BMRT dead ?

from the BMRT ML :frowning:

BMRT is dead, hooray for BMRT :frowning:

This just came down the pipe to us:

"To our valued Customers:

You have no doubt seen the latest press release
announcing the settlement between Exluna and Pixar as
well as a teaser about the acquisition of Exluna by
NVIDIA.

http://www.quicken.com/investments/news/story/djbn/?story=/news
/stories/dj/20020722/ON20020722000515.htm&symbol=NVDA

We wanted to explain to you the ramifications of these
two pieces of information for you. As an Entropy
customer, NVIDIA will continue to provide you with the
same level of service and support you have come to
expect. If you need more copies of the product to
complete your production, you can get them by
contacting [email protected]. The product roadmap has
been frozen, and we will not add new features to the
product, however, maintenance and support will
continue. You can get that through
[email protected].

BMRT will no longer be distributed by Exluna or
NVIDIA. If you have further questions, please donā€™t
hesitate to contact us either by email or phone at
xxx-xxx-xxxx. We look forward to continuing to work
with you and thank you for your continued support."

Bummer.

SHada

Perhaps someone else will pick up distribution. or maybe it will go the route of Blender & become opensource?

It has sounded for some time like something like this was gonna happen. What is the advantage of BMRT over other renderman compliant renderers (e.g. 3Delight)?

Thatā€™s TERRIBLE!

theyā€™re discontinuing entropy. That is just MEAN.

and its been a smash hit.

Yes, BMRT was a great renderer.
Perhaps they can make a Geforce optimized version :slight_smile: ?
Does NVIDIA have to much money? Why not donate something :slight_smile:
miga

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH! This is bloody dreadful.

But letā€™s look on the bright side- thereā€™s still:
Virtualight
Lightflow
Blenderā€™s Renderer (god forbid)
Aqsis
PovRay
Poor Manā€™s Renderer (<-- I am not to sure about this one)
Moonlight
ā€¦
to name a few, so BMRT isnā€™t the end of the world-- but weā€™ll miss 2.7 and aā€™. And BMRT2.6 is still pretty good.

hm. well. its not good that entropy dies. but ive allways hated bmrt so im glad to see that one go.

Does anyone know what the reason for this is?

Does nvidia have any connection with pixar?

okie.
apparantly nvidia are producing a hardware renderer aimed at game companies doing pre rendered video stuff.

Entropy isnā€™t dead. I quote:

"As an Entropy customer, NVIDIA will continue to provide the customer with the same level of service and support you have come to expect.

BMRT will no longer be distributed by Exluna or NVIDIA."

BMRT as dead. Entropy is not.

SatoriGFX.

support as in you can ask them questions. entropy will not be developed any longer.

to me, that is dead.

Know whatā€™s goig on? Nvidia is taking istā€™s share of traditional non-realtime-rendering! There are some posts on various newsgroups the deal with realtime-raytracing made posiible by advanced pixel and vertex shaders such as offered by the GeForce4+ GPUsā€¦

With Ope4nGl 2.0 rising at the horizon, what would be more logical than to eliminate free competitors in the field???

what would bmrt have todo with opengl?
I dont see a logical connection between buying exluna and opengl2.0.

I know the story behind this, but correct me if Iā€™m wrong. Pixar was sueing the Entropy/BMRT people for copyright infringement on some coding process behind the rendering engine that Pixar had patented. Nvidia was able to buy the source code from them because it settled the case. Yes, Nvidia is entering the rendering market. The only point Iā€™m not clear on is how Nvidia is going to stop Pixar from sueing them (unless they donā€™t include the Pixar special features).

Until Larry decides to tell the whole story we may never know all the dirt. However, from his and other posts, the following is not tooo far off:

  1. Pixar sued Exluna for Patent infringement
  2. Pixar sued Exlunaā€™s founders (LG etc) for misappropriation of trade secrets (ie using knowledge gained while at Pixar to write a competing renderer).
  3. Nvidia buys Exluna to get the IP and personel (probably for use on their Cg project)
  4. Lawsuit is settled and Entropy and BMRT are removed from market.

Number 2 seemed to be the kicker since they sued the individuals in addition to the company.

Matt

Having talked with several people from Exluna at SIGGRAPH, I think I can clear a bit of this up.

Firstly, Entropy will still be suported by NVIDIA in the sense of techā€™ support, and it will be ā€œdevelopedā€ further in the sense of bug-fixes. However, no new features will be added to Entropy.

Secondly, BMRT, as was said, will no longer be distributed by Exluna of NVIDIA. However, as with Blender, BMRT is still out there on peoples computers, and thus I would not be surprised if some mirrors started popping up soon (if they havenā€™t already).

I didnā€™t ask them about any of the legal stuff (i.e. the Pixar vs Exluna stuff), so I donā€™t know any more about that than the rest of you. But as far as Iā€™m concerned, it is just another instance of something that has become common practice in the computing industry (in addition to some other industries as well). It has gotten so absurd that youā€™d think that sueing is all that the computing industry is aboutā€¦