ATI's Latest Release of RENDERMONKEY Development Tool Supports OpenGL Shading Language; Tool Improves Shader Development Workflow.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

GDC 

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 24, 2004

ATI Technologies Inc. (TSX: ATY) (NASDAQ: ATYT) has added full support of the OpenGL(R) Shading Language to the latest version of its hardware independent shader development tool, RENDERMONKEY(TM). Designed to bring artists and programmers closer together during the shader development process, RENDERMONKEY 1.5 builds upon the previous version, which was downloaded over 100 000 times, to feature implementation of the OpenGL(R) Shading Language, workflow improvements and the addition of the RENDERMONKEY SDK.

ATI is committed to supporting industry standards, such as Microsoft's DirectX(R) High Level Shading Language (HLSL) and OpenGL(R) Shading Language because they make it easier for artists and developers to incorporate advanced effects into their work. The shading language standards enable developers to leverage their efforts across a wide variety of platforms and operating systems, while creating increasingly complex visual effects. ATI and 3Dlabs' collaborative support for the OpenGL(R) Shading Language in RENDERMONKEY 1.5 and their respective drivers allow developers who work in an OpenGL(R) environment to create realistic shader effects in real time and then export them to any application, whether it is a computer game, a car design model or broadcast animation.

"Industry standards accelerate development of visually stunning content," said Rick Bergman, Senior Vice President of Marketing and General Manager Desktop, ATI Technologies, Inc. "The development of RENDERMONKEY has been a focused effort on ATI's part to bridge the gap between hardware and software by supporting hardware independent standards like OpenGL(R) and giving developers the flexibility to create."

"3Dlabs and ATI have been at the leading edge in their support of the OpenGL(R) Shading Language through our mutual integration of the industry-leading shading language into RENDERMONKEY," said Neil Trevett, Senior Vice President of Market Development, 3Dlabs. "By allowing developers to maximize the capabilities of today's graphics hardware and by providing them the tools to drive innovation within the OpenGL(R) standard, end users will ultimately reap the benefits of more realistic games and animations, regardless of their hardware."

New additions to the RENDERMONKEY feature set include the import and export of full-featured standalone packaged effect files, an updated Microsoft FX exporter and support for procedural geometry and textures. Within the workspace itself, workflow improvements have been made to ease integration with developers' graphics engines and to support additional engine-driven shader parameters using custom names. Drag and drop operations are now possible in RENDERMONKEY, and there is increased visual feedback for models and textures.

The introduction of the RENDERMONKEY SDK will allow developers to customize the RENDERMONKEY environment according to their individualized needs. To facilitate creation of custom components within RENDERMONKEY, the tool provides a wizard for automatically creating new SDK projects. By creating a flexible architecture for developers, programmers and artists to work with, RENDERMONKEY enables seamless integration within the production pipeline.

RENDERMONKEY 1.5 will be available for free download to developers at the end of March, followed by the free public download, available in April from ati.com

About ATI Technologies

ATI Technologies Inc. is a world leader in the design and manufacture of innovative 3D graphics and digital media silicon solutions. An industry pioneer since 1985, ATI is the world's foremost visual processor unit (VPU) provider and is dedicated to deliver leading-edge performance solutions for the full range of PC and Mac desktop and notebook platforms, workstation, set-top and digital television, game console and handheld markets. With 2003 revenues in excess of US $1.3 billion, ATI has more than 2,200 employees in the Americas, Europe and Asia. ATI common shares trade on NASDAQ (ATYT) and the Toronto Stock Exchange (ATY).

Copyright 2004 ATI Technologies Inc. All rights reserved. ATI and ATI product and product feature names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of ATI Technologies Inc. All other company and product names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Features, pricing, availability and specifications are subject to change without notice.

For media or industry analyst support, visit our Web site at http://www.ati.com

Developer Quotes

"RENDERMONKEY became an invaluable tool for fast real-time shader development during "Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness". It allowed us to setup shaders in an isolated controllable environment with instant feed back on changes."

Duncan Hopkins, Lead PC Programmer, Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness'

"RENDERMONKEY has proven to be an awesome day-to-day shader tool. It allows us to prototype the latest and greatest in shader technology rapidly and efficiently. With its easy to use UI, and fantastic real time visual feedback system, it's helped us cut our shader development time significantly."

Marcin Wieczorek, Gas Powered Games 

"While prototyping, RENDERMONKEY allowed us to quickly put up new shaders and test out various rendering techniques. The ability to instantly see the results in the preview window dramatically accelerated development time spent on new effects and allowed us to concentrate more on tweaking to get the expected result. RENDERMONKEY ships with a wide library of shaders ranging from basic examples to the more advanced ones demonstrating some of the latest technology used in real time graphics."

Francis Boivin, 3D Programmer,Ubisoft

"When writing "Shaders for Programmers and Artists", I wanted to present shaders in a manner which was original and detached from any specific rendering API. RENDERMONKEY empowered me to write a book in a way giving my readers an easy to use environment which allows the creation of shaders by even novice users. Its powerful yet intuitive interface made it the best choice!"

Sebastian Laurent, Microsoft

"RENDERMONKEY vastly improved our turnaround, from concept to actual code."

Phillipe Paquet, Core Technology Manager, Reflections Interactive (Driver 3)

"RENDERMONKEY revolutionized our shader development. It enabled Kuju to rapidly prototype cutting edge special effects and significantly increased the productivity of our graphics programmers. RENDERMONKEY's clean UI has brought shader development into the mainstream of games programming.

Adrian Hawkins, Technical Director, Kuju Action, Kuju Entertainment Ltd.

"RENDERMONKEY allowed us to quickly and easily develop high, medium, and low-end shaders for our latest title. RENDERMONKEY's easy to use, and its customizable interface helped programmers and artists efficiently work together to develop a desired shader effect. ATI has really hit a home run with this tool. We'll be using it for years to come."

Matt Gdowski, Technical Lead, Gabriel Interactive

"RENDERMONKEY saves us a lot of time in developing shaders, because of its immediate visual feedback. The shaders we develop with RENDERMONKEY are immediately usable by our artists who on their turn setup all parameters inside the 3D modeling software we use, in order to create the visual effects that are desired. We find RENDERMONKEY especially useful when developing multi-pass effects because it allows us to see the output of each pass individually. We can highly recommend using RENDERMONKEY to anyone who needs to create anything from simple to very complex shaders."

John van der Burg, Director of Development, Mystic Game Development

"With real-time preview, simple interface, disassembly window and other great features, RENDERMONKEY helped us to develop shaders in very short time for our game. If we did the same in C++, it would increase development time by factor of ten or even more. This tool is vital for any shader programmer."

Roman Lut, Graphics engine programmer, Deep Shadows