Nvidia teaming up with Mental Images

Modelworks

Lifer
Feb 22, 2007
16,240
7
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Nvidia has had a product for quite some time called gelato.
It allows someone doing 3d work to use the GPU as well as the CPU as a final render.
Today Nvidia made gelato pro free, and announced they are ending gelato and teaming up to work with mental ray renderer.

This is a pretty big deal if you work in 3d like I do.
Mental Ray is one of the best renderers that exist.
It even received an academy award a few years back for all the work that it made possible in movies.

If nvidia gets mental ray running on the gpu its going to be a major accomplishment.

I wonder what Intel thinks of all this.

http://blogs.nvidia.com/gelato/
NVIDIA GELATO PRO GPU-POWERED RENDERING SOFTWARE NOW FREELY AVAILABLE Final Version Now Available to the 3D Design, Animation, and Postproduction Communities SANTA CLARA, CA?May 29, 2008?NVIDIA Corporation, the world leader in visual computing technologies, today announced NVIDIA® Gelato® Pro 2.2 rendering software, the Company?s advanced GPU-accelerated rendering software for professionals, is available as a no-cost download at www.nvidia.com/gelatozone. Well suited for rendering of 3D digital content and design, Gelato Pro software now replaces the basic version of Gelato software, which was previously available directly from NVIDIA. ?NVIDIA Gelato Pro 2.2 software is extremely powerful GPU-accelerated rendering software and we are excited to support the creative community by making it freely available,? said Dominick Spina, senior product manager, Digital Film Group, NVIDIA. ?Now all artists and designers with NVIDIA Quadro graphics cards can enhance their production pipelines with Gelato Pro?without a licensing fee.? Gelato Pro 2.2 will be the final version of NVIDIA Gelato rendering software. Moving forward, the NVIDIA Gelato and mental images rendering teams will focus on the development of mental ray software, reinforcing NVIDIA?s investment and commitment to advanced accelerated rendering. Gelato software is a GPU-accelerated, final-frame renderer for the creation of high-quality computer-generated images using NVIDIA Quadro® graphics cards. Originally developed to render film and broadcast visual effects and animation, Gelato software can be used with 3D software applications that require advanced rendering such as game development, CAD, industrial design, and architecture. Basic capabilities of the Gelato renderer include sub-pixel antialiasing; true displacement; high-quality motion blur; depth of field; support for NURBS, subdivision surfaces, and particles; raytracing features, including global illumination effects and ambient occlusion; and fully programmable shading. Frantic Films? Amaretto plug-in also provides advanced rendering functionality with Autodesk?s 3ds Max software, complementing the Mango plug-in for rendering with Autodesk?s Maya software. Features of Gelato Pro 2.2 software, which until now required payment of a license fee to access, include the Sorbetto? interactive relighting engine, network parallel rendering, multi-threading, 64-bit support, and DSO shadeops. Gelato Pro also supports Joe Alter?s Shave and a Haircut software for computer-generated hair and fur effects and includes support for Autodesk Maya 8.5 and 3ds Max 9.0, offering improved stereo rendering, fog lights, and significant performance improvements. NVIDIA Gelato Pro 2.2 software supports Windows XP and Linux operating systems and runs on any NVIDIA Quadro graphics solution. Gelato is available for download at www.nvidia.com/gelatozone. As a freely downloadable product, NVIDIA will no longer be developing or supporting the Gelato software products.
 

BassBomb

Diamond Member
Nov 25, 2005
8,396
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Did gelato work with any renderer? Or did you have to use some sort of specific one.

I use brazil r/s and it is phenomenal. MentalRay and Vray are quite good but I have not learned them.

I wonder if it will work at all with non quadro cards
 

Modelworks

Lifer
Feb 22, 2007
16,240
7
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Originally posted by: dev0lution
Teaming up isn't exactly correct. NVIDIA owns Mental Images :)

http://www.mentalimages.com/1_0_company/index.html


Yes I know about the purchase, but don't think of the purchase as a merger.
They remain two separate companies.

Gelato does a lot of things that while they worked were not as easy to implement as in mental ray. I think it was a very smart move to not try to reinvent , but to use something that is already working. Still they are going to have to jump through some major hoops to get mental ray working on a gpu basis.



 

Modelworks

Lifer
Feb 22, 2007
16,240
7
76
Originally posted by: BassBomb
Did gelato work with any renderer? Or did you have to use some sort of specific one.

I use brazil r/s and it is phenomenal. MentalRay and Vray are quite good but I have not learned them.

I wonder if it will work at all with non quadro cards

Gelato is a renderer in itself.
It borrows things from the various renderers.
I think that is why nvidia moved to give it up and focus on mental ray.
Lots of people did not move to gelato because they had to relearn how to render scenes and I probably don't have to tell you , people get attached to their renderer.

It will work with any nvidia gpu.
Its just not guaranteed to work with non quadro cards.