Together with ART’s RenderPipe for Maya plug-in interface for AliasWavefront’s Maya application, RenderPipe MAX for 3ds max or 3D Studio VIZ, and ART’s generic RenderMan interface, PURE provides a complete high-performance 3D rendering environment for designers and animators.

PURE delivers the high quality rendering performance of a rendering farm – on one compact PCI card device within a graphics workstation. With a rendering speed of 10X over software-based ray tracing, the simple, easy to use, RenderPipe interfaces, and its low cost, PURE is the most efficient high quality 3D rendering solution available.

“The design goals for PURE were to create a fast, productive and cost-effective photorealistic 3D rendering solution that delivered the same high quality virtual photography images ART’s products are recognized for,” commented Craig Wareham, ART’s Marketing Manager. “PURE gives every designer the power to produce images that are indistinguishable from photography. Businesses can capitalize on their CAD data throughout the design cycle – from accelerating the conceptual design stage, eliminating mistakes through more effective digital prototyping, through to utilizing the data to create marketing and point-of-sale materials.”

PURE is based around an array of eight of ART’s unique AR350 ray tracing graphics processors. The AR350 is the only 3D chip capable of accelerating the complex, physically based ray traced rendering algorithm. Each AR350 features a geometry co-processor for performing ray/triangle intersection calculations and an end-user-programmable shading co-processor for performing highly flexible shading and lighting calculations. With eight AR350 chips, the PURE P1800 is capable of performing over 1.1 Billion ray/triangle intersection tests each second.

PURE provides the user with an efficient, cost effective solution for rendering ray traced images. In addition, PURE uses a more physically based environment including real-world lighting, reflections, refractions, depth of field, motion blur, area lights, attenuating soft shadows, physically accurate materials and camera effects. With these features accelerated by the AR350 chips and ART’s unique lens effects and adaptive ray calculation technology, PURE delivers the highest quality images.

PURE is currently undergoing Beta Testing at a number of sites across the UK and USA. Orders are being taken immediately for delivery in November.

About PURE
PURE comprises software and PCI card hardware based on the company’s proprietary ray traced rendering 3D graphics chips, which automatically perform the geometry and shading operations of the ray tracing algorithm. PURE’s unique toolset includes a host of powerful features that allow users to easily integrate convincing effects such as accurate real-world lighting, physically-based materials, motion blur, and depth of field, to create images so lifelike they are referred to as virtual photographs. Application plug-in interfaces to PURE are available for 3dsmax, 3D Studio VIZ, AliasWavefront Maya, and the generic RenderMan language. PURE is available for PC’s and workstations running Windows NT and Windows 2000.