mental images Introduces mental mill
A Look-Development Environment for Creating Platform-Independent Shaders in MetaSL™

SAN FRANCISCO and BERLIN; March 23, 2009: mental images®, a global leader in rendering software and visualization tools for animators, visual effects artists and professionals who create high-quality imaging today introduced mental mill. mental mill is available in two editions. The Standard Edition is a complete visual development environment that includes powerful debugging capabilities, shader authoring features, exporters to DCC and CAD software, and instant mental ray® preview rendering; and the Artist Edition, a subset of the mental mill toolset, that come bundled with Autodesk 3ds Max® 2010.

With the Artist Edition, one can quickly assemble complex shader graphs from the provided library of shaders, tweak the parameters, and save them as files which 3ds Max reads natively. In 3ds Max one can then assign the shaders to 3D objects, continue to tweak the parameters in context with other shaders and lighting, and fine-tune the look of the final renderings.

For taking shader creation to the next level, mental images releases the mental mill Standard Edition. In addition to the tasks that can be performed in the Artist Edition, with Standard Edition one can write and edit shader code, and visually debug shaders by interactive, visual inspection of graphical representations of the variables while stepping through the code. Also, one can export shaders for use in targeted software applications including Autodesk’s 3ds Max®, Maya®, Softimage®, Dassault Systemes’ CATIA® and NVIDIA’s FX Composer, through the supported, customizable back-end formats such as CgFX, HLSL, and GLSL. With the included mental ray preview plug-in, it is easy to see the rendering results of a shader with mental ray’s photorealistic ray tracer. The Standard Edition will be available for purchase and download from the mental images website www.mentalimages.com in April 2009.

“The mental mill Standard Edition greatly facilitates the creation of complex and visually compelling shaders. In addition, thanks to their representation in MetaSL, these shaders are future-proof and will not need to be recreated or modified to take full advantage of future technology and performance advancements in GPUs, multi-core parallel processing, and rendering algorithms,” said Rolf Herken, CEO and COO of mental images.

“Our publisher signed off on the look of our characters before level design”, said Izmeth Siddeek, Character Art Lead at Blue Castle Games. “mental mill has revolutionized the development pipeline for the making of our latest game, Dead Rising 2. We are looking into integrating mental mill even more.”

During GDC mental images and Blue Castle Games will host a joint session entitled “Platform-independent Shader Development with mental mill: The Making of Dead Rising 2” on Friday, March 27, 2009 from Noon to 1:00 pm, Room 2011 (West Hall). The session will be presented by Izmeth Siddeek of Blue Castle Games and Laura Scholl of mental images.

About mental images: mental images®, founded in 1986, is the recognized international leader in providing component and platform software for the creation, manipulation and visualization of 3D content. Its world leading rendering and other technologies are used by the entertainment, computer-aided design, architecture, scientific visualization, and other industries that require sophisticated images primarily as part of their software products and application services. mental images is a wholly-owned subsidiary of NVIDIA Corporation with headquarters in Berlin, Germany, a subsidiary in the United States, mental images, Inc., and a subsidiary in Melbourne, Australia, mental images Pty.. mental images has a multinational staff of top qualified engineers exclusively dedicated to basic research and development in the area of 3D graphics and 3D Web Applications and Services technologies. For more information, visit www.mentalimages.com.
Contact:

mental images:        
Loretta Stevens                
Double Forte Marketing + Communications        
e-mail: Email Contact        
Telephone: +1 (415) 848.8123        

Trademarks: mental images®, mental ray®, mental mill®, are registered trademarks and MetaSL™ is a trademark of mental images GmbH, Berlin, Germany, in the United States and/ or other countries. Other product and company names in this document may be trademarks of their respective owners.

About NVIDIA: NVIDIA (Nasdaq: NVDA) is the world leader in visual computing technologies and the inventor of the GPU, a high-performance processor which generates breathtaking, interactive graphics on workstations, personal computers, game consoles, and mobile devices. NVIDIA serves the entertainment and consumer market with its GeForce® products, the professional design and visualization market with its Quadro® products, and the high-performance computing market with its Tesla™ products. NVIDIA is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif. and has offices throughout Asia, Europe, and the Americas. For more information, visit www.nvidia.com.        

Certain statements in this press release including, but not limited to, statements as to: the benefits, features, and capabilities of mental mill; are forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause results to be materially different than expectations. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include: development of more efficient or faster technology; adoption of the CPU for parallel processing; design, manufacturing or software defects; the impact of technological development and competition; changes in consumer preferences and demands; customer adoption of different standards or our competitor's products; changes in industry standards and interfaces; unexpected loss of performance of our products or technologies when integrated into systems as well as other factors detailed from time to time in the reports NVIDIA files with the Securities and Exchange Commission including its Form 10-K for the fiscal period ended January 25, 2009. Copies of reports filed with the SEC are posted on our website and are available from NVIDIA without charge. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and speak only as of the date hereof, and, except as required by law, NVIDIA and Mental Images disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances.

© 2009 NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved. NVIDIA, the NVIDIA logo, GeForce, Quadro, and Tesla are trademarks or registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated