Articles June Edition of 3dWorld

[geldslaw]

We been waiting for this and it's about to arrive -

mental mill® enables artists and other professionals to develop, test and maintain shaders and complex shader graphs for GPU and CPU rendering through an intuitive graphical user interface with real-time visual feedback without the need for programming skills.
Software companies can incorporate parts or all of mental mill in the form of software libraries into their own digital content creation and design products. Shaders are automatically generated in the MetaSL™ language and can be modified easily.

mental mill supports CgFX, HLSL, and GLSL, and runs natively in mental ray and RealityServer. Back-end plug-ins for other targets such as special purpose processors and other software renderers can be developed by third parties using the mental mill Integrator Edition.
mental mill Editions
mental mill Standard Edition

Using a graphical user interface, the application allows for writing and editing shaders, visually debuging shader code and sharing shaders with other Standard Edition users. The shaders can be used in DCC and CAD applications through the supported, customizable back-end formats such as CgFX, HLSL, and GLSL. Also included is the mental ray preview plug-in where it is easy to preview shaders with a photorealistic ray tracer. The application is a standalone product available from mental images in April 2009. The current beta version can be freely downloaded here.
mental mill Artist Edition

With the Artist Edition, one can quickly assemble complex shader graphs or Phenomena from the provided library of shaders and modify the parameters. It is bundled with the Autodesk® 3ds Max® 2010. More information about features and functionality available here.

mental mill Integrator Edition

The mental mill libraries are available from mental images for software companies wishing to integrate mental mill with their own products. This allows for the full integration the MetaSL language into a game engine, DCC or CAD application, or renderer. It consists of the mental mill SDK in the form of libraries. For more information about how to purchase a license to the library, please contact us directly here.