Imagination previews Brazil 3.0 Beta running on OpenRL

Vancouver, Canada, 9 August 2011: Imagination Technologies, a leading multimedia and communications technologies company, is showing with partners the first examples of a growing portfolio of solutions based on the new Brazil™ 3.0 beta interactive ray tracing renderer, built using Imagination’s ground-breaking Caustic ray tracing technologies including the OpenRL™ API, at SIGGRAPH 2011 in Vancouver Canada (Booth 129, August 9-11).

Imagination is demonstrating the beta version of its powerful new rendering engine, called Brazil 3.0, to address the next generation of high quality fully interactive ray traced rendering across a broad range of markets from CAD and industrial design through to gaming and cinematic quality content creation. Brazil 3.0 embraces the features and capabilities of a world class renderer, but introduces fully dynamic geometry support enabling full rendering and manipulation of ray traced rendered objects on the fly.

Brazil 3.0 is a completely new renderer implementation, designed from the ground up for real-time, interactive high quality visualization. Thanks to the speed of Brazil 3.0, users can now edit everything in a scene on the fly – including geometry, lights, materials and shaders - enabling truly interactive real-time high quality ray tracing-based visualization.

Brazil 3.0 is built using OpenRL, Imagination’s ray tracing API that it intends to promote as an open industry standard. OpenRL is designed to work on any graphics hardware, including Imagination’s forthcoming Caustic Professional ray-tracing board level solutions.

Brazil 3.0 builds on the success and renowned capabilities of the Splutterfish Brazil RS batch-based rendering system, one of the industry’s most highly respected and widely recognized cinematic quality renderers. Brazil RS is still used by many industry leaders today more than ten years after it was first conceived.

When Brazil 3.0 is released, artists and designers who have built up libraries of shaders and materials based on Brazil RS 2.0 maps and materials will be able to use them in Brazil 3.0, creating a convenient path for users wishing to migrate from the Brazil RS 2.0 renderer to Brazil 3.0 based solutions.

The Brazil 3.0 SDK beta enables Caustic Insider ecosystem partners to develop plug-ins to any tool environment or other application. Partners are using the Brazil 3.0 SDK beta to start developing plug-ins to create fully integrated viewports within well-known tool environments, delivering high quality ray traced imagery in a truly interactive environment for the first time. It has been integrated directly into the 3D viewports of many of the industry's most popular industrial design packages, including Autodesk® Maya® and Autodesk® 3ds Max® 2012, and Robert McNeel & Associates Rhinoceros®. 

Now artists and designers can create and visualize concept models right within their favorite modeling tool, eliminating the necessity and burden of exporting scenes to a third-party design visualization package. Several examples of these plug-ins will be demonstrated at SIGGRAPH 2011 on Imagination’s booth.

The Brazil 3.0 SDK is based on OpenRL, the only ray tracing API that is fully device independent and can leverage multiple compute devices simultaneously. Built using similar paradigms to those used in the Khronos family of OpenGL ES, OpenGL and OpenCL APIs, OpenRL has the unique ability of supporting dynamic geometry by updating its acceleration structure to account for transformations, and vertex modifications to any model within the scene.

Expert presentations will take place through the day at the SIGGRAPH 2011 Exhibition on the Imagination booth #129, showing the benefits of interactive visualization in CAD and creative content creation applications, including demonstrations of real time ray-traced viewport rendering with fully dynamic geometry to manipulate the rendered object on the fly. 

The Brazil 3.0 SDK beta programme is open now to all software tools developers.

Notes:

(1)   Splutterfish, Caustic Graphics and Imagination Technologies

Splutterfish, developers of the Brazil RS 2.0 renderer, was acquired by Caustic Graphics in 2009. Caustic Graphics was acquired by Imagination Technologies in December 2010.

(2)   Brazil 3.0 SDK (Beta)

The Brazil™ 3.0 SDK is a real-time, fully interactive ray tracing-based renderer suitable for a wide range of 3D graphics applications. It is based on OpenRL, which enables it to be highly interactive, rendering photorealistic scenes as well as being able to be accelerated using chips containing Caustic ray tracing technologies. Imagination will be releasing the production version of Brazil 3.0 SDK in Q4 2011. Brazil 3.0 is a rich, full production renderer that is easy to use yet delivers high quality product visualization. It features a smooth migration path for existing Brazil RS 2.0 users, who will be able to migrate easily their Brazil RS shaders, materials and other assets to Brazil 3.0.

(3)   OpenRL API 1.0 (Beta)

OpenRL™ (Open Ray Tracing Library) is the world's first device-independent API for writing ray tracing applications across a wide range of graphics hardware devices from AMD®, Intel®, and NVidia®, as well as Imagination’s Caustic Professional boards and other platforms incorporating Caustic ray tracing technology in the future.  Imagination will be releasing the production version of the OpenRL 1.0 SDK in Q4 2011.

(4)   Caustic ray-tracing technology

Caustic ray tracing technology is changing how interactive cinema-quality graphics will be produced, used, and enjoyed. The technology uses a unique, patented approach which fundamentally changes the performance and cost metrics for production quality ray-traced images without cutting corners for quality or functionality. Future generations of Caustic ray tracing technology will be ultimately integrated with Imagination’s PowerVR GPU IP cores, delivering a price/performance level that is set to change the world’s perception of the cost and accessibility of real-time, cinematic quality ray tracing.

About Imagination Technologies

Imagination Technologies Group plc (LSE:IMG) – a global leader in multimedia and communication technologies – creates and licenses market-leading multimedia IP cores for graphics, video, and display processing, multi-threaded embedded processing/DSP cores and multi-standard communications and connectivity processors. These silicon intellectual property (IP) solutions for systems-on-chip (SoC) are complemented by platform level IP and services, a strong array of software tools and drivers and extensive developer and middleware ecosystems. Target markets include mobile phone, handheld multimedia, home consumer entertainment, mobile and low-power computing, and in-car electronics. Its licensees include many of the leading semiconductor and consumer electronics companies. Imagination has corporate headquarters in the United Kingdom, with sales and R&D offices worldwide. See: www.imgtec.com.