SIGGRAPH's Computer Graphics Quarterly Newsletter features an article titled "Ending the Tradeoff of Time vs. Quality when Creating 3D Computer Graphics Content - Stepping Up the Production Workflow with Real-Time Rendering Software".
The article is about MachStudio Pro specifically, but more generally about how today's fully programmable hardware GPUs (e.g. FirePro V8750) can be optimally tapped by writing software that structures advanced rendering effects as separate independent processing passes.
"MachStudio Pro exploits a confluence of enablers emerging on the 3D graphics scene to address a glaring and unfilled need. Real-time rendering coupled with a comprehensive 3D workspace streamlines workflow, ending the compromise between time and quality."
I've been a champion of MachStudio Pro since I first saw it a year ago. But the software is now making real headway into the mainstream and getting some great reviews along the way. Renderosity just released a comprehensive review and it is worth pointing out some of the highlights:
"This is a jaw-dropping software application. It's hard to describe the impact of seeing complex lighting and shaders being applied in real-time. Every aspect of the program has been carefully considered and designed to be discreet and out of the way until you need it. And although the program doesn't render every single scene in absolute real-time, the rendering is so much faster that it seems almost real-time to anyone who has had to take a coffee break while waiting for a lighting pass to render on their render farm."
Now for all of us who live for the "what's coming next" news: Check out these two bullets:
Raytracing using DX11 Compute Shaders - "I had a first-hand demonstration of what looks to be the first DirectX 11 “compute shade” raytracing prototype, which looked fantastic. I believe Yoni told me that this will be the first time raytracing will be applied using the GPU only."
Hair - “anything you can do in 'Shave and a Haircut' you can do in MachStudio Pro's hair mode.
MachStudio Pro ships with the ATI FirePro v8750 card which carries a full 2GB DDR5 graphics memory and 800 unified shader engines. "It is quite simply the best video card you can get, hands down."
FX, lda, a one-man TV production studio in Mozambique, released the second in their series of 3D CG animated TV commercial for “Arroz Leao” brand of rice. What makes these commercials particularly interesting is that they were all produced from start to finish - the audio, modeling, lighting, rendering and client review - in one week.
The tools: ATI FirePro V8750 as the backbone for graphics acceleration; 3ds Max for modeling; MachStudio Pro for lighting and rendering (Pal frames rendered at 1.2 sec/frame!); After Effects for foreground and background compositing; and Premiere Pro for audio and final editing.
Check out this “Natal” holiday commercial and then try to fathom producing this all in a week (music is punkish so take control of your speaker volume before playing).
Asia is a booming market for CG animation. While everyone knows about Bollywood, I’m not sure everyone is aware just how impactful it is (just listened to a TED podcast about this). China is also a fast growing center for high-end digital content creation. Related to this I just received an alert about an upcoming event at Bejing Film Academy sponsored by reseller Sinotoon, Kingtoon Film & Animation and Bejing Li-Yang Light Technology on using ATI FirePro V8750 and MachStudio Pro in high end visualization and CG animation production .
This demo from IBC 2009, very clearly explains how MachStudio Pro v1.2 uses the hardware tessellation feature on the AT FirePro v8750 to add incredible levels of detail using a displacement map - all without impacting performance. Hardware tessellation in this demo increases the mesh density from a few thousand to several million polygons - without any (as in ZERO) impact on rendering speed. Now more polygons become important when you use the increased number of polygons with a displacement map. MachStudio Pro uses the displacement map to physically displace the model vertices on the model surface to create new geometries. This happens on the fly, on the ATI FirePro card, so that there is no hit to rendering, including AO, lighting, and shadows
I have a second, more complete video demo of MachStudio Pro from SIGGRAPH 2009 at the AMD booth. This demo runs through manipulating the ambient occlusion, HDR environment lights, point lights, (her eyes glow) & projected lights (amazing to watch moving these in real-time and watching the shadow), shader manipulation and displacement maps using hardware tessellation in a complex animation scene.
These are not pre-baked passes. Everything happens in real-time, on-the-fly in MachStudio Pro using the FirePro V8750 GPU and the built-in hardware tesselation.
Also one big point to make - this is not just faster final rendering. Faster final rendering doesn’t really address the issue of the 3D creative lighting and rendering workflow being a linear process. As a lighter or TD, you would still have to go through a multi-step process where creative flow is broken down into set-up time, render time and review time.
With MachStudio Pro, the workflow is changed into a non-linear one where you see the full render quality as you manipulate lights, shadows, fog, depth of field, ambient occlusion, etc. The creative component is one and the same as the rendering and review component. As you add a light, and adjust it, you see the shadows, glows, reflections, etc, as you are working, exactly as it will appear in a final render. When you scrub the timeline and watch your camera moves, you can adjust lighting and effects without having to re-render.
It is a complete change in the creative workflow. This is why everyone who sees this product gets so excited and why there really is nothing else like it (at Siggraph or in the market).
Demo of manipulating the ambient occlusion (AO) in a complex animation scene in real-time. These are not pre-baked passes. It is AO (as well as HDR cameras, shadows, Depth of Field, etc) calculated in real-time in MachStudio Pro using the FirePro V8750 GPU.
Like Develop3D, I am a big supporter of MachStudio Pro and how it is shaking up the CG industry by using the GPU to move from a traditional linear, setup-preview-render workflow into a completely non-linear workflow with real-time control and feedback.
This year at SIGGRAPH, StudioGPU is showing off v1.2 of MachStudio Pro. Several significant enhancements in this new release:
Ships with a FirePro v8750 (previously shipped with a FireGL v8650). I am hearing reports of striking performance increases (as in doubled).
Real-time hardware-based geometry tessellation in conjunction with displacement maps for unbelievable surface details
Stereoscopic camera support for anaglyphic effects (see Pansy Warrior Princess for an example)
Cartoon shading - I assume for the previz and architectural crowd
Unlimited render passes to generate separate layers for later compositing in other apps like FCP or Shake (e.g. ambient occlusion, shadows, diffuse, specular, velocity maps, depth maps, glows, etc.)
Exporter for Maya, 3ds Max, ArchiCAD, SketchUp Pro, Rhino - with SolidWorks and Blender coming soon)
So now I am not the only one dazzled by the MachStudio Pro/FirePro package. The Develop3D blog just posted their initial impressions of MachStudio Pro. A quote from the article says it all: Now I’m no rendering expert, but I have to say I was gobsmacked with the speed and quality of renders, and the control you have over scenes with near instant feedback is simply astounding. Moving rendering to the GPU is an extremely exciting development and the potential to revolutionize the design visualisation workflow is huge.
I’ve got to add one thing. If you see the product, you get this immediately, but if you are just reading about it, most people think: “ah - GPU-accelerated final renders - seems logical and we expect to see more of this trend.” But reality is, this is a lot more then accelerated final rendering. Just a fast final render means you still do setup and compositing in the same way. You setup, adjust, then render then try again until you get it right or run out of patience or budget. But the way MSP uses the GPU is that it accelerates all steps of the process, not just the final render. The creative component is the same as the rendering and viewing component. It becomes a non-linear workflow. So just saying renders of 500-900 times faster, doesn’t really cover how big of a change this really is.
Not sure my explanation makes it any clearer so I encourage you to take a look at MachStudio Pro in the AMD booth #2417 at SIGGRAPH. From what I have read, they are going to be showing some snazzy use of one of ATI’s unique strong suits: hardware-accelerated tessellation. According to the StudioGPU events page the SIGGRAPH demos will show “support for displacement mapping with hardware tessellation and the ability to process more than a billion polygons in real-time. Other new features being demonstrated will include the ability to create full motion blur with velocity maps, stereoscopic camera support, configurable anti-aliasing algorithms (Box, Gaussian, Mitchell) and many more.”
StudioGPU announced that MachStudio Pro is now shipping for Windows XP and Vista. MSRP is $4,999 and that includes an AMD ATI FireGL V8650 3D workstation graphics accelerator card (2 GB framebuffer). Here’s the short take home summary: MachStudio Pro harnesses multi-threaded GPU computing so that lighitng and render times can be dramatically reduced from hours to minutes and minutes to seconds or sub-seconds. Comparable final scenes are consistently rendered with MachStudio Pro at rates of 500 to 900 times faster than traditional rendering packages.
I’ve written about MachStudio Pro previously because it really takes advantage of the the FireGL/FirePro GPUs for real-time, non-linear 3D workflows (AMD has a winner on their hands here). But now a few reviews have started to appear that corroborate my first impressions. This software is game changing. Here’s a few of the latest:
MachStudio Pro is a jewel in the GPGPU crown Bright Side of News
“3D artists prepare to be amazed - StudioGPU released MachStudio Pro. If you thought that Modo was pretty rad, you haven’ seen anything yet.”
MachStudio Pro democratizes content creation studiodaily blogs
“MachStudio Pro isn’t simply about a dramatic speed-up in rendering time: it’s about subverting the production-line assembly of CG images, in which each task–lighting, texturing, cameras–is an island. Instead, MachStudio Pro aims for a nonlinear pipeline in which any aspect of the image can be tweaked at any point in the creation process.”
StudioGPU replaces computer animation render farms with $5,000 PC VentureBeat
“I’ve seen the demo with my own unbelieving eyes. A single graphics accelerator card on a standard Intel-powered PC can now render in seconds what used to take a roomful of servers all day.”
FireUser.com is a community resource for visualization, 3D, video and engineering professionals to learn about the latest acceleration and display technologies, discuss support issues, as well as influence the features and direction of the FireGL and FirePro accelerator line.
I've been a champion of 
So now I am not the only one 
