HPCwire: mental images Introduces mental mill

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March 23, 2009

mental images Introduces mental mill

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A look-development environment for creating platform-independent shaders in MetaSL

SAN FRANCISCO, and BERLIN, March 23 -- mental images, a global leader in rendering software and visualization tools for animators, visual effects artists and professionals who create high-quality imaging today introduced mental mill. mental mill is available in two editions. The Standard Edition is a complete visual development environment that includes powerful debugging capabilities, shader authoring features, exporters to DCC and CAD software, and instant mental ray preview rendering; and the Artist Edition, a subset of the mental mill toolset, that come bundled with Autodesk 3ds Max 2010.

With the Artist Edition, one can quickly assemble complex shader graphs from the provided library of shaders, tweak the parameters, and save them as files which 3ds Max reads natively. In 3ds Max one can then assign the shaders to 3D objects, continue to tweak the parameters in context with other shaders and lighting, and fine-tune the look of the final renderings.

For taking shader creation to the next level, mental images releases the mental mill Standard Edition. In addition to the tasks that can be performed in the Artist Edition, with Standard Edition one can write and edit shader code, and visually debug shaders by interactive, visual inspection of graphical representations of the variables while stepping through the code. Also, one can export shaders for use in targeted software applications including Autodesk's 3ds Max, Maya, Softimage, Dassault Systemes' CATIA and NVIDIA's FX Composer, through the supported, customizable back-end formats such as CgFX, HLSL, and GLSL. With the included mental ray preview plug-in, it is easy to see the rendering results of a shader with mental ray's photorealistic ray tracer. The Standard Edition will be available for purchase and download from the mental images Web site in April 2009.

"The mental mill Standard Edition greatly facilitates the creation of complex and visually compelling shaders. In addition, thanks to their representation in MetaSL, these shaders are future-proof and will not need to be recreated or modified to take full advantage of future technology and performance advancements in GPUs, multi-core parallel processing, and rendering algorithms," said Rolf Herken, CEO and COO of mental images.

"Our publisher signed off on the look of our characters before level design," said Izmeth Siddeek, Character Art Lead at Blue Castle Games. "mental mill has revolutionized the development pipeline for the making of our latest game, Dead Rising 2. We are looking into integrating mental mill even more."

During GDC mental images and Blue Castle Games will host a joint session entitled "Platform-independent Shader Development with mental mill: The Making of Dead Rising 2" on Friday, March 27, 2009, from Noon to 1:00 p.m., Room 2011 (West Hall). The session will be presented by Izmeth Siddeek of Blue Castle Games and Laura Scholl of mental images.

About mental images

mental images, founded in 1986, is the recognized international leader in providing component and platform software for the creation, manipulation and visualization of 3D content. Its world leading rendering and other technologies are used by the entertainment, computer-aided design, architecture, scientific visualization, and other industries that require sophisticated images primarily as part of their software products and application services. mental images is a wholly-owned subsidiary of NVIDIA Corporation with headquarters in Berlin, Germany, a subsidiary in the United States, mental images, Inc., and a subsidiary in Melbourne, Australia, mental images Pty.. mental images has a multinational staff of top qualified engineers exclusively dedicated to basic research and development in the area of 3D graphics and 3D Web Applications and Services technologies. For more information, visit www.mentalimages.com.

About NVIDIA

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