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Domain: splutterfish.com

Stories and comments across the archive that link to splutterfish.com.

Comments · 8

  1. Re:Unanswered questions by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 2, Informative · on New Graphics Firm Promises Real-Time Ray Tracing

    You're asking a couple of incorrect questions.

    This isn't a renderer. This is a render accellerator.

    The idea is that Brazil, Mental Ray, Vray and FR can use this to accellerate the existing renderers without any sacrifice of quality or features.

    Think of it like SSE3. It's a new instruction set you can use to accellerate your software. It's not a hardware renderer. It's a hardware ray tracer. The distinction is subtle but in important in this case.

    It should also be noted that Splutterfish (the makers of Brazil. One of the top 4 raytracers on the planet and argueably the fastest.) has been aquired by Caustic. http://splutterfish.com/

  2. Deadline Render Queue (beta) by bhouston · · Score: 5, Interesting · on Renderfarm Setup Tips?
    At Frantic Films we have over the past year developed our own network rendering solution: Deadline. Our solution has just recently entered a beta testing period thus if people are so inclined one can have a look at the current product (screenshots) and possibly download a trial version (download page). We used Deadline on a number of recent feature films including Scooby Doo 2 and Paycheck.

    We did this because we primarily use Discreet's 3dsmax (with Brazil and V-Ray) and Eyeon's Digital Fusion. We have found that most existing render farm solutions do not support these two packages very well -- thus we decided to develop our own custom solution. We also support After Effects, Alias|Maya, AIR and other RenderMan compliant rendering packages.

    Of interest to the general Slashdot crowd may be that this Deadline Render Management Solution is based on the open source (BSD License) Exocortex C# library originally released with this C# 3D Engine. Deadline is built with C# in the hopes that using Mono we will be able to start supporting Linux with minimal extra effort.

    I'll be reading all the posts on this Slashdot thread but I would also appreciate any direct feedback on our current beta product. We also found solutions such as Rush and Smedge to be less than user friendly in many respects. Thus we have tried as best as we could to increase a 3D package that is not well supported by most render farm management solutions -- except for Discreet's Backburner (which we found not that that scalable.)

  3. Gelato by dFaust · · Score: 5, Informative · on Rendering Processors: AR350 vs AMD vs P4?
    Another possible consideration would be nVidia's newly announced Gelato. $2750 per license, plus the cost of a good Quadro card to make it worthwhile. It's yet to be seen what kind of performance and quality this will offer, but certainly something to keep an eye on.

    On another note, I haven't been keeping up with my 3D like I used to, but some software, such as Renderman, can do distributed rendering on a single frame, and then automagically merge the results. I don't think Brazil offers this yet (could be wrong?), but they're working on it (under the name of Banshee, bottom of page. If your renderer of choice offers such a feature, you could build some serious distributed rendering for $12k.

  4. Please learn how to use links. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on POVRay Short Code Contest Results In
    Please learn how to use links.
    check out <a href="http://www.splutterfish.com/sf/sf_gen_page.p hp3?page=FeatureGalleries/Illumination">this gallery</a> and scroll down.
    yields: check out this gallery and scroll down.
  5. BRAZIL rendering system by Splutterfish. by MrCaseyB · · Score: 1 · on Which 3D Rendering Package Do You Recommend?

    At work we use 3dsmax as our primary modeling and animation package. We do not use 3dsmax's default scanline renderer though, we use a 3rd party render system called BRAZIL. It is made by splutterfish, which is associated with Blur studios in Santa Monica. www.splutterfish.com

    IF you are an individual artist it is a great system, well integrated into max, very artist friendly, no shader writing required if you dont want to. But the images speak for themselves, go check out some of the galleries around the web. Right now it is for 3dsmax only but they are working on the maya compatibility. Great software, great people.

  6. A Shader standard by pajor · · Score: 1 · on NVIDIA Cg Compiler Technology to be Open Source

    Cg technology could be a great step forward. By releasing it under a nonrestrictive license, companys like splutterfish can accelerate their plans for a shading language in brazil.

    The standardization on a shading language is going to push forward renderers two a new level, creating a massive pool of competition to Pixar's Photorealistic Renderman.

  7. A Shader standard by pajor · · Score: 1 · on NVIDIA Cg Compiler Technology to be Open Source

    Cg technology could be a great step forward. By releasing it under a nonrestrictive license, companys like splutterfish can accelerate their plans for a shading language in brazil.

    The standardization on a shading language is going to push forward renderers two a new level, creating a massive pool of competition to Pixar's Photorealistic Renderman.

  8. Aardman and CGI by edo-01 · · Score: 3, Interesting · on New Wallace and Gromit Episodes Coming Online

    Aardman have produced a couple of CG shorts recently; the first I saw on last year's SIGGRAPH reel featured two posers in a nightclub trying to pick up the same girl, the second is three little plasticene-looking monsters explaining to the camera why they don't have their short film ready in time, and ends with them singing a song dressed as flowers in a desperate attempt to fill time. The later one is VERY hard to tell it's not claymation. They've also used it a fair bit in their TVC work as well as for certain effects in Chicken Run.

    I get where people come from when they decry the use of computers in animation these days - sometime I see the quality of 3D kids shows like Beast Wars or Max Steel and I feel like burning my computer in disgust - but the extreme crappiness of a lot of 3D animation is nothing to do with the tools, just a lack of creativity on the part of the production companies. CGI can be used to create stunning imagery and animations, it's just a shame that as yet most of the stuff the general public sees on TV is just so bad...