Advanced Rendering Technology (ART) today started shipping an upgrade to RenderPipe for Maya, the plug-in interface to the company’s PURE and RenderDrive 3D rendering products for users of Alias|Wavefront’s Maya application. This latest update delivers an expanded and improved set of shaders, providing more complete coverage for Maya’s standard Shading Nodes and ensuring a good visual match on these shader nodes between ART’s rendering devices and the default Maya renderer.

“To deliver the closest integration between Maya and PURE or RenderDrive, ART created its own framework in which to create equivilent shaders and shading networks to those in Maya,” commented Craig Wareham, Marketing Manager for ART. “By providing a visual match with the standard Maya shaders, users of Maya with RenderDrive or PURE can leverage the best of Maya’s shading environment together with ART’s physically-accurate materials and generic RenderMan shaders.”

The combination of Maya and PURE is proving very popular in both the entertainment and industrial design markets. Companies such as Arcana Digital, IBM Interactive, and Naxos Images are using Maya and ART’s 3D rendering devices to deliver unmatched image quality and improved 3D design productivity. Recently completed projects include design visualization for LG Electronics Cyking vacuum cleaners, and animations for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe’s WipeOut Fusion for Playstation2 television commercial.

The Shader Pack upgrade for the RenderPipe for Maya interface includes new support of Maya shading nodes, and an improved visual match for some nodes already supported. New shading nodes within the Shader Pack upgrade includes: Cloud, Crater, Granite, Marble, Mountain, Rock, SolidFractal, Snow, Water, and Wood. Shaders that have been rewritten to give a more accurate visual match with Maya includes: Brownian, Bulge, Checker, Cloth, Fractal, GammaCorrect, Grid, LayeredTexture, Leather, Multiply Divide, Place2Dtexture, Ramp, Set Range, and Stucco.

The Shader Pack upgrade will be provided free of charge to all registered PURE and RenderDrive customers who use Maya.

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, Maya, and the generic RenderMan language. PURE is available for PC’s and workstations running Windows NT and Windows 2000. PURE has a manufacturers recommended price of £2499 in the UK, $3699 in the USA (international pricing may vary) and is available through ART’s value-added reseller network.

ART’s RenderDrive comprises software and hardware based on the company’s proprietary ray traced rendering processors, which automatically perform the geometry and shading operations of the ray tracing algorithm. The system’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. By providing a unified, platform-independent rendering environment that harnesses the power and features of major host applications like Maya and 3ds max, RenderDrive ensures that architectural and industrial designers, broadcasters, and post-production and special effects animators can seamlessly realize their projects with a number of modelling and animation packages—all with an unparalleled level of realism.