Brazil r/s Rendering Features are Key to CG Industry Leader's Most High Profile Success Stories

Film, Broadcast, and Visualization Professionals Count on Brazil r/s for Their Most Demanding Work

SEATTLE, WA (April 20, 2005) – SplutterFish LLC, a leading high-end 3D rendering software solutions provider has been gaining significant respect from the professional computer graphics industry since its inception. Top CG studios from every corner of the industry, and around the world, are relying on SplutterFish’s Brazil Rendering System for their most demanding shots.

The Orphanage, a leading San Francisco and Los Angeles-based visual effects company, used Brazil r/s on the recent motion picture "Sin City", based on the Frank Miller graphic novel. They created all of the CG elements in the "That Yellow Bastard" segment, shot entirely on green screen, and relied extensively on Brazil r/s.

"The VFX supervisor was adamant about achieving real world lighting and materials, and for our 600+ shots, a third of the film, we relied on Brazil for this. We pulled out all the stops: soft reflections and refractions everywhere, heavy use of global illumination and area lighting, and Brazil's advanced materials and built-in shaders," says Michael Spaw, a Senior Digital Artist on Sin City. "Additionally, since every Orphanage final uses the EXR format, Brazil is the renderer of choice."

For a visually intense Motorola ad in which a woman’s modern apartment and contents literally fold up into a cellular phone, The Orphanage crew reconstructed the entire set in 3D to be animated and then rendered it out with Brazil r/s.

"For the Motorola spot, Brazil was crucial to handling soft reflections and refractions, skylight, area lights and HDRI reliably and predictably while being amazingly easy to use," says Nathan Fariss, a Technical Director at The Orphanage.

London’s Glowfrog Studios uses Brazil r/s to produce stunning images for both interior and exterior projects. For a recent visualization of Britain’s Millennium Square that stressed their pipeline by nature of its sheer size, Brazil r/s was able to manage the 7.5 million polygon model, and churn out image after image.

"Our studio’s pipeline used Brazil r/s extensively using HDR data taken from site photography to add realism to lighting the images," comments Nigel Hunt, Director at Glowfrog Studios. "The Brazil Utility Material was indispensable in creating evening shots and enabled our team to utilize individual Global Illumination parameters applied to building interior materials. This gave us complete control over soft diffuse lighting."

U.K.-based Nexus Productions creates some of the most startlingly original 3D content in the industry. Seamlessly blending styles and genres ranging from photorealistic to stop motion animation, Nexus uses Brazil r/s to ensure the demands of a busy production schedule are consistently met. The work they did for Honda on the "Grrr!" commercial has garnered 4 BTAA awards including the overall Best Commercial prize.

"We needed a flexible workflow to match the director's creativity, and thus a fast renderer. Brazil kept up with us all the way, delivering great images with little fuss, keeping everyone happy in the process," says Darren Price, Head of 3D at Nexus Productions.

Nexus Productions used Brazil r/s on the opening stop motion styled sequence to "Lemony Snicket’s a Series of Unfortunate Events" as well. Price continues, "Brazil helped achieve a look that was very convincing, lending crisp definition, and a solidity of form that really sold all the little critters involved as hand-made puppets."

Canada’s Frantic Films is one of the country’s leading visual effects houses and has one philosophy with regards to software: if it doesn’t work, they don’t use it. Thus Brazil r/s is one of the primary rendering tools Frantic uses in production.

"In the recent Wes Craven thriller 'Cursed', one shot originally required a prosthetic hand to be replaced by a CG hand. Brazil's skin and wax shaders were perfect for achieving the look needed," says Chris Pember, Lighting Lead at Frantic Films. "Some more challenging shots had ceilings rendered in Brazil, where most or all of a roof was replaced. We never had to fuss over any of the shots, as Brazil gave us we needed from the get-go and its unique workflow saves a lot of time and effort."

With a solid reputation for excellence, Venice, CA-based Blur Studio is a respected leader in CG Animation / VFX for film, broadcast and game visuals. "Gopher Broke", Blur's delightfully funny, Oscar-nominated short film was rendered entirely in Brazil r/s from initial development and art direction through final rendering.

"The art direction we aimed for had inherent challenges right from the very beginning. Our goal not only demanded a warm, autumn feel with soft lighting and a dusty atmosphere, but a clean cartoon look as well. Highly intuitive, Brazil's lights and undersampling feature offered nice, quick feedback. This gave us the freedom and ability to tweak and test different looks until we found exactly what we were looking for. And because of its predictability, we were confident that once we turned up the sampling for final renders, it would be exactly as we expected," says Dan Rice, Lighting and Compositing Supervisor at Blur.

"Our mission has been to write rendering tools for professional artists. To see real-world success stories at the highest levels of this craft and to know that we've contributed to that success is rewarding and a proof-positive that the deliberate, long-term vision approach we took was the right thing to do," says Scott Kirvan, CEO of SplutterFish. "Our next gen Brazil products due for release this year will further empower our clients who continue to respectfully demand the best from us."

About Brazil r/s

The award-winning Brazil Rendering System is designed by and for production professionals as a powerful, flexible and affordable high-end rendering solution for film, broadcast, architecture and other cross-visualization applications. It offers uncompromising image quality while addressing the need for the natural, streamlined workflow that CG artists demand.

About SplutterFish

SplutterFish LLC, established in 2001, designs high-end, affordable and efficient 3D rendering tools. The company’s flagship product, Brazil Rendering System, has been honored with leading industry awards and is relied on by the industry's top CG studios. SplutterFish software products are currently available from the company and its international reseller representatives, accessible through www.splutterfish.com

Media Contact : Connie Jacobs/SplutterFish contact@splutterfish.com

# # #

Brazil Rendering System is a trademark of SplutterFish, LLC. All other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.