RED: Ray tracing of Dynamic Elements

RED is the core technology of all products sold by Redway3d. It covers all the graphics features for real-time 2D, real-time 3D and photo-realistic visualization.

The RED technology can accelerate its processing speed by the use of the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit), the CPU (Central Processing Unit), as well as a combined use of both processing units or all their multi-core equivalent architectures.

RED is completely dynamic and any parameter (geometry, lighting, materials, animations, etc.) can be updated without any time penalty.

The RED technology can be integrated inside any software, through its 3D / C++ Software Development Kit called Redsdk.


Crunch the Apple: Redsdk 3.1 Redsdk now runs on Windows, Linux & MacOS X in native or virtualized environments. The full software rendering mode was improved to run in real-time, tone mapping is available on both CPU and GPU and the overall ray tracer performance improved.

New connections: Redsdk 3.0 Redway3d developed a bridge between Parasolid and Redsdk (a bridge for Teigha was already available), improved the engine anti-aliasing, added two built-in shaders and tested / validated several GPU and stereoscopic devices.

Precision increase : Redsdk 2.4 The Redway3d engineers focused on sampling quality (better repartition in space), the database accuracy (management of double precision models databases and better display of texts), plus new shadowing modes and a material editor as new features.

Faster Global Illumination: Redsdk 2.3 Continuously working on R&D, Redway3d succeeded again in raising both the quality and the rendering speed. Redsdk offers a new shading API for its CPU working mode, enabling the full emulation of its already available GPU and hybrid CPU-GPU modes.

Global illumination : Redsdk 2.2 Redsdk 2.2 adds its own global illumination algorithms (GI) to its photo-realistic quality, together with the new Skylight type of light for outdoors renderings. Windows 7 is also supported in both 32bit and native 64bit versions.

CPU and GPU combined at will: Redsdk 2.1 Redsdk 2.1 runs in "hybrid" (CPU + GPU) and "CPU only" modes. Redsdk based applications can be easily deployed on the web, support blade servers render farms or virtualized environments in a transparent way.

A complete library of materials: Redsdk 2.0 Redmaterials offers ready-to-use materials for a wide range of categories (metals, woods, glasses, etc.), with real-time and photo-realistic settings. Redsdk 2.0 offers also several performance improvements.

The Linux move: Redsdk 1.5 Redsdk supports Linux in addition to Windows. About rendering quality, the glossy effects improve the rendering quality in a terrific way and the visualization of texts was also improved. First graphics midldeware certified by NVIDIA® & AMD-ATI.

The HDR (r)evolution: Redsdk 1.4 Redsdk rendering pipeline can be customized between 32bit and 128bit floating point resolution. Several performance improvements are released, due to algorithm modifications and new hardware features available from GPU manufacturers.

A killing release: Redsdk 1.3 The support of Vista as well as native 64bit Windows versions are released. Redsdk scales between multiple CPU-cores and multiple GPUs architectures, in an automatic way, but still customizable. Area sampling is added to real-time and ray tracing rendering modes.

An optional graphics file format: Redsdk 1.2 Redsdk offers a .red file format dedicated to 2D/3D graphics & customizable. Volume visualization can be combined to the other features proposed by Redsdk.

A recursive ray tracer: Redsdk 1.1 The hybrid ray tracer (CPU + GPU) now supports recursive rays, multiple levels of reflections, refractions, etc. Redsdk adds the support of the GLSL shading programming language in addition to the ARB one, supported initially.

A true middleware: Redsdk 1.0 The technology was packaged in a single API for real-time and ray tracing, called Redsdk. Advanced visualization features (composite materials) were exposed in a way programmers could develop unique materials for direct and indirect lighting purposes.

Foundations of the RED engine technology The first 3 years were dedicated to the development of an up to date real-time graphics toolkit for professional 2D/3D display, with the implementation of basic ray tracing functions (mainly a first level of hard ray traced shadows & true reflections) accelerated at the GPU, since the programmable graphics cards were becoming more popular at that time. From the beginning the technology was designed to be 100% dynamic, scalable, taking the best of the rasterization & ray tracing worlds … while being as much accelerated as possible by the GPU. The RED engine will be a top level real-time 2D/3D professional toolkit with ray tracing extensions!