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Intel and DreamWorks Working On Rendering Animation In Real-Time

PolygamousRanchKid writes "This week while speaking at the Techonomy conference, DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg told audience members that they'd formulated the solution for real-time rendering of animation for video. Katzenberg told the audience that they'd been working hand-in-hand with Intel in order to rewrite their software to take advantage of scalable multi-core processors, this allowing them to achieve advances that will, for lack of a better term, revolutionize the animation process."

15 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. Wonderful by Moheeheeko · · Score: 5, Funny

    Because we all want them to pump out more Shrek films as fast as possible amirite?

    1. Re:Wonderful by ackthpt · · Score: 3, Funny

      Because we all want them to pump out more Shrek films as fast as possible amirite?

      Now I have to eat lunch, again.

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      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    2. Re:Wonderful by need4mospd · · Score: 5, Funny

      Maybe if rendering time wasn't an issue, they could focus more on plot, character development, and....ah who the fuck am I kidding. Maybe we could see more animated boobs.

    3. Re:Wonderful by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think this has the potential to make animation more like live-action film. A director woking with live actors can order more takes if he's not getting the performances he needs from his actors or the shot's composition is less than perfect. This system sounds like it might give animators the same direct feedback, allowing them to more easily compose those perfect shots,

    4. Re:Wonderful by kelemvor4 · · Score: 2

      "don't crank out crap just because it'll 'sell'"

      What better reason is there to crank out crap?

      True that! As long as they make millions of dollars per turd they'll churn out as much "crap" as possible. I don't blame them, I'd like to make millions of dollars.

    5. Re:Wonderful by hairyfeet · · Score: 2

      Wasn't it Jobs with Pixar that gave an interview about Disney, something about them only being able to mine past IP and come up with "crap like squirrels" or some such? All this will mean is Disney can crank out "(insert name of past character) story (insert number)" even faster. Wow, I'm soooo grateful Intel, really.

      Thanks for making dreck able to be produced at the speed of light, now they'll be able to crank out 5 sequels before the first line of toys is done being made out of PCBs in China! Thanks Intel! All I can say is thank (insert Deity) my kids are grown!

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  2. Wrist Straing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Homer: Uh, I guess. Is this episode going on the air live?
    June Bellamy: No, Homer. Very few cartoons are broadcast live. It's a terrible strain on the animators' wrists.

    1. Re:Wrist Straing by JoeMerchant · · Score: 2

      Well, it could be kinda cool for an interplanetary chat link - transmit a compressed description of the character's parameters (joints, facial muscles, etc.) and then render at the destination.

  3. Re:Management discovered SMP and threading... by ackthpt · · Score: 2

    So management finally discovered SMP and threading about 20 years or so after it was introduced onto the types of systems all of these outfits have been using since the beginning of time?

    Sedate this fellow before he starts to perpetrate some more "management".

    No need.

    As good animation is dependent upon good writing and good voice work, all this could do is bring even lower quality animated items to the masses. Seems to me, when I look over the total production time of any feature (despite the apparent cookie-cutter approach to movies) the writing takes up a tremendous amount of time. Perhaps a gifted ad-libber could do something well, making it up as he/she goes along, but you don't see a lot of those.

    More likely to be of use in the board room or training than cranking out the latest Dreamworks flick.

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    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  4. Re:GOOD LUCK by masternerdguy · · Score: 3, Funny

    Maximum Friendship

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    To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
  5. Re:Rotoscope? by ColdWetDog · · Score: 3, Interesting

    No, think more along the idea of Rango - an animated film that used human actors as guides for the animators in terms of facial expressions and posing. Took quite a while to do.

    Hopefully this will bring some creativity to the genre as opposed to simply cranking out more Shrek reruns.

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    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  6. Which is it? by Ibiwan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    One link says 50-70 times faster, and the other says 50-70 percent faster.

    Does anyone actually feel like watching the video to see what the claim is?

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    -- //no comment
    1. Re:Which is it? by jeffeb3 · · Score: 5, Funny

      What's the difference?

  7. Old news, blender can do this already! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually blender can do this in 2 ways!

    Since last Blender Conference last October, Cycles has been announced as the new render for Blender.
    This is a realtime renderer that uses Progressive Rendering and can render realtime on CPU, GPU or both!
    This can also be done for animation.

    But this is possible for quite a while, since blender also can do OpenGL rendering realtime, and you can use the BGE as a realtime viewport.
    So been there, done that, open sourced it

  8. Re:Is it user-friendly yet? by Howitzer86 · · Score: 2

    It's better than it used to be. I'd put it on par with Maya and Max as far as 'user-friendliness' goes... which is appropriate. If you want a super easy 3d program, there is always Anim8or. Beyond that there is the Japanese program DOGA, which is probably as easy as it will ever get for 3d graphics.