LOS ANGELES, August 2, 2005 – ART VPS Ltd. announces that it will support hardware-accelerated global illumination in the upcoming version of its RenderPipe plug-in software, scheduled for release in September. The RenderPipe plug-in interfaces popular 3D applications such as Maya, 3ds max, CATIA and VIZ with ART VPS’s PURE and RenderDrive hardware ray-tracing systems.
RenderPipe’s new support for global illumination enhances lighting effects by using bi-directional path ray tracing in each AR350 processor in the RenderDrive and PURE systems. Global illumination increases the photorealism of computer-generated images by mimicking the subtleties of natural light, diffusing color properties as light radiates between objects.
Realism will be further enhanced by new support in RenderPipe for caustics that simulate light reflections and refractions.
Other new features in RenderPipe include:
· NetRIB, a new render management application providing a graphical user interface (GUI) that enables users to manage rendering on the RenderDrive network outside of a 3dsmax or Maya session.
· Layers support for additional rendered channels such as color, diffuse, specular and self-illumination.
· Velocity support for the 3dsmax G-buffer channel, which generates 2D vector information that is used for 3D post effects.
About PURE and RenderDrive
PURE and RenderDrive incorporate ART VPS’s modular ray-tracing architecture, which accelerates 3D rendering by distributing it across an array of specially designed chips. The systems generate full-frame previews in seconds, and give users the speed to take advantage of advanced 3D rendering features such as multiple area lights, accurate 3D motion blur and depth of field, secondary illumination, HDRI lighting, and physically based materials, lighting and camera properties.
With RenderDrive the number of details we are able to resolve and refine based on the rendering alone, without prototyping or making physical models, is remarkable.
