Archive for the ‘iray’ Category
SIGGRAPH 2010
This past week (July 25th through 29th 2010) Ryan and I attended the annual SIGGRAPH convention, this time held in downtown Los Angeles California.
To say we had a great time would be an understatement. It was our first time at SIGGRAPH so we had a lot to explore, and being ‘newbies’ to the event it was all a fascinating and unique experience for us. On Sunday we flew in to LAX and spent some quality time exploring the Convention Center and looking at the poster gallery. Each poster held a summary of the sessions being held during the week, and the technology on display at the convention.
Monday during the day was mostly spent in the Emerging Technologies area. In this large hall it was one thing after another of cutting edge developments, the strange, and the interesting. One of the first things we found was an electronic eye being developed by Disney’s engineering group. It started out as an eyeball free-floating in a fish bowl which could be directed to look in a particular direction via electromagnetism, something to have in their haunted house. This eventually turned into a large eyeball prototype consisting of a free-floating eye in a plastic sphere with coils arranged along the outside to control the orientation of the eyeball. The really unique things about this is that they can also pull video from the floating eye! The eye is now about the same size as a human eye and can be placed easily in robotic heads, and because it has a stationary outer sphere that encloses the floating eye it also has potential as a prosthetic eye for people.
There were a number of demonstrations going on including one about lenses and optics by the guy that designed the camera optics for the lunar missions for NASA. Fascinating. There were interactive articulated humanoid robots, terminator-like robotic arms that work from a video image of a human arm/hand and could (remotely) pick up and set down items from a table, albeit slightly shakily. Some things in the gallery were art, or art as proof-of-concept for ideas, and often times the simplicity of the display masked the difficult technology and years of research needed to get to that point. Groups from around the world – Japan and Germany in particular – made the trip to show the world what they were up to. I won’t go into all the things that were there, but it took most of the day to get through and was fascinating.
We coincidentally ended up behind Ludwig von Reiche and Barry Ruff of mental images while in line for lunch, and got to meet them both and chat briefly about the book. As Ludwig put it, it is one of the great things about SIGGRAPH; you never know who you are going to meet.
Monday afternoon was the Autodesk Education Summit at the new Marriott LA Live, and they had three speakers including Chicago’s own Perry Horovas of Tribeca Flashpoint. All the talks were exceptional, and unfortunately we didn’t have any time after this to mingle as we needed to get to the mental images event immediately afterwards.
The invitation only mental images event, also at the new Marriott LA Live, and that was a lot of fun. I got to meet Zap Andersson in-person finally, and he is, of course, a really nice guy. I didn’t get much opportunity to talk with him as the place was packed beyond capacity, I ended up mingling a lot on my way to drop off business cards for a raffle, and there was an endless stream of interesting people to meet and talk with. I got to meet Bart Gawboy, the mi Director of Training and overall mr guru, but again didn’t get much time to chat. Zap and Bart were in high demand, I’m sure, and the place was packed. There were several tables where it looked like they were going to do demonstrations, but that was impossible due to the crowd and the noise. In mingling I got to meet Alexander Keller, mi’s Chief Scientist, and Juri Abramov, the Director of Software Development, and got to chat for a while with them. Juri was in a deep discussion with Ivan or Rainmaker Entertainment (Vancouver) and discussing the advantages, disadvantages and workflows of mental ray and Renderman. Ivan was critical of mental ray and felt that – compared with Renderman (Rman actually) – it lacked essential tools for production use. The main difference between Pixar and mental images is that Pixar also produces animation and they build their tools to work in a production environment whereas mental images does not have a production studio.
Once I made it back to the other end of the room near Zap and Ryan I found Ryan hanging out with and getting his picture taken with a group of people I didn’t know. It turns out it was Rolf Herkin and friends. Rolf is the CEO and CTO of mental images, and one of the people in the group saw the book on the table next to Ryan and had Ryan join their group. Rolf and many others had no idea that I had written a book and we all talked for quite a while about the book, along with the writing and publishing process.
After mingling some more there was a raffle (we didn’t win anything) and then I got a chance to talk with Rolf and Ludwig together. Ludwig mentioned how difficult it has been to start mr User’s Groups anywhere but LA, and where they have existed briefly elsewhere there has been only a couple/few people involved. I told him of my experiences in the Chicago area how the Max user’s are very interested, and we have had two annual “mental ray Seminars” that had between 60 and 80 live attendees along with online attendees. So, perhaps, there are some opportunities to get some things moving in a more mi-sponsored way for the mr Seminars and groups.
Somewhere in there I got an invitation to come to Berlin, and offers for a lot of support for my efforts with mental ray and iray. Having never been beyond the US and a little piece of Canada, going to Europe would be exceptionally cool. Gotta get that passport now. :)
The mi/mr event was very fun and a lot of interesting conversation, and certainly a highlight of the week.
After the mi event Ryan and I went to the CG Architect gathering at a bar near the hotel. I got to meet Jeff Mottle in-person, and we also got introduced to the two Brians with 3DATS. I’ll be taking over Pete Draper’s mental ray class next week as he is in India working and won’t be able to do the training. Mark Gerhard had considered doing the training, but is now part of the TurboSquid team (congrats Mark!). I’m excited for the opportunity.
Again, it was nice to put names to faces and to meet the other players in the new CG School in Miami. The first book by Brian Smith of 3DATS was inspirational to me in that it was written in a style I could connect with, and focused on the essential tools and practical techniques, and in many ways I kept those things in mind as I developed my book.
Tuesday I had a video shoot for Sybex, which will appear on Amazon.com and their web site, and that went very well I’m told. Next I did an appearance at the Sybex booth to demo and answer questions to anyone that was interested. I got to meet Chip Weatherman of HNTB, a fellow Beta Tester and a reviewer of the book. Chip said that the book has been an invaluable resource and had helped them out time after time. Comments like that are what I appreciate the most, to know that the book has helped someone with their work. Eddie Perlberg stopped by to take a picture, and I have to make sure I get a copy of that.
We spent a couple hours looking through the first section of the convention floor. Ryan found some trick Photoshop tools that solved a number of problems he was having and we bought that right away. We had to run to a 3ds Max session, and Ryan bugged out of there early to play with his new toys (he had a project due Thursday, too).
Wednesday I went to the first NVIDIA session on iray and cloud computing, presented by Alexander Keller and Michael Kaplan of mental images. It was very interesting to learn about the how and why of GPU-accelerated raytracing and some of what is going on with the workings of iray in particular. I hope the PowerPoint or other similar documents will be available at some point. The iray demo was excellent, of course, and there was a lot of horsepower behind what they were doing. It was amazing how fast it got to a resolved image.
The remainder of Wednesday was spend going from booth to booth (stopping if interesting) and seeing what they were showing. I met a lot of interesting folks, picked up a lot of material, and gave away a few books to key people (courtesy of me and Sybex). I spent a lot of time at Autodesk and NVIDIA/mental images and meeting people and getting demos, or watching as many of the presenters at Autodesk as I could. I figure those will be on The Area at some point, eh?
One highlight at the show was William Shatner and Dick Van Dyke appearing at the NewTek booth. Dick was an absolute delight, and just what you would expect; ear-to-ear grin, outgoing, and funny at every moment. He has been a user of 3d software (Lightwave) for over 20 years, and active in user’s groups and the like. A fan and a hobbyist. Bill was returning a favor to the Lightwave people for help with www.myouterspace.com, and had no clue what was going on. Both were funny on stage and very outgoing, but Bill looked unapproachable as he walked past me twice to/from the stage. He only came up to my shoulder, too (which isn’t that hard). Dick was very approachable and I got to thank him as he went by. Dick truly beams joy, and loves the crowd as much as they love him. They showed videos of him in various shows on the screen behind them, like Chitty Chitty and The Dick VD Show, and the crowd would let out a big applause. He’d look back and laugh, and then joke about not having the legs for that anymore, but you got the sense he’d be up there dancing and singing if he could. He was fascinated by all the technology, and told a story about his friend Walt Disney and how he would have just loved every bit of what what was at the show. Dick talked about the early ‘special effects’ days and they had these sulfur lamps to light the background so they could then composite backgrounds, animated creatures, or whatever. The event was recorded, and I’m guessing it will show up on the NewTek.com site at some point.
I got to meet Louis Marcoux and chat with him for a while and catch the “3ds Max Tips and Tricks” which was very cool. Then the day was done. There was a two-hour gap between the end of the show and a party we were going to so I crashed at the hotel, out like a light. I woke up too late to really get a cab and make it anywhere, and added to the fact we had a very early flight and were exhausted, decided to call it a show.
A fun and fascinating week that I definitely will try to work into my schedule every year that I possibly can. Next year is Vancouver!
3ds Max 2011 Announced
If you have not seen the news yet, 3ds Max 2011 has been announced by Autodesk. See Ken P’s blog at: http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/ken/3ds_max_2011_announced The software was also demonstrated at the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) on March 11th through 13th. There are a lot of new features in Max, but also a lot of new stuff for Maya and Softimage 2011. Those videos will be available soon on www.area.autodesk.com
I can’t discuss anything beyond what has been released so far, and as I understand it 3ds Max Design 2011 will be announced at a later date. Being involved with the alpha, beta and release candidate (RC) versions of the software is an interesting process. It is fun, of course, to hear about the new details being introduced into the software, and it is also interesting to hear some of the reasons things are the way they are. Suffice it to say that I think the developers are fighting the good fight to get you the reliable tools you need to get the job done, and to get the resources to get the development accomplished. It isn’t always what a particular user might like, but the world is full of compromises. There is never infinite resources for the things we want to see accomplished. I think with this release people will see things start to come together, and the Excalibur information Autodesk released helped to explain the path they are taking.
I like to see them bring in tools from other developers, and the new Slate Material Editor (SME) is a welcome addition. Based on the Node Joe editor, it is one tool that saw a lot of internal development from Autodesk; it wasn’t a simple drop-in. Since it was continually changing during the writing of the book, Chapter 2, “Materials and Maps”, was a bit of a moving target and saw a lot of revisions in the many months I worked on the book. The final release of Max has a couple subtle differences, and I’ll see if anyone notices. :)
My opinion of the SME is that it will greatly help people at all levels create and manage materials. It will particularly help new users that are typically confused by the way that you navigate materials and maps in legacy Max; the user adds a bitmap to a material and the UI switches to the bitmap settings, and they don’t know how to get back to the parent level or where they are and why their settings disappeared. Hopefully they will eventually find the Material/Map Navigator button, or the Up To Parent button, but I have dealt with a lot of new users that have a very hard time getting their head around the editor. With the SME everything is visible and you see the connections between maps and materials. Much better, IMHO, and a targeted response by Autodesk in improving workflow. The Excalibur information promises more node-based workflow in Max, so the next few years will be exciting times in the Max world.
Another feature that has been announced is the Quicksilver rendering engine. This is a GPU-based renderer and a pretty cool tool. Do not expect it to run well on old and/or low-end graphics cards. A newer card with 1gb of memory (or more) is likely to give you the features and speed that you are expecting from the renderer. It isn’t mental ray, but for many scenes and on the right hardware it can burn through images pretty quickly.
The new functionality of Containers is another welcome addition. I have been slow to warm up to containers, I’ve had a few issues, however the new ability to make local ‘reference-like’ edits to the objects may sway me into using these more often. The XRef Scene functionality is what I typically use when importing and sharing external geometry.
Ken mentions “Viewport Display of 3ds Max Materials”. Each new release of Max has brought additional functionality to the viewport Hardware Shading functionality, and this is an area of serious development at Autodesk, as is the Quicksilver renderer. The better your video card the better it works, and a nice game-rated card gives an excellent preview of your rendering in the viewwport.
3ds Max Composite, based on the Toxik application, is another welcome addition. In Chapter 10 “mr for Design” I cover a few basics for compositing an image, however Composite is a big application and spending some quality time with the introduction tutorials, and going over the training DVDs from Ken LaRue’s company www.thestreetproductions.com will give you a firm foundation for effectively using this program. I still use Combustion but as I move from PNG and RPF files to OpenEXR using Composite will be essential. The only drawback to Composite is that it shares a license with Max and only runs on the same workstation as Max; you can’t run it on a separate workstation from Max.
Ken P’s 3ds Max 2011 announcement makes mention of “mental ray 2011″, which is mental ray 3.8. I understand that Ken mentioned on CGTalk that iray is not going to be included with Max 2011 or any mr3.8 Autodesk applications, and I believe that it really comes down to keeping only production-ready tools in the program. The iray application was still in development when the 2011 features were set in stone an completing the current toolset was the focus. I hope that it will come out as a subscription benefit down the line, but Autodesk does not tell the beta testers about their future plans and I have no inside information.
One very cool addition to Max 2011 is the ability to control mental ray via string options. For instance, in MAXScript, you can perform a few options to access mental ray and then send a character string such as:
“importons” on
…to enable that feature. I will most assuredly have more on using mental ray strings here on the web site, and I’m working on a few things now to help optimize your mental ray settings.
As far as Importons and Irradiance Particles, Max Tarpini will be coming out with a new plugin that is compatible with Max 2011. Although Max 2011 is plugin compatible with plugins for Max 2010, mental ray has changed and so must Max T’s plugin. The Max 2011 ctrl.ghost plugin shipping with the book worked in earlier betas but broke at some point. You can access my information on the ctrl.ghost plugins at:
I’ll be adding an article on the updated ctrl.ghost and mental ray functionality once 3ds Max/Design is released.
Jenni
Final DVD burned, and another book?
I got the DVD image from Wiley’s production group late last week, and went through the files and checked them again for accuracy. Autodesk changed a few minor things in the latest build so I changed a few files so they will open correctly and find the files they need.
Wiley moved all the book files into a sub-folder to work with their Flash menus, so people will hopefully figure out to go to the “Lesson Files” folder for the folders mentioned in the book. They also moved the IPF files for Irradiance Particles into a separate folder, and again I’m sure people will figure out where the pre-computed files are located.
A friend of mine at NVIDIA asked me if I would be interested in writing a book about the new iray application, which would be great I’m sure, so I’m starting to put together some ideas for what to cover. The book would not be specific to 3ds Max/Design and would potentially cover products from Autodesk and other developers like Dassault. Interesting? Is that something you would like to see?
Jenni
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