SIGGRAPH 2016: Computer Graphics Show Round-Up

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NVIDIA

NVIDIA introduced and demonstrated their new Pascal GPU technology. The Quadro Pascal platform for artists, designer, visual effects artists and animators gives them the power to work faster with greater creativity. The main focus though in their booth was VR tech with several real time demos taking place at SIGGRAPH.

The Quadro P6000 can power the most advanced workstations ever built. It has 3840 cores with an amazing 12 TFlops of computer power. Users can manipulate complex projects twice as fast as before.
VR Works ‘360 Video SDK gives VR developers the ability to create application to ingest, stitch, and stream 4K video feeds from multi-camera rigs, enabling 360 degree real time surround video experiences.

The addition of GPU acceleration for mental ray, one of the world’s most popular film-quality renderers was another announcement.

03 – NVIDIA at SIGGRAPH 2016. Image Photo by Akiko Ashley for Architosh. All rights reserved.

NVIDIA Optix 4, the latest version of their raytracing engine on NVIDIA’s DGX-1 supercomputer, which allows production artists to achieve the fastest interactive rendering possible for film sizes up to 64GB. Pixar Content was running on the new DGX-1, fully ray traced with NVIDIA OptiX at interactive speeds.

NVIDIA also partnered with Adobe on the world’s first real time 3D Oil Painting Simulator called Project Wet Brush.

Intel

Thunderbolt 3 was being shown on the Exhibits show floor and what a difference it makes versus Thunderbolt 2. It is twice as fast as Thunderbolt 2. It was being demoed with Intel’s new Solid State Drive 750 series that is 4 times faster then SATA SSD.

04 – The power of Thunderbolt 3. Image Photo by Akiko Ashley. All rights reserved.

First drive with NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express). This is welcome news for those dealing with heavy data loads, such as those in film and VFX markets and sciences. It will be interesting to see if Intel’s new Drive 750 series make their way into any new upcoming Macs. One thing we should assume for sure is that Thunderbolt 3 is headed to future Macs.

Thunderbolt 3 in particular would be amazing to see in an upgrade to the Mac Pro because it is truly fast enough to support external GPU enclosures like the Razer Core we wrote about recently. (see, “Could Apple Release One Of These—External GPU Enclosure Anybody?,” 29 June 2016)

LIGHTWORKS

Lightworks was showing off their Iray technology producing beautiful, photo realistic rendering demos. They showed how Iray can be used across applications, configurators and VR experiences to bring the best photorealistic, physically based materials to point of sale customer engagement projects and the design review process.

05 – Lightworks booth on show floor. Image Photo by Akiko Ashley. All rights reserved.

Lightworks has partners with NVIDIA using CUDA acceleration. This is something Architosh has written about before and one of the sad aspects of the new Mac Pros with their non-NVIDIA GPUs and lack of CUDA acceleration options.

AUTODESK

Autodesk rented space on the second floor of the Anaheim Convention Center; you could go to see demos of their latest releases on their products but the focus was on their new software upgrades for VR capabilities and 3D animation tools for indie game developers including Maya LT 17 and 3D Game Engine and Real Time Rendering solution Stringray 1.4.

MORE: SIG: Autodesk upgrades VR and 3D animation tools at SIGGRAPH 2016

There were demos of other products including Shotgun, 3DS Max and the new purchase to the family of products—Arnold. Arnold will be replacing mental ray in Maya, news that somewhat contradicts statements the company made when it acquired Arnold, saying back then that Nvidia’s mental ray and Iray renderers would continue to ship with Maya.

06 – Autodesk sessions on the second floor of the convention center. Image Photo by Akiko Ashley. All rights reserved.

I saw a demo of Arnold and Cinema 4D. Great integration and yet another rendering option for Cinema 4D which is a competitor product. True to Autodesk’s words when they acquired Arnold, the company aims to put customers first even when they are using other rival products. (see, “NAB: Autodesk acquires the Arnold Renderer and its development team,” 21 April 2016).

Shotgun showed how it is leveraging itself to be the portal to organize and bring integration to all your work tools so you can have a central location for all your assets. Shotgun is highly optimized for Apple’s Mac operating system.

next page: City Engine, Unity, Chaos Group and more….