Detroit Agency Purchases Eight RenderDrives for Photorealistic 3D Automotive Rendering

CAMBRIDGE, England--Feb. 1, 20056, 2005--Latcha & Associates, a leading provider of photorealistic images for the automotive industry, has purchased eight high-end RenderDrive systems from ART VPS. The RD5000 models each contain 36 AR350 ray-tracing processors - a total of 288 - that will be used by Latcha to speed 3D rendering for automotive marketing materials.

"Latcha is using our rendering systems to create images of vehicles under development that are indistinguishable from photographs of an actual product," says Brian Tyler, CEO of ART VPS. "Automotive companies and the agencies that serve them are discovering that our tools can dramatically reduce their costs and increase their efficiency in creating compelling marketing images."

RenderDrive provides hardware-accelerated ray tracing for popular applications such as Autodesk VIZ, CATIA, 3ds max and Maya. It offers 3D rendering performance matching that of a renderfarm but without the associated set-up and maintenance costs. Each system features capacity in excess of 30 million polygons and rendering speed up to 60 times faster than software ray tracing.

The modular ray-tracing architecture within RenderDrive enables 3D rendering to be split across an array of chips, and provides full-frame previews in seconds. Such capability speeds up tasks such as lighting set-up, shot composition and material mapping.

With the newly purchased RenderDrive systems, Latcha's designers and artists can increase realism through advanced 3D rendering features such as multiple area lights, accurate 3D motion blur and depth of field, secondary illumination, HDRI lighting, and physically based materials, lighting and camera properties.

About ART VPS Ltd.

ART VPS Ltd. (www.artvps.com) offers hardware-accelerated 3D ray tracing that improves design communication and helps reduce the time and cost required to bring a new project to market. ART VPS systems are used by some of the world's leading design and manufacturing companies, including Bombardier Aerospace, Learjet, Nikon, and Procter & Gamble; architectural firms such as Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Bovis Lend Lease, and Chapman Taylor Partners; and entertainment companies such as IBM Interactive and Walt Disney Imagineering.