Graphics: Better, Cheaper and Faster?

Get Ready for Next Generation PCs, "Collaboration" and New Environments’

Better, cheaper, faster — those three demands for graphics are never, ever satisfied at the same time. But it’s still a relentless mantra in the graphics business.

Pressured by increased demand for digital imagery and HD projects, post, VFX and animation studios must handle large datasets efficiently and cost-effectively. A collaborative workflow streamlines the process for all these needs, enabling — you guessed it — more speed, better imagery and, well, I’ll get back to you on the price.

"Everybody is dealing with workflow and compatibility among multiple products to keep the pipeline flowing," notes Eyeon Software CEO Steve Roberts. Strategies to enhance collaborative workflow are even cropping up within a single company’s product line. This year Avid is announcing increased integration with Softimage XSI and Alienbrain, its media management product. (Autodesk Media and Entertainment, formerly known as Discreet, has made a major move into more collaborative workflow with Toxik; see "Finishing is Just Getting Started," in this issue.)

As loaded commodity PCs have moved into the graphics mainstream, they are themselves a moving target. The next generations are either here (PCI Express), pulling in at different speeds (64-bit OSes) and/or creating a whole lot of anticipation (dual core processors). Though hardware improvements dangle the promise of more bandwidth, more processing power and more speed, they put the onus on software manufacturers to migrate their applications to fully exploit them.

Not a moment too soon. Animation and post operations clamoring for higher resolution, more interactivity, and more throughput will have more demands as they move to file-based post. "With HD on TV and new game consoles, there’s a lot of pressure for high resolution," observes Autodesk’s 3D software product manager, Dan Prochazka. "Now we have a higher standard to deliver." The pressures are such, he adds, that many software companies have shortened release cycles from 18 months to 12, a not insignificant squeeze on their own resources.

Both AJA and Nvidia highlight the acceptance of souped-up PCs with the wide use of their graphics cards. Ted Schilowitz, AJA’s desktop video engines product manager, says, "Quality is increasing, stability is increasing, and any sort of perceived limitations in quality regarding more cost-effective systems are going away." (Kona 2 cards were used in tandem with Final Cut Pro systems to create bumpers and teases for the Super Bowl and Daytona 500.) After years of guest-starring in other companys’ booths, Nvidia puts up its own tent at the show. "This year, we’re kicking up the ante, launching Nvidia Quadro FX 4000 SDI, which allows the user to do graphics to video-out for $6K, and showing Nvidia Quadro FX 540, a low-cost solution for previewing workflow," says product manager for professional products Raj Mirpuri. The company will also show a mobile solution, Nvidia Quadro FX Go 1400. "Mobile workstations will come on strong this year," says Mirpuri, who notes that applications impacted by these products include Adobe for HDV editing, Discreet for uncompressed DI mastering and VizRT and Brainstorm e-studio for video-out in broadcast graphics.

The pressure for open architecture is also making itself felt among workstation providers. SGI is responding with the open-architecture Silicon Graphics Prism, a successor to the proprietary Onyx. A 4K demo (planned to incorporate Sony’s much-talked about 4K projector) will use the multipipe capability of Prism, which was launched in October, to show its capabilities for DIs and digital-cinema mastering. "We’ve migrated industry-standard components, including the Linux operating system, but found a way to combine them with our unique architecture," says Director of Production Louise Ledeen, who reports the Prism starts at under $30,000.

Boxx Technology is coming out with the 7300 series, a dual PCI Express, Dual Opteron workstation, ready for 64-bit, Windows 64 and dual core, with up to 16 GB of memory and 3 PCI slots. The company is also showing the 2200 series, its mobile workstation, with a 17-inch widescreen display, full Pentium 4, 64-bit enabled PC with two drives for DVD burners and other features.

"People want much more interactivity — they want to pre-vis in full motion [and] full texture before they send it off to the render farm," notes CTO Todd Bryant. " Boxx is facilitating this. We’re part of the 64-bit launch team with Windows. We’ll be ready with those workstations on day one of shipping." Also coming out this year, says Bryant, is the extra boost in CPU power with dual core-ready workstations. "We plan on dual core-capable solutions as soon as AMD and Intel release it," he promises.

NAB is a good time to see advances and launches made in graphics over the last six months, as many of the hot new announcements are kept under wraps until SIGGRAPH. Released in late January, Maya 6.5 features new tools for managing large data sets— 4K’s the target— as well as improved interactivity for polygon modeling, deformations, UV texturing and 3D paint and other advances. Mental Ray for Maya Satellite (2 CPUs for Maya Complete and 8 CPUs for Maya Unlimited) supports interactive, batch and command-line rendering.

Softimage will demonstrate more interoperability with Avid editors, showing XSI 4.2. This version allows rendering directly from Behavior to Mental Ray. The XSI GUI allows direct interface with Alienbrain (Avid’s project management acquisition), and XSI sequences can also be rendered out directly into AAF and MXF formats and into Avid storage, where they appear directly in the editor. “What we’re doing is [creating] interoperability with XSI and other digital production tools across the Avid family,” says XSI senior product manager Gareth Morgan, pointing to integrations with Avid DS Nitris and Avid Xpress Studio. “It’s a very streamlined workflow.”

There are big changes underway at Discreet, which makes its appearance at the show as Autodesk Entertainment and Media (see “Finishing is Just Getting Started, in this issue). 3ds max will be demoed in version 7.5, which offers new VFX features including Mental Ray 3.4 and a satellite option of eight CPUs. Trickling down from the high end into the new version of Combustion are color-warper technology from Flame and Inferno (in the Diamond Keyer) and Timewarp. PC versions of Combustion 4 should already be shipping as you read this, with Mac versions in May.

Eyeon Software will debut Digital Fusion version 5 at NAB. “We decided to rewrite and re-architect huge portions of the code,” explains CEO Steve Roberts. “We’re introducing a complete 3D environment in this new system and a new architecture that will sustain product growth into the future.” The exploded 3D environment handles geometry, models and cameras and is compatible with cameras between different animation systems.

A classic gets an encore as Quantel restores some of the features of its Classic Paintbox, which was first shown in 1981. More recently, as island products have lost all viability, Paintbox lived on as a set of embedded tools in generationQ.

It was something of a surprise then when Quantel, bidding to dominate the close-to-air design market, used IBC to launch three brand-new versions of Paintbox — an SD workhorse, the gQ version armed with the extra bandwidth for HD work, and the software-only release QPaintbox. The launch strategy — a combo of new hardware and new software — was explained at its IBC unveiling last year by product manager John Woodhouse.

“It’s about the spirit of Paintbox.” he said. “Although generationQ brought loads of new things to users, there was something about Paintbox — the feel and the intuitive way things worked — that had changed.

“Perhaps we’d gone too far too quickly. We listened, thought and brought some things back, like color map, and changed the way some things, like stencils and keys, worked. We also added things to improve the ergonomics, and one of these is the Bank, a visual storage area for managing raw material, packs and anything else you need to get at quickly.”