Vislab, Open-Source and Emerging Technologies

Vislab: What's been happening and where are we heading

Open-Source: The state of play in graphicsHow one can help the other

Vislab

Founded in 1991 by Bernard Pailthorpe. Employed Ben Simons, Chris Willing, others.

Extremely successful for over 10 years.However, changes in computing require a

change in structure: less service-oriented, more research.

Bernard leaves to go to UQ. Masa takes over as director.

Ben goes to CORE in Toronto, Steve “takes over” Ben's role.

Vislab moves to Madsen building

Vislab v2.0

Now more research oriented, includes clusters and super-computing in its mandate

Clusters

We now have access to facilities of AC3Barossa: 155 dual-Xeon nodes

Others (64 processor SGI, NEC Vector computer)

Clusters

We have our own clusters22 processor Intel cluster, Gigabit backbone.

Currently OpenMosix, will convert to MPI12 node SGI cluster using old O2 machines

Access-Grid

Access-Grid is a network collaboration tool.OpenSource success: 1st all-Linux AG, DPPT

for OpenOffice, Firewire cameras.Chris has now left, but work will continue.

Access-Grid

But full potential is not being realised

Chromium

Clustering for OpenGL

GL-App

Processor

Processor

Processor

Projector

Projector

ProjectorTile

Processor

Chromium

Chromium

Other SPUs possible

GL-App

SoftwareGL Renderer

SoftwareGL Renderer

TileProcessor

Image'Stitcher'

VideoEncoder

Network

Blender

Open-Source modeller, animation framework and renderer:

Blender

Interesting for a number of reasons...Completely OpenGL based (see Chromium),

including the general-purpose widget toolkit.Contains game-engine.

PowerPoint style presentations?Python scripting framework, including access to

GUI system. Write plugins, shaders, etc. in python.

Not perfect (UI could use some work) but capable of good stuff already ...

Blender

Open-Source Software Rendering

Chromium isn't the only sort of graphics clustering we're interested in.

Clusters widely used in film industry, but are frame-based. We want to parallelise below the frame level. So we need to do it ourselves.

Open-Source allows us to do this in ways proprietary software doesn't.

So what type of rendering do we want to provide?

Raytracing / Global Illumination

Basic raytracing/GI engines two-a-penny.Best of breed at the moment is Yafray:

Does threaded/SMP rendering.Forking rendering fixed, MPI implemented!

Renderman

Some “free” ones available, but not all are free-enough for our needs.

Of interest are Pixie (most of PRMan-11), and Aqsis. Either could probably be modified to use MPI.

Lucille: MPI capable already (author works with AC3). But too young for the time-being.

Interconnection and Interaction

We need a bridge between 3D applications, 2D applications, render-cluster and Access-Grid.

We would like 2-way interaction: Realtime collaboration on 3D data.

Verse2D and 3D exchange of dataLow-latency and lightweightPython bindings already existMajor initiative now funded.

The big picture

AG/Internet

MJpeg

GL AppChromium Renderers

Linux Cluster

VerseServer

[Render]

Gimp Verse

Blender

Verse

Video (Vic)

Audio (Rat)

Asterix/Bayonne

VOIP

POTS

User

Verse

Rest of world

Other Stuff of Interest

Gimp just hit 2.0Now has full Windows supportModified version ('Cinepaint') widely used in film

industry for post-production workAsterix and Bayonne

VOIP enabled PABX system. Bridge between AG and POTS.

It's not all roses of course

Usability: Already a problem elsewhere. But users are the best people to put back in here.

Culture: Do artists “get-it”? Students seem to want to focus on products rather than skills.

Is FOSS being pushed out of Graphics field? Blender creator thinks so.

But this is needed: Graphics tools are expensive.

Comments, Questions, Discussion