Gelato (software)
| Gelato | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer | Nvidia |
| Release | April 19, 2004[1] |
| Final release | 2.2 Release 1
/ May 2008 |
| Operating system | Windows, Linux[2] |
| Predecessor | Blue Moon Rendering Tools, Exluna Entropy |
| Successor | mental ray |
| Type | 3D computer graphics |
| License | Proprietary, freeware |
| Website | Nvidia Gelato Zone at the Wayback Machine (archived 2008-05-01) |
Gelato is a discontinued CPU/GPU-accelerated offline rendering software product first released in April 2004 by Nvidia,[3][1] at the time known mainly as a graphics card manufacturer. Designed to produce film-quality images, Gelato uses a shading language very similar to the RenderMan Interface Specification (RISpec). Gelato originally supported Quadro FX GPUs,[1] later adding support for GeForce cards.
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]
Gelato is notable for being one of the first software applications to use GPU hardware as a compute resource (as opposed to realtime display rendering). It marked the culmination of the BMRT family of RISpec systems, ultimately becoming a freely-available, feature rich rendering package. At the same time, it was a key step in supporting Nvidia's goal to become a leading provider of high-performance compute hardware, and an early move toward providing 3rd-party developers with a standardized API for developing software to use this technology via its CUDA platform.[5]
History
[edit]Although Nvidia's first products were dedicated video game graphics cards, its founders' intent from the beginning was to grow beyond that to become a high-performance computing platform provider.[6] One step in this evolution was Nvidia's acquisition of Exluna in 2002, to expand and simplify the ability to use graphics processing units (GPUs) for purposes beyond real-time graphics display.[5] Exluna's main product was Entropy, an enhanced commercial version of Blue Moon Rendering Tools (BMRT), a popular Renderman-compliant photorealistic rendering package.
At Nvdia, Gelato was developed as a functional successor to Entropy by BMRT's original creator Larry Gritz and other former Exluna employees. Unlike Entropy, which was based on BMRT code, Gelato was developed from scratch.[7] It was released in 2004 to support motion picture industry customers by providing software for near-time rendering, one of the two main application target markets for Nvidia Quadro Plex hardware.[8][9]
To work around the limitations 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] 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.[10][11] The full-featured version was rebranded "Gelato Pro", and was priced at $1,500 per render node, supporting extra features:[11]
- 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 develop or support Gelato software, and released a final version of Gelato Pro as a free download.
Legacy
[edit]The Gelato development team was redeployed to the Mental Ray ray tracing software team, which Nvidia had acquired in 2007.[12]
Gelato was described in 2011 as having "paved the way for important advances in GPU computing."[3]
See also
[edit]- Cg (programming language)
- OptiX, a later Nvidia CUDA-based ray tracing API
- OpenImageIO
Further reading
[edit]- Bryan Hoff (2007-04-23). "Gelato 2.1 Review: A Flavor for Everyone". VFX World. Retrieved 2025-10-27.
References
[edit]- 1 2 3 4 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.
- 1 2 3 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.
- 1 2 David Becker (July 22, 2022). "Nvidia buys software company". CNET. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
Nvidia said in a statement that the acquisition is intended to boost Cg, its new set of software tools intended to ease the programming chores associated with creating high-level graphics effects.
- ↑ 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.
We believed this model of computing could solve problems that general-purpose computing fundamentally couldn't.
- ↑ Raghavachary, Saty (2005). Rendering for Beginners. Focal Press. p. 360. ISBN 9780240519357.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ Tony Smith (2005-05-02). "Nvidia serves up free Gelato". The Register. Retrieved 2025-10-27.
- 1 2 "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.
External links
[edit]- Nvidia Gelato Zone at the Wayback Machine (archived 2008-05-01) (official website, archived)
- Gelato 2.1 Technical Reference Nvidia, 2006.
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