this release 3.5 but that would have been confusing. The amount of changes from version 3.1 is quite large. For example, Reality 3.1 did not have the Automatic Presets and the Universal Presets. So that made it clear to us that it was a jump to version 4.0.

    Since it's the same code base used for both Poser and Studio, it would have been confusing to call the Poser edition 4.0 and the Studio edition 3.0.

    So, it's Reality 4. From now on both editions will be updated at the same time and with the same version number.

    Hope this explains.

  • pcicconepciccone Posts: 661
    edited December 1969


    I bought Reality 1.25 from Daz, but I upgraded to 2.0 through your site. Daz only shows 1.25 in my product library. If the same upgrade price applies, it may be a moot point.

    In that case you can upgrade from either place. Your choice.

    Cheers.

  • R25SR25S Posts: 595
    edited December 1969

    since DAZ haven`t Reality in their Store at the time I bought it, I bought from Renderosity... do I have to upgrade from their Store, too?

  • pcicconepciccone Posts: 661
    edited December 1969

    R25S said:
    since DAZ haven`t Reality in their Store at the time I bought it, I bought from Renderosity... do I have to upgrade from their Store, too?

    At this date I still have to receive a confirmation if Renderosity will be selling the upgrade. If they will then you will have the option to get the upgrade either from them or from us. It will be your choice.

    Cheers.

  • nDelphinDelphi Posts: 1,861
    edited December 1969

    Reality 4 has been announced and is supposed to be available but I can't get to the Preta 3D site. I even tried with the Tor Browser.

    Can anyone?

    I will not pose the email as I don't know if I would violate the rules around here, but it seems to be available for Poser and DAZ Studio this time. No more waiting for the DAZ Studio release as is the case with Reality 3, at least this is what I take away from the email announcement I received.

  • kalazarkalazar Posts: 415
    edited December 1969

    Same here. The socket (?) connection keeps failing........

  • kalazarkalazar Posts: 415
    edited December 1969

    Was able to sneek in here's some infoo=:


    Pricing and availability
    Reality 4 will be released on December 1st 2014.
    There will be two versions of Reality 4:
    Reality 4 – Poser Edition
    Reality 4 – DAZ Studio Edition
    For each edition, the price for new users will be just $49.95. Special discount pricing will run for a limited time at the launch of the product.
    Reality will be available for purchase at this site and also through our distributors: DAZ 3D, Hobbyrenderer, Renderosity, RuntimeDNA and Smith Micro.
    All previous users of Reality 1, 2, and 3 will be able to upgrade to Reality 4 for just $19.95.
    Registered customers who bought Reality in November will be able to upgrade for free.
    Reality works with Poser 9/Pro 2012 and above and DAZ Studio 4.6 and above.
    Reality runs on both OS X and Windows.

  • nDelphinDelphi Posts: 1,861
    edited November 2014

    According to Paolo "The traffic has slammed the site. I'm restarting it now."

    Reality is a lot more popular than I thought.

    Looks like more waiting, why announce now if the release date is sometime next month, we DAZ Studio users are still waiting for Reality 3 for DAZ Studio!?

    More waiting....

    Post edited by nDelphi on
  • CybersoxCybersox Posts: 9,049
    edited December 1969

    nDelphi said:
    According to Paolo "The traffic has slammed the site. I'm restarting it now."

    Reality is a lot more popular than I thought.

    Looks like more waiting, why announce now if the release date is sometime next month, we DAZ Studio users are still waiting for Reality 3 for DAZ Studio!?

    More waiting....


    There will be no Reality 3 for DAZ. We jump straight forward to 4 and any previous version can be upgraded at the same price.
  • nDelphinDelphi Posts: 1,861
    edited November 2014

    nDelphi said:
    According to Paolo "The traffic has slammed the site. I'm restarting it now."

    Reality is a lot more popular than I thought.

    Looks like more waiting, why announce now if the release date is sometime next month, we DAZ Studio users are still waiting for Reality 3 for DAZ Studio!?

    More waiting....


    There will be no Reality 3 for DAZ. We jump straight forward to 4 and any previous version can be upgraded at the same price.

    Of course. I was just commenting that it is a waiting game again with 4.Call it sarcasm.

    I was hoping for a release. I am sure I am not the only one. At this point, it will come and go. I will have to await even longer than most now as I doubt I will have the resource to purchase it in December. And hopefully, it will be in December, because as far as announcements go, that's just it, it is an announcement.

    Post edited by nDelphi on
  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604
    edited December 1969

    Merging this thread with Paolo's own thread about this.

  • pcicconepciccone Posts: 661
    edited December 1969

    nDelphi said:
    Reality 4 has been announced and is supposed to be available but I can't get to the Preta 3D site. I even tried with the Tor Browser.

    Can anyone?


    The traffic crashed, and crushed, our server but we are back stronger and faster than ever :)
    Thank you for bearing with us.
  • pcicconepciccone Posts: 661
    edited December 1969

    nDelphi said:

    Looks like more waiting, why announce now if the release date is sometime next month,

    Hi nDelphi.
    The release will be exactly on December 1st which is just 12 days ahead. The announcement was done today so that people have the time to learn about it. News takes time to travel and I wanted to be able to talk about Reality 4 from now on, so that when the program comes out it's clear that we have a different version number than expected and there is no confusion.

    The time gives everybody the opportunity to prepare and ask the questions needed. This is pretty much a two person operation. I do the development, marketing, website, and tech support duties. Kim handles the social media and advertisement.

    With only two people doing so much, there are seven builds of Reality 4, we need time to handle everything.

    In case you're wondering what are the seven versions of Reality, here is the break-down:

    - Reality 4 - Poser Edition (Mac OS)
    - Reality 4 - Poser Edition (Windows 32-bit)
    - Reality 4 - Poser Edition (Windows 64-bit)
    - Reality 4 - Studio Edition (Mac OS 32-bit)
    - Reality 4 - Studio Edition (Mac OS 64-bit)
    - Reality 4 - Studio Edition (Windows 32-bit)
    - Reality 4 - Studio Edition (Windows 64-bit)

    Plus we have written our own installer, which is exactly the same on Mac OS and Windows, and that is another two different executables to test. Yes, we need to test the installer as well :)

    So, all in all, every time I build Reality, there are nine programs to test and deliver. It's a very time consuming operation for a single developer.

    Hope this helps.

  • Sfariah DSfariah D Posts: 26,219
    edited December 1969

    I got reality at daz when it first came back but I think that was in October. Does that mean I do not get the free upgrade?

  • pcicconepciccone Posts: 661
    edited December 1969

    I got reality at daz when it first came back but I think that was in October. Does that mean I do not get the free upgrade?

    Hello.

    You will be able to upgrade for $19.95.

    Cheers.

  • nDelphinDelphi Posts: 1,861
    edited November 2014

    Pret-A-3D said:

    With only two people doing so much, there are seven builds of Reality 4, we need time to handle everything.


    I can appreciate all the hard work. It is just that we have waited for so long for this. December is a tough month.


    All previous users of Reality 1, 2, and 3 will be able to upgrade to Reality 4 for just $19.95.

    Is this time sensitive? Will I be able to receive this upgrade price after December?

    Post edited by nDelphi on
  • pcicconepciccone Posts: 661
    edited December 1969

    There is no time limit for the upgrade. You will be able to upgrade at any time. As you can see from the announcement, we offer it also for Reality 1 users.

    Cheers.

  • MattymanxMattymanx Posts: 6,902
    edited December 1969

    Sounds really interesting Paolo

    Got any screen shots for us???

  • pcicconepciccone Posts: 661
    edited December 1969

    Mattymanx said:
    Sounds really interesting Paolo

    Got any screen shots for us???


    I'm working on it :)
    I'll have a whole series of videos to show the new features. Everything should be ready for Dec.1st.

    Cheers.

  • Herald of FireHerald of Fire Posts: 3,504
    edited December 1969

    Consider me excited. One thing I've always praised about Reality is how well it handles a lot of the material conversions by itself. I've seen some of the gorgeous skin materials which Reality 3 converts, and I've been wanting it ever since. Not owning a 'modern' version of Poser though, I've been eagerly awaiting the Daz Studio version.

    With the conversion tools of Reality 4 and the expanded materials options, this is going straight into the basket the first chance I get!

  • pcicconepciccone Posts: 661
    edited December 1969

    Thank you HeraldOfFire, very much appreciated.

    Cheers.

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