Gelato (software)
 | The topic of this article may not meet Wikitia's general notability guideline. |
| Developer(s) | Nvidia |
|---|---|
| Initial release | April 19, 2004[1] |
| Final release | 2.2 Release 1
/ May 2008 |
| Operating system | Windows, Linux[2] |
| Replaces | Blue Moon Rendering Tools, Exluna Entropy |
| Replaced by | mental ray |
| Type | 3D computer graphics |
| License | Proprietary, freeware |
Gelato is a discontinued hybrid CPU/GPU-accelerated offline renderer first released in April 2004 by Nvidia,[3][1] which was then known primarily as a graphics card manufacturer. Gelato originally supported Quadro FX GPUs,[1] later adding support for GeForce cards. Designed to produce film-quality images, Gelato uses a shading language very similar to RenderMan.
It was initially priced at several thousand US dollars (USD) per node. In 2006, Nvidia added a free limited-functionality version.
In May 2008 Nvidia announced that it would no longer be developing or supporting Gelato software, releasing a last full-featured version as a free download.[4]
History
Gelato is a rendering system developed in the early 2000s to support Nvidia's motion picture industry customers, by providing software support for near-time rendering, one of the two main target application markets for Nvidia Quadro Plex hardware.[5][6] To address the limits of GPU technology of that time, Nvidia designed Gelato as a hybrid GPU/CPU system, leveraging the advantages of each of the two processing architectures.[3] It was created as a functional successor to Blue Moon Rendering Tools (BMRT), a RenderMan-compliant photorealistic rendering system, by BMRT's original developer Larry Gritz and other former employees of Exluna, which Nvidia had acquired in 2002. Exluna had previously created Entropy, an enhanced commercial version of BMRT; unlike Entropy, Gelato is a clean-slate renderer implementation.[7]
Gelato was originally priced at US$2,750 per node.[1] In a push to popularize the emerging concept of GPU-accelerated rendering (as opposed to traditional CPU-based rendering), with the release of Gelato 2.0 Nvidia introduced a free version of Gelato for PCs, with some capabilities locked out.[8][9] The full-featured version was rebranded "Gelato Pro", and was priced at $1,500 per render node, supporting extra features:[9]
- Sorbetto, an interactive relighting technology
- DSO shadeops
- Network parallel rendering
- Multithreading
- Native 64-bit support
- Maintenance and support
In May 2008 Nvidia announced that it would no longer be developing or supporting Gelato software, and released a final version of Gelato Pro as a free download.
Legacy
The Gelato development team was redeployed to the Mental Ray ray tracing software product, which Nvidia had acquired in 2007.[10]
Gelato was an early step in the Nvidia founders' intent to evolve from a video game card company to a high-performance computing platform provider;[11] it was described by one author as having "paved the way for important advances in GPU computing."[3]
See also
- cg (programming language)
- OptiX, a later Nvidia CUDA-based ray tracing API
- OpenImageIO
Further reading
- Bryan Hoff (2007-04-23). "Gelato 2.1 Review: A Flavor for Everyone". VFX World. Retrieved 2025-10-27.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Tony Smith (2004-04-19). "Nvidia green lights Quadro FX 4000 chip". The Register. Retrieved 2025-10-27.
- ↑ Bryan Hoff (2005-12-07). "Gelato 2.0 Review: Harnessing the GPU". VFX World. Retrieved 2026-03-12.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Kurachi, Noriko (June 2011). The Magic of Computer Graphics. Taylor & Francis. p. 52. ISBN 9781568815770.
- ↑ Ryan Ball (2008-05-29). "NVIDIA Gives Away Gelato Pro 2.2". Animation Magazine. Retrieved 2026-03-12.
- ↑ Arun (2007-02-16). "NVIDIA CUDA Introduction". Beyond3D. Retrieved 2025-10-26.
- ↑ "Nvidia Introduces Gelato - Industry's First Hardware-Accelerated Final-Film Renderer" (Press release). Nvidia. 2004-04-19. Retrieved 2025-10-26 – via Hexus.
- ↑ Raghavachary, Saty (2005). Rendering for Beginners. Focal Press. p. 360. ISBN 9780240519357.
- ↑ Tony Smith (2005-05-02). "Nvidia serves up free Gelato". The Register. Retrieved 2025-10-27.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 "Gelato Pro 2.0 and Gelato 2.0 GPU-Accelerated Final-Frame Renderer" (PDF). Nvidia. 2006. Retrieved 2025-10-27.
- ↑ "NVIDIA Gelato Pro GPU-Powered Rendering Software Now Freely Available". NVIDIA Blog / Gelato. 2008-05-29. Archived from the original on 2008-12-18. Retrieved 2025-10-24.
- ↑ Nusca, Andrew (November 16, 2017). "This Man Is Leading an AI Revolution in Silicon Valley—And He's Just Getting Started". Fortune. Archived from the original on November 16, 2017. Retrieved October 27, 2025.
External links
This article "Gelato (software)" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical. Articles taken from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be accessed on Wikipedia's Draft Namespace.