Vancouver, British Columbia is the venue for the 45th SIGGRAPH 2018 conference, this week, August 12-16, where technology vendors and aficionados gather to view the latest and greatest in virtual reality, artificial intelligence (AI), computer graphics and interactive techniques.
Each year outdoes the last in terms of wow factor and some of these announcements most likely will be of interest to AEC professionals. Live ray tracing and a new level of visual quality are just a couple of the new advancements on the horizon. What has taken root in the entertainment industry finds its way into AEC as better graphics means better ways to display concepts to stakeholders, and to show the guts of a project as it is being built.
The conference also spotlighted womens’ contribution to the computer graphics industry, noted at the end of this article.
At the heart of computer graphics are graphics cards and GPUs. NVIDIA announced its first Turing
architecture-based GPUs, enabling designers to render photorealistic scenes in real time, add new AI-based capabilities to their workflows, and enjoy fluid interactivity with complex models and scenes.
NVIDIA Turing-based Quadro RTX GPUs
According to company materials, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang unveiled the NVIDIA® Quadro® RTX 8000, Quadro RTX 6000 and Quadro RTX 5000 bring hardware-accelerated ray tracing, AI, advanced shading and simulation to creative professionals. Also announced was the Quadro RTX Server, a reference architecture for highly configurable, on-demand rendering and virtual workstation solutions from the datacenter.
The Chaos Group gave a sneak peak at Project Lavina, a groundbreaking new technology designed for photorealistic real-time ray tracing. Debuting as a SIGGRAPH tech demo, Project Lavina (named for the Bulgarian word “avalanche), depicted a large 3D forest and several architectural visualizations running at 24-30 frames per second (FPS) in standard HD resolution. By leveraging the dedicated RT Core within NVIDIA’s Turing-based Quadro RTX GPUs, Project Lavina fundamentally changes the direction of computer graphics, introducing a new level of visual quality for real-time games, VR, and 3D visualization.
Instead of using game engine shortcuts like rasterized graphics and a reduced level of detail, each scene features live ray tracing for truly interactive photorealism. Lavina has the capacity to handle massive scenes at real-time speeds – over 300 billion triangles in one case – without losing any detail.
“We’ve been developing ray-tracing technology for 20 years, and this is one of the biggest breakthroughs we’ve ever made,” said Chaos Group co-founder and CTO Vlado Koylazov. “Real-time and ray-tracing coming together is the beginning of something big.”
“We are thrilled to see how well Project Lavina takes advantage of the RTX stack debuting on our new Quadro RTX line,” said Bob Pette, Vice President of Professional Graphics, NVIDIA. “True real-time ray-tracing is our goal with RTX, and it’s great to see a market leader like Chaos Group achieve it with us.”
The SIGGRAPH tech demo uses 3D scenes exported from V-Ray-enabled applications directly in Lavina. This is a departure from a traditional game engine that requires assets to be rebuilt and specially optimized. Lavina simplifies this process with direct compatibility and translation of V-Ray assets. Upon loading the scene, the user can explore the environment exactly as they would in a game engine without having to translate, and thus are able to experience physically accurate lighting, reflections and global illumination.
AMD announced a high-performance addition to the Radeon Pro WX workstation graphics lineup with the AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 graphics card, delivering significant workstation graphics performance for under $1,000i for real-time visualization, virtual reality (VR) and photorealistic rendering. Among their announcements, AMD also unveiled major updates to Radeon ProRender and a new alliance with the Vancouver Film School.
The new turbocharged AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 graphics card allows professionals to easily accelerate design and rendering. It is the ideal graphics card for design and manufacturing, media and entertainment, and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) workloads at all stages of product development.
Autodesk announced a collaboration with StarVR, a provider of virtual reality for the enterprise, to bring breakthrough VR to the automotive design and engineering industry with VRED Professional, optimized for the StarVR One head mounted display. The Autodesk VRED Professional software solution is a 3D product visualization and virtual prototyping software supporting automotive designers and engineers. It is used for product presentations, design reviews and virtual prototypes in real-time.
VRED Professional for StarVR takes advantage of the StarVR headset’s high resolution with 16 million subpixels plus high fidelity of VRED’s rendering capabilities.
The two technologies come together to make a high quality VR experience for the automotive industry.
These “women in technology” spotlights aim to note the impressive contributions of women across the industry.
SIGGRAPH 2018 Conference Chair Roy C. Anthony said, “Among our presenter ranks are women who play a huge role in their respective fields.” Some of the many women who presented work at SIGGRAPH 2018 include:
- Jen Underdahl, VFX Producer, Marvel Studios (panelist, “The Making of Marvel Studios’ ‘Avengers: Infinity War’” Production Session)
- Isabelle Langlois, Vice President of Production, Rodeo FX (panelist, “’Game of Thrones’ Season 7: Orchestrating Sea Battles and Blowing Up a Big Wall” Production Session)
- Sarah Eagle Heart, CEO, Native Americans in Philanthropy (voice of “Luna” in the Immersive Pavilion’s “Crow: The Legend” and panelist, “’Crow: The Legend’ – Bringing a Native American Legend into VR” Production Session)
- Fran Kalal, Character Tailoring Lead, Pixar Animation Studios (panelist, “’Incredibles 2’: Suit Up, It Might Get Weird!” Production Session)
- Monika Fleischmann, pioneering German research artist, digital media scientist, and curator of new media art (recipient, 2018 ACM SIGGRAPH Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement in Digital Art)
- Haru Hyunkyung Ji, Assistant Professor, OCAD University (researcher, “Inhabitat: An Imaginary Ecosystem in a Children’s Science Museum”; presenter, “Technical Papers Fast Forward” and “Art Papers Session #1”; and, 2018 Art Papers juror)
- Özge Samanci, Professor, Northwestern University (creator, “You Are the Ocean” in the Art Gallery)
- Skawennati, Co-director, Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (creator, “She Falls For Ages” in the Art Gallery)
- Amy Fredeen, CFO, E-Line, and EVP and CFO, Cook Inlet Tribal Council (creator, “Never Alone: The Art and the People of the Story” in the Art Gallery)
- Nicole L’Huillier, Ph.D. Student and Research Assistant, MIT Media Lab – Media Arts & Sciences (creator, “Diastrophisms” in the Art Gallery)
- Ruth West, Associate Professor, College of Visual Arts and Design, University of North Texas (creator, “INSTRUMENT | One Antarctic Night” in the Art Gallery)
- Victoria Szabo, Associate Professor of Visual & Media Studies, Duke University, and ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Community Chair (curator, “Origins + Journeys” in the Art Gallery)
- Qiyang Hu, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Bern (researcher, “FaceShop: Deep Sketch-Based Face Image Editing” and presenter, “Sketching” Technical Papers session)
- Jessica Hodgins, Professor, Carnegie Mellon University, and current ACM SIGGRAPH President (researcher, “Automatic Machine Knitting of 3D Meshes” and “Learning Basketball Dribbling Skills Using Trajectory Optimization and Deep Reinforcement Learning,” and presenter, “Textiles & Microstructures” and “Animation Control” Technical Papers sessions)
- Yibing Jiang, Technical Art Supervisor, Unity Technologies (presenter, “Emotional Connections” Talk)
- Kristen Lester, Story Artist, Pixar Animation Studios (presenter, “Production Junction” Talk)
- Silvia Rasheva, Producer, Unity Technologies (presenter, “Real-Time Live!”)
- Corinne Scrivens, Principle Artist, Polyarc (creator, “Moss” in the Immersive Pavilion – Vrcade)
- Niniane Wang, Senior Director, Engineering, Niantic, Inc. (creator, “Multiplayer Augmented Reality: the Future is Social, presented by Niantic” in the Immersive Pavilion – Village and presenter, “Games in Multiple Realities” Experience Presentation)
- Diana Hu, Lead, Augmented Reality Engineering, Niantic, Inc. (creator, “Multiplayer Augmented Reality: the Future is Social, presented by Niantic” in the Immersive Pavilion – Village and presenter, “Games in Multiple Realities” Experience Presentation)
- Illya Szilak, independent scholar, writer, and new media artist (creator, “Queerskins: A Love Story” in the Immersive Pavilion – Village and presenter, “Stories in Virtual Reality – Part 2” Experience Presentation)
In spite of the fact that the fields of computer graphics and interactive techniques, like many other industries, have been dominated by men, the women participating in SIGGRAPH this year are working at the cutting edge of advancements across the spectrum of the industry.
Among women-focused events at the conference are the International Resources Committee’s annual ‘Women in CG’ session, various lunches and networking events for women organized by big companies like ILM, and even women mentoring initiatives, which are currently in their early stages.
The Women in Animation (WIA) Vancouver chapter presented a Women in Animation Vancouver Summit, in partnership with Spark CG Society and supported by Emily Carr University of Art & Design, on August 11th. The co-located event is free to attend and will feature panels, presentations, TED-style talks, and various discussions with leading speakers such as:
- Prem Gill, CEO, Creative BC
- Anja Haman, Principal Program Manager, Microsoft
- Sue Rowe, VFX Supervisor, Sony Pictures Imageworks
- Nadine Blackburn, Head of Inclusion, Diversity, and Corporate Social Responsibility, Electronic Arts
- Ann Marie Fleming, independent filmmaker, writer, and director
- Michelle Grady, SVP of Production, Sony Pictures Imageworks, and Executive Committee Member, WIA Vancouver
- Michelle Eisenreich, Senior VFX Producer, DNEG
- Sharon Taylor, COO, Animal Logic, and Executive Committee Member, WIA Vancouver
In a nutshell, the SIGGRAPH Conference promises better, faster, greater accuracy and hopefully, greater enlightenment.