About Aura Acceleration Extension

Aura Acceleration Extension for CET makes it even faster to render your images in Photo Lab. Aura is designed to offload and accelerate rendering tasks, especially photorealistic renderings, by using cloud or distributed compute instead of relying only on your local machine. 

Time is your most valuable asset. That's why we've offer you to use Aura Acceleration, a groundbreaking rendering offload plugin for CET Designer’s Photo Lab. The only thing you need is an internet connection and you are all set.

Paired with the "Render Multiple" feature in Photo Lab, Aura Acceleration can process a dozen or more renderings AT THE SAME TIME, exponentially increasing the speed at which they complete compared to any laptop or desktop computer.  This allows you to make fast revisions to your renderings as part of a LIVE design engagement with a client or while preparing proposals for your sales team without having to wait until after hours or weekends.

Aura also allows you to greatly increase detail settings in Photo Lab and improve the detail and quality of your renderings without the significant time penalties required to do the same on your laptop; 4k, max details, PBR finishes and fancy lighting can become part of your standard renderings instead of something reserved for special situations. You can do more with the software and training investments you already make in CET Designer without depending on external tools, extra desktop hardware or contract labor resources to generate amazing renderings.  This simplifies your workflow, decreases licensing/labor costs for your dealer and can save you dozens of hours per month in design labor. 

Getting Started with Aura Acceleration

Step 1: Purchase, Download, and Install the Aura Acceleration Extension

1. Visit the Marketplace to purchase the Aura Acceleration Extension plug in for CET.
2. Launch CET to download and install the Extension.
3. Click "Update & restart" in the blue ribbon at the top of CET.
   • Don't see a blue ribbon? Try Help > Check for updates
4. Click the new Aura acceleratior Extension tab.

This Extension requires Aura Acceleration to be installed (step 2) and running on the same system as CET.

A new Extension tab will appear in CET after downloading and installing.

Step 2: Start Using Aura Acceleration

1. Prepare your scene

Before using Aura, you work as usual in CET:

• Place products and build your layout
• Apply materials and finishes
• Add lighting (spotlights, daylight, etc.)
• Insert and position cameras (Photo Lab / Camera tools)
• When you initiate a rendering, CET packages the scene data (geometry, textures, lighting, etc.).

Nothing Aura-specific yet, this is standard CET workflow and at this point, without Aura, rendering would happen entirely on your local GPU/CPU.

2. Open the Rendering Tool (Photo Lab)

• Go to Photo Lab (or the rendering section you’re using)
• Select a camera view
• Adjust:
  • Image resolution
  • Lighting presets
  • Exposure, depth of field, etc.

This is where you decide how the final image should look.

3. Start the Render Job

• Click Render (or “Start rendering”)

CET will then:

• Package your scene automatically
• Upload it in the background

From your perspective, this feels almost identical to starting a normal render, just faster and offloaded. When Aura Acceleration is enabled and shows Active:

• The rendering job is exported and uploaded to Aura servers.
• Data is compressed and optimized before transfer to reduce size and speed up upload.
• The system queues the job in Aura’s rendering infrastructure.

This is where the “acceleration” begins - you're no longer limited by your own hardware. This step is significantly faster and more scalable than local rendering. 

You can follow the progress as usual from the Render Task dialog.

4. Receive the Finished Image

When rendering is done:

• The image appears in:
  • Photo Lab as a thumbnail preview
  • Render history / image list
• You can:
  • Open it
  • Save/export it
  • Share it

No manual downloading needed, it flows back into CET automatically.

5. Iterate Quickly

If something isn’t right:

• Adjust:
  • Materials
  • Lighting
  • Camera angle
• Click Render again with Aura

Because Aura is faster, users often iterate more and refine visuals further.

Key Benefits of Aura Acceleration

• Speed: Much faster than local rendering, especially for complex scenes
• Scalability: Handles large scenes without local hardware limits
• Consistency: Uses standardized rendering environments
• Productivity: Frees your machine for continued work while rendering runs remotely

Things To Notice

• First render might take slightly longer (upload time)
• Requires internet connection
• Large scenes may still take time—but scale better than local rendering

If you have questions about Aura Acceleration, please email info@citsolutions.net 

Web: Aura Acceleration - CIT | Computer Integration Technologies | Twin Cities MN IT Provider