RAY TRACING: TODAY, TOMORROW AND BEYOND

Transcription

1 RAY TRACING: TODAY, TOMORROW AND BEYOND The challenges getting machines to make physically acute pictures Ian Mallett 1

2 Focus and emphasis on Visualization, Graphics, and forms of reality Consulting and market research - Advisor to industry leaders and investors Bi-weekly report, various Digital Technology Market Studies Product testing and benchmarking Conferences Chasing Pixels, Finding Visual Magic

3 Introduction Ray tracing is to manufacturing what a storyboard is to film the ability to visualize the product before it's built. Movies couldn't be made today with the quality they have without ray tracing. The market for ray tracing is entering into a new phase Will review market size, market composition and ways the industry is reducing rendering time and

4 Ray tracing is part of the 3D hierarchy 3D Modeling CAD AEC MCAD M&E Ray Tracing engine

5 Wireframe to Rendering

6 Overall Market Huge $14,000 $12,000 $10,000 Simulation, CAGR (14-20): 6.7% M&E, CAGR (14-20): 2.3% MFG, CAGR (14-20): 4.3% Data Generation Markets ($M) $8,000 $6,000 $4,000 $2,000 $

7 Moore s Law Marches Ray Tracing Forward 2015 Autodesk A360 Cloud Rendering 2000 Software prices tumble for 3D modeling tools 2014 Google acquires Zync, cloud-based rendering 2013 Lagoa introduces cloud-based renderer 1968 Arthur Appel introduces Ray Tracing Algorithm 1986 Mental Images 1988 Cebas founded 1997 Chaos Group founded introduces V- Ray 2002 Renderm RT Ray-Tracer introduced Siggraph 2005 for BRL-CAD 2007 Nvidia acquires Mental Images 2007 Nvidia releases CUDA enabling GPU compute iray introduced

8 The Big get Bigger 3D Modeling and Animation Market Share CAD Market Share The Foundry 2% Other 32% SketchUp 7% McNeel 5% Pixologic Zbrush 1% Autodesk 21% Daz 3D 15% Maxon 9% Lightwav e 3% Smith Micro 4% Side Effects 1% Other 19% SketchU p 7% Rhino 8% Siemens 6% PTC 11% Autodes k 26% Dassault 17% Bentley 6%

9 Ray tracing software market Ray tracing TAM (M units) 2.00 TAM, CAGR (14-20) 2.6% PAM, CAGR (14-20) 2.4%

10 North America Largest for RT SW 3.5 Country France Japan 2 USA 1.5 Germany Canada Bulgaria Spain USA

11 Crazy market 80 Ray tracing suppliers Continuing companies & software Free software Acquired & merged companies Failed or abandoned companies

12 Consolidation Seems Obvious Consolidation inevitable? Acquisitions and mergers already in the works, but its not going to be a blood

13 No Discernable Cause and Effect? 80 Ray tracing suppliers CAGR: 89% Ray tracing suppliers Introductions Linear (Ray tracing suppliers)

14 Virtual Prototyping is the Key Try it before you buy it, fly it, fund or build it There is no longer any need to photograph automobiles and airplanes for marketing... Not much else is either Ray tracing saves zillions of dollars by catching mistakes, allowing for changes, and helping analyze collateral issues BUT it has to be physically perfect, and to do that you have to have a ridiculously large, robust, and compatible

15 This is not a photograph

16 The Future Some companies have survived on the basis of their breadth of services, supporting all the major tools, several shaders and materials libraries. Material libraries offer an opportunity and a threat. The leading companies are offering material library tools and formats and thus have a way to lock-in their customers. Nvidia hopes to use its leverage with GPUs and marketing power to widely disseminate their materials and tie customers to their libraries (and thus, their hardware).

17 A shakeup is coming in the rendering market The successful companies will be those who can offer: Ease of use, including test images and production run progress monitoring Some guarantee of success Tweaks that enhance ray tracer performance. In general, physics-based optical fidelity is not as valuable as looks right. Service and support Broad-based robust materials library

18 Summary There is an enormous demand for virtual prototyping The data analysis is gigantic and can t be done without the cloud or ray tracing The images have to be physically accurate, photo-realistic, and made with high-fidelity material properties

19 Chasing pixels finding Visual Magic

20 Epilog Photorealism vs. photorealistic Margaret Hagen introduced the concept that there are different methods of portraying realism in which certain properties of a scene are accurately represented, and others are approximated, abstracted, or omitted (Varieties of Realism, Cambridge Press, 1986). Thank you Ludwig The point of this idea is that pictures can be realistic in some respects and not in others. For example, Dürer s A Young Hare is extremely realistic, but not photo-accurate. However, the iconic Utah teapot is geometrically accurate. Rendering methods can make its rendering photo-accurate but not necessarily realistic.