NVIDIA Corporation, a worldwide leader in graphics and digital media processors, today announced that Frantic Films, one of North America's most dynamic and creative resources for stunning visual effects and animation, has entered into an agreement to incorporate the NVIDIA (R) Gelato(TM) GPU-accelerated film renderer as a key element of its production pipeline.

In addition, Frantic Films Software division is putting the finishing touches on Amaretto, a plug-in for Discreet(R) 3ds max(R) modeling and animation software, bringing the exceptional speed and quality of the Gelato renderer to a registered user base of over 280,000.

"The work Frantic Films does has always been taxing on a high-quality renderer and Gelato will be able to add a great deal to their already rich production environment. Features like Preview Mode and its open API allow easy extensibility through plug-ins like Amaretto," said Larry Gritz, chief architect of the Gelato renderer. "The feature-rich Amaretto plug-in opens the door to the many other studios using 3ds max."

Whether it's creating new worlds -- or destroying them -- Frantic Films continues to redefine the cutting edge of digital film production. Their award-winning work has appeared in films such as The Italian Job, X2: X-Men United, The Core, Swordfish, and Stephen King's Storm of the Century. Using top content creation tools like Gelato, 3ds max software, and a variety of other custom and off-the-shelf tools, Frantic continually builds upon the latest advances in the industry and increases its processing power to tackle its challenges.

"Frantic has maintained a close relationship with NVIDIA since the creation of the Digital Film Group," said Chris Bond, president of Frantic Films. "Gelato brings the latest in rendering technology to our production pipeline and Amaretto allows 3D artists to take full advantage of the power of this GPU-accelerated software from within the familiar 3ds max user interface."

• The combination of the Gelato renderer and Amaretto provides a fully-integrated, plug-in renderer for 3ds max software through an interface that 3D artists are accustomed to. Some of the advanced features found in Amaretto include:
• Rendering of existing 3ds max scenes and access to the Gelato renderer's extensive feature set including fast sub-pixel displacement, analytical sub-division surfaces and shader language.
• Translation of 3ds max materials into Gelato shader networks and allows any shader written in the Gelato Shading Language to be compiled as a 3ds max material and applied using the familiar 3ds max software user interface.
• A sophisticated Preview and History system allowing users to share their shader previews, browse preview libraries and instantly apply presets to Gelato shaders in order to quickly create new shader variations.
• Support for the Gelato renderer's advanced displacement capabilities and the means to apply procedural or texture-based displacements in  layered manner.
• A hybrid C++/MAXScript design that allows artists and technical directors to quickly adapt the software to their needs or add features.

The Gelato renderer is currently shipping for both Windows XP and Linux . Pricing, evaluation copies, product details, and a list of Gelato resellers are available at http://film.nvidia.com . Details on the availability and pricing of the Amaretto plug-in for 3ds max will be made available on Frantic Films website http://www.franticfilms.com/ .

fonte:digitalproducer.com