At the Gamescon conference in Cologne Germany Nvidia amazed the crowds with almost a dozen new games that have used ray tracing to enhance their story and overall appearance. One of the tricks to show off ray racing is to use highly reflective surface such as a window, an automobile, a wet sidewalk, or a still pond. Look not at, … Read more
Chaos has been a leader in ray tracing since they started the company 21 years ago in Sofia, Bulgaria. Their program, V-Ray, has been used in innumerable designs and a dozen movies. Seeing the Chaos people at Siggraph was always enjoyable, but predictable—exchange a few jokes, see some beautiful pictures, make a date for drinks, break the date. Not this … Read more
Maxon is modernizing on all fronts. At Siggraph 2019, the company outlined new features and tools for Cinema 4D R 21, Maxon’s flagship 3D modeling, animation, and rendering software. Maxon is consolidating all of the options available for Cinema 4D into one central version, and the company has announced a new subscription plan to replace Maxon’s comparatively high upfront purchase … Read more
Nvidia launched the DXR Spotlight contest this spring with Epic and Microsoft and has just announced a trio of winners. The DXR Spotlight contest, an offshoot of the Nvidia Indie Spotlight Program, invited game developers and content creators to build tech demos using Nvidia’s RTX AIBs, Unreal Engine 4.22, Microsoft DirectX 12 and DirectX Ray tracing and any combination … Read more
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World. Scene rendered by MoonRay (with Embree): Property of DreamWorks Animation. At Intel’s inaugural Create event at Siggraph 2019, the company outlined its vision for rendering with exascale computing and oneAPI, and reiterated its six-pillars. Jim Jeffers, Intel’s senior principal engineer and director of Advanced Rendering and Visualization, took the stage and … Read more
Ever since Arthur Appel proposed the core technology for ray tracing in his 1968 paper, realtime ray tracing has been the ultimate goal for computer graphics. The Ballistics Research Lab (BRL) demonstrated ray tracing for ballistics research using technology developed by the Mathematical Applications Group, Inc. (MAGI) in 1979. Turner Whitted showed how to speed up the calculations in … Read more
Corsair began in 1994 as a PC DIMM memory supplier and quickly expanded to power supplies, coolers, keyboards, and other peripherals and components. The company has become a trusted supplier to the DIY community, as well as SIs, and VARs and as they grow, they have steadily moved into further adjacencies growing its portfolio to over 20 product lines. … Read more
The oft-maligned VR industry is on the verge of growth. The headsets are going tetherless and there is continued improvement in reducing the screen door effect. I have tried probably 15 VR and MR headsets over the years and the one that changed my mind is one of the least expensive. The Qualcomm-based Oculus Go. But the killer app … Read more
The marriage of CAD and metrology is the marriage of the digital and the real-world. It is transforming many industries including AEC and manufacturing. Hexagon, which has its roots in metrology, has addressed the digitalization revolution from the sky down. Founded in 1992 in Stockholm, Hexagon acquired ERDAS for their satellite-based geospatial technology and they’ve acquired the leading lidar companies … Read more
The Open Design Alliance’s season of press releases is here and the quantity of information is greater than ever as the organization follows up on the several new directions they have taken to support interoperability and communication in the CAD industry. The organization has moved into new territory with its Visualize, Web SDK, and BIM (Building Information Modeling) APIs. The … Read more
Epic Games announced its MegaGrants program at GDC 2019. The company established a $100 million fund to support game developers, enterprise professionals, media and entertainment creators, students, educators, and tool developers who are “doing amazing things with Unreal Engine” or enhancing open-source capabilities for the 3D graphics community. The Blender Foundation had their wish granted with a $1.2 million grant … Read more
The Corona Renderer developed by Chaos Czech is a leading renderer for architectural visualization. Image by Jesus Selvera. (Source: Corona Group) In the world of Chaos, one press release is never enough. No, the company sends them out like little soldiers one after the other. Most recently, Chaos Czech, formerly the Render Legion group which was acquired by Chaos … Read more
