Ray tracing, rendering the light and reflection in 3D graphics, tends to be time-consuming.  But the people at ArtVPS (Cambridge, UK), say that their new software, Shaderlight 01, which is a plug-in that works with 3ds Max from Autodesk, can eliminate the rendering bottleneck in design.  “No matter how fast the rendering speed of an end-to-end ray-tracer, it cannot match Shaderlight’s ability to make changes without restarting the render,” says Michael Lawson, ArtVPS CTO.

The ray tracing module allows designers to make changes to an image during and after the rendering, including altering materials, environments, lighting and textures, or MELT variables, at any stage in the rendering process, including on production-ready images.

The plug-in for 3ds Max is the first of what ArtVPS hopes will be a series of Shaderlight versions for just about any CAD program.

A demo of the Shaderlight can be seen here.