Computer Graphics World

August 2009 26 n n n n Rendering We're seeing the rise of products that enable users to quickly put a model in a scene, adjust a few lights, play with mate rials and colors a bit, and, voila, a photo realistic scene is born. Germany's RTT has a variety of products to do this at various points in the pipeline. Also, Nvidia last year acquired Utah raytracing startup RayScale for its Mental Images division, and is also building tools for fastrendered scenes. ere are new customers for rendering— or, at least, that's what all these firms hope. e idea is that there might be users out in the design pipeline. A product has been de signed, and the proud designers want to show off what they've got. ey are not the ones w ho will create the TV ads or the fullspread magazine ads, but they can communicate their latest ideas to the full team and maybe to marketing to get everybody onboard. To this end, Autodesk has just released Showcase 2010 in three versions: Viewer, Presenter, and Showcase, and all three now have raytracing and integrated global illu mination. In this instance, Showcase takes advantage of the computers' CPU—all of them. e more cores, the better. Autodesk has expanded the materials capability in Showcase with a unified and calibrated materials library, including hundreds of texture maps and fully editable materials so users can create their own and share them. Two Parts of the Brain For the longest time, there has been a di vide between the entertainment world and the CAD world, even though the technol ogies are very similar. All the work CAD users do goes into the creation of a digital version of something that is going to be manufactured or built. In general, it mat ters less if it is beautiful, but it must be ac curate—lives, careers, and dollars depend on it. e entertainment world, of course, is all about appearances. It must live, but it doesn't need to be real. at divide is gradually getting filled in, and the tools used to create fantasy are also c oming into play in the alltooreal world of CAD. Consider Luxology, for example. e company's roots are deep in the broadcast industry, but its sights are fixed on the broader CAD industry. As Peebler notes, "ere's hundreds of thousands of custom ers in the entertainment business; there's millions in CAD." e lowcost Brazil renderer (formerly from Splutterfish) was a tool used in con junction with Robert McNeel & Associ ates' Rhino. Raytracing upstart Caustic Graphics recently acquired Splutterfish as a tool to reach out to new markets in CAD as well as entertainment. Another new en trant is StudioGPU, a company that has just arrived on the scene with enthusiasm and some crazy ideas that just might work. StudioGPU has experience in game development, film, and video. Brothers David and Yanni Koenig and Robert Knaack decided to create better rendering tools after too long living the nightmare as creatives in entertainment and advertising. As Yanni Koenig puts it, the artist is still subject to a priesthood that dictates when they can really see their work. Modelers, animators, and artists have to pass their work off to be rendered, all the while wait ing hours for a fast render or overnight for a complete view. Every change, every ex periment has to wait for the rendering pro cess, which happens elsewhere. Jobs go to the farm, and they're delivered back. e StudioGPU renderer is fast, re ally fast. It takes advantage of GPUs and shader technology, and can make changes at the push of a button. It's also clever technology, taking advantage of rendering tricks to create reflections that seem as if they've been raytraced, but the technol ogy is all rasterization. In the future, say the Koenigs, they'll add raytracing tech nology, but the system they have now is capable of professional rendering that can free the creative process from the drudg ery of the render cycle. In their earlier incarnation in 3D design and development, the StudioGPU team worked on games, movies, advertising campaigns, and architectural renderings. ey're pushing MachStudio Pro first as a tool for previsualization, for small pro ductions and advertisements, and for vi sualizations. For example, in the case of creating previsualizations for products, the group thinks it can offer a rendering tool that can help determine the look of the production throughout the process, instead of at the very end. And, the StudioGPU guys are well aware that they have their work cut out for them when it comes to changing the way productions are organized. Rendering newcomer Caustic Graphics has developed an API that takes advantage of a work station's CPU or GPU to combine raytracing and rasterization technologies.

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