Maya 5 First to Deliver Advanced Rendering Power by Leveraging the new mental ray 3.2 Technology
LAS VEGAS, April 7, 2003 -- Alias|Wavefront(TM), an SGI (NYSE:SGI) company, revealed today that its Maya® 5 software is the first 3D package to leverage advanced rendering innovations from mental images' new mental ray® 3.2 rendering technology. Alias|Wavefront and mental images® continue to forge ahead with mental ray for Maya(TM) development, after each company recently accepted awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for their advanced technology solutions.
"It's exciting to see two of the world's most advanced graphics companies working together to provide customers with even greater control over content," said Samantha Staples, Principal & Senior Analyst at Acacia Research Group. "mental ray is quickly establishing itself as the 3D industry's renderer of choice - this coupled with Maya continuously being a leader in the entertainment market means a powerhouse of technological imaging capability will be available in the newest version of Maya."
Advanced Rendering Enhancements Added to Maya
mental ray for Maya 5, which is now distributed and installed automatically with Maya software, offers physically accurate, photo-realistic rendering options such as global illumination, caustics and ultra accurate lighting calculations. Highly requested features such as support for particles and hierarchical subdivision surfaces, as well as light mapping optimizations, are now available in Maya 5. With the new mental ray 3.2 core architecture, more efficient use of memory and low-level CPU optimizations offer significant performance improvements to rendering pipelines.
"The integration of mental ray with Maya produces better looking renderings, but more importantly for us, it increases our productivity," commented Tristan Salome, CTO at nozon.com.
"Maya's diverse customer base pushes rendering technology further and further as new productions seek higher quality and more realistic imagery," said mental images President and Director R&D, Rolf Herken. "The integration of mental ray 3.2 into Maya will provide users with the most powerful rendering option available today. It fits perfectly with mental images' agenda to make mental ray the uniquely sophisticated and most pervasive renderer used in the industry."
Both Alias® and mental images were honored on March 1, 2003 by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. mental images received a Technical Achievement Award for mental ray, "a highly programmable computer-graphics renderer incorporating ray tracing and global illumination to realistically simulate the behavior of light in computer-generated imagery." Alias|Wavefront received the highest honor the Academy can bestow - an Oscar® statuette for "...the development of a 3D animation, dynamics, modeling and rendering production tool known as Maya. With its significant and dominant impact on the motion picture industry, the Maya software package offers a robust and widely used commercial visual effects tool with a rich infrastructure for extension and customization."
"Industry recognition proves what our customers already know," commented Shai Hinitz, Maya Product Manager. "The combination of Maya and mental ray is opening a new world of unprecedented image creation possibilities for Maya's extensive community."
Alias|Wavefront Customers Get First Access to mental ray 3.2
Alias|Wavefront customers will be the first to have access to mental images' new 3.2 standalone renderer. mental ray 3.2 standalone is available for the Windows®, IRIX® and Linux® operating systems and now for the first time, Maya customers working on the Mac® OS X platform can also take advantage of the mental ray standalone renderer. mental ray for Maya is a standard feature of Maya 5 which will begin shipping in May 2003. The mental ray 3.2 standalone renderer will be available separately in early May 2003 from Alias|Wavefront. For more information please visit www.aliaswavefront.com.
About Alias|Wavefront
As the world's leading innovator of 3D graphics technology, Alias|Wavefront develops software for the film and video, games, web, interactive media, industrial design and visualization markets. On March 1, 2003, the company was awarded an Oscar® for Technical Achievement from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for its development of Maya software, its professional 3D animation and effects package. Entertainment and games customers include: Acclaim Entertainment, Inc., CNN, Core Design Limited, Digital Domain, Disney, Electronic Arts, Industrial Light & Magic, Factor 5 LLC, Midway Games, Nintendo, Pacific Data Images (PDI), Pixar, Sega, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Square Co., Ltd., Warner Feature Animation and Weta Ltd.
Alias|Wavefront is a wholly owned, independent software company of SGI® with headquarters in Toronto and custom development center in Santa Barbara. Please visit the Alias|Wavefront web site at www.aliaswavefront.com or call 1-800-447-2542 in North America. International contact numbers include: Northern Europe, Middle East and Africa, +44 (0) 1494 441273; Germany, East & Southeast Europe, 0049 89 31 70 20; France, Spain and Portugal, +33 1 44 92 81 60; Japan and other parts of Asia Pacific, 81 3 5797 3500, 81 3 3470 8282 and Latin America, 770 393 1881.
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 main product of the company is the high performance photo realistic rendering software mental ray which is capable of running on a wide variety of platforms ranging from workstations and networks of workstations to parallel supercomputers, producing images of unsurpassed realism. mental images GmbH & Co. KG is a privately held company based in Berlin, Germany, with a subsidiary in San Francisco, California.
Alias and the Alias|Wavefront logo are registered trademarks and Alias|Wavefront is a trademark of Alias|Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited in the United States and/or other countries. Maya is a registered trademark of Silicon Graphics, Inc., exclusively used by Alias|Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited, and the Maya logo and mental ray for Maya are trademark of Alias|Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited. mental ray and mental images are registered trademarks of mental images GmbH & Co. KG in the United States and/or other countries. Oscar and Academy Award® are trademarks and service marks of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. SGI and IRIX are registered trademarks of Silicon Graphics, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries worldwide. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Windows is either a registered trademark or trademark of Microsoft Corporation, in the United States and/or other countries. Mac is a trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. registered in the US and other countries. All other products or companies mentioned are trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.
Alias|Wavefront, 210 King Street East, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5A 1J7, Tel: 416-362-9181, FAX: 416-369-6140.
Copyright (C) 2003 Alias|Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited.
All Rights Reserved.
For screenshots and press images:
www.aliaswavefront.com/entertainment/press
Press contacts
for Alias|Wavefront:
Alias|Wavefront
Donna Teggart, +1 (416) 874-8592
dteggart@aw.sgi.com
or
Heather Kernahan, +1 (416) 874-8288
hkernahan@aw.sgi.com
for mental images (North America):
Rachel Yarmey
Sparkpr
87 McLea Court
San Francisco, CA 94103
USA
e-mail: rachel@sparkpr.com
Telephone: +1 (415) 962-8200 x241
Telefax: +1 (415) 522-0330
www.sparkpr.com
for mental images (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