 | | | real time rendering | real time rendering 2004-02-01 - By Dave Angelini
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In light of the fact that a number of movies released in 2003 have set new
milestones in special effects (The Matrix films and Lord of the Rings),
there have been a number of articles in 3D World and Film and Video which
basically ask "What next?".
While everyone is getting excited about real-time rendering in the game
world, this level of excitement has not fully trickled over to the a
"high-end content creation" market (namely broadcast and film), though many
do see the gap closing between the two. But they see it first happening to
two areas:
1) Real time pre-visualization: Directors are beginning to embrace digital
VFX because the artists and technicians have figured out ways to use gaming
technology to allow the directors to visualize "on-the-set" exactly what the
computer generated creation is going to look like on screen (this probably
explains why 500+ effects shots for a movie is now very common). This was
first used in A.I. where Stephen Spielberg could see how a futuristic city
would look like on the green screen stage in real time as the camera was
being moved. He could plan his shots in real time on the stage without
having to be locked into some pre-determined motion controlled camera move
that was planned months earlier via alternate non-real time previsualization
techniques. Peter Jackson also used it in The Fellowship of the Ring during
the battle with the cave troll. He could determine how the cave-troll would
appear in the camera frame on the live-action stage (not a green screen
stage) and therefore deal with it like any director would deal with a live
action actor.
2) Sharing of data-assets between film and game development. If the gaming
industry can manage the higher-resolution meshes/textures/motions used in
the film industry, then they can share those assets without the need to
create "down-rezed" versions.
Actually, the trend in the VFX industry now is more HDRI and SS (sub-surface
scattering) being used in more and more visual effects shots. The other
trend is a greater use of procedural animation ("universal capture" and
intelligent simulations used in character animation) and better physical
simulation (cloth, water, fire). Rather than "fake" reality in the past,
they are beginning to use better computational algorithms to simulate
virtual reality directly in the computer. All of these are computationally
expensive and therefore keep final VFX work from becoming real-time. Don't
forget that as rendering technology becomes faster, so won't simulation
technology get better, thereby consuming whatever bandwidth gains have been
made by the rendering technology.
It will be interesting to see who wins the race and whether or not real-time
high-end content creation becomes a standard within the Hollywood industry.
Thanks,
Dave Angelini
-- -- Original Message -- --
From: Roman Ormandy
To: truespace@(protected)
Sent: Sunday, February 01, 2004 2:41 AM
Subject: Re: [TSML] Real time rendering
You are right Shawn, Hollywood will stop spending big bucks on render farms,
though it will take them a while:) That is a real time screen grab! Holywood
better rethinks their business models:)
Roman
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