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What is going on with CGI Rendering and what’s Blockchain got to do with It Creative Advances in Film

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The Incredibles 2 is in theaters this month, and it is safe to say that technology has improved a lot since the first Incredibles movie was released 14 years ago. So many changes have been made not just to creative skills, but also to the technical capabilities of animation, and specifically CGI rendering. It is exciting. In fact, some viewers are certainly heading to the theater not only to introduce their kidsto an adorable character set from their youth, but also to see for themselves what a different technical world this film was produced in.

The change is so noticeable that Rick Sayre, supervising technical director for both films, stated in an interview with IndieWire, “One of our goals was to make this one feel like you remember the first one. If you watched them back to back, you might feel that the first one suffers occasionally by comparison but this one is a glorious memory of the first one. But by opening with the slight unfamiliarity of Dicker slamming the light on Tony [during the interrogation], it allows you to adjust to this world before we have our flashback.”

Pixar’s RenderMan software has existed since the late 1980s, and it was revolutionary. 2016’s Finding Dory, sequel to Finding Nemo, one of their first and most popular films of all time, was the first feature film to utilize RenderMan RIS technology. One of the biggest changes to this version of the software is its capability to create both direct and indirect light sources.

This feature is especially valuable in a movie like Finding Dory, whose storyline takes place underwater 90% of the time. The artists don’t need to create simply visually appealing meadow scenes with light, or the ambiance of the late afternoon sun, but the complexities of an underwater world.

Paul Oakley, Finding Dory’s Lighting TD summed up the advances in this technology perfectly when he said “RIS allows us to focus on aesthetics instead of technology”.

Advances for the Everyday Creative

One of the most significant changes to CGI rendering over the past decade since Pixar began making these extraordinary films is that now, CGI rendering is widespread across a multitude of creative endeavors. Fields including architecture, digital advertising, real estate, automotives, and education all use this technique to create visually appealing, photorealistic still and video imagery for their products. In other words, everyone is using it.

This widespread use has led to new companies popping up in the market (think 3ds Max Design, Blender, Maya, Cinema 4D, and KeyShot.) It has also triggered massive improvements in rendering software, all of which is happening at an exponential rate.

Programs like Maya and others mentioned above offer upgrades and new features constantly. These include operational efficiencies like software compatibility, artistic breakthroughs in lighting, hair, skin tone and movement, and other specialized techniques. In fact, one of the biggest advances in CGI rendering recently has been specifically with fur.

New advances in technology have also made CGI rendering faster. While we know that rendering speed is ultimately a function of available CPUs, and most CGI rendering consumers simply don’t have the CPU bandwidth of Pixar and other major motion picture studios, other alternatives to improve speed are being developed by lots of different companies.

Z-buffering, or the ability to control which portion of an image is visible in a particular scene, is one way renderers can now improve the efficiency of their rendering. It operates under the simple premise that the less information per image needs to be rendered, the quicker the image will be completed.

A “dated’, but effective way to improve rendering speeds is to simply improve the rasterization algorithm. For those of us who have been in the field for years, improving rasterization sounds like stating the obvious. But changes in technology over the past 30 years have automated even the most basic of techniques, making them more efficient on a foundational level.

Ray casting is another basic, as it basically manages the color value. But it improves speeds by producting fast, accurate, and reliable results through automated processes in many off the shelf and open source rendering platforms.

However, the greatest breakthrough in improve rendering speed efficiency has been not to software itself, but to the processing. Companies like newcomer Leonardo Render, a blockchain-based rendering service provider, have tapped into previously dormant CPU sources and are now using their power to improve rendering speeds.

They are using blockchain mining farms to provide this power. These farms were designed to efficiently produce massive amounts of CPU power with which to mine cryptocurrency. However, they have recently become obsolete due to new advances in mining technology. Leonardo Render has repurposed them for use in CGI rendering.

They offer speeds so fast, that renders which would previously take hours, days, or even months, now happen affordably and in real time. This is a game changer for visual artists across all fields currently using CGI rendering to improve their visual presentation. In fact, with the new speeds and editing abilities available, Leonardo Render is likely opening up the industry to even bigger improvements in other areas.

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