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[McFly]

Thx to Jaws @ B3D:

System and method of adjusting ray origins when shading vertices with rays

The present invention is related to rendering computer animated video and/or images generally, and to adjusting the origins of rays cast for object-edge positions. The present invention includes identifying a location of a vertex positioned on a perimeter of an object defined in the object scene by a plurality of vertices. The plurality of vertices include the vertex positioned on the perimeter of the object. A shading position that corresponds to, but is offset from, the vertex is then established. A shading value is then computed for the vertex by reference to the shading position. The shading value may be computed, for example, by casting a ray from the shading position.

From nAo:

That patent is from Larry Gritz.
Mr. Gritz is an ex Pixar who founded Ex Luna. ExLuna got acquired by NVIDIA a couple of years ago. NVIDIA also settled some patents litigation between Pixar and ExLuna.
IIRC Gritz also developed BMRT (Blue Moon Rendering Tool) the first renderman compliant interface ray tracer (it used some kind of global illumination algorithm too..) who was used as ray server when PRMAN didn't supported ray tracing.
Now he's working on GELATO. That patent is about ExLuna rendering technology, now owned by NVIDIA.

Pana?

Fredi

 

[j^aws]

Well I hate to speculate, (ahem...yeah right!) but nAo mentioned that ExLuna got bought by nVidia a couple of years ago... and when did nVidia start work on the PS3 GPU...hmm?...Maybe they could implement something from this in hardware for the PS3 GPU?

Btw, there isn't an echo...it's the same Jaws from B3D, my first post, yay!

 

[McFly]

Btw, there isn't an echo...it's the same Jaws from B3D, my first post, yay!

Damn, an other stalker.

Fredi

 

[j^aws]

Don't flatter yourself McFly!

Anyways,

With some talk of what PS3 may do prior to this nVidia announcement, this patent would be a suitable match for PS3 and CELL, no? Especially with Peter Hofstee's recent talk of physics based modelling, ray casting etc. With the importance of shading technology next gen, it's the only patent filed by nVidia that mentions REYES, ray-tracing and global illumination that I could find! Even if it's not for PS3, it's still interesting!

An ideal time to implement something like this would be in a console with a clean sheet designed CPU/GPU architecture?!

Hofstee gamespot CELL video

 

[McFly]

Google, your best friend (or maybe not):

SANTA CLARA, CA — JUNE 13, 2002 — NVIDIA® Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA), the worldwide leader in visual processing solutions, today announced that the graphics community—including industry luminaries, game developers, middleware vendors, digital content creation (DCC) software vendors and rendering vendors—are overwhelmingly endorsing and adopting the Cg Language and the NVIDIA Cg Toolkit, unveiled earlier today. Industry-leading DCC tool providers, including: Alias|Wavefront, Discreet, Luxology and Softimage, are actively working with NVIDIA to incorporate Cg into their current development plans. The first Cg-based offerings—primarily expected to be software plug-ins—will be available to DCC customers this summer directly within their favorite tools.

...

“Today’s gamer expects the same richness, reality and immersivity in their gameplay as they do with other entertainment media, so the pressure is on the development community to challenge their existing creative boundaries and deliver truly astounding graphics effects. Criterion has always been committed to empowering individual developers with the tools to realize their creative vision, and we fully support NVIDIA’s new Cg Compiler as a positive step towards realizing a real-time REYES/Renderman-style architecture and help narrow the gap between non-real time and real-time graphics.”

Adam Billyard
CTO
Criterion Software

http://developer.nvidia.com/object/IO_20020612_7133.html

That was some months before Sony and Nvidia started working together. Maybe this new GPU is the hardware realistation of the software ideas they had earlier that year and Sony was the perfect partner to realise it.

But it could also meen that the Nvidia REYES patent was never there for a future hardware based on it, but just for their software idea.

Or a mix of both.

Fredi

 

[Drek]

Criterion has been a major PS2 middleware provider, I'd imagine that if anyone knows what Sony and Nvidia are up to it'd be them. Sony will want Renderware with the PS3 from the word go I'd imagine.

Speaking of that, a little OT, does anyone know if Sony gets royalties for middleware? If so doesn't that mean they're double dipping royalties on games built with Renderware, namely Grand Theft Auto?