Autodesk Showcase 2012

Autodesk Showcase 2012 real-time 3D presentation and rendering software offers architects, designers, engineers, and managers the ability to quickly and easily transform digital prototypes or architectural designs into compelling imagery, movies, and real-time presentations. With Showcase, creating high-value, interactive design reviews, stunning marketing materials, and convincing sales pitches is as simple as a few clicks.

Features:

• Bring your designs to life—Quickly and easily transform your CAD data* into breathtaking, real-time 3D presentations and renderings.
• Validate your designs in real time—Explore your design variations dynamically with peers, managers, and constituents in an immersive 3D environment. Accelerate your feedback loop by reducing physical prototypes and long rendering times.
• Win more business—Make a positive impression with your customers, regardless of whether they are in the same room or on the other side of the world. Stand apart from your competition by communicating your designs with high-quality images and storytelling features.

CAD to real-time 3D presentations, in just a few clicks.

Autodesk® Showcase® 2012 software helps you transform your digital prototypes and architectural designs into compelling imagery, movies, and immersive presentations for interactive design reviews, stunning marketing
materials, and convincing sales pitches.

Autodesk Showcase for Manufacturing
Autodesk Showcase 2012 is a highly useful companion to Autodesk® Inventor® and Autodesk® Alias® software because it helps designers, engineers, and marketing teams to evaluate designs in context, more rapidly explore design options, and accelerate the feedback loop by reducing the need for physical prototypes. Showcase now enables you to automatically generate interactive scenes from your Inventor files, complete with Shots, Alternatives, Storyboard, and animated Constraints.

Autodesk Showcase for Architecture
Showcase is an easy-to-use companion to Revit® Architecture and AutoCAD® software because it helps to provide architects, interior designers, principals, developers, and city planners with the tools to visualize their designs in context. They can explore material alternatives and design options with the click of a button, and create their own renderings and real-time presentations to convey design intent at any stage of the project.

Key Features:

ENHANCED Interactive Raytracing
With RapidRT raytracing functionality, users can now switch on the fly between a GPU-powered viewport and full raytracing, without the need to change materials, lighting, or environments. The RapidRT raytracing engine renders the scene progressively, directly in the viewport. With Showcase 2012, RapidRT raytracing has been accelerated by a factor of up to 10x.

ENHANCED Interoperability
Autodesk Showcase 2012 supports Autodesk Materials, which are now automatically imported from AutoCAD, Autodesk Inventor, Revit Architecture and 3ds Max® Design. In addition, the interoperability with Autodesk® Maya® and 3ds Max Design through the Autodesk® FBX® data exchange tool has been improved and now includes support for cameras. Showcase imports more than 15 thirdparty CAD file formats*.

NEW Import Templates
Save time when working with Inventor software data. You can now automatically create a Showcase scene from an Inventor file, complete with Materials, Shots, Alternatives, Storyboard, and animated Constraints.

Easy-to-use Camera and Animation
Add narrative to your design with cinematic camera motion and animation features. The Orbit shot allows you to move the camera 360 degrees around a center of interest, while keyframe animation techniques and triggers add greater interactivity to your presentations. Import 3ds Max and Maya camera animations directly into Showcase shots via the Autodesk FBX data exchange tool.

Storyboard and Movie Creation
Storyboard enables you to orchestrate the story of your design in a familiar, slide-based metaphor. The Storyboard slides can be played back in sequence, or one at a time. Also, you can share work with colleagues or customers who do not use Showcase by more quickly and easily exporting slides as movies or rendering Showcase scenes to interactive Adobe® Flash® files.

NEW Automatic Real-time Shadows
Create highly realistic imagery by automatically simulating ambient shadows for polygonal objects and adding real-time, geometry-casted shadows. NEW Non-photorealistic Effects and Styles Create a variety of non-photorealistic (NPR) effects that help simulate artistic styles created by hand. The Styles user interface aggregates all rendering styles in one view, making it quicker and easier to explore options.

NEW Smart Navigation
Use Autodesk® Steeringwheels® to walk naturally around architectural scenes. Navigate up or down stairs, or remain on the ground level; avoid walls and other obstacles. Showcase now supports 3Dconnexion input devices for total motion control.

NEW Quick Start Wizards
Users who are new to Showcase can now be productive almost immediately. The new Quick Start wizards guide users through common workflows in two to six steps, helping them accelerate time to completion and reach a successful finish every time.

NEW Language Packs
Showcase now ships in English, French, German, and Japanese.

Autodesk Showcase Product Family

Autodesk Showcase 2012 Viewer
Autodesk® Showcase® 2012 Viewer software is a free** application that enables anyone to view and navigate Showcase scenes. Autodesk Showcase 2012 Viewer is particularly useful when sharing your designs with customers. The free viewer can be downloaded at www.autodesk.com/ showcase-viewer.

Autodesk Showcase 2012
A free** 30-day trial of the standard version of Showcase 2012 can be downloaded at www.autodesk.com/showcase-trial.

Autodesk Showcase Professional 2012
Autodesk® Showcase® Professional 2012 software is designed for specialized display environments involving multiple-screen displays, high-speed raytracing clusters, stereoscopy, and remote session sharing. Autodesk Consulting can help design and implement the right Showcase Professional software solution for your specific needs. Learn more about Autodesk Consulting at www.autodesk.com/consulting.

System Requirements:

The 32-bit version of Showcase 2011 software is supported by any of the following operating systems:

• Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional (SP3 or higher) operating system
• Microsoft® Windows Vista® Business (SP2 or higher) operating system
• Microsoft® Windows® 7 Professional operating system

Hardware

• Minimum/Laptop
• 2.4 GHz Intel® or equivalent AMD® processor
• 2 GB system RAM
• Certified NVIDIA® or ATI™ graphics card with at least 512 MB graphics memory
• Recommended
• Intel® Pentium® 4; 4-core 2.8 GHz processor; or equivalent AMD processor
• 4 GB or more system RAM with Windows XP x64 Edition or Windows Vista 64-bit
• Certified NVIDIA or ATI graphics card with at least 768 MB graphics memory

Supported Graphics Cards

• ATI Radeon™ and ATI FirePro™ graphics cards, as well as NVIDIA® Quadro® FX and NVIDIA® GeForce® graphics cards released after 2007 that include the 7, 8, or 9 series graphics chipset. Graphics cards must have a minimum 512 MB graphics memory. More memory is recommended on Windows Vista or for users working with large data sets or complex scenes.

Graphics cards include:

• 7 series: Quadro FX 4500, GeForce 7900GTX, Mobile FX 2500M
• 8 series: Quadro FX 1700, Quadro FX 4600, GeForce 8800 GTS, Mobile FX 1600M
• 9 series: Quadro FX 3700, Quadro FX 5800, GeForce 9600 GT, Mobile FX 3600M
• Quadro Plex Model II and Model D2 are also supported.
• ATI Radeon 4830 and 4850
• ATI FirePro 5700, 7750, 8700 and 8750

The 64-bit version of Showcase 2011 software is supported by any of the following operating systems:

• Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional x64 (SP2 or higher) operating system
• Microsoft® Windows Vista® Business x64 (SP2 or higher) operating system
• Microsoft® Windows® 7 Professional x64 operating system

Hardware

• Minimum/Laptop
• 2.4 GHz Intel® or equivalent AMD® processor
• 2 GB system RAM
• Certified NVIDIA® or ATI™ graphics card with at least 512 MB graphics memory
• Recommended
• Intel® Pentium® 4; 4-core 2.8 GHz processor; or equivalent AMD processor
• 4 GB or more system RAM with Windows XP x64 Edition or Windows Vista 64-bit
• Certified NVIDIA or ATI graphics card with at least 768 MB graphics memory

Supported Graphics Cards

• ATI Radeon™ and ATI FirePro™ graphics cards, as well as NVIDIA® Quadro® FX and NVIDIA® GeForce® graphics cards released after 2007 that include the 7, 8, or 9 series graphics chipset. Graphics cards must have a minimum 512 MB graphics memory. More memory is recommended on Windows Vista or for users working with large data sets or complex scenes.

Graphics cards include:

• 7 series: Quadro FX 4500, GeForce 7900GTX, Mobile FX 2500M
• 8 series: Quadro FX 1700, Quadro FX 4600, GeForce 8800 GTS, Mobile FX 1600M
• 9 series: Quadro FX 3700, Quadro FX 5800, GeForce 9600 GT, Mobile FX 3600M
• Quadro Plex Model II and Model D2 are also supported.
• ATI Radeon 4830 and 4850
• ATI FirePro 5700, 7750, 8700 and 8750