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The computer industry is famous for splashy product demonstrations
designed to showcase its technology, and as a result has seen
its share of empty eye candy masking true technological innovations.
In the spring of 2003, ATI decided to change the rules of how
demos were developed with the initiation of a multi-phase project
called Ruby. With ATI’s extensive experience in the gaming
and film world, it was clear that for a demonstration to have
real impact, a strong story was crucial to success. And so
with that in mind, Ruby - ATI's digital superstar - was born.
The primary goal of this production project was to develop
both an interactive version, which could run in real time,
as well as a fully rendered, film-like version. Breaking new
ground inevitably poses several challenges, which ATI approached
head-on when developing the first episode of Ruby.
The first step was to look at design firms that would complement
ATI's in-house team of designers and developers. After an extensive
search, an established broadcast and film design studio was
selected to work with ATI to bring Ruby to life. The RhinoFX
team of animators, motion capture artists and programmers joined
ATI's 3D Application Research Group to design a one-of-a-kind
demo that would showcase the innovative capabilities of ATI
graphics hardware.
"We know what it takes to create a first class 3D graphics
demo that really wows the design community," said Callan
McInally, Manager, 3D Application Research Group. "However,
with Ruby we wanted to do something different, something that
had never done before, and by leveraging RhinoFX's extensive
experience in film and broadcast, we knew we could showcase
ATI's technology to a much broader audience than ever before."
"RhinoFX has had great successes in film and broadcast,
but this was our first opportunity to work on a project that
was also being adapted with the same technologies used in today's
games," said Harry Dorrington for RhinoFX. "ATI has
built their reputation on innovation and were thrilled to join
forces with them. From day one we knew that this was going
to be a unique partnership which would allow both companies
to experiment with new techniques and new technology leading
to greater innovation.“ |
The story begins with the heroine, Ruby....
Once the basic premise was determined, RhinoFX and ATI
worked on developing the plot and script through storyboards
that illustrated Ruby's first episode. As in a Hollywood blockbuster,
several rounds of casting were held to audition actors who
would perform the intricate martial arts moves that would later
be digitized through a state-of-the-art motion capture system.
To ensure that Ruby remained very real, even the most incredible
moves were performed by actors.
"Early on in the process, realism kept coming up as
the most important element in this project," remembers
Harry Dorrington, RhinoFX. "Although it can become very
complex, we knew that motion capture was the way to go for
Ruby and her enemies, to make sure that their actions and moves
were very true to life. To accurately keyframe human movement
is a real challenge, no matter how talented the animator, so
motion capture was the best option for this project."
Having completed the extensive pre-production and production
stages, both ATI and RhinoFX switched gears and focused on
bringing Ruby to life on the screen. Using ATI's FireGL workstation
graphics accelerators and Alias' Maya 3D graphics software,
ATI's team worked collaboratively with RhinoFX to leverage
the specialized talents of both groups. The power of ATI FireGL
workstation graphics was key to accelerating the
workflow and keeping this complex project on track.
RhinoFX's team began by mining the extensive motion capture
data collected during production. Then the significant task
of modeling the entire project began. Everything was built
from the ground-up, including characters, environments and
animation. Working with the motion capture data, animators
began to rig the character skeletons which represented the
story’s characters: Ruby, Optico and his henchman. Each
bone, joint and muscle was carefully crafted by RhinoFX's talented
team of animators. With the characters in place and the raw
motion capture data collected, the team then went about refining
the animation, ensuring smooth transitions and synchronizing
the movements of all the characters. Continuing to use the
wide set of tools available in Maya, RhinoFX's team built the
environments seen within the demo, including Optico's lair
and getaway helicopter. Again, the graphics hardware played
a vital role in enabling the animators to build their virtual
actors and scenes without impairing the creative process.
Once the modeling and animation was complete, RhinoFX moved
into the rendering stage to give all the objects in the scene
texture and color. Reference shaders, (which point to existing
shaders saving rendering power), and textures were added, making
Ruby and her enemies come alive and the environments even more
realistic. With the film quality version complete, RhinoFX
proceeded with the time consuming task of rendering a final,
fully rendered version entitled Ruby: The Doublecross.
The Importance of 3D Graphics
Throughout any production workflow,
3D graphics plays a vital role—from previsualization
and modeling to animating and rendering. As a result, it is
critical
to
have the right
graphics hardware powering your content creation workstations.
ATI’s
ATI FireGL graphics products feature hardware accelerated rendering
that enable designers to experience real time performance and
playback. Users can than tweak their designs and see the results
immediately without having to go through a time intensive render.
This dramatic reduction in the time required to make changes
allowed the team working on Ruby to refine both the animation
and shading to create the optimal result while continuing to
stay on schedule and budget. All ATI FireGL products are tested
and certified for all the leading digital content creation
applications and provide workstation users with superior image
quality and high performance that is supported by a unified
driver providing the driver stability necessary in a production
environment. By providing graphics solutions that work seamlessly
with software, workstation customers can spend their valuable
time designing and creating.
Once the film version of Ruby was complete, the advanced
research team at ATI was then called upon to take the animated
movie and build a version that could be generated in real-time.
The idea was to make Ruby run as if it were an interactive
video game. Considering that the rendered version of Ruby took
numerous hours to be rendered, the team had a significant task
ahead of them to make this demo run in real-time, at a minimum
of 30 frames per second.
New Real-Time Shading Techniques
Extensive research was conducted
by ATI to develop real-time techniques for some of the critical
shaders
implemented
in
the demo. Unconvincing hair and skin is a common tell-tale
sign of a digitally created character so new, realistic shading
techniques were implemented by ATI to make Ruby look more lifelike
than ever imagined possible. In addition, ATI introduced new
depth of field techniques which gave the Ruby demo a film quality
that other real-time demos simply hadn't been able to achieve
in the past. As the last step, normal maps were added to the
interactive version to improve the details on surfaces such
as skin and leather which ultimately created a greater sense
of realism.
"These new techniques for hair and skin that have been
applied to Ruby represent a significant advancement in real-time
rendering, which will become immediately apparent to game developers
and graphics professionals," said Callan McInally. "At
the same time, a general audience can easily appreciate the
level of realism that has been achieved, without sacrificing
speed and lifelike movement.”
Since Ruby’s introduction, she has been used in a number
of various capacities to demonstrate the power and of ATI hardware,
including trade shows and product launches. Her popularity
is demonstrated by the over 100 000 downloads of the demo from
Ruby’s Headquarters on ATI’s website. Ruby was
publicly featured in North America for the first time at this
year’s SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles.
With the tremendous success of Ruby: The Doublecross, ATI
is moving forward with future episodes of Ruby - once again
teaming with RhinoFX - continuing to showcase the unlimited
potential of what can be created with ATI's wide range of graphics
products and to continue to break new ground in the graphics
industry.
Visit
Ruby's Headquarters
View
the Real-Time Demo
Product Information
