Ricardo Montesa is passionate about innovation. His studies in Industrial Engineering culminated in a graphics proposal for the audiovisual world. Little time was needed for that inner strength to become Brainstorm, a pioneer in the world of graphics, data visualisation, 3D objetcs and, more recently, augmented reality and the optimisation of resources with virtual sets.

“Thank you very much for this distinction, which surprises me personally” said Montesa, moved by the distinction.

Ricardo, university professor, project leader, a man of our time and our corridors, is undoubtedly a pillar of innovation in this industry, who uses his ideas, and shows them from virtual sets, with amazing scenarios created by software , to add – who would say – much more magic to TV.

Ricardo Montesa (Valencia, 1960) is the CEO of Brainstorm, a provider of real-time interactive 3D graphics solutions. He achieved an Industrial Engineering degree from the Polytechnic University of Valencia. After his final degree project, he founded Montesa Grafics, a company dedicated to the development of specific software for real-time 3D and 2D rendering of graphics, mainly aimed at contests and elections.

In 1993 he founded, with other partners, Brainstorm Multimedia, a company of which he has been CEO and Director of Development ever since. Under his direction, Brainstorm presented and began marketing the software called eStudio in 1994, currently the world’s reference for the generation of real-time 3D graphics and virtual scenery, including applications for sports and electoral events.

Between 1996 and 1997 he joined George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) company in San Rafael, California, as a software developer for special effects. After his American experience, he returned to Spain to retake the technical direction of Brainstorm, directing the design and development of the applications created by the company, applications that are used today in many of the largest and most prestigious television networks around the world such as BBC (UK), NHK (JP), KBS (KO), NBC (USA), RTL (DE) and TVE (ES).

Ricardo Montesa is an experienced speaker with outstanding teaching experience at the University, and his vision has led Brainstorm to be awarded for its innovative work on numerous occasions”.

*Extracted from the PRODU news piece.

*The awards show was entirely produced using Edison PRO, Brainstorm’s brand new product for live virtual events and presentations. Watch following the whole PRODU Tecnología Awards Ceremony.

Suite 4 introduces a key feature that changes the game regarding how Aston and InfinitySet deal with broadcast workflows, while providing additional playout possibilities. It is called LAYERS, and its foundation rests on the capability of Brainstorm Suite 4 for creating Simultaneous Multiple Independent Renders using a single workstation. With LAYERS, Brainstorm Suite 4 can now deliver several outputs from a single instance, in both Aston and InfinitySet, or combine several outputs in a single one as required.

InfinitySet 4 also gains major updates to the rendering features and especially the management and compatibility with the Unreal Engine. This effectively enhances the way the Combined Render Engine, Brainstorm’s seamless integration between the company’s eStudio render engine and the Unreal Engine, works in practice. Another key development is that InfinitySet now features an Unreal-native behaviour, so InfinitySet users can achieve anything Unreal Engine provides in a workflow fully integrated into Unreal. The added value of this configuration is the multitude of benefits of including more than 25 years of Brainstorm’s the experience in broadcast and film graphics, virtual set and augmented reality production, including data management, playout workflows, virtual camera detach, multiple simultaneous renders and much more.

Brainstorm is also introducing the InfinitySet Unreal Engine Controller, a new module that directly controls Unreal Engine from InfinitySet’s own interface, adding a user-friendly, live production-oriented control interface. The Unreal Engine Controller can identify any blueprints, objects and properties in the UE project, and control them directly from InfinitySet, which results in a new, unique and revolutionary workflow that does not require to previously prepared blueprints in Unreal Engine to create actions or edit the project. Unreal Engine Controller works in a bi-directional way, so not only can blueprints, objects and properties be controlled from InfinitySet’s interface, but it can also transfer any input to Unreal for use as a texture, including movies, live video, images or even Aston projects with StormLogic.

On top of that, the InfinitySet Unreal Engine Controller provides additional compatibility for video hardware devices not available in Unreal Engine, including support and driver updates for video IO boards and virtually any tracking device.

Aston 4, Brainstorm’s 2D/3D motion graphics creation, CG and playout solution, also gains a number of enhancements that further improve its capabilities, like shader-based 2D fonts or the ability to open multiple projects simultaneously for playout. And thanks to the LAYERS feature, the Aston family of applications is enhanced with the addition of Aston Multichannel. With this, Aston provides extended workflow possibilities, including playout of multiple channels from a single workstation or from different workstations, which can also be combined with multiple simultaneous projects. Additionally, InfinitySet now includes an Aston Crosspoint for further flexibility. Aston the PBR materials within Aston are further enhanced, and taking full advantage of Nvidia’s GPU Movie Decoding feature.

According to Ricardo Montesa, Brainstorm’s CEO and founder “With Suite 4 we have made a significant leap forward on what can be achieved in virtual sets, augmented reality and real-time broadcast motion graphics. We have worked hard to match and even surpass the high-end requirements of our customers. So now the integration of InfinitySet with Unreal Engine is even tighter, and we have included industry-unique features like the Unreal Engine Controller, that can fully control not only the Unreal Engine projects but also its blueprints, objects and properties directly from InfinitySet’s own interface. We’re very excited with this release and the response received from our customers is excellent.”

Added to all the above, Brainstorm is also introducing the Web Controller, an independent, HTML5-based application designed to control the Playout mode of InfinitySet from a remote computer, using Ethernet protocols, and greatly simplifying the setup and control of multiple workstation installations.