studioGPU

Hardware tesselation brings the artist vision into alignment with the final product

SIGGRAPH 2009 was an exciting show for StudioGPU.  We showcased the upcoming version of MachStudio Pro V1.2 and announced that MachStudio Pro now ships with the FirePro V8750 2GB accelerator from AMD.

But the fun part of the show was watching peoples’ jaws drop when they saw MachStudio Pro in action.  Everyone understands the concept of a really fast final renderer.  But real-time workflow, working creatively at final render quality was what drove the “I don’t believe it” reactions.  The best way to show you what I mean is to let you watch a demo we captured on camera.

The demo runs through real-time ambient occlusion,  lighting, on-the-fly shader adjustments and finally shows sub-pixel displacement mapping using hardware tessellation. 

Tessellation involves breaking down polygon meshes into higher poly meshes. In the video below, taking a simple polygon mesh and breaking each polygon down into smaller units allows the surface of the object/model to become smoother with a greater sense of depth and detail, including self-occlusion, self-shadowing and silhouettes.

But more detailed characters, especially with complex animation, devour memory and up storage requirements. Software runs into bandwidth issues so load times increase and memory demands shoot up. But the new version of MachStudio Pro takes advantage of the FirePro V8750 GPU to generate the additional complexity using hardware tessellation.

Hardware tessellation means there is no penalty hit for the virtually unlimited fineness and detail created by the displacement maps.

Quick note:  Once you start the video, click on the HD button on the lower right, to watch the video at higher quality.