MicroStation to Incorporate Luxology Photorealistic Rendering

LOS ANGELES, CA (SIGGRAPH 2008) Aug 12, 2008 – Bentley Systems, Incorporated today announced that it has entered into a technology agreement with Luxology LLC – maker of the modo 3D software widely used by video professionals and graphic artists. Through this agreement, Bentley will license Luxology’s super-fast, photorealistic rendering engine for inclusion in its forthcoming release of MicroStation. Though the Luxology technology is the preferred renderer for a broad community of users, including major film studios, it is ideally suited to the demanding requirements of AEC applications to quickly produce extremely high-quality images and animations from huge datasets that typically include vast numbers of parametrically replicated geometry elements.

The super-fast Luxology rendering engine, combined with breakthrough “compression” techniques for replicated geometry in MicroStation, will allow users to generate images and animations with life-like detail, and uniquely enable designers to make real-time decisions from near-real-time rendering within interactive AEC workflows. Unlike other approaches currently available, no time is wasted transferring datasets between the design environment and a separate – and often costly – rendering system requiring special training. As a result, world-class photorealistic rendering has finally become a readily accessible tool for virtually every AEC practitioner and project, empowering design teams to:

• Immediately visualize and further refine potential designs to provide better-performing infrastructure,
• More easily secure stakeholder buy-in on concept and final design work with high-impact presentations as a routine by-product of their work.

Commenting on the new agreement, Brad Peebler, Luxology President and Founder, said, “Bentley put us through a rigorous comparison test and we feel fortunate for this opportunity to work with one of the AEC community’s leading providers of software solutions and products. We look forward to seeing how Bentley and MicroStation users take advantage of the rendering power we are providing.”

Bentley Systems Executive Vice President Ray Bentley said, “We’ve always delivered an outstanding set of visualization tools integrated with our MicroStation design platform, and have taken them to an even higher level of flexibility and ease of use in our forthcoming release. Now we can offer users the capability to create visualizations of unsurpassed realism in a lot less time by choosing the Luxology engine from among the many rendering options in MicroStation. In fact, the Luxology engine is so fast that our users will be able to create animations in the time it takes most renderers to create a single image. The new renderer will be available as a simple menu option within our interface, and will not require separate training or specialized hardware.”

The Luxology engine is a fast ray-tracer that can render millions of polygons at enormous frame sizes. In addition, it is highly scalable on multi-core systems and can speed the rendering of immensely comprehensive scenes using up to 32 cores per workstation.

Features of this technology that contribute to its high-quality renderings include global illumination and physically-based shading models, which provide advanced optical phenomena such as anisotropic blurry reflections, indirect caustics, and subsurface scattering. In addition, realistic camera models include lens distortion, motion blur, and depth of field, and physical sky and physical sun rendering provides accurate sunlight at any location as well as support for photometric lighting through the IES standard.

Added Mr. Bentley, “As exciting as all of these visualization improvements are, they are just the beginning. Our ongoing licensing arrangement with Luxology gives us access to the steady stream of enhancements from Luxology’s outstanding development team and will allow us to provide our users with ‘best of breed’ visualization – and unique integration – for years to come.”

Subscribers to Bentley’s SELECT program for MicroStation and related AEC applications will get the Luxology rendering engine at no additional charge as part of the new release this fall. For more information about MicroStation, visit www.bentley.com/MicroStation. 

For more information about the Luxology technology, visit www.luxology.com. 

About Luxology

Based in San Mateo, Calif., Luxology LLC is an independent technology company developing next-generation 3D content creation software that enhances productivity via artist-friendly tools powered by Nexus, its modern underlying architecture. Founded in 2002 by Allen Hastings, Stuart Ferguson and Brad Peebler, Luxology is home to some of the top 3D engineering expertise in the industry. More information on Luxology and its flagship product modo, a gallery of sample images, and the active Luxology community are available online at www.luxology.com. 

About Bentley Systems, Incorporated

Bentley is the global leader dedicated to providing comprehensive software solutions for sustaining infrastructure. Architects, engineers, constructors, and owner-operators are indispensable in improving our world and our quality of life; the company’s mission is to improve the performance of their projects and of the assets they design, build, and operate. Bentley sustains the infrastructure professions by helping to leverage information technology, learning, best practices, and global collaboration – and by promoting careers devoted to this crucial work.

Founded in 1984, Bentley has more than 2,800 colleagues, offices in more than 50 countries, annual revenues surpassing $500 million, and since 1993, has invested more than $1 billion in research, development, and acquisitions. Nearly 90 percent of the Engineering News-Record Top Design Firms are Bentley subscribers, and a 2008 Daratech study ranked Bentley as the world’s #2 provider of geospatial software solutions. For more information about Bentley, visit www.bentley.com. 

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