Video + Screenshots of project Monte Carlo.

[Pablo Zurita]

Taken from my own blog available at http://www.pablo-zurita.com.ar/?newlang=english.

I’m back with more screenshots and a pair of videos. The work on the Monte Carlo project continues at a very good pace, we are trying to finish the first internal release. Once that’s done we will be looking for a few beta testers so if you are interested then check out this place every now and then. Right now Monte Carlo is in a state where you can take any geometry in 3ds max, generate complete or light maps with our own version of the Render to Texture feature, put our own materials (called Flux Materials at the moment), and use a few helpers to specify different things (for example, what’s the presentation start point, etc.).

Ok, let’s get to the interesting stuff. The scene I have now is the pretty famous Sponza Atrium. This scene was made by Marko Debrovic and it’s a good scene to test diffuse inter-reflections. But the reason I decided to use this model for the video is because it’s a simple scene, it looks good, and since we haven’t automated a few of the processes yet (for example, apply composite materials and Flux materials) it wouldn’t take me too much time to setup the presentation. So the process to set up the presentation was the following. First I put a composite material in all the materials used in the scene; I keep the original material as a base material for the composite. Then I put a Flux Base Material in the first material slot of the composite material and disable the check so that it doesn’t affect the rendering. Once that’s done I use our own version of the Render to Texture feature to generate the CompleteMaps of all the geometry, once that was done I exported the scene and that was it. The presentation was ready to run in real-time. Anyway, you can download the video from here (the video is in a Bink .Exe), and I also have a very simple video of a teapot on a plane, you can download it from here. Here are the screenshots, click on them for the high res version.

The Scene in 3ds max.

 

The Scene in Monte Carlo running in real-time. Wireframe.

 

The Scene in Monte Carlo running in real-time.

I should say that all here is not final, its just a product in development, if you have any comments or questions let me know.

[pickle]

Hi Pablo,

 

looks very good. What are the main selling points of monte carlo? is it going to be web deliverable etc.

 

Thanks,

 

Rich

[Pablo Zurita]

What are the main selling points of monte carlo?

Mostly it’s going to be its easiness to use, its tight integration with 3ds max, the mostly non intrusive way that you can create presentations, and the visual flexibility (you can create your own pixel and vertex shaders if the ones included don't fit your needs).

 

is it going to be web deliverable etc.

No, we will focus more on the kind of "high-level" presentations where the visual aspect is the most important thing for the user, and not the bandwidth or size.

 

If you (or anybody else) have any question, don't hesitate to ask.

 

Thanks.

[nawash]

Hi Pablo,

This realtime scene loks great and I suppose you are quite happy with it.

I am very interested in this kind of applications.

I see that you are from argentina, and I wonder how is the realtime market in this part of the world.

Can you give me a few indications and describe this market ?

 

thx

[thomas+son]

the fully rendered scene looks GREAT. What kind of Video card are you using? or does the video card even matter with your software making all the calculations for the display. (Wow)

[nawash]

I suppose that the author will answer you himself but I think that the main thing you definitly know for that kind of rendering oin real time is enough video card RAM.

I am myself trying to improve real time rendering for achitects but I am only at the start of my experiences.

I would like to take advantage of the great features recent video cards offer.

As soon as I have something nice, I'll show you (I hope : -) )

[Pablo Zurita]

Hi Pablo,

This realtime scene loks great and I suppose you are quite happy with it.

I am very interested in this kind of applications.

I see that you are from argentina, and I wonder how is the realtime market in this part of the world.

Can you give me a few indications and describe this market ?

 

thx

First of all let me say that even though we (Irradiance Software) are in Argentina, we won’t do anything to sell our product in Argentina because the level of piracy it’s just too high. Now, based on the knowledge I have of the market, very few people make real-time presentations mostly because their customers don’t ask for them. Also, the few times I saw real-time presentations here, all of them were web based presentations. If you speak Spanish you may want to check out http://www.3dpro.com.ar (3D forum similar to CgTalk but for Argentina, I will remove the link if requested).

 

the fully rendered scene looks GREAT. What kind of Video card are you using? or does the video card even matter with your software making all the calculations for the display. (Wow)

When I ran the demo I was using a GeForce 6800 Ultra but the same demo runs great on a Radeon 9700 Pro. But yes, the video card does matter, cause the whole lighting and shading solution depends on both, 3ds max’s Render to Texture, and the vertex/fragment shaders that we use in the presentation.