SIGGRAPH 2015: OTOY improves economies of scale, speed and cost with powerful next-generation production pipelines

SIGGRAPH 2015, Los Angeles, CA – Cloud graphics company, OTOY Inc., unveiled at SIGGRAPH this week, next-generation production pipelines set to dramatically improve economies of scale, speed and cost for CG rendering, post production, and VR and AR development, through flexible, cloud-based technologies designed for current and forthcoming production needs.

Showcasing how even the most demanding production requirements can be handled with ease by these pipelines, OTOY demonstrated the first-ever example of a navigable, room-sized light field rendering with animation in VR, live 360-degree avatar scanning for VR, 16K video production and playback, and insanely fast rendering of volumetric effects, all powered by OTOY technologies including OctaneRender, OctaneRender Cloud, and ORBX Media Player.

“OTOY has made astounding progress, taking breakthrough technologies we premiered at SIGGRAPH last year and productizing them into fully functional, future-ready production pipelines that anyone can use today,” said Jules Urbach, Founder and CEO, OTOY. “The most demanding formats such as holographic light field rendering and 16K video are achievable today in an economic way, using existing tools. We’re proud to continue our tradition of graphics innovation, and will strive to put even more revolutionary capabilities in the hands of content creators everywhere.”

OTOY is demonstrating the following at SIGGRAPH at booth 845:

Groundbreaking photorealistic VR and AR with OTOY’s holographic light field rendering pipeline

• Used to produce stunning VR works for studios like Warner Bros., OTOY is putting the power of holographic light field rendering in the hands of content creators around the world, allowing them to produce photorealistic, navigable VR and AR experiences based on CG content, real-world scans, or a combination of the two.
• The pipeline consists of OTOY’s light field camera array and LightStage technology to capture real-world content, OctaneRender for creating synthetic content, OctaneRender Cloud for seamlessly and rapidly producing the rendered output with just a few clicks within OctaneRender Standalone or any OctaneRender plugin, and OTOY’s ORBX Media Player for viewing the experience on PC, mobile and tablet devices, and head-mounted displays.
• Publishing tools on Octane Render Cloud enable ORBX projects to be updated and deployed to specific device profiles including the Samsung Galaxy Gear VR, HTC Vive, Sony’s Project Morpheus and Oculus Rift CV1.
• At SIGGRAPH, OTOY is demonstrating the technologies that make up the pipeline, along with some stunning examples of the results, including:
• The first-ever navigable, room-sized light field with animation in VR using the HTC Vive,
• AR integration using a Google Project Tango tablet enabling light field objects to be viewed from any angle,
• 18K stereo cube map movies and navigable scenes played back on the Samsung Galaxy Gear VR at 60 frames-per-second with the use of Lua scripts for interactive content support and custom user-interface elements,
• Stunning light field captures of real-world environments such as the Walt Disney Music Hall in Los Angeles,
• And content from studio and artist partners.

The ultimate in VR presence with live 360-degree avatar scanning for VR

• Bundled with OTOY’s ORBX Media Player, the ORBX Media Server enables human-sized avatar scanning, creating a live representation of yourself in a VR experience that mirrors your actions in the real world, and will allow you to interact with others in the same room or over the Internet.
• ORBX Media Server integrates data from position tracking systems such as Valve’s Lighthouse and Microsoft Kinect cameras to untethered mobile VR devices such as the Samsung Galaxy Gear VR, while streaming VR experiences such as 18K stereo cube map videos from a PC server to the Gear VR over Wi-Fi.
• The avatar scanning can be combined with other technologies such as LightStage face scans and CG bodies or avatars saved in the ORBX file format to produce evermore realistic representations of users inside of VR applications.

01 – OTOY Live 360-degree Avatar Scanning Demonstration at SIGGRAPH 2015

The prototype shown at SIGGRAPH uses the depth information from a Microsoft Kinect V2 camera to scan users, and OTOY is working to support other scanning technologies in the future.

Handling demanding rendering with ease with OTOY’s 16K video pipeline

• Using OctaneRender to create scenes, OctaneRender Cloud for quick and easy rendering, and ORBX Media Player for playback, the 16K video pipeline demonstrates how even the most demanding future media standards can be handled easily and economically today with existing OTOY technologies, scaling to thousands of GPUs to render the most complex animations and still frames.
• OTOY is demonstrating 16K video built using the pipeline, played on a 16K video wall made of 12 UltraHD 4K displays on its booth at SIGGRAPH.

The first-ever hands-on of OctaneRender 3 preview

• At SIGGRAPH, for the first time ever, OTOY will let users try out the next version of the world’s best GPU renderer, OctaneRender 3, test driving its speed and efficiency of volumetric rendering for effects like smoke and fire.
• OctaneRender 3 uses OpenVDB for volumetric rendering in real-time with unbiased, spectrally correct quality. Built in atmosphere controls in environment nodes provide full control of dust and particle thickness in the air across an entire scene delivering a huge jump in realism for any render.
• For content creators who are unable to make it to SIGGRAPH, OTOY is also hosting a live version of OctaneRender 3 on the OTOY website allowing users to test the new version in their browser by visiting www.otoy.com and clicking the “Octane Demo” link.

About OTOY Inc.

OTOY Inc. is the definitive cloud graphics company, pioneering technology that is redefining content creation and delivery for media and entertainment organizations around the world. OTOY’s Academy Award®-winning technology is used by leading visual effects studios, artists, animators, designers, architects, and engineers, providing unprecedented creative freedom, new levels of realism, and new economics in content creation and distribution powered by the cloud. For more information, visit www.otoy.com.