At 3D Festival, taking place 8-10 May in Copenhagen, ART VPS demonstrated it’s latest software update for its PURE and RenderDrive 3D rendering devices – the only hardware-rendering solutions to support ray tracing and secondary illumination. Building on their capacity to deal with highly complex data, produce stunning image quality and their reputation for dependable reliability, this latest update includes new features and improvements that benefit design workflow and further extend the company’s lead in high-end 3D CAD visualization and virtual photography. Specifically, weighted frame splitting, support for the built-in radiosity in 3dsmax/VIZ, and support for Maya5 underscore the additions in this software release.

In testing, PURE and RenderDrive demonstrated a substantial rendering speed advantage over software rendering with 3dsmax and VIZ for scenes including radiosity. Once lighting fixtures had been translated to those optimised for PURE and RenderDrive, speed improvements of up to eighty-times (80X) were seen as rendering times fell from 4 hours to just 3 minutes!

The inclusion of support for radiosity pre-calculations in 3dsmax and VIZ means that PURE and RenderDrive now offer two routes for calculation of secondary illumination: in software using 3dsmax/VIZ or in hardware with ART VPS’s RP-SSI shader (available in 3dsmax, VIZ, and Maya).

The addition of frame-splitting for PURE and RenderDrive will enable studios with more than one rendering device to dramatically reduce the latency of still-frame rendering – further extending the speed advantage PURE and RenderDrive deliver to quality-conscious 3D professionals. Splitting a high-resolution image across two RenderDrive devices resulted in a 40% speed reduction. Similar advantages were seen for PURE, and images can be split across any number of ART VPS rendering devices. For ART VPS customers, who produce ultra-high resolution images, this delivers a dramatic timesaving.

Uniquely, a user can specify the weighting of each rendering device – closely controlling the rendering workload assigned to each PURE or RenderDrive unit – allowing the utilization of each rendering device to be maximised within each individual production studio.

New features in this software update release include:
· Advanced lighting (radiosity) in 3dsmax 5 and VIZ 4 is now supported
· A user can render a frame on multiple rendering devices (frame splitting)
· A WDM driver for PURE is now available
· Capacity and speed for many scene types has been improved
· Additional Maya features supported by RenderPipe for Maya
· Additional 3dsmax/VIZ features supported by RenderPipe MAX
· RenderPipe for Maya can be run with Maya 5

Used by the most quality-demanding 3D designers and computer-graphics professionals around the world, RenderDrive and PURE have become synonymous with the efficient generation of photographic-quality computer images. ART VPS solutions are widely used within the architectural visualization and industrial design markets where leaders such as Nikon Corporation, Procter & Gamble, Skidmore Owings & Merrill and HDR Inc. rely on virtual photographs created with ART VPS products to communicate their designs.

“My RenderDrive outperforms my 20 station network renderfarm while providing real reflections, true depth of field, much better materials, and real shadows,” commented Richard Grogan, Architect and Project Designer at architects HDR Inc. “With RenderDrive I’ve seen a minimum 200% productivity increase.”

“This latest software update furthers ART VPS’s drive to make photographic quality 3D visualization simple, efficient, and available to everyone,” said Craig Wareham, VP Marketing at ART VPS. “Virtual photography delivers clear financial and time advantages to all design companies and ART VPS systems - uniquely combining hardware and software - continue to lead innovation in this area.”

PURE is available for Windows platforms and includes RenderPipe interfaces for 3dsmax, VIZ, and Maya. RenderDrive RD3500 and RenderDrive RD5000 are available for Windows and Irix platforms.

The AV2 Software Update will be available at the end of May 2003. It will ship with all new PURE and RenderDrive shipments and is provided automatically to all users with ART VPS Subscription Program membership.

ART VPS products are available through a network of international resellers.

PURE is ART VPS’s rapid ROI, PCI add-in board 3D visualization solution that brings the company’s award-winning 3D rendering technology to all visualization and design professionals. PURE renders images up to 16X faster than software-based ray tracing and can simultaneously deliver higher quality images through its silicon chip accelerated ray tracing architecture. Installed within a windows-compatible graphics workstation, PURE brings the power of a render farm onto a designer’s desktop.

RenderDrive delivers the ultimate performance for high quality 3D rendering, and is the choice of the most demanding studios. A networked appliance, RenderDrive offers shared access and minimum image rendering latency to revolutionize design workflow.

PURE and RenderDrive come with fully integrated plug-ins for Autodesk’s VIZ, Discreet’s 3dsmax and Alias|Wavefront’s Maya applications.

ART VPS products are based on unique hardware and software that utilizes physically accurate 3D rendering methods to produce convincing lighting, realistic textures, and lifelike reflections on a variety of materials. With software-based rendering, generating high quality images requires massive computing resources or long production times. Using ART VPS’s unique hardware technology, PURE and RenderDrive are able to deliver photographic quality images far more productively and more cost effectively than software-only tools.