Rtzen Inc., the new company dedicated to empowering 3D artists, today announced the Pre-release of its advanced visual 3D editing tool, RT/shader. Designed to unleash the creativity of today's game development production artists, technical artists and programmers, RT/shader is the first software that makes developing realistic hardware 3D shaders quick and easy.
"We've spent three years designing the foundation for RT/shader so that we could enable artists to return to their roots by going beyond the mathematical concepts of creating 3D art," said Jeremy Hubbell, co-founder and ceo of RTzen. "Our inaugural product, RT/shader, does just that."
Available through the month of March as a pre-release download from www.rtzen.com, RT/shader works directly within leading professional graphics development software, such as 3ds max from Discreet and Maya from Alias. It is designed to be compatible with the installed base of DirectX 9.0 compatible 3D graphics accelerator boards that support programmable hardware shaders, such as those by ATI Technologies and NVIDIA Corp. Users who register and download the pre-release will be entitled to special discounts when the product ships later this Spring.
To celebrate the pre-release, RTzen is hosting the "Show Us Your Shader" contest. From now until March 31, 2004, pre-release users can compete to produce the best shaders in several categories and win several prizes, including a copy of RT/shader. For more details, check the announcement section on www.rtzen.com support forums.
Developed on the RTzen framework, the patent-pending technology of RT/shader automatically creates high-level shading language code while the user assembles the shader from standard visual components such as texture, reflection, and brightness. The framework provides for UI management, an extensible component-based architecture and a transactional database enabling features such as unlimited project history and time-stamping. Regardless of the user's experience with high-level shader languages such as HLSL or Cg, it's easy to build a shader visually while RT/shader compiles the resulting code on the fly for quick previews of the results.
RT/shader, which implements .NET technologies, is fully extensible and ships with an open SDK. It is compatible with Microsoft's DirectX 9.0 and higher, making it ideal for next-generation PC and console game development. It also is an excellent tool for industrial designers, architects and engineers who require realtime visualization.
"We encourage artists to take RT/shader for a test drive, and let us know how it works in their day-to-day design environment," Hubbell added.
RT/Shader, priced at $1995.00, will be officially launching at the Game Developer Conference, in San Jose, California, March 22-25, 2004, with demonstrations of the product at the ATI and NVIDIA booths and Alias and Discreet seminars. Volume shipping will begin this spring.
Founded in 2001 by a group of digital content experts, Rtzen (www.rtzen.com), located in Bellevue, Washington, is dedicated to developing products that provide the best 3D experience possible to graphic artists.
Bill Desowitz, former editor of VFXWorld, is currently the Crafts Editor of IndieWire.
