SIG’18: Siggraph 2018 — Vancouver Highlights From Computer Graphics Show

SIGGRAPH 2018, in Vancouver, had a big focus on women in the field of computer graphics with prominent speakers of women in strong predominant roles. VR/MR/AR are still significant areas of development; this year the “Immersive Pavilion,” a Virtual Augmented and Mixed Reality Program, debuted. GPU technology is growing exponentially, defying Moore’s law.

Growth in Architects and Designers

Architect and designers with creative teams are putting together spatial experiences changing the way that people buy homes and plan cities. The effects of VR are not limited to just large design firms as smaller firms start to integrate VR/AR into their pipelines.

The session called “Architectural VR: The Hidden Giant, presented by Kilograph” at VRLA 2018 quoted a recent study that found that 50% of architectural firms are using VR or AR in their work and two-thirds were planning on doing VR work by 2019.  Architectural Visualization in VR is growing though not many people are talking about it.

Marc Petit, of Unreal Engine, did a presentation at SIGGRAPH last year and stated that architectural firms in Europe were adopting the Unreal Engine in their visualization including using it for VR/MR/AR. We discuss below some of these products for these pipelines with new hardware innovations in the space.

Unreal Engine

Unreal Engine is no longer just for gamers. It has become one of the most widely used tools for creating VR. Unreal Engine provides multiple options for importing architectural models, scenes, and textures using software packages like 3DS Max, Maya, Houdini, Cinema 4D and much more.

At the moment TwinMotion is one of the most widely used solutions for architects using ARCHICAD on the Mac and PC. Unreal Engine Online Learning content is split into several tracks: Game Development, Architecture, Industrial Design, and Media & Entertainment. “Content” is also sorted by job roles and engine features. There are videos available anytime, on demand.

Firms who are buying Apple iMac Pros want to know all the options available to them for creating visualization and VR. These are a few, but more are coming every day.

Maxon

Maxon recently released version 20 of Cinema 4D with key highlights including:

• Node-Based Materials — providing possibilities for creating materials from simple references to complex shaders in node-based editors.
• New capabilities in MoGraph Fields; CAD Data Import can be seamlessly imported into Cinema 4D R20.
• Volume Modeling — used to create complex models by adding and subtracting basic shapes in Boolean-type operations.
• ProRender Enhancements in Cinema 4D R20 extends the GPU rendering toolsets with key features sub-surface scattering, motion blur, and multi-passes.
• Core Technology Modernization with substantial API enhancements.

I asked Paul Babb, President of Maxon USA, what the iMac Pro pipeline would look like for architects who want to do VR using an option without TwinMotion.

“TwinMotion is not the only way to get C4D assets into Unreal, there are many methods, including the [Maxon] Cineversity plugin we released early this year. However, a seamless workflow from Cinema 4D into the Unreal engine is certainly something that is of great interest to Maxon. I cannot comment on the progress of that effort, but it is a high priority. There are many solutions to work with C4D into Unreal. It is our goal to make that workflow even easier.”

I think Cinema 4D R20 is one most reliable software packages to consider when you are considering doing architectural visualization and VR/AR interactive presentations.

Chaos Group

Chaos Group previewed Lavina using Microsoft DXR to deliver 3 to 5 times faster ray-tracing performance over Volta generation with scenes imported from Autodesk Maya or 3DSMax. Chaos Group also has an option for exporting a V-Ray scene file from any V-Ray product of your choice into V-Ray for Unreal.

Chaos Group says, “V-Ray lights and materials will be automatically converted into real-time equivalents, and your original V-Ray assignments are maintained so you can still access V-Ray from within Unreal. Once you’re in Unreal, you can navigate in real time, and you can also render fully ray traced V-Ray images.” You can export V-Ray scene files from Maya, Houdini, and SketchUp on the iMac Pro right into Unreal. V-Ray for Maya, beta 2 is now available as is V-Ray for Houdini Beta.

Chaos Group also notes, “For Mac users that are using V-Ray for Maya, Houdini or SketchUp, they can freely access the beta of V-Ray Cloud and try free cloud rendering for a limited time.”

next page: OTOY, Allegorithmic, Nvidia, Autodesk and Closing Comments

OTOY

OTOY and Epic Games unveiled Octane Render for the Unreal Game Engine.  Octane Render 4.0 is available with a complete feature release including a new volumetric Denoiser, light linking, and a  true Uber material to the GPU renderer.  OTOY demonstrated a demo of Vectron and Spectron, the new procedural uber primitives and volumetric lighting system due in Octane Render revision 2018.1.

There were demonstrations of environmental reflections in real time with AR Kit in Unity.

Allegorithmic

Allegorithmic hosted a Substance Day Event at Meeting Room 1 at the Vancouver Convention Center. Sebastien Deguy, Allergorithmic’s CEO, presented what’s new in Substance including the new user interface look, floating windows, align nodes, contextual editing, faster bakers, 3D shape nodes and a new splatter node, shape extrude node, splatter node.

Get more control on normal maps with normal map intensity and transform, better transformation tools (Quad Transform, Trapezoid Transform), new gradient tools with control points. There are new node improvements including new and improved flood fill, material transform improvement, new reaction and diffusion filter, and faster auto levels. A new Python API that will allow you to control every part of Substance Designer through scripting.

Substance Day included a session on VR/AR Experience in Architectural & Design hosted by Stephen Phillips, CTO, from Theia Interactive. The session talked about recreating client materials in Substance Designer to painting details using Substance Painter and bashing together a scene with Substance Source.

Nvidia

NVIDIA stole the stage at the keynote as CEO Jensen Huang unveiled the new Turing Based Quadro RTX video cards including the Quadro RTX 8000, Quadro RTX 6000, and the Quadro RTX 5000 bringing hardware accelerated ray tracing, AI, advanced shading and simulation for creative artists working with high-end visualization and computer graphics.

The only problem is that this technology is unavailable for the Mac-based pros for the moment on Mac hardware, but you might find yourself on a virtual server with RTX technology. Jensen Huang showed the Porsche Presentation “The Speed of Light” of the Porsche 911 Concept Car created using Unreal and the NVIDIA Quadro RTX Technology.

There is Global Illumination and Ray Tracing. There is reflection and refraction on the windshield. You can see the light leaking right into the cabin, the dynamic reflections. DLA (deep learning accelerator), ray-tracing, faster shading are due to the Tensor Cores using Turing technology are able to accelerate the image ray-trace rendering by 6x times that of the previous Pascal technology.

Architects need photo-realistic models. Jensen Huang demonstrated how SolidWorks and Revit models could be modified in real-time using RTX technology. Cannon Design did a customer presentation this year at SIGGRAPH, demonstrating NVIDIA’s Holodeck immersive project review application. It is possible to make cutting planes or add comments in real time, and if you import models from 3DS Max or Maya, you can allow management of display layers to see different aspects of the building.

This is critically important for new hardware and software technology from Nvidia. Imagine what this might be like in the upcoming future modular Mac Pro Apple has promised Mac-based pros.

Autodesk

Autodesk hosted the VISION SERIES including panels, sessions, and workshops demonstrating their workflows, masterworks, and trends by Autodesk professional clients. The series is in its fifth year and includes presentations by ILM, Netflix, WETA Digital, MPC and Electronic Arts Sports.

During the CEO’s (Jensen Huang) keynote, he showed a demonstration of Autodesk’s Arnold Beta utilizing OptiX running on Quadro RTX GPU hardware. The ray tracing capabilities were 3 to 6 times faster than the previous Pascal technology Quadro cards. Autodesk also hosted a Shotgun Developer Day to help developers learn to use Shotgun’s advanced features.

Other Items and Final Notes from SIGGRAPH

Additional SIGGRAPH announcements include items like The Foundry provided updates to Nuke, Mari, and Katana. Blender announced the release of Blender 2.8 Alpha 2 and showed off how to use Grease Pencil.

Ikinema’s real-time animation technology was employed on two projects showcased at “RealTime Live!” at SIGGRAPH 2018.

Reallusion showed innovations in motion capture and character creation at this year’s SIGGRAPH show, including the standalone character creation tool Character Creator 3—the real-time motion capture solution Motion Live, and 3D face motion capture with Live Face for iPhone X.

Unity’s booth celebrated real-time creative achievements with a focus on films directors, CG artists, and animators among others. Wacom Creators’ Conference, an evening presentation and forum spotlighted Wacom’s latest concept in the areas of Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality.

Apple Continues to Send Mixed Signals to Mac-based Pros

Apple hasn’t exhibited at SIGGRAPH since the days of the G5, and while the innovator has promised a future modular new Mac Pro and delivered a new powerful iMac Pro, the company’s black box ways of communicating with the market continue to leave its legends of loyal users guessing, and perhaps straining their loyalty.

iMac Pro and Mac Pro users doing architectural visualization and design should remember that Apple this June dropped support for OpenGL and OpenCL by deprecating those technologies, which means older software packages that support OpenGL and OpenCL may not be able to integrate with newer tools or run on newer versions of macOS or iOS systems or more modern hardware.

When you consider what to buy in the future, consider the options explored here as many more become available. Mac-based Pros still have the support of the many software companies already supplying solutions to the platform—and many do their development on the Mac—but monitoring the graphics API landscape across these solutions will become more important going forward, in the face of OpenGL’s deprecation.

Developers will choose different paths, such as converting to Apple’s Metal API, adopting a pathway that involves Vulkan, or instead pushing their solutions to the web and WebGL.