A fully interactive integration of mental ray with a graphical user interface for creation and editing of visual phenomena by means of mental ray PhenomenaTM in the Phenomenon CreatorTM and Phenomenon EditorTM, creation and editing of the lighting, full control of all rendering related options and parameters, and management of the rendering process has been developed in cooperation with Softimage Co. (a division of Avid Technology, Inc.), and is available in the Softimage|XSI product.