Physically based and photo-realistic renderer simulates the physics of light to achieve near-perfect image realism

Wellington, New Zealand, 16th September 2010 — Glare Technologies, a Wellington-based company which specialises in high-end 3D visualisation software and has customers in Europe, Japan, the United States, Saudi Arabia and New Zealand, have today announced the release of a new version of their Indigo Renderer. Indigo Renderer 2.4 is a big step up — it’s faster, looks better, is more user-friendly and works well with large networks.
Indigo Renderer is an unbiased, physically based and photo-realistic renderer which simulates the physics of light to achieve near-perfect image realism. With an advanced physical camera model, a super-realistic materials system and the ability to simulate complex lighting situations through Metropolis Light Transport, Indigo Renderer is capable of producing the highest levels of realism demanded by architectural and product visualization.

Faster Rendering

Indigo 2.4 is dramatically faster than Indigo 2.2, a result of numerous optimisations in the core rendering engine: vastly more efficient MLT, up to 2X faster instancing and motion blur in complex scenes, colour noise is completely eliminated, 4X faster blackbody illumination and many other substantial improvements.
Indigo shaders run 10-20X faster using Indigo 2.4 in 64 bit mode than Indigo 2.2 64 bit, a night-and-day performance difference for complex materials.

Improved User Interface

The interface is more capable and easy to use than ever.
New features include an image histogram, improved zooming controls, aspect ratio locking and the ability to select a region for copying or zooming in on. You can now set the colour temperature of light layers with the new light layer interface.
Indigo 2.4 simply looks better – support for CSS themes has been added, and a new dark theme is included.

Improved Handling of Images

Indigo 2.4 now supports saving 32-bit per channel images using OpenEXR, the industry standard for high dynamic range (HDR) images, without clipping and optionally without tone mapping. These important improvements provide increased flexibility in post-processing using other applications.
Very large images (greater than 2GB) can now be saved, resumed from, and used in network rendering.

Introducing the Indigo Network Manager

Network rendering in Indigo 2.4 is much more robust and flexible, easily scaling across large networks using the new Indigo Network Manager.
Stopping and starting networking during rendering happens at the click of a button, and the Network Manager now balances available slaves among masters.

Floating Licences

Indigo 2.4 introduces floating licences, which allow for easy deployment and administration of Indigo in offices and computer labs. Floating licences are served by the network manager, and so can service any computer on your network.

About Glare Technologies

Based in Wellington, New Zealand, Glare Technologies Limited is a privately owned company specialising in high-end 3D visualisation software. Indigo Renderer is Glare Technologies’ flagship product.