Luxology® LLC, an independent technology company developing modern 3D content creation software, today announced that its Nexus® technology was used to jointly develop PhotoView 360, the new design visualization application that is bundled with SolidWorks Premium and Professional 2009 editions. Designed to deliver new levels of interactivity, the software features physically based lighting, a library of realistic surface appearances and a collection of studio-quality lighting environments. Nexus is the core rendering technology behind PhotoView 360. Information on PhotoView 360 and the complete SolidWorks 2009 offering is available at www.solidworks.com.

“PhotoView 360 is more than a fast renderer, it is an intuitive tool for deciding how different parts of a 3D model should look in the real world and getting a usable image with just the right lighting and camera angle in a matter of minutes,” said Brad Peebler, president of Luxology. “The incredibly complex and sophisticated models that came from SolidWorks required us to optimize our Nexus rendering engine to new levels of efficiency.”

“Our primary goal in developing PhotoView 360 was to allow our customers to get to a great looking image with minimum effort and expertise,” said Austin O’Malley, CTO at Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp. “Luxology’s Nexus technology has allowed us to deliver a product to our customers that removes a lot of the mystery in rendering and delivers very rapid results.”

Nexus is Luxology’s cross platform media-aware architecture that supports the rapid deployment of 2D and 3D authoring and visualization applications, and is the same technology that is used to develop the award-winning modo® software. Nexus includes a variety of modeling, sculpting, rendering, painting and animation capabilities, is multi-core aware and fully scriptable using Perl, Python or LUA.

About PhotoView 360
PhotoView 360 is a highly interactive rendering tool that offers a simplified interface for applying realistic materials to SolidWorks models and rendering out images of photorealistic quality. The software also presents a series of environments to select from that include studio lighting setups and backgrounds. Key to the user experience is a highly interactive rendered preview that allows the model to be positioned and decorated with immediate feedback using standard camera navigation controls. Materials can be applied at the assembly, part, or even individual face level for maximum control. PhotoView 360 is included in both SolidWorks Premium and SolidWorks Professional 2009, which began shipping to customers on Sept. 18, 2008.

About Luxology
Based in San Mateo, Calif., Luxology® LLC is an independent technology company developing next-generation 3D content creation software that enhances productivity via designer-friendly tools powered by the modern underlying architecture known as Nexus®. Founded in 2002 by Allen Hastings, Stuart Ferguson and Brad Peebler, Luxology is home to some of the top 3D engineering expertise in the industry. More information on Luxology, Nexus, its flagship product modo®, and a gallery of customer created images is available online at www.luxology.com.