mental images and Dassault Systèmes to Improve Realistic Rendering in Product Lifecycle Management Solutions

Enhancements to Academy Award® winning rendering technology mental ray® 3.2 soon available in CATIA® and ENOVIA™ V5

Berlin, Germany and Paris, France - July 29, 2003 - mental images GmbH & Co. KG and Dassault Systèmes (Nasdaq: DASTY; Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA) today announced the extension of their Original Software Development agreement (OSD), for embedding the mental ray® rendering technologies in Dassault Systèmes product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions.

For almost ten years, the highly successful development partnership between Dassault Systèmes and mental images has brought continuous improvement and software engineering creativity to the manufacturing market with integrated realistic rendering simulation capabilities. The partnership was the first OSD agreement between Dassault Systèmes and an independent software developing company. Most recently, the partners have collaborated to provide rendering technologies integrated in the Photo Studio 2 (PHS) and Photo Studio Optimizer (PSO) Version 5 (V5) products offered by Dassault Systèmes.

PHS and PSO enable visualization of the final product exactly as it will appear in reality based on the original CAD data, and authorize product quality assessments early in the design phase. They leverage the strength of version 3.2 of mental ray®, the world’s most advanced and powerful rendering software with outstanding quality image generation and enhanced scalable performance.

mental ray also provides the power of global illumination and caustics simulation inside PSO. Users can simulate light behavior in Version 5 in a physically correct manner to obtain unparalleled levels of visual richness and realism. In addition, PSO will support the mental ray Satellite feature that enables users to distribute and hence accelerate the rendering process across networks of homogeneous or heterogeneous machines. This cost-reducing feature shortens response times and facilitates the interactive workflow for all types of users, including small engineering and design departments.

“We are extremely pleased about the long-term extension of the agreement between mental images and Dassault Systèmes,” said Rolf Herken, president and director R&D, mental images. “After nearly ten years of close cooperation, we are honored by the trust that Dassault Systèmes places in our technology and our ongoing research to provide visualization and lighting simulation solutions for our customers in the manufacturing, motion picture, interactive entertainment, and learning application sectors.”

“World-class visual realism in virtual product simulations -- this is what the development partnership with mental images brings to our customers,” said Dominique Florack, executive vice president, Strategy and Research, Dassault Systèmes. “We are about to celebrate ten years of rewarding collaboration and an impressive illustration of “built-in reality” with the exceptional level of realism attainable in our PLM solutions.”

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored mental images with a Technical Achievement Award on March 1, 2003 for mental ray referring to it as "a highly programmable computer-graphics renderer incorporating ray tracing and global illumination to realistically simulate the behavior of light in computer-generated imagery.”