11. Miscellaneous: hardware,...

Brock University
COSC 3P98 Computer Graphics
Instructor: Brian J. Ross

Hardware: 3D accelerators for the consumer market

• A number of manufacturers of 3D graphics cards: NVidia, ATI, Matrox, Diamond,...

• typical features
  • 60+ frames per second
  • hardware polygon transformations, clipping, perspective projection, lighting calculations, triangularization of polygons: per vertex
  • hardware scan-conversion of triangles: per pixel
  • textures: computationally intensive, and important in games
    • texture lookup table: video RAM stores textures; need fast processing!
    • basically a "texture pallette"
    • graphics card will grab textures from main memory w/o CPU interference (bus mastering)
    • various texture mappings supported, including transparency
  • vertex shaders: graphics hardware "machine language" for a variety of effects... particles, key frames, fur, ...
  • pixel shaders: lighting and texture control
  • hardware Z-buffering
  • fog, blending, antialiasing, shadows,...
  • 2D engine (for windows, other applications)
  • DVD, HDTV support

NVidia GeForce GTX 590

• some specs: NVidia GTX 590
  • 1024 CUDA cores (processors - Compute Unified Device Architecture)
  • 607 Mhz core GPU
  • processor clock: 1215 MHz
  • memory clock: 1707 MHz
  • 77.7 billion/sec fill rate
  • Memory: 1792 MB
  • Performance: 2.51 TFLOPS (trillian flt pt ops per second)
  • $700

ATI Radeon HD 6990

• some specs: ATI HD 6990
  • 3072 stream processors, 192 texture units
  • 830 Mhz core GPU
  • memory clock: 1250 MHz
  • Performance: 5.10 TFLOPS
  • $700

Nintendo Wii

• Nintendo Wii
  • 729 MHz PowerPC CPU
  • 243 MHz ATI CPU
  • 88 Mb RAM, 3 Mb texture memory
  • 32 shader pipelines (Xbox 360 has 48)
  • 500 million triangles/sec (100m sustained)
  • 50 billion shader ops/sec

Playstation 3

• CPU: PowerPC 3.2 GHz
• CPU: 550 MHz RSX
• 1.7 Teraflops Flt Pt
• 75 million polys/sec

A selection of products

• 3D animation:
  • Blender: Free animation system. Powerful too!
  • Autodesk Softimage: one of the best animation tools for character modeling
  • Autodesk Maya: good general system; powerful features include hair, modeling
  • Side Effects Houdini: history list - programmer-control of entire session
  • Newtek Lightwave: popular in television productions (Star Trek, ...)
  • Autodesk 3ds MAX: Popular for PC game animation
  • e-on Vue: Realistic landscapes
  • Bryce: Fantasy landscapes
  • Poser: character animation
  • Electric Image: the main Macintosh animation system; super-fast rendering

• 2D graphics:
  • Adobe Photoshop: main image processing program
  • Corel Painter: powerful paint program; Quicktime generation
  • Deep Paint 3D: 3d model painter
  • Kai's Power Tools: popular plugin to Photoshop, Painter
  • Adobe Illustrator: vector drawing (shape retention)

• Post-production video editing:
  • Sony Vegas : popular video editor
  • Final Cut: Apple's video editor
  • Adobe Premiere: Quicktime editing system
  • Adobe After Effects: like Quicktime, but many more special effects (mixing, adding text, warping,...)

• Multimedia authoring
  • Adobe Flash: scripting language for creating multimedia presentations (web)

• 3D scanning
  • Ghost 3D Systems: 3D digitizers ($3500+)
  • NextEngine: desktop laser scanner ($2500)

Conclusion

• graphics advancing at fast rate, mostly due to hardware advances
  • advances in microprocessor technology = better, faster graphics
  • software technology likewise advancing

• the realtime 3D graphics normally only available on high-end graphics workstations, is now commonplace on home PC's and game consoles
  • 3D cards with pixel and vertex shaders, graphics pipelines, OpenGL drivers
  • Playstation 3, XBox 360

• If you are interested in a career in graphics...
  • many areas: GUI; games and entertainment; 2D and 3D applications; animation; VR; Web
  • industry: lots of opportunitie$ right now
  • an MSc specializing in graphics is worth considering

• Most jobs in game industry fall into 3 categories:
  1. Programmers, software engineers
  2. Artists
  3. producers: directors, business, project leaders
• Additionally, most programming involves writing tools for the artists, special FX modules, etc.

• In any case, be sure to:
  • a) stay on top of current technology: subscribe to graphics mags and journals; be a member of SIGGRAPH
  • b) study advanced graphics on your own: buy a PC & graphics library; implement graphics techniques
  • c) get a good handle on mathematics, especially linear algebra and calculus!
  • d) DIVERSIFY... study art, drama, literature, history. Companies want employees with not only specialist technical abilities, but breadth of interests!

COSC 3P98 Computer Graphics
Brock University
Dept of Computer Science
Copyright © 2002 Brian J. Ross (Except noted figures).
http://www.cosc.brocku.ca/Offerings/3P98/course/lectures/misc/
Last updated: November 24, 2008