[Figure 6] A depth of field render pass invoked from the command line.

Gelato is fully integrated with Maya, even to the point of including a Gelato/Sorbetto Shelf, as shown in Figure 5. You’re able to adjust lighting, shaders and render settings, and use the buttons in the shelf to control relighting, toggle progressive refinement and so on. Progressive refinement, or rapid preview rendering in Mango, can show you a quick preview of your scene, and allowing the render to continue provides a full quality render.

The way Sorbetto works is instead of discarding data calculated during a render, it caches that data and uses it to rapidly recalculate changes to scene lighting. The resulting time-savings can be up to six times that of the initial render. You really need to experience Sorbetto to appreciate it, as words and still images can’t do it justice.

Shadows — We’ve Got Shadows
Gelato 2.0 also introduces volumetric shadows for smoke and hair/fur in Maya. The hairy monster (shown in Figure 6) is an updated image that some may recognize from Gelato 1.2, takes full advantage of this new feature. By adding multiple depth values per pixel, volume shadow maps eliminate the shortcomings of regular shadow maps as used with hair and smoke. As with all of Gelato’s features, volume shadows are completely accessible via the API.

GPU + Gelato = Speed
Gelato is available for Linux (both 32- and 64-bit) and Windows XP 32-bit, with a Windows 64-bit port on the way. With the recent introduction of NVIDIA Quadro FX for the Apple Power Mac computers, there is the potential for an OS X port of Gelato in the future. NVIDIA has no plans for an OS X port at the moment, but won’t rule it out if there’s enough industry demand. Better GUI integration with Maya and now 3ds Max promises to make working with Gelato even more transparent, although its command line features should not be underestimated. By running a simple batch file under Windows or a shell script under Linux, you can call iv, Gelato’s image viewer, and perform a complex render pass from the command line. While it’s not necessary to invoke iv, it’s nice to be able to see the progress of your render. Command line rendering is fast, and a good way to invoke Gelato’s network capabilities. For studios with the need to tweak settings and create custom shaders and plug-ins, Gelato is ideal. It’s also a boon to studios that want GUI integration with Max and Maya. And with advances in GPU capability occurring at a rate of Moore’s Law squared, Gelato’s speed and performance will continue to increase much more quickly than software-only renderers, providing studios with a future-resistant rendering solution.

Bryan Hoff is a multifaceted artist and writer. A freelance web designer, digital artist and animator, his credits include movie and television effects, online games, 3D corporate animation, Flash and traditional website design. His writing credits include articles for LinuxWorld, Element K Journals and InformIT, covering such topics as Photoshop effects, Linux 3D graphics applications, Web and HTML design, RSS feeds and painting with a graphics tablet. Bryan has written ebooks on blogging and website creation for beginners and regularly teaches classes for Element K online.