Holomatix Rendition

Holomatix Rendition was a raytracing renderer, which was broadly compatible with mental ray. Its rendering method was similar to that of FPrime in that it displayed a continuously refined rendered image until final production quality image was achieved. This differs to traditional rendering methods where the rendered image is built up block-by-block.

It was developed by Holomatix Ltd, based in London, UK. As of December 2011, the Rendition product has been retired and is no longer available or being updated. The product is no longer mentioned on the developer's web site, either. The successor is SprayTrace.

Key application Features

• Realtime (or progressive) rendering engine
• Based on mental ray shader and lighting model
• Supports 3rd-party shaders compiled for mental ray

Rendering Features

As it used the same shader and lighting model as mental ray, Rendition supported the same rendering and ray tracing features as mental ray, including:

• Final Gather
• Global Illumination (through Photon Mapping)
• Polygonal and Parametric Surfaces (NURBS, Subdivision)
• Displacement Mapping
• Motion Blur
• Lens Shaders

Supported platforms

• Autodesk Maya, up to and including 2011 SAP
• Autodesk 3ds Max, up to and including 2010
• SoftImage XSI, up to and including 2011, but not 2011 SP1

Supported Operating Systems

• Microsoft Windows on x86 and x64 architectures
• Apple Mac OS X on x86 architectures
• Linux on x86, x64 architectures

The renderer came in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

External links

• Holomatix Rendition home page (WayBack machine archived page - page no longer served by Holomatix)
• Interview discussing Rendition with Holomatix CTO on 3d-test.com
• SprayTrace home page (the successor to Rendition)