AMD Shows Ray-tracing Tech on YouTube

By Humphrey Cheung
published

San Francisco (CA) - AMD has published two YouTube videos that show off its voxel-based rendering technology.

The videos were released by AMD’s company blog, AMDUnprocessed, and showcase the 3D technology developed by JulesWorld.

The first video is a shaky-cam clip of a ray-traced Ruby, AMD/ATI’s red-clothed vixen (YouTube link). The second video is an interview with Jules, talking about technical aspects of OTOY/LightScape technologies (YouTube link). OTOY is JulesWorld’s plug-in that allows cinematic-quality rendering within browsers.

Real fireworks are expected for Siggraph 2008, where JulesWorld will be one of the companies to take the center stage. As soon as we learn more details about OTOY, LightScape, Fincher and Ruby demos, we’ll let you know. One thing is certain - this year’s Siggraph will be a-must-visit event.

Humphrey Cheung
9 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Lozil
    Ya, AMD is Back in the Graphics Game, Now they Just need to be back in the Processor Game....

    http://free-and-useful.blogspot.com
    Reply
  • one-shot
    Lightscape is pretty cool, can't wait till more programs use a gpu to render instead of a cpu.
    Reply
  • LAN_deRf_HA
    This could be it, the point at which graphics get so close to real life so consistently that they take a sideline to plot, gameplay, and art direction. Might as well just be one console next gen cause they're all going to look perfect.
    Reply
  • zarksentinel
    hell yea babe.
    Reply
  • And how exactly is that supposed to be ray tracing? That video is an ordinary GPU render. Some aspect of the scene may involve ray-tracing, but the majority don't.

    This posting is absurd.
    Reply
  • How is that Ray tracing? You might as well of said how is this gas oxygen? Maybe looking at the other higher quality vids will help you with whatever problem you're having. They even cycle through the rendering layers that make up a completed ray-trace scene.
    Reply
  • Despite the "youtube quality" video, that actually looks pretty sick.
    Reply
  • Niva
    Ray tracing is a generic term used to render images including things like shadows, reflections, refractions and even caustics. There is very little information about the quality of ray-tracing which gets more expensive with depth increases and scene complexity. However, it's about time they're able to do good enough ray-tracing realtime.
    Reply
  • robertstar20
    Ray tracing is not a 'generic term', and has a very specific definition. Ray tracing is where rays of light are shot out from the camera (so far, no different to GPU rendering conceptually), and then as each ray hits an object, more rays are shot towards light sources and other rays are shot to simulate reflections, etc.

    Ray tracing is not 'just high quality' as tir implies, nor is it just any rendering type which is capable of reflections, refractions, or caustics, all of which can be trivially done with DX10 shaders, well short of true ray tracing. Photorealistic ray-tracing of non-trivial scenes takes hours or even days on standard CPUs, so I don't think even GPUs can bridge that gulf quite yet.

    Now I don't actually have a clue whether the graphics demonstrated in these videos is true raytracing or simply an incremental improvement in traditional GPU techniques, but all of you should do some research before posting such strong statements...
    Reply