Graphics Goodness - Fluid Dynamics Rendering
Date: 4/23/2013 4:25:00 PM
PhysXInfo seems to have solved a challenging tasks, making computer generated water look like water. Now, I'm not talking about fluid rendering with the horsepower like ILM uses for movies like The Perfect Storm, but instead using a commercial available desktop to render out the magic in real-time. Think video game, instead of pre-rendered movie special effects.
Rendering water is particularly tricky because it takes a ton of processing cycles manipulating triangle based meshes, similar to this image below. The higher resolution the water, the more triangles and the more math the computer needs to crunch.
Instead PhysXInfo has come up with a process that is able to real-time render beautiful fluid dynamics using their Position Based Fluids software using a technique they call Position Based Dynamics. Instead of using a multi-million dollar rendering server farm, the following video was powered by a nVidia GTX 850 based video card that can be purchased today for a couple hundred USD. Check out the video below to see what PhysXInfo has been up to. While it's certainly not a replacement for what ILM, Pixar, Dreamworks and other animation studios can do, for use in a video game, it's pretty spectacular. (make sure to switch the video HD)