March 19, 2015, GPU Technology Conference, San Jose, CA—Jeff Brue from Open Drives described the work in developing and implementing a native 6k workflow. Part of the effort is to anticipate the eventual move to 8k and the balance is to get more out of their infrastructure. The primary motivation was to bring effects closer…
March 4, 2015, Game Developer Conference, San Francisco—Viktor Lidholt from Spritebuilder talked about techniques for advanced visual effects in 2-D games. Visual effects come from things like sprites, color, blur and bloom, and distorted polygons. In addition, the use of particles and shader effects add much to a game. All of these effects have to…
December 15, 2014, IEDM, San Francisco—Enrico Prati from Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche talked about atomic scale devices and the potential for 3-D atomic printers. The driver of Moore’s Law and the progressions of molecular-scale processing begs the question of the possibility for atomic-scale devices and the mechanisms to enable their creation. Over time, normal functions…
October 11, 2014, Audio Engineering Society Convention, Los Angeles—David Collins and Dan Briczynski from Sony Consumer Entertainment America talked abut the sound design and implementation for the game “Hohokum”. The game uses graphics like “Yellow Submarine” and general game play like “Snake” The music is a large part of the game and much of it…
June 17, 2014, SMPTE Entertainment Technology in the Internet Age Conference, Stanford, CA—A panel addressed the changes in movie making, sports, and games due to new underlying technologies. Chris Bregler from NY University and Industrial Light and Magic moderated the panel, with members Marv White from ESPN, Kim Libreri from Lucas Film, and Erik Johnson…
By Peter McGuinness, Imagination Technologies The concept of ray tracing has been bandied about for more than a generation – since 1968, it has been viewed as a promising technology, especially for visual arts disciplines, and in particular, the entertainment industry. Why? Because the ray tracing algorithm as developed into its recursive form can closely…
March 25, 2014, GPU Technology Conference, San Jose, CA—Aske Simon Christiansen from Blueberry and Loonies described some of the programming tricks used to create graphics effects on the Amiga console. In 1987, the Amiga 500 became the first gaming machine to offer graphics effects that were not based on pixel manipulation or sprites. These machines…
March 26, 2014, GPU Technology Conference, San Jose, CA—James Fox from DawnRunner described the changes in visual effects workflows, and the consequences and impacts of changing technologies. New technologies are enabling small, independent visual effects companies to challenge existing philosophies. Existing solutions to creating effects are very hard to scale. The complex tools and equipment…
March 26, 2014, GPU Technology Conference, San Jose, CA—Olivier Maury from Industrial Light and Magic described the use and modifications of their tools for generating pyrotechnics. Plume is a GPU-based tool that provides integrated fluid simulation and rendering. The tool transforms 6-7 k Plume effects for smoke, fire, dust, and other physical explosion effects. The…
October 15, 2013, Imagination Developer Connection, San Francisco—Imagination Technologies described the flows and technologies involved in ray tracing for images. Wikipedia notes that in computer graphics, ray tracing is a technique for generating an image by tracing the path of light through pixels in an image plane and simulating the effects of its encounters with…