HANDS ON GUIDE

5 - One of the first GPGPU apps was… 3D rendering

Not real time 3D rendering, but creating ray traced images ..

Although ATi grabbed the GPGPU limelight with its Stream Processors and CTM initiative, Nvidia released an application back in April 2004 called Gelato which could be categorised as GPGPU. Gelato is an offline 3D renderer aimed at professional animators, so it’s not very far away from what graphics cards were originally intended to do. However, it renders using raytracing and global illumination, which aren’t part of hardware-accelerated Direct3D. It’s aimed at visual quality without compromise, rather than real-time frame rates.

Gelato’s main requirement is that the graphics card has FP32 single-precision processing capabilities, which means NV30 cards and above support it (GeForce FX 5200 or later). There’s a free version available, or a Pro version which will set you back a whopping $1,500 per node, but includes important features like network parallel rendering, multithreading, and native 64-bit support. Both versions come with the Mango and Amaretto plug-ins, which allow you to render straight from Alias Maya and Autodesk 3dsmax espectively, two of the leading 3D animation applications used in film production and game development.

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