Alright so let's get straight to the point.
DirectX 11 is out along with the new NVIDIA and ATI cards which both support hardware tessellation. What does that mean?
Well you remember how in Zbrush you'd subdevide your model so you could get SUPER detail on it but then you had to bring it back down because the engine can't handle too many polygons?... well NO MORE will you have to do this because the new cards can calculate the models and add LOTS of detail to them as the camera gets closer... Now I konw talk is cheap, so here are some videos.
Water.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfrSaIY0YQA&feature=player_embedded
Hair.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xrb8PSpkhkQ&feature=player_embedded
An example of the EVGA card with some demos of the graphics.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzjNiDr05Fk
A ton of other games using this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pBLtZUJ9OA&feature=player_embedded
Now I know it doesn't look EXACTLY like films look but it is at least DEFIANTLY a step in the right direction.
Ambient Occlusion is also used as well.
"alright" you say, "That looks pretty good, but not all of us have tons of money to shell out for something like that."
Ok I thought the same thing... until I found one of these cards for around 380 dollars which I think is pretty good for the quality. I think the top price is around 499 with an average of about 400-450. (I thought these things would be like 600)
Now I know that some of you could argue that not everyone has these and if Reallusion did this, it'd be ignoring others... no, not really.
Take a look at Unigine.
http://unigine.com/products/unigine/
Now this is supporting all of the DX11 features... BUT I can also run the demo they give on my comptuer which can't even run DX10. They even have an openGL version for very low end computers as well. Take a look at the system requirements and you'll see that it supports a wide range of cards starting at the 700 series.
So iClone could still work with older cards.
Furthermore, I suggested a similar idea like this to those on the Second Life forum and they gave me a large "NO NOT EVERYONE HAS THOSE IT WOULD BE USELESS!"... which was somewhat arguable because everything would have been running inreal time plus it was all streamed too.
But here, the only person who's seeing it in realtime is you. And a lot of people watching may not be able to render these things, but most of them are fully capable of running HD content on their computers. So as a director, the choise would really be up to you as to what hardware you needed to render this.
Yes the story is the most important part of the film, but once you have your story and script all worked out, the quality of the visuals and sound only help to highten the feeling and emotional aspect of it. (at least this is what I believe, I'm not an expert in the field).
So in the end, this is up to you... do you think you could use these tools? Do you think it's worth it for RL to invest their time in making these features available in a future version of iClone?
Any comments?
EDIT:
These are just a few more poitns, you don't HAVE to read these, just something to consider.
When Avatar was created, the graphics in there were VERY NICE... even though I could still tell it was CG, it was VERY GOOD CG and I think DX11 with these cards is on the verge of producing just that in realtime.
When they made the story, they didn't HAVE to use that... they could've used other ways... had people dress up, designed all the sets in real life... but they didn't, they got the hardware and things needed... now this being said, they had a MUCH MUCH larger budget than we do. However, I think with this update, we could do things just as good.
Oh and also... yes I'm aware that there is dynamic hair... but this would be dynamic hair that DOES NOT go through the character.
... ok that's all. :P
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