The movie Toy Story needed top-computers in 1995 to render every frame and that took a lot of time (800000 machine-hours according to Wikipedia).

Could it be possible to render it in real time with modern (2025) GPUs on a single home computer?

  • Emily (she/her)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    11·
    4 days ago

    You’re right, it looks like they didn’t (at least for most things?). They do mention raytracing briefly, and that the sampling stage can “combine point samples from this algorithm with point samples from other algorithms that have capabilities such as ray tracing”, but it seems like they describe something like shadow mapping for shadows and regular raster shading techniques (“textures have also been used for refractions and shadows”)?

    • magic_lobster_party@fedia.io
      4·
      4 days ago

      Interesting paper. I skimmed through it quickly, but it seems like they wanted to avoid relying on ray tracing.

      Minimal ray tracing. Many non-local lighting effects can be approximated with texture maps. Few objects in natural scenes would seem to require ray tracing. Accordingly, we consider it more important to optimize the architecture for complex geometries and large models than for the non-local lighting effects accounted for by ray tracing or radiosity.

      Most of the paper is way above my understanding, so I’m not qualified.