Jig is a fast, extensible, and open general purpose renderer for special effects companies and post production facilities of all sizes. Jig is a comprehensive solution for rendering traditional geometry as well as photorealistic hair, volumes, and particles. Jig is designed to be scalable, performing well on modest workstations as well as large rendering clusters.

Features:

Multiple Rendering Algorithms
Jiggy™, Jig’s Graphical User Interface (GUI)
Explosivo™, Jig’s particle pipeline
Network Rendering
Fast Surface Rendering
Fast, anti-aliased line primitives (useful for Hair Rendering)
Correct high-quality shadowing and self-shadowing
High quality motion blur on all geometry types.
Unlimited Segment Hair Length
Arbitrary number of control vertices on guide hairs
Procedural Geometry Generation
Hair Combing via Guide Hair Interpolation Line and Curve Primitives for Hair
Sub-Pixel Point Primitives and Shadowing for Particles
Volume Rendering
Super-fine displacement mapping without cracks
Clip Shaders
File Formats - Write images as 8, 16 or floating point
Plug-in Development Kit
C++ Application Programming Interface (API)
User defined surface primitives may be added via plug-in API
Plug-in Shading Network


Jig includes a comprehensive solution for rendering photorealistic hair. The speed of our rendering algorithm allows us to render millions of hairs in a reasonable amount of time. The sheer number of hairs we can render greatly increases the realism of the final image. The hairs are generated procedurally in the renderer with a plug-in. As a result, no more than one hair is stored in memory at any given point in time. All attributes of the hair (i.e. color, kink, length, etc.) are mappable with the same layered mapping system used by the shaders. Hair combing may be controlled by sparsely positioning guide hairs on the surface, and interpolating them within the Jig system.

The Jig system supports the rendering of volumetric effects such as smoke, clouds, and fire. Volumes may be defined using all the power of the Jig shading system, similar to the layering of maps and shaders. Volumes may also be defined by using large numbers of sub-pixel particles. Jig has the ability to cast shadows from the volumes onto other objects or even themselves (self-shadowing). Self-shadowing is crucial for many effects like smoke and clouds. The volume-rendering algorithm is also extremely efficient in terms of both memory and speed. Many effects that were previously impossible simply because of render time may now be achieved at nominal cost.