Next week is Autodesk University 20010 in Las Vegas and the FirePro line and Eyefiinity multi-display technology will be on display in the AMD booth #1201 and at the conference. (Mandalay Bay Hotel, South Convention Center, Level 2, Shoreline B).
If you are attending, check the AMD booth to win FirePro T-shirts, FirePro graphic cards, Autodesk software and a very, very cool 2 foot Ferrari Spider remote conrtol car.
If you aren’t familiar with Eyefinity for Autodesk software solutions, check out these videos I posted yesterday. Eyefinity is a clear differentiator for the professional markets - it what transforms stability and performance, into productivity and communication.
Unrelated but certainly attracted my attention: Attendees at AU will get a sneak peek of the design and visual effects of the upcoming movie TRON: Legacy.
I’ve been waiting for this since it was demoed in the AMD booth at SIGGRAPH 2010: KeyShot 2.1 adds GPU support to it’s real-time rendering raytracing and global illumination engine. Until now, KeyShot has supported multiple CPUs, but now it supports the FirePro GPUs to maximize rendering speed and performance.
At SIGGRAPH, Luxion was demonstrating realtime ray traced subsurface scattering on a FirePro V8800 - basically they can render realistic natural translucent materials such as human skin, plants, windows interactively, in realtime, without any approximations. The graphic in this post is of a fully interactive raytraced human head with subsurface scattering, where the skin is rendered using the true optical properties of human skin.
SolidSmack has a great review of KeyShot 2. With 2.1 now out, this is really the rendering software to beat (sorry Bunkspeed).
Update Oct 7 Check out the review of KeyShot 2.1 on Develop3D. Here’s the great summary: ” I tthink it’s one of the best products in the world of technology for those involved in product development. Not just in rendering circles, but in general. After all, if you’ve got a job to do, you need to do it well, in a timely manner and as efficiently as possible. That’s what a tool should do. And KeyShot, frankly, excels.
And in reference to the new GPU-acceleration features: Many of these [other GPU-based simulation products] have proprietary requirements for the GPU in use such as NVIDIA’s Cuda architecture but KeyShot doesn’t. if your workstation or laptop has a GPU in place, it’ll work and have the following effect calculated separately both in real time mode and when rendering out a final pass.
PC Perspective weighs in on the FirePro V9800 with it’s Eyefinity 6 HD display outpus. As they note, if you are looking at performance only, the Quadro 5000 is a competitor. But the FirePro V9800 is clearly targeting developers and professional user interested in performance plus multi-displays to increase their productivity or even to create new workflow models for their business.
PC Perspective’s conclusion: “If you are in the market for a multi-display card, there is nothing even close to the FirePro V9800 and its 6 DisplayPort outputs except maybe AMD’s own V8800 with four. AMD is hoping to capitalize on that customer need with a solution that can dramatically lower their costs and provide new development and display experiences. “
They also note: “Combining more than one V9800 card is possible using the FirePro S400 card - a small board that is responsible for synchronizing display outputs on multiple graphics cards. Using the S400 a system can support up to four FirePro V9800s (or any other GPU) for a total of 24 outputs in a single PC! While a set of four V9800 cards is going to be expensive ($14,000 or so), that cost is well below any other professional solution that provides that many display configurations.”
IBC demo Stereo 3D compositing using Fusion 6.1 on the FirePro V8800
This demo from IBC 2010 is a lot better in person because when you put on the glasses, you can see the 3D!
In any case, the demo shows eyeon Fusion 6.1 compositing and rendering software, running in real-time for editing a 3D stereo scene using 4 displays running on a single FirePro V8800 graphics card.
The two displays on the side, let you see the individual right and left channels, so you can work on them individually.
The third display, shows the 3D image output via the Stereo output on the FirePro (visible using the passive glasses). And a fourth displays shows additional footage for compositing.
More from IBC: Barco 4k display running off a single FirePro V8800
This one is hard to grasp until you actually see it in person. The 4k Barco display is commanding in size and resolution. For film resolution compositing, color grading and rendering, there is nothing like this. You could use 4 individual displays connected by a single FirePro V8800, but there are always seams between them. This Barco is really stunning without seams and with incredible performance - again, driven by a single FirePro V8800 using Eyefinity.
The application that is doing the real time rendering is VRED 64-bit.
By the way, sadly I missed the Klingon Opera that was performed this weekend at the Zeebelt Theater in The Hague.
I’m loving it at IBC. Very cool stuff on display. And I biked (on a typical Amsterdam 40lb clunker bike) from my hotel, along the canals, to the convention center - what a trip!
Below is a video of the FirePro V9800 video wall at IBC.
This FirePro V9800 really opens up a new market - low cost, high performance video walls. This demo at IBC shows two FirePro V9800 cards driving a 12 HD display video wall (each card has 6 DisplayPort outputs). The complex graphics are being rendered in real time on the GPU using Vizrt. Synchronization across the two GPUs is handled by the FirePro S400 synchronization card.
I’m at IBC at Amsterdam where AMD has a big showing in the DCC markets. I am posting videos as I get them.
Here the first:
Demo at IBC 2010 of Ventuz real-time 3D authoring and rendering on the GPU using DX11 for presentations across 4 displays (5120 X 2880) using the ATI FirePro V8800. Real-time means you can control the presentation in a non-linear fashion. Pretty slick.
TroubleMaker Studios is up to it again, using the AMD FirePro V8800 and 6-core Opterons for post-production on the the upcoming film “Machete” on a compressed schedule. A team of ten artists accomplished 500 final shots in just six months.
Shots from three different digital camera models, one film camera, camera tracking work using PFTrack, 3D special effects work using Softimage, and compositing work using Nuke, all came together through AMD hardware.
Such added effects include extensive set damage, a huge number of bullet holes, and wide-ranging set extensions. AMD hardware also played a part in sophisticated particle simulations helped more accurately render realistic blood spatters that interact with each other, the actors and objects in the environment.
Just saw this in my RSS feed from Vizworld. If you’re a designer, recent graduate, student or talented young gun in Italy, now is your chance to shine and bring your work to a wider audience. To enter the Autodesk-sponsored contest post a link to your 3D visualization or design visualization showreel in any format, along with a description under 140 characters as to why you think you’re the hottest design visualization talent around.
The grand prize winner receives a high-end ATI FirePro graphics card with the two runners up receiving mid-range FirePro cards. The contest will run from September 1st to October 1st.
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