Maya 5 and graphics cards.

[garethace]

Maya 5 with Quadro FX Smashes Rendering Barrier

 

Graphics Industry Leaders Alias|Wavefront and NVIDIA Introduce Hardware Rendering Breakthrough

 

http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=IO_20030404_4242

 

I have heard some interesting propositions put forward by this poster at a forum here:

 

http://www.aceshardware.com/forum?read=95027813

[Christopher Nichols]

This is huge news... I (and many more before me) was predicting that this would be the future of rendering... it looks like it is happening. I can be a huge thing for architecture. I am sure that not to far from now most renderings for architecture can be done this way and can be done in a few seconds...

[Greg Hess]

Remember that hardware companies tend to throw around the term "rendering" fairly loosely.

 

Rendering to us is the production of a final image or animation for the purpose of filling a contract or obligation with a client.

 

Rendering to video card companies is the projection of visual data in an interactive medium.

 

What may be occuring in this "PR" press release is the explanation of the advances that cG brings to Maya5's viewports...NOT final images. What one hopes is that they actually mean at least preview rendering...

 

Remember they were showcasing this with the ATI card's at siggraph 2002, as well as the the quadro4's. They had the same stuff all the way back in Siggraph 2000, with the ooooooh and aaaaah of the final fantasy realtime rendering array (sony ps2 cube).

 

When I can click render, have my 3d accelerator chop that stuff up and place it in a SELLABLE form, then I'll believe the press release.

 

Maybe I'm wrong and I'm just ignoring the fact they've had the same press releases for the past few years....i sure hope I am.

 

[ April 07, 2003, 10:00 PM: Message edited by: Greg Hess ]

[garethace]

This person over at aceshardware has this to say:

 

http://www.aceshardware.com/forum?read=95027905

[Greg Hess]

Interesting to see them fight over a post I made a few months ago

 

Looks like the general consensus is that it may just be some sort of preview ability.

 

Then of course, nobody on that forum is using their real name, so not much substance behind the comments.

[garethace]

:ngelaugh: Throw the dog a bone! Well that is a really mild discussion compared to the usual arguments between the Ati and the nVidia camps. You see engineers know alot about technology and invest some of their money in companies they feel have a good chance of sucess. Probably quite small investments too, but that can sometimes be enough to pay for a new luxury item, or facillitate some hobby you like to have, which needs a bit of funding. Have you noticed how expensive keeping up with computer technology equipment actually is? I mean compared to the old brush and paint days?

 

You will notice too, how posters can 'stick' a post in anywhere along the thread. The threads generally only stay 'active' for a few days after which you need to save the link, or go to the archives to find an old discussion. It means that discussion about 'late-breaking' news, interviews, releases is facillitated - which suits discussion about technology if not discussion about cg etc. It also suits discussion about technology companies/products from a financial stock investment point of view. The anonymous thing is perhaps necessary for engineers who work with IT companies and have their emails monitored etc. Being anonymous, it is 'easier' for them to discuss and compare ideas about late-breaking technological development, which are normally heavily censored by IT company marketing departments. You know what they are like! Here is a nice example from

 

http://rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_memory.shtml

 

Our company had begun to demo its new product, a client-server office suite. It was pretty new to everyone, and there was a lot of groundwork to be done to ensure that the demos would go smoothly and the stories would be compelling. The marketing guys decided to host a three-way question and answer session between the pre-sales people, some of the key developers, and the senior marketing suits.

 

About ten minutes into the session one of the pre-sales guys asked about per user memory consumption at the server end, stating that his tests showed a 32 meg per user minimum (back when 64 meg servers were considered big). Before anyone technical had a chance to answer, one of the senior marketing suits piped up and said, in a totally exasperated voice, "It's client-server! You don't need memory because it's in the network!"

The posters at Ace are very interested in the finer details, but I have been made aware often over there how important the details actually are with hardware. For instance, gpus are highly parallelised designs which rely on increased bandwidth for greater performance and a high performance wide pipeline to the fast memory subsystem on the gpu card. With cpus it is different, because tasks can rarely be made as 'parallelised' as with gpus. Hence bandwidth and memory performance are not nearly so important for a cpu.

 

They discussed the use of DDR II for desktop here:

 

http://www.aceshardware.com/forum?read=95027654

 

Currently the only product using the new memory standard DDR II is the QuadroFX and GeforceFX. As you are probably aware, not many of those currently are floating around! So it gives you some idea how expensive that rare DDR II memory is to put on the few Geforce FX cards available on the market. I gives you some idea how important increasing memory clockspeed and bandwidth and latency is to the overall perf of the card.

 

If you want to understand some of the 'politics' that goes on between marketing departments of rival Graphics companies read here:

 

http://www.aceshardware.com/forum?read=95026587

 

If you wish to see how detailed the aces forum posters are capable of delving into gpu tech this post demonstrates my point quite well:

 

TSOP vs BGA

 

http://www.aceshardware.com/forum?read=95027231

 

[ April 08, 2003, 10:41 AM: Message edited by: garethace ]

[Christopher Nichols]

I know what you mean Greg... but this may be the real deal... or at least the very begining of it. I don't think they are sooting for realtime... just to make renders a few seconds, which is a LOT slower then realtime. Did you see the demo on the AW site:

http://www.aliaswavefront.com/en/products/maya/movies/hardware_vector_renderer.shtml

 

they did a 2k render in a few seconds. They claim broadcast quality... and maybe for logo graphics etc... this may be the case.

 

Yeah but who knows... I am always trying to be optimistic. Lets see some good raytraced shadows and some motion blur first.

[Greg Hess]

garethace,

 

I'm not trying to bust on Aceshardware...its one of the greatest tech sites on the web currently. You usually get more information from one of their articles, then a whole grouping of other sites combined. Along with ars-technica.com, their pretty much the true sources of technical information about upcoming and current technology.

 

What I am saying however, is that I don't know

 

1) The names of who is posting.

2) Who those people are.

3) What their experience/knowledge is in the field.

4) If they even have experience in the field.

 

I tend to use my real name in forums, just so people know when I post, I ain't blowing shit outta my ass. Its easy to post under an alias, a bit harder to do it when your rep's sitting out there on the ledge.

 

Not to saying the people posting aren't experts in their fields, I just don't visit their forum's enough to know whose full of it, and whose the top dog in the industry putting the facts straight.

 

I'm with you chris. When I see it, I'll believe it .

[garethace]

Some of the Ace guys used to post on Ars before, until it got a bit spammed out with the kind of thing you describe. No i didn't think you were attempting to bust anyone. But i have spoken to Jeff about hardware web sites and your work at 3dluvr before. So what i was attempting to do was, illustrate the difference between an engineering/investor message board and a forum dedicated mainly to artists who USE highend software and computers on a daily basis.

 

I often had words with the posters on Ace about the Mackintosh platform, which still has a stronghold amongst the cgartist community. After a while, they actually began to think of me as 'the guy who uses MACs'. :ngelaugh: I have explained to the guys at Ace, how Apple MAC users are often great 'users of computers'. Some MAC users have been using computers longer than most people. While the guys at Aces often laugh at the little MAC cause it doesn't measure up with todays muscle-bulging hardware standards.

 

Most of the guys at Aces are very good IT experts and electronic/software engineers. The problem mainly with being a good engineer is you tend to be only focussed on your area - a particular aspect of a chip, technology or standard. So you have guys exclusively well-versed in thermal disipation of silicon, 3d software languages, network administration, storage devices, cpu design, product marketing, software development, driver development.... Ace is the only place where they 'get to put it all together' and see how their 'bit' fits in with the rest.

 

With cgartists, it is nice to know a bit about everything and absolutely nothing about anything. cgartists are one of the most intensive and skillful users of computer technology i have ever met. But with engineers, an individual working in one department may never know what another individual in another department in the same building is doing. We are lucky in cg, that we can share images, ideas, opinions so freely without fear of 'drifting off focus'.

 

I have a friend who has spent 3 years developing controller chips for firewire and the humble serial port in computers - nothing else. If he wants to find out 'what else' is happening in the world of technology he has no choice but to post on Ace etc. The other thing which hardware and software engineers see very little of is selling and marketing, hiring employees and so on, literarily because a different 'department' does it.

 

At least on a forum, engineers can learn valuble techniques of presenting/discussing technology with a real audience. As cgartists, especially when self-employed we tend to do ALOT or marketing and human resources ourselves, as well as actual cgwork. As STRAT points out in his 'artist pride v. commercialism' thread, sometimes that 'aspect' of the cg business can take over completely being self employed.

 

One last thing too, It MUST be extremely hard as an IT engineer to remain any way current with what is going on. This job is made none the easier by marketing departments for products who really just 'try to sell the damn thing' to unknowing consumers. With computer graphic illustration, what you learned 10 years ago is still as fresh today. In fact, better because you have built on that original good foundation. With IT and technology the playing pitch is constantly being moved, necessitating the engineer to constantly re-assess the situation he/she will be facing down the road.

 

What could be argued for computer graphics, is that is 'somewhat' rides on the coattails of this fast development cycling. But i still firmly believe, there is a core aspect of computer graphics which has NOT changed one bit since the days of Walt Disney and Bugs Bunny.

 

[ April 08, 2003, 11:47 AM: Message edited by: garethace ]

[dwright]

This is just the begining, GPU based rendering will be the way to render. This is just V1!.

 

David

[Greg Hess]

garethace,

 

Excellent post .

 

Thanks for giving us some information on the ace forums, I'll have to check them a bit more often now.

[garethace]

No problem Greg, it took me a while to compile, but worth it in the end. I managed to clear some things up in my own head that had been bothering me for a while. I have shared some of the same thoughts with the people at aces forum from time to time, and they have agreed with some things i said.

 

I have been spending some time and effort over at aces for nine months now. In that time i have had to understand a little bit more about economics, how economics drives or stops the development of technology. Sometimes a great product bombs, while an inferior product in the right place at the right time can soar to the top.

 

I know at least now that i am very naive about economics as a force that effects architecture, effects industry, politics, technological advances,... every aspect nearly of our daily lives. I have developed a real interest in how the stock markets of the world operate, how building contracts give clients value for money, and even return on investment. I owe a lot of that to the time i have spent at economics 101 over at aces hardware.

[Greg Hess]

Sometimes a great product bombs, while an inferior product in the right place at the right time can soar to the top.

 

One of the best examples of this was the original LS-120 Imation superdisk, verses Iomega's Zip 100 Drive.

 

The Superdisk ran off internal IDE, as did the Zip drive.

 

The zip drive took 100 meg removable disks.

 

The Superdisk took 120 meg removable disks, red 3.5 disks 10x faster then a normal floppy drive, was backwards compatible with both 720k and 1.44 3.5 floppy's, and benefited from a more robust design.

 

Iomega got the EDU crowd on their side...superdisk all but died.

 

I still hate iomega for pushing superdisk into the ground, if not for them, we'd all have LS-240's with the capability of reading 240, 120, and normal 3.5 floppies, as well as the ability to reformat 3.5 1.44 meg floppies into 25 meg floppies....and no damn floppy drives.

 

Its interesting your discussions about economics and the industry. I'm sure you'll bring a new perspective to the cgarchitect forums, which I really welcome .

[garethace]

Well Greg, i can only speak from my own experience of course, but for almost a decade i have surrounded myself with architect types now. Whenever economics or money, or budgets came on the ajenda, there was always this rather weird defensive attitude taken. Money is the enemy, it compromises my design, and ties my up doing unnecessary sums, when i should be drawing nice pictures! :onfusedw:

 

However, the designers of software, operating systems, hardware, IT solutions ALWAYS appear to have an eye on financial aspects. They whole-heartedly embrace that aspect.

 

Bear in mind also, that here in Europe the architect has got a separate individual called a property economist to act as the money-man in the building design process. Inevitably, this guy is a complete ego-maniac, who has no appreciation for "design", and views an architect as an irresponsible child who can get "carried away with notions". Architects here in Europe will seldom if ever use hard copy plans, or CAD 2d/3d programs to calculate costs and quantities. Nor will architects here generally do a cost feasibility for the client initially.

 

That is, to establish whether or not, the job may provide the client with good value for money at the end of the day. E.g. Will doubling the size of his factory, actually provide any increase in revenues? Most architects will just rush headlong into the design without bothering about economic feasibility. If the architect cannot provide this pre-view information, then who can?

 

One of the first computer generated visualisations i ever saw was done of a space frame roof concept for a new factory building in Ireland in 1997. The American company, was into the communications boom but has since closed down.

 

Anyhow, that project had an 11 million Irish pound budget but the space frame, though very visually appealing would drive the price up to 12 million. No marks for guessing who won that argument in the end. On top of all that, the client employed a "project manager" to fly in once a month and make sure the architect wasn't drifting off course again.

 

The project manager commanded way more fees for doing very little in the way of work. Architects always have a sack full of these kinds of horror stories to tell. But the lesson i learnt from aces guys, was that you embrace the problem of economics, use it as a design generator and learn as much as you can about "how money and investment works".

 

A typical company, speculator or client employs many designers at various times to design many different projects. They are used to closing off on their last assignment and looking forward to the next one. Clients are normally business types, but that reality is very seldom embraced and enjoyed by the architect. Which is a missed opportunity in my opinion. Just like any IT product, the product an architect is selling should provide good value for money, have a long lifespan and run itself quite efficiently.

 

Love 'em or hate'em, Gates, Dell, or any of them would not be fortune 500, if they served their customers with anything less than the client is prepared to pay for. It is a delicate balance, but economics really is the driving force.

 

[ April 09, 2003, 10:19 AM: Message edited by: garethace ]