NVIDIA GELATO PRO GPU-POWERED RENDERING SOFTWARE NOW FREELY AVAILABLE
NVIDIA GELATO PRO GPU-POWERED RENDERING SOFTWARE NOW FREELY AVAILABLE Final Version Now Available to the 3D Design, Animation, and Postproduction Communities SANTA CLARA, CA—May 29, 2008—NVIDIA Corporation, the world leader in visual computing technologies, today announced NVIDIA® Gelato® Pro 2.2 rendering software, the Company’s advanced GPU-accelerated rendering software for professionals, is available as a no-cost download at www.nvidia.com/gelatozone. Well suited for rendering of 3D digital content and design, Gelato Pro software now replaces the basic version of Gelato software, which was previously available directly from NVIDIA. “NVIDIA Gelato Pro 2.2 software is extremely powerful GPU-accelerated rendering software and we are excited to support the creative community by making it freely available,” said Dominick Spina, senior product manager, Digital Film Group, NVIDIA. “Now all artists and designers with NVIDIA Quadro graphics cards can enhance their production pipelines with Gelato Pro—without a licensing fee.” Gelato Pro 2.2 will be the final version of NVIDIA Gelato rendering software. Moving forward, the NVIDIA Gelato and mental images rendering teams will focus on the development of mental ray software, reinforcing NVIDIA’s investment and commitment to advanced accelerated rendering. Gelato software is a GPU-accelerated, final-frame renderer for the creation of high-quality computer-generated images using NVIDIA Quadro® graphics cards. Originally developed to render film and broadcast visual effects and animation, Gelato software can be used with 3D software applications that require advanced rendering such as game development, CAD, industrial design, and architecture. Basic capabilities of the Gelato renderer include sub-pixel antialiasing; true displacement; high-quality motion blur; depth of field; support for NURBS, subdivision surfaces, and particles; raytracing features, including global illumination effects and ambient occlusion; and fully programmable shading. Frantic Films’ Amaretto plug-in also provides advanced rendering functionality with Autodesk’s 3ds Max software, complementing the Mango plug-in for rendering with Autodesk’s Maya software. Features of Gelato Pro 2.2 software, which until now required payment of a license fee to access, include the Sorbetto™ interactive relighting engine, network parallel rendering, multi-threading, 64-bit support, and DSO shadeops. Gelato Pro also supports Joe Alter’s Shave and a Haircut software for computer-generated hair and fur effects and includes support for Autodesk Maya 8.5 and 3ds Max 9.0, offering improved stereo rendering, fog lights, and significant performance improvements. NVIDIA Gelato Pro 2.2 software supports Windows XP and Linux operating systems and runs on any NVIDIA Quadro graphics solution. Gelato is available for download at www.nvidia.com/gelatozone. As a freely downloadable product, NVIDIA will no longer be developing or supporting the Gelato software products.


I'm quite sure that the opensource word here is not in the right place. For years NVIDIA kept all the videocard related stuff under strong secrecy [think about Linux drivers]. If you read the Gelato FAQ you will note that even what operations are optimized by using video card is a big secret.
No way!
Posted by: CmonBoyz | May 18, 2009 5:07:21 PM
You really should release this as open source ...
all it can do is sell more of your video cards.
Stopping development is an extreme disappointment. Please consider open sourcing this!
Thank you,
== John ==
Posted by: John | Sep 15, 2008 8:34:26 PM
This follows the way 'Not A Number' sold the source code of blender to the public. It would be great if you could provide students and aspiring animators this great software on gpl terms. That would mean that the public could develop the software on it's own. But more importantly... and I stress... IMPORTANTLY, it would raise the population of the future rendering market. Simply put, the more people interested in buying 3D software, the more people potentially buying your new product. NaN did it. Why can't you? Would you at least consider releasing parts of the code to advance Open Source Software and inspire coders as well?
Posted by: YoYoFargo | Aug 1, 2008 10:54:22 PM
please open source or give it to someone like blender.
Posted by: dbmuse | Jul 26, 2008 12:14:48 PM
I totally agree with "hmmm". Unless Geltao has further development then what is the point of learning how to use it when future support for Maya 2009, Max 2010 etc will never exist. It is typical marketing bs -- they make it sound like we the customers are the winners, when in reality is means nothing. If NVidia were really genuine then they would make it open source for continued development (but of course then they'd giving away trade secrets in the source code). So be honest guys, Gelato wasn't making a buck so it's being discontinued.
Posted by: WhattaCrock | Jun 13, 2008 12:30:32 AM
since you have release Gelato Pro as is with no further support and development, is there any chance of open sourcing the software so that it can be further developed by people who want to? it just seems like a waste of perfectly usable code...
Posted by: hmmm | Jun 6, 2008 9:27:59 PM