The shareplay foundation has granted 500.000 DKK to the project "Elements - Environmental visual effects through result-oriented design". The project will try to tackle some of the challenges faced by the danish creative industry by making them more competetive. The project group consists of Sunday Studio - an Aarhus-based visual effects company - The Alexandra Institutte and the game company Javira.
We would like to invite you to participate in our first open workshop with the purpose of qualifying the project direction and to anchor the project in more Danish companies.
The workshop is on the 13th march 2013 at 1PM - 4PM at the Alexandra Institutte in meeting room Ada-333.
Sign up: http://www.doodle.com/7hqft2934eqswdn3
The main focus of the project is to build a software platform on which new techniques are able to facilitate quality improvements and faster production in the danish creative industry. By using result-oriented 3D-software we enable the artists to work directly on the final visual result and by doing so we allow the artists to be more creative.
We are going to give an introduction to what it could mean to be working using result-oriented 3D-software. Afterwards we would like the participating companies to join in – and tell us about the challenges you see in 3D software today.
We hope you will participate in our workshop and by doing so help us target the challenges faced by your company.
More information about the project can be seen here:
http://www.alexandra.dk/dk/lige_nu/nyheder/nyheder-2013/jan-mar/Sider/Aarhusianere-vil-udvikle-smarte-skyer-og-flammer-til-film.aspx
http://jyllands-posten.dk/aarhus/erhverv/article5202950.ece
Archive for category Realistic Rendering
We recently published a pathtracer that runs in JavaScript and WebGL (link). The WebGL pathtracer is inspired by a pathtracer that we previously implemented in C++ with OpenGL shaders written in the OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) 3.3. However, since WebGL 1.0 uses a simpler version of GLSL, namely the OpenGL ES shading language 1.0, we encountered some language constructs that were not supported. This post describes some of the challenges we encountered in order to implement our pathtracer in WebGL. Finally, we benchmark how our WebGL pathtracer performs compared to the OpenGL version.
Read the rest of this entry »
We present our newest gpu accelerated raytracer that runs entirely in JavaScript and WebGL. You can try a live demo by clicking the button below, but be sure that you have read the requirements at the bottom of the page before you launch the demo. If your system does not meet the requirements, you can watch a video here.
To involve our audience a bit further we launch a Christmas competition. The rules are as follows:
Update: We have decided to extend the competition until December 27th.
- Use our raytracer to create the coolest image with a Christmas theme. You can supply your own scene in basic Wavefront OBJ format. Our demo video shows how to use the features of the raytracer.
- Send a screenshot of your creation to thomas.kjeldsen {at} alexandra(.)dk.
- We reserve the right to publish your screenshots on our blog.
- The competition ends on December 27th 2012.
The winner will be awarded a genuine Skylark-124 gaming console.
Requirements
You should ensure that you have a web browser that supports WebGL with the OES_texture_float extension.
If you use Windows you will need a recent version Firefox (v17 has been tested) or Chrome (v23 has been tested) due to some optimizations in the shader compiler in the Angle layer. Alternatively you have to enable native opengl in your browser (in Firefox open about:config and set webgl.prefer-native-gl=true, in Chrome use the command line argument --use-gl=desktop).
Some pictures and videos from our own gpu-raytracer which is physically based and currently supports path tracing and stochastic progressive photon mapping with a variety of different materials.
The left statue is made of rough glass , the middle is an imitation of plastic/wax and the right statue is copper (using sopra nk-values).
Full spectral rendering using stochastic progressive photon mapping.
A comparison between pathtracing and sppm after two minutes of rendering. Click the image to see a video-capture of the rendering.
This video demonstrates our real-time molecular visualization application written using OpenGL and GLSL. The video features three distinct visualizations: Stick-and-ball, Connolly surface and density plot. The application renders the molecule using image-based lighting combined with depth-of-field. Ambient occlusion and fog is further used to enhance the perception of depth. The Connolly surface can be dynamically recreated when changing the orbital or probe radius. When recreating the Connolly surface the ambient occlusion is dynamically updated. The density plot, which features five separate density fields, is composited onto the rasterized geometry using raymarching.
The application is part of a presentation which will be given at Symposium on Scientific Visualization held on September 25th - 26th, 2012 at The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters in Copenhagen.
As part of an ongoing research project we decided to see how far we could push real-time volume rendering using only GLSL shaders. The video shown here demonstrates some of the supported features such as:
- Multiple iso-surface shading
- Density plotting
- Arbitrary oriented contour planes
- Arbitrary oriented cutting plane
The shown video is running on an explicit dataset 256^3 4x16bit floating data on a Nvidia GTX470 graphics card.
Better Innovation
Apr 19
(In danish)
Er du i et firma indenfor IT, visuel indholdsproduktion, computergrafik eller smartphones ? Vi har brug for dine kommentarer på vores forslag til at opbygge ny viden og serviceydelser til gavn for danske virksomheder indenfor disse områder. Dit indlæg kan være ligefra "det støtter vi" til uddybende forklaring og kritik - og din mening er vigtig i forhold til at sikre en finansiering af vores aktivitetsforslag. På forhånd tak 
It værktøj til effektiv og højkvalitets visuel indholdsproduktion
Softwareudvikling til fremtidens heterogene processor
Næste generations smartphone apps til professionelle anvendelser
This video demonstrates our experiment with progressive photon mapping. But this time combined with a really fast bvh rebuilder. This way the user can play around with all objects in the scene and the lighting geometry. This gives a nice preview of the light distribution and caustic effects.
The converged image of the mandatory bunny scene.
Merry Christmas to you all out there. Do you want to stress your computer a bit during the holidays.
Then please try our new Christmas path-tracing demo.
Cozy path tracing graphics from our lab.
Welcome to a day with talks on Accelerating Computations.
On 15 December 2011 the Computer Graphics Lab at the Alexandra Institute in Aarhus will host a conference on the core aspects of accelerating computations. This research conference will be divided into a technical part called Technical Talks in the morning and a business-oriented part called Applications Talks in the afternoon.
The conference is free and you can participate either in the Technical Talks, the Applications Talks or both. Keynote speaker will be David McAllister from NVIDIA.
The Computer Graphics Lab at the Alexandra Institute is working on realising efficient computations on massive data sets by using modern many-core processors and massive data algorithms. Subsequently
interactive information visualisation is crucial to analyse and understand massive data sets.
PROGRAMME
10:00- 10:15 Introduction
10:15 – 14:45 Technical Talks
10:15 – 11:00 How OptiX Makes the GPU Shine – a look inside NVIDIA’s Ray Tracing Engine, David McAllister, NVIDIA
11:00 – 11:45 MR reconstruction on GPU, Thomas Sangild, Computer Science, Aarhus University
11:45 – 12:30 Lunch
12:30- 13:15 Parthenon Renderer Revealed, Toshiya Hachisuka, Computer Science, Aarhus University
13:15- 13:45 Subsurface Light Propagation Volumes, Thomas Kim Kjeldsen, Computer Graphics Lab, Alexandra Institute
13:45 – 14:00 Coffee break
14:00 – 14:45 Accelerating Dense Linear Algebra on the GPU, Hans Henrik Brandenborg Sørensen, DTU Informatics
14:45 – 16:45 Applications Talks
14:45 – 15:15 Massive acceleration, Jesper Mosegaard, Computer Graphics Lab, Alexandra Institute
15:15 - 15:30 Coffee break
15:30 – 16:15 Dozens of Uses for Billions of Rays – a survey of ray tracing applications, David McAllister, NVIDIA
16:15 – 16:45 Scalable GPU computing service architecture: LEGO 3DServices, Henrik Høj Madsen, LEGO, Michael Schøler, Hinnerup.net.
16:45 – Networking and sandwiches
Venue: Alexandra Institute, Peter Bøgh Andersen Auditorium, building 5335, Finlandsgade 21-23, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark
Registration: Online at http://cg.alexandra.dk/signup/
no later than 12 December
Abstracts
How OptiX Makes the GPU Shine – a look inside NVIDIA’s Ray Tracing Engine
David McAllister, Optix Manager, NVIDIA
I will briefly describe the OptiX programming model, then dive into the internals of how we exposed the
GPU’s computational power for ray tracing in an application programmable way.
MR reconstruction on GPU
Thomas Sangild Sørensen, Associate Professor, Computer Science, Aarhus University
A barrier to the adoption of non-Cartesian parallel magnetic resonance imaging for real-time applications has been the times required for the image reconstructions. These times have exceeded the underlying acquisition time thus preventing real-time display of the acquired images. We present a reconstruction algorithm for commodity graphics hardware (GPUs) to enable real time reconstruction of sensitivity encoded radial imaging (radial SENSE).
Parthenon Renderer Revealed
Toshiya Hachisuka, Assistant Professor, Computer Science, Aarhus University
Parthenon Renderer, initially released back in 2002, is one of the earliest publicly available rendering software that utilise graphics hardware for accelerating computation of high-quality offline rendering. I will talk about the inside of Parthenon Renderer in order to give you some examples of engineering choices and algorithm design that make (and made) sense for an offline rendering system using graphics hardware.
Subsurface Light Propagation Volumes
Thomas Kim Kjeldsen, Research and Innovation Scientist, Computer Graphics Lab, Alexandra Institute
We present the Subsurface Light Propagation Volume (SSLPV) method for real-time approximation of
subsurface scattering effects in dynamic scenes with changing mesh topology and lighting. SSLPV extends
the Light Propagation Volume (LPV) technique for indirect illumination in video games. We introduce a
new consistent method for injecting flux from point light sources into an LPV grid, a new rendering method
which consistently converts light intensity stored in an LPV grid into incident radiance, as well as a model for
light scattering and absorption inside heterogeneous materials. Our scheme does not require any precomputation
and handles arbitrarily deforming meshes. We show that SSLPV provides visually pleasing results
in real-time at the expense of a few milliseconds of added rendering time.
Accelerating Dense Linear Algebra on the GPU
Hans Henrik Brandenborg Sørensen, Post. Doc., GPU Lab, DTU Informatics
GPUs have already become an integral part of high performance scientific computing, since they offer
dedicated parallel hardware that can potentially accelerate the execution of many scientific applications.
In this talk, I will consider the automatic performance acceleration of dense vector and matrix-vector operations
on GPUs. Such operations form the backbone of level 1 and level 2 routines in the Basic Linear Algebra
Subroutines (BLAS) library and are therefore of great importance in many scientific applications. The target
hardware is the most recent NVIDIA Tesla 20-series (Fermi architecture). Most of the techniques I discuss
for accelerating dense linear algebra are applicable to memory-bound GPU algorithms in general.
Massive Acceleration at the Alexandra CG Lab
Jesper Bjerg Mosegaard, Head of Research and Innovation, Computer Graphics Lab, Alexandra Institute
The Computer Graphics Lab at the Alexandra Institute does research and development within the topic of
fast and accurate simulation and visualisation in high quality. This talk describes the role of the Alexandra
Institute in transferring research to application in Danish Industry as well as specific opportunities for
companies to benefit from the latest knowledge and technology.
Dozens of Uses for Billions of Rays – a survey of ray tracing applications
David McAllister, Optix Manager, NVIDIA
Since introducing OptiX in 2009, NVIDIA has been approached by engineers from industries as diverse as
geothermal exploration, cell phone antenna design, and automotive headlamp design that have one thing
in common – the need to intersect rays, usually billions of them, against a database of geometry. I will
survey many applications of ray tracing, within and beyond computer graphics, and show how accelerating
ray tracing using GPUs addresses many challenges in industry.
Scalable GPU computing service architecture: LEGO 3DServices
Michael Schøler, Hinnerup.net og Henrik Høj Madsen, Solution Architect, Lego
As LEGO is moving into the virtual playspace, a platform technology has been developed in-house primarily
based on NVIDIA technologies, featuring:
• CUDA, OptiX, OpenGL and general shaders
• 17 Quadro Plex in multiple environments, multiple datacentres
• Advanced shading techniques for approaching high-quality results in real-time
• On-demand asset generation
• CDN assets distribution
• A generic service-oriented interface
• A distributed rendering architecture
• Architectural patterns for distributed computing
• A plugin architecture supporting existing and future LEGO experiences
• A mentality shift from traditional ways of doing things on CPU vs GPU.
• General experiences from developing on NVIDIA tech in a large-scale Enterprise setup
The LEGO 3DServices system is designed to support diverse computational needs such as on-demand rendering, mesh optimisation, a Massive Multiplayer Online Game (MMO), product visualisations, 3D modeling and other current and future demanding computational tasks. Our aim with this session is to share our learnings and present LEGO’s vision of the future of distributed GPU accelerated computation as a business-driven platform technology.
