Dreamworks and Carmack Discuss 3D and Threading At IDF 85
MojoKid writes "At the Intel Developer Forum, VP and GM of Intel's Software and Solutions group, Renee James, wheeled out a few celebrities of the 3D world, namely Jeffrey Katzenberg of Dreamworks and John Carmack of id Software. According to Katzenberg, film directors Robert Zemeckis, James Cameron, Peter Jackson, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas are all 'working in 3D now.' Katzenberg specifically showcased the Dreamworks film Kung Fu Panda, which was rendered in 3D, and then spoke of the first 3D, CG animated film they'll be releasing in March '09, titled Monsters vs. Aliens. Then came John Carmack, co-owner and Technical Director of id Software, who ran a demo of their still-in-development, post-apocalyptic game, Rage. Carmack talked briefly about the different ways that the game utilizes threading and multi-core support."
A webcast of the full 50+ minute presentation is available at the IDF page. Renee James' presentation is on day two. A full transcript (PDF) is also available.
3D? That sucks! (Score:2, Interesting)
Why do I have the feeling that I may have accidentally created another annoying marketing term?
Related topic: 3D Star Wars at SIGGRAPH (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the more interesting presentations was In-Three's [in-three.com] talk "Dimensionalization: Creating 3D Movies from 2D Images" in the 3D Cinema [siggraph.org] session. They showed a space battle clip from Revenge of Sith which had been "Dimensionalized" [in-three.com] which is their term for 3D-conversion. They showed dimensionalized clips from other movies with people and nature scenes, the latter which can be challenging. Overall, I thought they were pretty good- just a bit short of have filmed in 3D in the first place.
Dimensionalization involves includes volumizing individual objects and positioning them in a 3D depth-of-field. Some is this is done automatically by the software, and some of it is interative. The interative part includes outlining objects to improve efficiency and quality. It also includes fixing flaws like how to filling in missing "around the edge pieces", and erasing "eye discomfort artifacts" where the the stereo view doesnt quite work right. The director also adds "artistic control" such as highlighting portions of depth of view. In-three showed various examples from a complex Sith space battle scene where the director might want to highlight the action of subset of spaceships. My perception was movie-dimensionalization operated in a similar fashion to movie-colorization 15 years ago with both computer and artistic components.
As of last week the In-Three presenter said that LucasFilm had not commited to dimensionalization of the six movies yet. They also did not mention names of other clients and movies when asked, but I think they are definately doing some.
Re:Gameplay vs. Graphics (Score:4, Interesting)
I've always considered ID to be an engine development house first, and a game developer second. They've had a lot of amazing successes in the retail market, but their true strength seems to be in developing the game engines that other developers use to push game-play boundaries.
I've always enjoyed the games that ID has created, but off the top of my head, I can't think of anything they've produced in-house that sparks a revolution in gameplay since the original Wolfenstein 3D.
John Carmack disappointed me (Score:2, Interesting)
I was a id software fan, I liked id because they gave me the feeling that they care about Linux.
I also bought most of their games (Doom 3, Quake 4, etc.) for playing them on my Linux box, but after reading this they really disappointed me: http://www.linuxgames.com/archives/10532
I still like their games though, and I hope they port their upcoming games to Linux (id tech 5 / doom 4, etc). Otherwise I'm never buying their games again.
Re:John Carmack disappointed me (Score:1, Interesting)
He speaks well within reason. And consider, too, the fiasco that has been the new opengl 3 spec. This leaves game developers with the sole avenue of directx. Which as you know doesn't work under linux.