Mental Images

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Mental Images" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (November 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Mental Images GmbH

Company type	Subsidiary
Industry	CGI, Computer software
Founded	April 1986; 38 years ago (1986-04) in Berlin
Headquarters	Berlin , Germany
Key people	Rolf Herken (president, CEO, CTO)
Products	Mental Ray, RealityServer, mental mill, MetaSL, mental mesh, iray, DiCE
Number of employees	80
Parent	Nvidia
Website	mentalimages.com

Mental Images GmbH (stylized as mental images) was a German computer generated imagery (CGI) software firm based in Berlin, Germany, and was acquired by Nvidia in 2007, then rebranded as Nvidia Advanced Rendering Center (ARC), and is still providing similar products and technology. The company provides rendering and 3D modeling technology for entertainment, computer-aided design, scientific visualization and architecture.

The company was founded by the physicists and computer scientists Rolf Herken, Hans-Christian Hege, Robert Hödicke and Wolfgang Krüger and the economists Günter Ansorge, Frank Schnöckel and Hans Peter Plettner as a company with limited liability & private limited partnership (GmbH & Co. KG) in April 1986 in Berlin, Germany. The Mental Ray software project started in 1986. The first versions of the rendering software were influenced, tested and used for production by Mental Images' then operating large commercial computer animation division, led by the visual effects supervisors John Andrew Berton (1986–1989), 2000 Academy Award winner John Nelson (1987–1989), and 1996, and 2000, Academy Award nominee Stefen Fangmeier (1988–1990).

In 2003, Mental Images completed an investment round led by ViewPoint Ventures and another large international private equity investor.^[1] Since December 2007, Mental Images GmbH is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Nvidia corporation^[2] with headquarters in Berlin, subsidiaries in San Francisco (Mental Images Inc.) and Melbourne (Mental Images Pty. Ltd.) as well as an office in Stockholm. After acquisition by Nvidia the company has been renamed Nvidia Advanced Rendering Center (Nvidia ARC GmbH).