Digital Art Zone

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-3L9BOTEtw

I wuz blown away!

Pixar SubD have been part of the Modo toolset for a while already so in terms of visuals I’ve seen it before. What I do find very exciting is that they are starting to follow the open source route which mean hopefully that they won’t stop with Open SubD but that we’ll eventually see Open Renderman.

and who is going to code it then for studio?

Hopefully we might see a third party developer come along and do that.  They’re releasing Version 1 of the code in the next week or so (at least that’s the plan) and Version 2 by July.

Maybe I should post this in the Developer’s forum.

The Developer Forum is for scripting, which wouldn’t be up to this.

The Open Subd stuff looks like it’s primarily for viewport acceleration, not for rendering.  (They talk about how it gives the same results as specifying the same CC subdivision in Renderman for actual renders.)  The main difference for Studio would be that when you make pose changes/etc, you’d always see the subd mesh, and not have that return to base mesh followed by snap to subd mesh once you let go.

My guess is we’ll eventually see DAZ incorporate it into Studio’s viewport, but not for a good long while until Pixar has the chance to work out the initial v1.0 kinks.

Actually, cwichura, that’s incorrect.  It’s primarily for rendering since it calculates the amount of subdivision created to lessen for flatter surfaces.  Fewer Polygons for faster render times.  In the video they make a pretty big deal about that.  It also makes a huge difference in modelling since defining hard edges will require fewer polygons to create.

The display aspects are self explanatory, of course.  Not just the subdivided mesh, but being able to see the DISPLACED mesh in realtime… wholymoly that’s amazing!

There’s also another benefit to making this open source: standardized subdivision across 3D platforms.

Since AutoDesk is directly involved, FBX will very likely be implementing Open SubDiv pdq…

Yeah…

Call me when DAZ implements real-time displacement.

Or, even real-time bumping via their already implemented Normal mapping (which is for real-time bump displacement [Not mesh displacement, mind you]).

The only software I have which can utilize this is Metasequoia 3D modeler which only recently was able to implement real-time Normal mapping (via on the fly bump map conversion through the 3D Paint module).

Hell, I’m still waiting for DAZ Studio to respect hard edges/smoothing groups within the OBJ’s so we don’t have to perform work-around modeling techniques such as Mechanical Beveling, or coincident facet separations.

I’ve been Sub-D modeling with Catmull-Clark for well over a decade, and Poser/DS only supports it on a rudimentary level.

I would even love to be able to use the “Open Source” P-Tex that I acquired from Pixar nearly two years ago.

This looks to be something one would need to purchase Autodesk Maya, Autodesk Mudbox, a very high-end PC, and a very high-end GPU card that can utilize all that it entails.

Don’t get me wrong, I would love to see DAZ do something with this, but for the next decade I don’t think I’ll hold my breath.