Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/14320
lation and rendering; it quickly became appar- ent, during the initial development phase, that saving simulation data to disk and loading it back for rendering took more time than both tasks when the resolution gets high enough; therefore, we designed the system so that it can optionally render as it simulates. Most of the time, we found that artists decided not to save their simulation and were more eager to evaluate their work directly looking at the render rather than through some intermediary simulation visualization. T is helped reduce the iteration time even further. It also made it possible for less technical artists to use the system, since the simulation and rendering in- tegration meant that they didn’t have to learn the many steps of our eff ects pipeline in order to be productive. For Airbender, most of the fi re visual devel- opment was shared between traditional assault fi reballs and what we called fi re trails, whereby a character would displace/bend fi re from an existing source toward another character or object, thus forming a trail. We had to produce special fi re events here and there, but these two types represent the vast majority of our work. For the fi reballs specifi cally, the artists used a to eff ective, extremely high resolution simula- tions. Shortly after full production started, we realized that artists were occasionally going to need more control of the simulation and pro- vided them with an expression-based frame- work in which they could author simulation stages that run on the GPU alongside the hard-coded ones. T is level of customization proved to be invaluable for certain shots. T roughout the movie, Plume additionally Using the new solver, ILM generated smoke and fi re together at a grid resolution of 640 x 320 x 320. feature that enabled the simulation domain to move in space. For the fi re trails, we also had some early look direction to try having the fi re twist like a tornado. Particles were the most popular choice for driving and sourcing into these simulations. T eir dynamics were authored in our eff ects pipeline using Zeno, our proprietary 3D plat- form. In both cases, since the simulated quan- tities travel mostly in one direction, we were able to chain simulations together, which led PC Graphics Shipments Increase Jon Peddie Research (JPR), a research and consulting fi rm for graph- ics and multimedia, announced favorable estimates for graphics chip shipments and suppliers’ market share for the fi rst quarter in 2010. Also noteworthy is the fact that the year 2009 came in above expectations, with 11 percent year-to-year growth— an amazing comeback. T e fi rst quarter of 2010 showed traditional seasonal slowdown, with everyone except Nvidia and SiS showing decline. Intel was the leader in unit shipments for the fi rst quarter of 2010, elevated by Clarksdale, continued Atom sales for Netbooks, and strong growth in the desktop segment. On a quarter-to-quarter basis, Nvidia gained in the note- Vendor book integrated and discrete segments as well as the desktop integrated segment. AMD gained a fraction in the desktop discrete segment and over four percent in notebook inte- grated. AMD reported that its graphics segment revenue for the quarter was $409 million, down from Q4’s $427 million and up signifi cantly from a year ago ($218 million). Intel reported “revenue from chipset and other” of $1.761 billion in Q1. Nvidia’s quarter, which straddles the calendar quarters, reported rev- AMD Intel Nvidia Matrox SiS VIA/S3 Total enues of $982 million for its fi scal Q4 2010, which is from September to the end of January. T e fourth quarter of 2009 saw the fi rst shipments of a new cat- egory, the Integrated Processor Graphics (IPG). With the advent of new CPUs with integrated or embedded graphics, JPR predicts that we will see the rapid decline in deliveries for traditional chipset graphics or 2003 2004 2005 2006 Total Graphics Chips Annual Percentage Growth 217.1 239.0 269.4 316.5 20.2% 10.1% 12.7% 17.5% 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 351.7 373.0 414.2 485.7 567.9 11.1% 6.1% 11.0% 17.3% 16.9% This Quarter Market Share 25.15% 45.49% 33.00% 0.06% 0.22% 0.71% 104.62% Growth rates from 2003 to 2011. Unit Growth Last Quarter Market Share 24.0% 43.5% 31.5% 0.1% 0.2% 0.7% 100.0% Quarter to Quarter 26.81% 63.04% 32.70% 0.05% 0.06% 0.81% 123.47% Recent market growth. IGPs (integrated graphics processors). However, for ease of reporting at this time, JPR is including these devices in its integrated numbers. T e Q1 2010 edition of Jon Peddie Research’s “Market Watch” is available now in both electronic and hard copy editions for $995. ■ July 2010 11 was used as a velocity fi eld generator for our air-bending pipeline. It provided a fast way for artists to generate motion for the many par- ticles that would get rendered for this bending eff ect. We also ended up using it for simulat- ing and rendering mist in some of our ocean shots, as well as for smoke and dust. Moving forward, the system put in place for this fi lm reinforced our belief in using GPUs in production for simulation and rendering pur- poses. It is hard to imagine any future eff ects development without considering harnessing their power in one way or another. T is per- formance gain, coupled with the integration of the simulation and rendering in the same tool, has really helped democratize a tradition- ally more technical task among our artists. ■ This Quarter Last Year Market Share 21.7% 51.1% 26.5% 0.0% 0.0% 0.7% 100.0% Year to Year 96.3% 22.3% 41.9% -7.7% -68.6% -14.7% 44.3% Growth