wysiwyg - 'What You See Is What You Get' - is an award-winning software suite that is the graphic application tool used by production professionals to create stunning pre-visualisations of lighting and video designs at home or in a studio, without having to spend time and money programming at the actual venue. The software gets its name from its ability to deliver renders that are identical to what the designer can expect to see at the event itself, helping users become more professional, more productive and more profitable.
Building on the success of R29, launched in this earlier year - itself the subject of solid critical acclaim by leading lighting designers such as Tim Routledge - R30 continues the trend of accelerating workflow that has been seen in recent releases. The latest version of the software features "a myriad of functional enhancements that shave hours off the event design stage", leading Beta testers to remark that R30 is by some margin the most productive version of wysiwyg yet. Among them was video designer and lighting visualisations specialist, Miguel Ribeiro.
"The numerous improvements made to R30 make it essential, really," notes Ribeiro. "The workflow has been sped up enormously - where it used to take me a full day to do something big, it now takes me just half a day, simply because all the things I'd previously had to correct manually are now done automatically. It's the best new wysiwyg I've seen in a long time, for sure. If you know wysiwyg already then you're going to absolutely love R30, and if you're a beginner then you're going to really appreciate some of the features that simplify the design process. But for a regular user like me, it's a must-have release. I couldn't fault this version."
Features new to R30 include: fastFan and fastFocus for Conventionals in CAD Mode and Automated Fixtures in Design Mode, Shaded View Selection in CAD Mode, File Merge, Layer Merge, Interactive Rigging Points for lighting and audio, Pipe & Drape Wizard and DMX control for camera path playback in Live Mode. There have also been a number of enhancements made, including the ability to select fixtures by position, group or type in CAD and Design Modes, enhanced resolution with the Fine Focus Key and additions to the Intensity Designer Tool. Shaded Views now have object, fixture and circuit counts, enhanced camera information and fastRender, which significantly increases the speed of realtime rendering.
(Jim Evans)
