3D printers are primarily intended for rapid prototyping, bypassing the traditional workflow of sending a CAD model to a machinist and waiting for a product to materialize. Instead you get direct printing of a 3D part.
ReadWriteWeb has posted a listing of the top ten videos about 3D printing. These videos are from FormZ, ProtoPulsion, Z Corp, Print2 3D, and Thing Labs. There is also a clip of the Star Trek Replicator thrown in for fun. While there are certainly more 3D printers out there like the HP 3D Designjet, this set of videos gives a nice overview of the technology.
I’m also including an 11th video of the new ZBuilder Ultra, which uses a DLP projector to “project” UV light onto each layers of UV-light curable polymers. The result is a smooth-finished prototype part that can be used immediately and withstand high-end functional testing. Develop3D has a good overview article on the Zbuilder Ultra.
The following video shows the production workflow integration between Maya, MachStudio Pro and PhotoShop running on a single ATI FirePro V8800. The three 2560x1600 displays are all being driven by the single FirePro graphics card using ATI Eyefinity technology.
There is a good whitepaper on Eyefinity for professional markets that explains the configurations, usage scenarios, etc.
Do multiple monitors really matter for productivity? IDC did a quick study and wrote up a whitepaper on the experience of three different companies (Cosworth, Kirkham Motorsports, and Slappy Studios) that recently made the move to multiple monitors using ATI Eyefinity. All saw notable improvements in productivity and creativity from those employees who received a multi-display upgrade.
Ever since the Radeon 5XXX series I've been eagerly waiting for the FirePro professional cards that are based on the Cypress architecture. The , announced today does not disappoint. It clearly takes the crown as the most powerful workstation graphics card on the market. Here's the gist:
1600 stream processors for more than double the computational power of the V8750
2GB of ultra high speed GDDR5 memory
Full 30-bit display pipeline (essential for medical imaging, pro video and photo editing)
Four DisplayPort outputs driven by ATI Eyefinity technology giving the option of a multi-monitor desktop of over 10,000 pixels wide; driving a 4K projector; delivering combinations of portrait and landscape orientations; driving virtual prototyping and curved "surround view" video walls.
Native CrossFire Pro multi-card support
OpenCL support!
Hardware tessellation
Stereo3D support
Windows and Linux drivers
Certified for leading CAD and DCC apps (i.e. guaranteed reliability)
Check out the FirePro V8800 web page and data sheet for complete specs.
One last note: At $1499 ($300 less than the FirePro v8750!) I want to point out that this is a really competitive price for high-end workstation graphics.
I haven't yet seen any actual performance specs, but I really want to see how this performs for Autodesk products, CATIA, and MachStudio Pro, in particular with the recently released v8.702 or better drivers. If anyone has any test results, please drop a comment.
Update: 04/07/10 - Performance reviews are already coming in from HotHardware and most notably 3DProfessor. General consensus is: performance at a completely new level.
Also worth noting are two PDF case studies for the V8800 used in Broadcast 3D CG and CAD visualization
Last week, HP announced their new 17-inch Core i5/i7 EliteBook 8740w Mobile Workstation. Although I missed the news, one of the more interesting notes is that this EliteBook ends the Nvidia workstation graphics exclusivity and now adds the ATI FirePro M7820 w/ 1GB GDDR5 memory to the line.
Configure the laptop with the ATI FirePro and in addition to better performance and half the power consumption than Nvidia’s flagship mobile workstation FX3800M, you get DirectX 11 and multi-display support. Using the FirePro the EliteBook can simultaneously support up to four independent display outputs, plus the native notebook panel, for a total of five displays.
The system will put a dent in your wallet (starting at $2k) but it is basically a full-fledged desktop workstation replacement for CAD users, graphic designers and videographers. The 1920 x 1080 30-bit DreamColor LED-backlit screen is a great option if you do anything requiring accurate color (from photo editing to medical imaging).
Update: Just noticed that at the same time, HP also quietly added the new 1GB ATI FirePro M5800 workstation graphics card to their existing 15-in EliteBook 8540w - again bringing DX11 and power-sipping efficiency compared to Quadro options.
AMD has posted a blog “Ready, Willing and Able - AMD Supports OpenGL 3.3 and OpenGL 4.0” announcing the new OpenGL 4.0 and OpenGL 3.3 beta drivers. The new beta driver fully enables the additional functionality introduced introduced in OpenGL 3.3 on all AMD ATI Radeon, ATI FirePro and ATI FireGL graphics accelerators - released since the spring of 2007. The Radeon HD 5400 Series to the Radeon HD 5900 Series, as well as the FirePro line are fully compatible with the OpenGL 4.0 standard, including tessellation and integration with the OpenCL API, enabling GPU acceleration in future OpenGL applications.
While there was a lot of positive press about the 20+% performance boosts with the new v8.072 FirePro driver release, one feature not mentioned was Linux support and performance. So Phoronix decided to run their own SPECViewPerf tests using an ATI FirePro V8750 comparing the previous fglrx 8.66.10 release found in Ubuntu 9.10 with the new fglrx 8.70.3 release.
The results speak for themselves.
31.5% faster in 3ds Max
33% faster in CATIA
33% faster in PRO/Engineer
32% faster in SolidWorks
59% faster in UGS Teamcenter Visualization Mockup
In addtion to the the major performance improvements, the article also notes the DisplayPort audio and stereo 3D support.
This month’s episode of the AMD Developer Inside Track brings AMD demo’s from the Game Developers Conference 2010.
Saif Ali, Software Engineer in the Advanced Technology Group, walks us through three examples of how OpenCL can now offer even more realistic physics experiences (cloth effects, blowing things up and fluid simulation) using Pixelux Entertainment and Bullet Physics adding significant support to the Open Physics ecosystem. The switch from rendered to wireframe and back in the cloth demo is very cool.
Christopher Jess from StudioGPU, demontrates MachStudio Pro running on a FirePro V8750 graphics card. MachStudio Pro empowers artists and designers working in film, broadcast, game development, computer-assisted design (CAD), and pre- and post-production to create and manipulate fully rendered film-quality 3D design and animation in real-time. Chris gives a walk through on what MachStudio Pro is and an example of how to use tessellation, currently an exclusive feature of ATI cards, to change the texture of a character in real time.
Over the past year many CAD and 3D sites have noted how the FirePro team has made significant strides in price/performance for the FirePro professional graphics accelerators.
A few years back the limiting factor was the software drivers. The FirePro team got the message loud and clear and have been focused heavily on producing robust, stable high-performance drivers for their FirePro line.
The latest v8.702 driver release is the culmination of much of this effort. The new driver announced today boosts application performance across the board with some notable standouts: CATIA by more than 25% and 3ds Max & PTC Pro/Engineer by more than 20%!
I got my hands on some unofficial side-by-side SPECviewperf tests comparing the FirePro V7750 on the old and new drivers. You can see the results below.
ATI FirePro V7750 performance using driver v8.702 vs v8.603
Viewperf 10 test
v8.603
v8.702
% improvement
3dsmax-04
58.08
74.36
28.03%
catia-02
55.66
73.81
32.61%
ensight-03
48.25
51.68
7.11%
maya-02
224.48
237.04
5.60%
proe-04
56.27
74.74
32.82%
sw-02
116.69
128.13
9.80%
tcvis-01
39.31
45.76
16.41%
ugnx-01
54.95
55.30
0.64%
Viewperf Composite
68.71
79.71
16.01%
The new drivers not only boost application performance but also feature:
Blue-line stereo 3D - In addition to current support of numerous active, passive and autostereoscopic displays, the new driver provides blue-line stereo support for synchronizing 3D glasses. This new mode enables stereo on any ATI FirePro graphics accelerator, without the need for the stereo synchronization connector currently available on select accelerators.
10-bit color for PhotoShop - Photoshop users now have the ability to render images with 10-bit per component color, ensuring an exact representation of colors between Photoshop CS4 and their 10-bit display, as well as the ability to maintain an end-to-end 10-bit color workflow in real-time.
DisplayPort audio - Support for 5.1 Dolby Digital and 5.1 DTS surround sound as well as 8-channel and 2-channel uncompressed audio over the display port connector
Khronos and the OpenGL ARB have made an unprecedented move by releasing two new versions of OpenGL along with two new versions of the OpenGL Shading language all simultaneously. The specs are available here - OpenGL 3.3 , GLSL 3.3, OpenGL 4.0 and GLSL 4.0. This release announced at GDC breathes new life into existing graphics hardware and also paves the way for the next generations of GPUs.
Why two core specs and two language specs at once? OpenGL 4.0 and GLSL 4.0 enables access to new hardware such as the AMD HD5000 series cards which have been shipping for 5 months. OpenGL 3.3 and GLSL 3.3 provide new features that will be accessible on a much larger current installed base. You may have noticed that the GLSL revision went from 1.5 to 3.3 and 4.0. To make things easier on developers, the Shading Language versions now match the core OpenGL versions.
OpenGL 3.3
OpenGL 3.3 adds numerous updates to OpenGL functionality to make it more usable. Occlusion queries get a new boolean mode which tells you if any samples passed. Texture lookups can be swizzled before reaching shaders. Instanced arrays allow instanced rendering to reuse attribute data on multiple vertices based on a divisor. Also new is timer functionality that allows applications to find out how long geometry takes to render.
Applications that use many textures or switch texture state frequently will be able to take advantage of the new sampler objects in OpenGL 3.3. These new objects can encapsulate traditional texture state, allowing an application to use the same texture sample state on multiple texture images or multiple sample states on the same texture image. This makes texture setup much faster and easier for applications to track.
OpenGL 4.0
OpenGL 4.0 includes all of OpenGL 3.3 plus a slew of new stuff including enhanced blending, indexed drawing from buffer objects and enhanced transform feedback functionality. It also provides access to double precision floating point data types in shaders, key for compute, design, and digital content creation where precision is critical. New texture functionality allows for advanced texture gather fetches, new texture buffer formats and cube map array textures.
OpenGL 4.0 tessellation for worskation applications
One of the biggest additions to OpenGL 4.0 is tessellation. This new feature allows an application to amplify geometry, generating tessellated geometry based on incoming vertices. Tessellation can help applications take a rough object defined by only a few vertices and generate new vertices to smooth out the object and provide more detail. Check the Stumbling Ahead blog for more info. Using tessellation can be a huge win for many workstation applications which tend to be vertex and bandwidth limited.
GL Shading Language
The GL Shading Language has also been updated with the ability to dynamically assign subroutine usage at runtime. This means you can create a GLSL program that has many different subroutines and then pick which ones are used to alter lighting, material, or other effects as each piece of geometry is rendered. This makes program management much easier and introduces previously unattainable runtime flexibility.
OpenGL 3.3 and 4.0 continue to progress 3D API standards, increasing flexibility and usability for applications. Just as important, Khronos and the OpenGL ARB continue to work on bringing you the latest and greatest access to 3D hardware.
“Avatar” and all of the hype about stereo 3D-enabled TVs aside, I still don’t get the impression that stereo 3D has really found it’s breakthrough application. CG generated films have a definite niche. But 3D micro-shutter glasses for you and your friends/family in your living room (fragile, costly and headache inducing)? I don’t think so.
3D visualization for CAD, design, architecture and mapping is a real market (check out the Infinite Z immersive, real-time virtual-holographic display, and Zebra Imaging plastic holograms for mapping and architectural design.). But it is still very limited in terms of market penetration and the ultimate value to most CAD/Design users is still untested.
But when it comes to something that is more pervasive and mainstream, I am wondering if it will be 3D digital signage that ends up the big breakthrough application. Last week was the Digital Signage Expo in Las Vegas and I noticed several press releases about companies planning to release auto-stereoscopic (no glasses needed) 3D digital signage that will be “popular with companies looking to reach consumers that have become desensitized to traditional media.”
As I wrote about previously, the upcoming Catalyst 10.3 driver for Radeons will introduce 3D stereo driver hooks - enabling third-party vendors to take advantage of more 3D stereoscopic options.
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