Mental Images
 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (November 2019) |
 | |
| Company type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | CGI, Computer software |
| Founded | April 1986 in Berlin |
| Headquarters | , |
Key people | Rolf Herken (president, CEO, CTO) |
| Products | Mental Ray, RealityServer, mental mill, MetaSL, mental mesh, iray, DiCE |
Number of employees | 80 |
| Parent | Nvidia |
| Website | mentalimages |
Mental Images GmbH (stylized as mental images) was a German computer-generated imagery (CGI) software company based in Berlin, Germany. In 2007, Nvidia acquired the company and rebranded it as the Nvidia Advanced Rendering Center (ARC). The company continues to provide similar products and technology, offering rendering and 3D modeling technology for entertainment, computer-aided design, scientific visualization and architecture.
The company was founded in April 1986 in Berlin, Germany, by the physicists and computer scientists Rolf Herken, Hans-Christian Hege, Robert Hödicke and Wolfgang Krüger as well as the economists Günter Ansorge, Frank Schnöckel and Hans Peter Plettner. It was established as a company with limited liability & private limited partnership (GmbH & Co. KG). The Mental Ray software project was initiated in 1986. The first versions of the rendering software were influenced, tested and utilized by the then-sizable commercial computer animation division of Mental Images, which was led by the following visual effects supervisors: The 1991 and 1993 Academy Award winner John Andrew Berton (1986–1989), the 2000 and 2017 Academy Award winner John Nelson (1987–1989), and the 1996 and 2000 Academy Award nominee Stefen Fangmeier (1988–1990).
In 2003, Mental Images completed an investment round led by ViewPoint Ventures and another large international private equity investor.[1] Since December 2007, Mental Images GmbH has been a wholly owned subsidiary of the Nvidia Corporation [2]. The company is headquartered in Berlin with subsidiaries in San Francisco (Mental Images Inc.) and Melbourne (Mental Images Pty. Ltd.) as well as an office in Stockholm. Following its acquisition by Nvidia, the company was renamed Nvidia Advanced Rendering Center (Nvidia ARC GmbH).
Products
[edit]Mental Images was the developer of the rendering software mental ray, iray[3], mental mill, RealityServer, and DiCE. Mental ray is a production-quality render engine that has been used in many feature films, including Hulk, The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, The Day After Tomorrow, and much more over three decades[4][5].
Filmography
[edit]- Mental Images[6] (1987) (movie awarded at Prix Ars Electronica 1987, 4 min, demonstrating the technical possibilities of the time)
- Asterix in America (1994) (3D computer animation "Storm Sequence" and digital effects, software development)
- Heaven (2002) (images computed with Mental Ray)
References
[edit]- ^ "Mental Images conjures up funding". CNET. Retrieved 2024-05-01.
- ^ "mental images®". Archived from the original on 6 Jun 2011.
- ^ Keller, Alexander; Wächter, Carsten; Raab, Matthias; Seibert, Daniel; van Antwerpen, Dietger; Korndörfer, Johann; Kettner, Lutz (2017). The iray light transport simulation and rendering system. ACM SIGGRAPH 2017 Talks. SIGGRAPH '17. Los Angeles, California: ACM. arXiv:1705.01263. doi:10.1145/3084363.3085050.
- ^ "The Great History of Mental ray: 1990-2018". inspirationtuts. Retrieved 2025-04-08.
- ^ "What Happened to Mental ray — Mental ray history“ on YouTube
- ^ "MENTAL IMAGES“ on YouTube
External links
[edit]- Official website
- Prix Ars Electronica 1987, Award of Distinction for the film “Mental Images”, 1987
- Technical Oscars: The 75th Scientific & Technical Awards 2002 / 2003
- mental images office at the Kant Dreieck tower
- Los Angeles mental ray User Group, archived from the original on 2002-11-22
 | This article about an IT-related or software-related company or corporation is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |