http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=IO_20010813_8706SIGGRAPH 2001 – LOS ANGELES — AUGUST 14, 2000 — The graphics industry took a quantum leap forward today at SIGGRAPH 2001 when NVIDIA® Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA) rendered Columbia Pictures’ computer-generated (CG) animated motion picture, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, in real-time. This groundbreaking demonstration takes place in the NVIDIA booth (#1701) and SQUARE booth (#1927) using NVIDIA’s Quadro™ workstation graphics technology, the industry’s leading workstation 3D solutions. Square USA Inc. research and development division developed the software for the technology demo. The real-time demonstration was made possible by NVIDIA’s nfiniteFX™ shading technology, including vertex and pixel shaders, to overcome the technical challenges presented in creating realistic skin, hair, clothing and other organic attributes.
“This interactive demonstration of Final Fantasy is a major achievement for the 3D industry. The realism and subtleties of the images demonstrate the power of the programmable GPU that NVIDIA pioneered,” stated Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO at NVIDIA. “We’ve taken a giant step in visual computing. The work done by Square and NVIDIA is a glimpse at the future of video games and other interactive story telling experiences. We had a great time working with the talented team at Square. Their artist vision is inspiring.”
The Quadro-based workstation renders a single frame in four-tenths of a second, allowing for an interactive, real-time CG scene. For comparison, a single frame from the original movie took over 90 minutes to render. NVIDIA’s GPU enables over 100,000 speed-up over software renderers running on a farm of the fastest supercomputers.
“It has long been an artist’s dream to render CG animation in real-time,” stated Kazuyuki Hashimoto, CTO at Square USA. “This technology demonstration represents the future direction of digital 3D entertainment, simulating human emotions, movements and characteristics through the use of computer-generated graphics.”
Final Fantasy: The Sprits Within represents the first attempt in moviemaking history to simulate human emotions and movements more realistically than any current CG animated film. Ushering in a new form of entertainment, the film links interactive entertainment software and motion pictures while using the latest in computer-generated animated technology.
Hmmmmmm.........interesting maybe NVIDIA has some sort of deal with square. I wonder what the specs on that bad boy is. We proably won\'t see graphics near that until late next generation, if that.:thepimp:
