FAQ

What is Gelato?
Is Gelato really free?
What is the difference between Gelato and Gelato Pro?
Why is NVIDIA now offering a free version of Gelato?
Can I get support for the free version?
Can I use the free version of Gelato for commercial purposes?
Do I need NVIDIA hardware to run Gelato?
What are the minimum GPU requirements to run Gelato?
What modeling and animation packages does Gelato work with?
Can I distribute Gelato with my own product for free?
Is it possible to create your own plug-ins?
What is Sorbetto™?
Does Gelato/Sorbetto require any other special hardware?
What does Gelato Pro cost?
Where can I buy Gelato Pro?
How can a GPU deliver photorealistic graphics on hardware?
How does Gelato differ from the native renderer on the GPU?
What rendering functions are run on the GPU?
How much faster is Gelato?
Does Gelato have any built-in limits for sampling, filtering, or texturing?
Can I use Gelato to render scenes originally created with Renderman?
What operating systems does Gelato run on?
Will support for Mac OS X be forthcoming?
Why the name "Gelato"?

What is Gelato?
The NVIDIA® Gelato® software application is a breakthrough GPU-accelerated, final-frame renderer that produces images of the highest quality. Originally designed for film and TV effects and animation, Gelato is useful for any application that requires high-quality rendering including game development, CAD, industrial design, architecture, etc. High-level Gelato functionality includes:

Antialiased texture, environment, and shadow mapping
Motion blur
Raytracing
True displacement
Automatic adaptive tessellation
Ambient occlusion & global illumination

Is Gelato really free?
There are now two versions available: Gelato (no charge) and Gelato Pro.

Gelato is high-quality renderer available at no cost that comes with all the features needed to make images of the highest quality. Gelato Pro is a premium product that offers additional productivity features and support options not found in the free version. Gelato Pro is available for US$1500, including the first year of maintenance and support (M&S). M&S after the first year is available for US$300 per year per license.

What is the difference between Gelato and Gelato Pro?
Both are high-quality renderers with rich feature sets. Gelato Pro, however, includes some features that are useful in a professional production environment and comes with support from NVIDIA's High-Quality Rendering team. The features that are unique to Gelato Pro are:

Sorbetto interactive relighting
Network parallel rendering (using a network to render a single image faster than one computer alone)
Multithreading
Native 64-bit support
DSO shadeops
Maintenance & support services from NVIDIA
Advanced access to new features

Why is NVIDIA now offering a free version of Gelato?
There are three major reasons.

First, NVIDIA is looking to make high-quality rendering available to anyone with an NVIDIA graphics card. There are large portions of the market that are not served by the current offering of expensive software renderers and who end up settling for lower-quality images. The free version of Gelato is intended for these: individual artists and freelancers, students, academics and non-profits, startups, small design and architecture firms, software developers who need to bundle a renderer in their product, and those in emerging markets and developing countries. The objective is summed up in our tagline, "Render Everywhere."

Second, a portion of these new users will eventually upgrade to the Gelato Pro version. For users looking for a combination of advanced features and the support options, Gelato Pro offers, a compelling product that professionals are willing to pay a premium for. Gelato lowers the barrier of entry and expands the available market of users who have the option to upgrade to Gelato Pro.

And third, the free version of Gelato is a value-add for our hardware customers. Gelato expands the functionality of and market for NVIDIA GPU products. By offering a free version of this powerful rendering software, NVIDIA is providing another compelling benefit for its customers.

Can I get support for the free version?
NVIDIA will only offer a comprehensive support package for Gelato Pro.

If you need assistance with the free version of Gelato, consult the information on this site or ask for help from the Gelato community on the site’s discussion forum. You will often get a swift response from other Gelato users. The forum is also monitored by our support team and development engineers and they’ll respond as time allows.

Can I use the free version of Gelato for commercial purposes?
Yes, Gelato is licensed for production use. It is not an evaluation or academic license. The free version does not produce watermarked or otherwise restricted output.

Do I need NVIDIA hardware to run Gelato?
Yes. Gelato is built from the ground up to take advantage of the NVIDIA GPU and uses the GPU to accelerate many of the rendering functions. However, we only certify and provide support for Gelato Pro when it is run on NVIDIA Quadro FX hardware.

What are the minimum GPU requirements to run Gelato?
Gelato requires the following GPUs to run:

Any NVIDIA Quadro FX graphics board (including Quadro Plex)

Gelato Pro requires:

Any NVIDIA Quadro FX graphics board (including Quadro Plex)

The reason we only certify and support Gelato Pro on NVIDIA Quadro FX hardware is the different ways we manufacture and distribute GeForce and NVIDIA Quadro FX hardware. All NVIDIA Quadro FX hardware is manufactured specifically for NVIDIA and we tightly control the specifications and quality. NVIDIA Quadro FX boards have a longer life span, allowing for a stable systems environment for professional customers. These reasons are why NVIDIA Quadro FX is the preferred choice for workstation users and why all leading professional applications are certified on NVIDIA Quadro FX.

What modeling and animation packages does Gelato work with?
Gelato ships with Mango™ and Amaretto™ plug-ins for Alias Maya and Autodesk 3ds Max. Gelato's API is published and others are free to develop plug-ins for other application packages. The NVIDIA website will keep you up to date with links to the latest third-party plug-ins and tools as they become available.

Can I distribute Gelato with my own product for free?
Yes, you can bundle Gelato with your own product for free or bundle Gelato Pro for a license fee. However, we do require you to sign a distribution agreement with NVIDIA before you do this, even for the free version. Contact gelatoinfo@nvidia.com for details.

Is it possible to create your own plug-ins?
Yes. Not only do our API, shading language, and extensive documentation make it easy to create plug-ins and other tools, but our licensing model is designed to encourage anyone to do so. There is no need to get permission from NVIDIA to use anything other than our trademarks and there are no royalties levied on products that use the Gelato API.

What is Sorbetto™?
Sorbetto is feature set in Gelato Pro that, using the final, fully shaded image, allows you to change any lighting parameter—add/delete lights, change position, color, intensity, reflections, alter shadow maps, and more—and then re-render the frame stunningly fast.

Sorbetto is truly a revolutionary tool that will change the way lighters go about their work and how production pipelines and processes are structured. For the first time, you can see changes to the final pixels fast enough for the tool to be dubbed "interactive."

Details on Sorbetto can be found in our Sorbetto Relighting Technology white paper.

Does Gelato/Sorbetto require any other special hardware?
No. Gelato is designed to work on mainstream hardware: PCs, workstations, and servers with NVIDIA GPUs. See the system requirements page for exactly what is required.

What does Gelato Pro cost?
Gelato Pro is available for US$1500, including the first year of maintenance and support (M&S). M&S after the first year is available for US$300 per year per license.

Where can I buy Gelato Pro?
Gelato Pro is available online and through a global network of resellers. Go to http://store.nvidia.com to purchase online or see http://www.nvidia.com/content/wheretobuy/consumer.asp to find your local reseller. For those without a reseller near them, Gelato Pro may be purchased directly from NVIDIA by contacting gelatosales@nvidia.com.

How can a GPU deliver photorealistic graphics on hardware?
Gelato is a hybrid, GPU/CPU renderer. Gelato never compromises on image-quality in favor of faster performance, so what cannot be executed on the GPU is done in software on the CPU. This enables clients to use the GPU to render the most beautiful, highest resolution, and complex scenes significantly faster than CPU-only renderers.

How does Gelato differ from the native renderer on the GPU?
The native renderer on the GPU is focused on rendering to the screen and is optimized to maintain a high-frame rate at the expense of quality. Gelato is exactly the opposite; it never compromises on quality. Gelato is designed from the ground up to exploit the massive floating point capability of NVIDIA GPUs, avoiding artifacts that are acceptable in real-time rendering, but are not in high-quality, offline rendering. Gelato also has a higher-level interface than the native renderer on the GPU, affording more flexibility and the ability to use advanced techniques, like global illumination, that the hardware is not yet capable of.

What rendering functions are run on the GPU?
NVIDIA does not disclose these details, and the answer is always changing because of advances in both the hardware and the software. However, because the changes are all "under the hood" you just see it render faster.

How much faster is Gelato?
Different renderers are better at certain tasks than others, so performance comparisons vary considerably depending on the type of scene being rendered. And since Gelato uses both the CPU and GPU, overall system configuration is a factor as well. We encourage prospective users to download Gelato and test it using their own scenes. We also have test scenes that you can download as well. This will give you a better comparison on "real" scenes than an arbitrary and irreproducible benchmark can.

And current performance is just the beginning. With GPUs doubling capacity at "Moore's Law cubed," improvements in Gelato's speed will happen faster than those of CPU-only renderers.

Does Gelato have any built-in limits for sampling, filtering, or texturing?
No, Gelato has no built-in limitations whatsoever.

Can I use Gelato to render scenes originally created with Renderman?
Gelato is not a Renderman compliant renderer, but with the aid of plug-ins, Gelato can read Renderman scene files and shaders. Two tools have been developed by third parties to do this. One is a Gelato plug-in that allows Gelato to read RIB scene files and the other is a tool that translates Renderman shaders into Gelato Shading Language. They are both free of charge and are links to the download are available on the Gelato download page.

What operating systems does Gelato run on?
Gelato runs on Linux and Windows XP. Additionally, Gelato Pro runs on Linux 64-bit with Windows 64-bit on the way.

Will support for Mac OS X be forthcoming?
Currently, we do not have plans to create an OS X version. If you are interested in an OS X version of Gelato Pro, let us know. If we find there is sufficient market demand, we will do a Mac port.

Why the name "Gelato"?
There is no specific reason other than that the NVIDIA team that we thought the name sounded pretty cool. Besides, who doesn't like Gelato?