Notch, the visual creation tool for interactive motion graphics, has announced it is incorporating ray tracing into its real-time workflow for the first time. In the upcoming March release (0.9.22), Notch is bringing truly flexible ray tracing to a fully real-time workflow — closing the gap between offline and real-time rendering, all in one, unified package.
Ray tracing, which has long been used for non-real-time rendering, will enable a significant jump in visual precision directly inside Notch. News of the soon-to-be-launched capabilities was welcomed by audiences at NotchCon, the inaugural Notch conference held in London.
Ray tracing – the holy grail of computer graphics
Ray tracing is an advanced graphics rendering technique which provides realistic lighting by simulating the physical behavior of light. It is considered the holy grail of computer graphics and is the foundation of visual effects used in movies and TV.
Notch’s new ray tracing features are vendor agnostic. They work on any GPU currently supported by Notch and requires no special hardware. Speaking about the new feature at NotchCon, founder Matt Swoboda said it has been built to take advantage of the various hardware accelerated APIs and platforms in the future, as they mature.
NotchCon attracts visitors from across the globe
NotchCon, the first ever two-day conference dedicated to Notch users, took place in London last month. Visitors travelled to London from all over the world. The event was a runaway success with over 30 sessions on a wide range of topics, featuring internationally acclaimed speakers and prominent Notch users.
Matt Swoboda, founder of Notch, comments:
“At Notch, we’re committed to making software for content creators that is flexible and scalable. We enable people to realize their creative ideas and improve their workflow, through the power of rendering in real-time, without the need for coding. We are looking forward to seeing how the integrations and software updates announced today will impact creatives when the new version of Notch Builder is released later this spring.”
Alongside ray tracing, several additional software announcements will also come into effect next month, including support for Substance Designer materials, Unicode and the first phase of the new multi-machine rendering features.
