But the power of the GPU is also being applied to things like Pixar's real-time preview system, Presto.ĭeveloped for the film Brave, this proprietary software enables an animator to view their animation in real-time, enabling them to work faster and more effectively.ĭriven by a £4,000 Nvidia Quadro K6000 card, the system leverages the power of the GPU to drive an OpenGL 4.0 system capable of displaying fully animatable characters with tens of millions of poseable hairs with PTex textures and real-time shadows. It's not just the rendering pipeline that's seeing the benefits of GPU acceleration already being employed elsewhere in computationally heavy tasks from physics and fluid simulations to filters in Adobe Photoshop. PIxar demoed Presto at NVIDIA's GTC conference The system is driven using a Boxx workstation, fitted with a Quadro K6000 and two Tesla K40s - around £17,000-worth of gear. Although the live image is a little coarse, the system can be paused at any time and the system rapidly resolves to show the near-final output, including motion blur and depth of field. Kevin Margo of Blur Studio recently demonstrated a combination of motion capture hardware with V-Ray RT for MotionBuilder, providing an almost-real-time view of the CG characters. The ultimate goal is to refine this to the point where previs footage is near or actual final quality. The concept was advanced during the shooting of James Cameron's Avatar, where a 'virtual camera' enabled a videogame-quality version of the CG characters and environments to be viewed in real-time, enabling Cameron to frame his shots. A key element in the creation of visual effects sequences pre-visualisation is a way for the director to see a version of the scene complete with basic effects in place.

Previs was seriously advanced during the making of AvatarĪ side effect of GPU-accelerated rendering is in previs.

Faceshift bones motionbuilder