mental ray Advanced Raytracing and Rendering Algorithms Supported in Massive 3.0
San Diego, CA - SIGGRAPH 2007 (August 6, 2007) - Massive Software, the leading developer of AI driven 3D animation systems, and mental images®, the premier rendering software for entertainment, scientific and architectural visualization, today announced native support for mental ray® in Massive. mental ray is software for high-end, photorealistic rendering. Massive is artificial life-based software for producing realistic character animation with up to hundreds of thousands of autonomous performances.
Native support for mental ray within Massive will give customers additional options for rendering Massive scenes and allow them to optimize workflow for applications and pipelines that rely on the quality and realism of mental ray. mental ray support within Massive is available with mental ray 3.6 and coincides with the new Version 3.0 of Massive.
"We are excited to be working with Massive, at a time where demand for its products is on the upswing," said Rolf Herken, the CEO and CTO of mental images. "In mental ray 3.6 we have support for assemblies, allowing arbitrarily large scenes such as those for which Massive is known to be rendered utilizing the most advanced raytracing and global illumination algorithms."
"As Rainmaker expands its capacity, we are looking to integrate Massive as a core capability in our pipeline, providing the creative benefits of Massive to our film and broadcast clients," commented Jason Dowdeswell, Digital Production Supervisor at Rainmaker. "Being a mental ray facility, the Massive/mental integration is a very important step for us."
"As the use of Massive becomes more and more prolific among facilities, there are lot of people who would like to use the two Academy Award® winning applications together," said Diane Holland, CEO of Massive Software. "mental images and Massive Software are both acknowledged technology innovators and we are delighted to be working with mental images to bring these new capabilities to our customer base."
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About mental images
mental images®, founded in 1986, is the recognized international leader in providing rendering software to the entertainment, computer-aided design, scientific visualization, architecture, and other industries that require sophisticated images. The company's main product is the Academy Award® winning photorealistic rendering software mental ray® which runs on a wide variety of platforms ranging from networks of workstations to parallel supercomputers, producing images of unsurpassed realism. mental ray was initially released in 1989 and has been used in the production of several hundred major motion pictures. Leading visual effects companies and studios, such as Buf Compagnie, Digital Domain, DreamWorks Animation, Lucasfilm Animation, Industrial Light and Magic, The Mill, The Moving Picture Company, The Orphanage, ReelFX, and Sony Pictures Imageworks are among mental images's largest customers. Additionally, in the CAD field mental ray is used by the world's leading automobile and aircraft manufactures to accelerate the design of new products. - mental images's new product RealityServer® enables interactive manipulation and visualization of existing and newly created 3D content. Applications based on it permit thousands of users to simultaneously and optionally collaboratively access and interact with original 3D data. Since the original content remains on the server, access to data and user policies are easily secured and managed centrally.
mental images GmbH is a privately held company based in Berlin, Germany, with a wholly owned subsidiary mental images, Inc. in San Francisco, California and an office in Stockholm, Sweden. For more information, visit www.mentalimages.com.
About Massive Software
Massive Software is the leading creator of artificial intelligence-based 3D animation systems. Massive was founded when Stephen Regelous programmed a unique piece of software for director Peter Jackson to make creation of complicated visual effects scenes involving hundreds of thousands of digital characters a practical reality for The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. Massive garnered a Scientific and Engineering Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2004.
Today, Massive Software develops a family of standalone, commercially available products, with customers including The Mill, Animal Logic, Digital Domain, Motion Picture Company, Framestore CFC, Rhythm & Hues and other leading digital production and effects studios. For more information, please contact Massive North America (+1 310-837-7878), New Zealand (+64 9-3030-030), or visit www.massivesoftware.com.
mental images Contacts:
United States
Elizabeth Olson
Double Forte Marketing + Communications
e-mail: eolson@double-forte.com
Telephone: +1 (415) 863.4900 x 8116
Other Areas
Silvia Hanko
mental images GmbH
Fasanenstrasse 81
D 10623 Berlin, Germany
e-mail: office@mental.com
Telephone: +49 (30) 31 59 97-0
Telefax: +49 (30) 31 59 97-33
www.mentalimages.com
Massive Company Contact:
Diane Holland
CEO, Massive Software
e-mail: info@massivesoftware.com
Massive Media Contact:
Karen Raz
Raz Public Relations
e-mail: karen@razpr.com
Telephone: +1 (310)450-1482