Architosh Staff (info@architosh.com)

23 Aug 00

Mac3D News: New 'Renderfarm' product for Macintosh

Pixels and Total Impact Demonstrate "Renderfarm in a Box"

In very exciting news for the Macintosh 3D and CAD community, Pixels Animation Studios Inc and Total Impact, Inc. released a press release regarding their public demonstration at SIGGRAPH 2000, in New Orleans, of a "next-generation rendering engine" with the blazing speed of Total Impact's Power Box 10x PCI card expansion enclosure:

PixelsÕ Tempest supports the RenderMan¨ specification and is the first commercial rendering engine to integrate the REYES rendering algorithm with a ray server in one application. Tempest provides the power of micro polygon displacement with true raytraced reflection and refraction, an industry first. Tempest also integrates RIB parsing and Shading Language support, therefore it fits seamlessly into an established workflow.

Total ImpactÕs mPower solution offers either 4 PowerPC G3 (750) or 4 Power PC G4 (7400) CPUs ranging from 366 to 500MHz on a single PCI based board for integration into PCI based computers. Up to 10 additional mPower PCI boards can be utilized in Total ImpactÕs Power Box enclosure via a high speed PCI card to the host computer. Multiple Power Box enclosures can also be configured together for highly intensive computations.

The combination of the Tempest rendering engine with the Power Box enclosure, filled with mPower PCI cards, offers the worldÕs first true "Renderfarm in a Boxª" solution for high-end computer generated graphics rendering applications.

According to the press release the Tempest Demonstration Application is now available for download for the Power Macintosh. This Demonstration Application simulates the speed and power of the Tempest rendering engine on a variety of configurations ranging from a single 400mhz G3 to 53 400mhz G3s.

The Tempest rendering engine is available now in Beta. Buyers receive the Beta at a reduced price to the Final Release and will receive the Final Release at no additional charge when it is available.

In addition, a fully functional version of Pixels 3D Studio software is available for a free 30 day trail period. Go get it now!