| Maya 5 with Quadro FX Smashes Rendering Barrier Graphics Industry Leaders Alias|Wavefront and NVIDIA Introduce Hardware Rendering Breakthrough Alias|Wavefront Press Contacts: Heather Kernahan Las Vegas, NV - NAB – April 7, 2003 - Alias|Wavefront™, an SGI (NYSE: SGI) company, revealed today an innovative new Hardware rendering capability in its recently announced Maya® 5 software. With Maya 5, customers can produce broadcast quality images up to 20 times faster than ever before possible. Now artists can benefit from advances in programmable shading technology to render a range of resolutions and quality, which stand up to even high definition scrutiny. Maya 5, in combination with the new NVIDIA® Quadro® FX graphics engine, provides customers with unprecedented rendering power. Maya 5 is the first 3D application to fully take advantage of the Quadro FX’s power and precision to render high quality images with specular highlights, bump and reflection mapping and shadows, that in many cases are indistinguishable from software rendering. The combination of Maya 5 and advanced graphics card technology raises the bar in quality for pre-visualization and boosts speed for broadcast quality output. Alias|Wavefront received one of the first Quadro FX boards and worked closely with NVIDIA engineers to bring Hardware rendering to Maya 5. Shai Hinitz, Product Manager at Alias|Wavefront, commented, “the stability of the Quadro FX card and driver allowed us to be extremely productive. Maya 5’s Hardware Renderer is going to change the nature of rendering for many artists – in the not-so-distant future, the quality and range of effects available with Hardware rendering will change the nature of 3D production forever.” Hardware rendering allows customers to meet deadlines faster and render multiple iterations in production refinement. It also allows them to undertake last minute creative changes that would previously be impossible to accommodate given tight production schedules. Maya 5 continues to push the graphics envelope with its unified rendering workflow, allowing customers to easily render sophisticated imagery faster than they ever imagined possible. Final rendered images, previews and render pass elements can all be created with the use of the new Maya 5 Hardware Renderer. Accelerated Visual Quality Maya 5 Hardware rendering is available for the Windows®, Linux® and Mac® OS X operating systems and works with most programmable graphics hardware. For supported Hardware and more details, please visit www.aliaswavefront.com. About Alias|Wavefront About NVIDIA ### The Alias|Wavefront logo is a registered trademark and Alias|Wavefront is a trademark of Alias|Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited in the United States and/or other countries worldwide. Maya is a registered trademark of Silicon Graphics, Inc., exclusively used by Alias|Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited, and the Maya logo is a trademark of Alias|Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited in the United States and/or other countries worldwide. IRIX and SGI are registered trademarks of Silicon Graphics, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries worldwide. NVIDIA and NVIDIA Quadro are registered trademarks or trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Oscar is a trademark and service mark of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 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. For screenshots and press images: |
