Ruby™: ATI’s Digital Heroine Harnesses the Power of FireGL

Building Ruby™: ATI’s Digital Heroine Harnesses the Power of FireGL

In the spring of 2003, ATI began work on a one-of-a-kind demo to showcase the innovative capabilities of ATI graphics hardware. The primary goal of the project was to develop both an interactive version that could run in real time and a fully rendered, film-like version. With ATI’s extensive experience in the gaming and film world, it was clear that a strong story was crucial to success. And so with that in mind, Ruby™, ATI's digital superstar, was born.

The Plot Thickens: Developing a Killer Story

Working with RhinoFX, ATI developed storyboards for the plot and script for Ruby’s™ first episode, called The DoubleCross. Using ATI's FireGL workstation graphics accelerators and Alias' Maya® 3D graphics software, ATI's team worked collaboratively with RhinoFX to bring Ruby™ to life on the big screen. The power of ATI FireGL workstation graphics was key to accelerating the workflow and keeping this complex project on track.

Digital Building Blocks: Capturing Human Motion

Everything was built from the ground-up, including characters, environments and animation. Accurately keyframing human movement is always a challenge, so several rounds of casting were held to audition actors to perform the intricate martial arts moves that would be digitized through a state-of-the-art motion capture system. Working with the motion capture data, animators began to rig skeletons to represent the story’s characters. Each bone, joint and muscle was carefully crafted. ATI’s artists constructed 128 morph targets to drive Ruby’s™ facial rig. All of these facial "poses" were combined using the GPU to create Ruby’s™ final look. The artists also used a number of animated wrinkle maps to add additional subtle expressiveness to Ruby’s™ brow, eyes, mouth and chin. With the characters in place, the team then went about refining the animation, ensuring smooth transitions and synchronizing movements. Using the wide set of tools available in Maya®, RhinoFX's team built the demo’s environments.

Realistic Shading and Rendering: Fooling the Eye

Once the modeling and animation was complete, RhinoFX moved into the rendering stage to give all the objects texture and color. Textures and reference shaders, which point to existing shaders and save rendering power, were added, making Ruby™ and her enemies come alive and the environments even more realistic. With the film-quality version complete, RhinoFX proceeded with the time consuming task of rendering a final version.

Ground-Breaking New Techniques: Creating Life-like Skin and Hair

The team faced a significant challenge in making the demo run in real-time, at a minimum of 30 frames per second. Unconvincing hair and skin are common giveaways of poorly created digital characters, so ATI developed innovative real-time techniques for some of the critical shaders implemented in the demo. In addition, ATI introduced new depth-of-field techniques that created a film-quality that other real-time demos simply hadn't been able to achieve. As the last step, normal maps were added to improve the details on surfaces such as skin and leather, which ultimately created a greater sense of realism. These new techniques represented a significant advancement in real-time rendering that can now be used by game developers everywhere.

Continuing the Fight: New Demos Bring Advanced Techniques

After the success of The DoubleCross, a second demo, Dangerous Curves, continued ATI's tradition of blending movie and gaming genres. The use of real-time motion-blur, glows and precomputed radiance transfer (PRT) technology delivered realistic lighting and is a compelling demonstration of the cinematic experience that is possible on today’s 3D-graphics hardware. A third episode, The Assassin, highlights the possibilities for a large complex environment, using high dynamic range lighting and dynamic soft shadows to set the mood. The villain of this episode, a cyborg called Cyn, is ATI’s most complex character to date, consisting of over 120,000 polygons – all lit, transformed, rendered and shaded using the power of the Radeon™ X1800. A fourth demo, Whiteout, exploits the power of the ATI Radeon™ HD 2900XT to create a rich and expansive landscape of snow, rock, and ice. From the procedural snow accumulation on the harsh terrain to the wrinkles on Ruby’s™ brow and the physics that drive each strand of fur on Ruby’s™ fur collar, the ATI Radeon™ HD 2900XT can handle it all. High dynamic range imaging techniques are used to account for the brightest of outdoor environments as well as the darkest depths of Ruby’s™ icy head quarters. Advanced light scattering techniques are employed to faithfully reproduce the complex interactions of light with snow and ice.

Forging Ahead: Ruby’s™ Next Mission

As fans eagerly wait to see what battles Ruby™ will take on next, they really anticipate the technical innovations that power her ever more life-like adventures. Throughout her development, Ruby™ has pushed the edge of what was possible in 3D graphics generation and created new models and techniques for the gaming industry. Ruby’s™ prowess, strength and success are truly symbols for the company that stands behind her.