Companies collaborate to provide a mental ray rendering option for Houdini
July 11, 2001-- (Santa Monica, CA) -- Side Effects Software announced today that it has entered into a strategic alliance with mental images® to add support to Houdini 5 for the mental ray® renderer. In response to strong demand by leading effects houses for mental ray support in Houdini, the new output driver will be demonstrated at Side Effects Software's annual Houdini User Group Meeting at SIGGRAPH 2001 on August 12. The companies are currently beta testing the solution, which will be available commercially when Houdini 5 is released.
"Houdini is the backbone of many production pipelines because it provides significant productivity," explains Paul Salvini, Chief Technology Officer at Side Effects Software. "We are committed to providing the best and most flexible animation solution for our users. Houdini 5's tightly integrated support for mental ray will result in even greater improvements in production efficiency for many studios. Moreover, we are giving all of our customers greater freedom in selecting the best renderer for their particular job."
"We have been working with Side Effects for some time now in their effort to support mental ray as a rendering option for Houdini," states Rolf Herken, President and Director R&D, mental images. "The combination of Houdini's procedural power and new levels of ease of use with mental ray - our programmable, photorealistic, rendering software - will permit the users of our products to further increase visual quality and overall productivity."
"We have used mental ray on a wide variety of features and commercials projects both for its quality and flexibility," states Judith Crow, Creative Director, Digital Production and Technology, Digital Domain. "Likewise, Houdini has, for many years, been our core package in the area of effects animation for our digital production pipeline. The combination of both products will allow us to take advantage of the high quality output in a much more productive manner. As early beta testers, we are looking forward to mental ray support in Houdini 5."
About Houdini
Houdini is an award-winning 3D animation software package that includes a comprehensive set of capabilities for digital content creation including modeling, animating, compositing, characters, textures, shading and rendering. Houdini has been used to create stunning visual sequences in blockbuster feature films including "Mummy Returns", "Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas", "X-Men", "Hollow Man" and "The Matrix".
Houdini's unique and award-winning Visual Procedural Network technology facilitates quick learning, rapid experimentation and the ultimate in production flexibility. Its revolutionary, fully non-linear architecture lets artists work the way they think. The powerful new customizable interface has been designed to handle the most sophisticated production environments with efficiency.
About mental ray
mental ray(r) generates images of outstanding quality and realism, and is widely acknowledged as one of the leading solutions in the Digital Content Creation industry. It is the only commercially available rendering software that combines the physically correct simulation of the behavior of light with full programmability for the creation of photorealistic imagery as well as of any imaginable visual effect. With its fully scalable parallel rendering capabilities supporting both multiprocessor platforms and networks of machines, mental ray can be used for near real-time interactive rendering sessions as well as for complex, high throughput batch mode rendering.
About Side Effects Software
Established in 1987, Side Effects Software is a world leader in the development of advanced 3D graphics and special effects software for use in film, broadcast and game development. Today, Side Effects Software leads the field of non-linear animation with its unique, award-winning, Houdini technology. Houdini is used by numerous digital content creation leaders including Digital Domain, DreamWorks SKG, Electronic Arts, Namco, Nickelodeon, Rhythm & Hues, Sega, Sony Computer Entertainment and Weta Ltd.
For more information about Side Effects Software and its products, please visit http://www.sidefx.com.
About mental images
mental images GmbH & Co. KG, founded in 1986, is a recognized leader in providing next generation rendering and modeling software technology to the entertainment, CAD and visualization markets, and to other industries where sophisticated images are required. Customers of mental images include major original software developers as well as select key industrial end-users. Users of mental ray include most of the leading visual effects and digital film studios, game development companies, and companies in the automotive and aerospace industries.
mental images is a privately held company based in Berlin, Germany. For more information please visit the mental images website at http://www.mentalimages.com
Houdini is a registered trademark of Side Effects Software Inc. mental ray and mental images are registered trademarks of mental images GmbH & Co.KG. All other trademarks are the properties of their respective owners.
For More Information, Press only:
Tony Cristiano, Side Effects Software
(310) 319-9876, tony@sidefx.com
Silvia Hanko, for mental images
+49 30 315 9970, office@mentalimages.com