As many of you know, I like to race cars. I can blame VFX supervisor Eric Barba (Oblivion, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) for that. I asked an innocent question when we worked together at Amblin Entertainment years go, "So how did you get into racing?" Low and behold, he introduced me to racing schools (this naive guy had no idea they existed!), and I was hooked.
Back in those days, we were working on Amiga computers doing VFX for things like Star Trek Voyager and seaQuest (yes, that far back). We had no idea what this world of CG was all about, but we certainly thought we did. I remember the baker racks of Amiga 2000 systems in a single room, roaring away on frames for various episodes. As we got involved in the pilot to Star Trek Voyager, we realized the big shot in the show, what we affectionally referred to as the "wave slap," would take us something like a year to render on our current systems. We realized we had to upgrade.
Throughout my career, computing has always been not necessarily about speed, but about the bells and whistles you could turn on. Ultimately, the computers had to be faster, but we weren't really turning things out faster. We could just turn on more features: more lights, more raytracing, more polygons, more textures. And still to this day, it's not that the work comes along faster. Artists are pushed harder and harder to make things more detailed, more photo real. All that takes more computing power, of course, and the day of the regular PC doing the job is quickly coming to an end.
But I have sensed a tide shift in recent years. It's no longer about the bells and whistles. Today, we can create anything we want, and make it as photo real as we need it. But what has been growing is the need for speed. It started when game engines became good. I mean really good. You could see that if a console could generate that awesome image in RT, the day when photo real needed to be RT was coming, and coming fast.
We do all sorts of work with various companies and software developers now. Everything is about real time: full on motion capture, including face and fingers, ray traced cars that you can't distinguish from a real one, stunning architectural images that look like the real thing. Sure, we've all seen these things, but now they have to be done live, with little or no lag in the image resolving. And now, artists are pushing into the realm of real time people, like the Tupac hologram, or the recent Michael Jackson performance. It's no longer about getting good work out fast, it's about making it real, real time.
People often ask me why I left my last VFX company (Pixomondo) and moved to a technology company. (Don't worry, I'm trying not to make this article about selling Silverdraft.) The truth is, I could see this change coming. We can no longer rely on a basic system, no matter how fast the processor is, to perform the tasks that we are being asked to do, or those in the future. We need to change the paradigm, embrace a new form factor. This is what Silverdraft does, and the Devil & Demon Strategy is the start of that.
So here I am, almost 21 years later, and I'm proud to say that I'm still racing, every now and then. I still like speed (thanks a lot, Eric!) and that equates to both my personal and professional life. The one thing you can't do in this industry is slow down, and I don't intend to. That's the fun of supercomputers... they just keep getting faster.
Back in those days, we were working on Amiga computers doing VFX for things like Star Trek Voyager and seaQuest (yes, that far back). We had no idea what this world of CG was all about, but we certainly thought we did. I remember the baker racks of Amiga 2000 systems in a single room, roaring away on frames for various episodes. As we got involved in the pilot to Star Trek Voyager, we realized the big shot in the show, what we affectionally referred to as the "wave slap," would take us something like a year to render on our current systems. We realized we had to upgrade.
Throughout my career, computing has always been not necessarily about speed, but about the bells and whistles you could turn on. Ultimately, the computers had to be faster, but we weren't really turning things out faster. We could just turn on more features: more lights, more raytracing, more polygons, more textures. And still to this day, it's not that the work comes along faster. Artists are pushed harder and harder to make things more detailed, more photo real. All that takes more computing power, of course, and the day of the regular PC doing the job is quickly coming to an end.
But I have sensed a tide shift in recent years. It's no longer about the bells and whistles. Today, we can create anything we want, and make it as photo real as we need it. But what has been growing is the need for speed. It started when game engines became good. I mean really good. You could see that if a console could generate that awesome image in RT, the day when photo real needed to be RT was coming, and coming fast.
We do all sorts of work with various companies and software developers now. Everything is about real time: full on motion capture, including face and fingers, ray traced cars that you can't distinguish from a real one, stunning architectural images that look like the real thing. Sure, we've all seen these things, but now they have to be done live, with little or no lag in the image resolving. And now, artists are pushing into the realm of real time people, like the Tupac hologram, or the recent Michael Jackson performance. It's no longer about getting good work out fast, it's about making it real, real time.
People often ask me why I left my last VFX company (Pixomondo) and moved to a technology company. (Don't worry, I'm trying not to make this article about selling Silverdraft.) The truth is, I could see this change coming. We can no longer rely on a basic system, no matter how fast the processor is, to perform the tasks that we are being asked to do, or those in the future. We need to change the paradigm, embrace a new form factor. This is what Silverdraft does, and the Devil & Demon Strategy is the start of that.
So here I am, almost 21 years later, and I'm proud to say that I'm still racing, every now and then. I still like speed (thanks a lot, Eric!) and that equates to both my personal and professional life. The one thing you can't do in this industry is slow down, and I don't intend to. That's the fun of supercomputers... they just keep getting faster.