Santa Clara, Calif. -
Mental images, an Nvidia company, has introduced iray, reportedly the first fully GPU-accelerated, commercially supported, turn-key rendering solution for a
wide range of 3D graphics application developers. Iray technology
leverages Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) to deliver
unbelievably fast photorealism to designers, engineers, and consumers.
Life-like graphics can become interactive as iray rendering technology exploits the massively parallel processing power of the GPU, enabling more convincing 3D visuals, greater levels of creativity, and faster decision making, says a company representative.
Iray technology speeds the creative process by enabling designers to simulate their creations using materials and lighting that relate directly to the physical world. Because it's highly scalable, interactive, and physically accurate, iray technology allows design and engineering professionals to produce the highest-quality final-frame output without the complexity inherent in other solutions.
With tight integration with mental ray technology -- mental images' renderer, which is used in feature film work and within the design and creation tools from Autodesk, Dassault Systemes, and Parametric Technology -- iray rendering technology will empower users with the ability to change the way they create synthetic images.
Iray rendering technology improves how designers, engineers, and other content development professionals work with rendering tools to produce high-quality, photorealistic imagery, continues the representative. Harnessing the power of the GPU and the Nvidia CUDA parallel processing architecture, iray technology progressively refines an image until maximum detail is reached, providing a single process that smoothly combines interactive pre-visualization and final frame rendering.
Iray rendering technology will be included with the mental ray 3.8 rendering software starting in late November 2009 at no extra cost to existing customers and OEMs under maintenance. Iray technology will also be available as part of RealityServer 2.4, the upcoming release of the 3D web application services software.