Saddington & Baynes Uses ART VPS Renderer to Win Top Innovation Award from Printing World.

LONDON -- Saddington & Baynes, a London-based digital post-production studio, won Best Innovation in Print at Printing World magazine's award ceremonies last week. The studio's winning campaign features two computer-generated cars photorealistically rendered with ART VPS's RenderDrive system.

"This award validates the contribution hardware ray tracing can make to the creative advertising community," says ART VPS CEO Brian Tyler. "ART VPS rendering technology produces 3D images that would be difficult or impossible to create within deadline pressure using conventional photography, software rendering or render farms. Time and cost savings for the advertising industry are huge."

Saddington & Baynes' production team obtained scanned 3D data for the Lexus campaign from Team One in Los Angeles, and the PT Cruiser data originated from 3D CAD engineering data from DaimlerChrysler in Detroit. Using a combination of 3D animation and ART VPS's RenderPipe software, artists applied finishes, lighting and other effects, making the automobiles seem real. Saddington & Baynes then seamlessly merged the 3D car models into high-dynamic range imaging (HDRI) backgrounds. The resulting images were then rendered on the RenderDrive RD5000, which includes 36 dedicated AR350 ray-tracing processors.

"We can produce high-quality, photorealistic images of products, packaging items and cars without photographing them in the studio," says Will Powell, head of 3D production at Saddington & Baynes. "With the RenderDrive's HDRI capabilities, we can feature images in all kinds of environments without shooting them on location. The other approaches we've tried couldn't provide the same level of imagery nor handle the large 3D data sets required for our automotive rendering."

The RenderDrive RD5000s enable the studio's designers and artists to increase realism through 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.

RenderDrive provides hardware-accelerated ray tracing for popular applications such as Autodesk VIZ, CATIA, 3ds max and Maya. It offers 3D rendering performance exceeding that of most render farms 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.

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; entertainment companies such as IBM Interactive and Walt Disney Imagineering; and photographers and digital post-production studios, including Doug Fisher, Saddington & Baynes and Burrows.