Akka for 3D computer animation systems?

[Giovanni]

I am completely new to 3D computer animation systems. However maybe my next job will be working in a research center for 3D computer graphics.

I know that 3D animation systems need a lot of computing power and many tasks can be done concurrently.

I would like to know whether Akka can be useful in order to build an highly performant and scalable 3D animation system.

I am ignorant at the moment about all the processing steps needed to do in order to produce a 3D animation movie, but I guess that a parallel and distributed system based on Akka can help to improve the performance of the whole system.

If anyone has some more thoughts or experience about it, please share with us.

Best regards
giovanni

[Giovanni]

Do you think that it is possible to build a system for processing 3D computer graphics by using Akka?

Best regards,
giovanni

[Jean-Francois Im]

It depends on what you mean by processing 3D graphics. If you mean
distribution of tasks for distributed rendering, I can't see why you
couldn't.

For example, say that you were rendering a short movie like this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_the_Birds_(film) . At 3 minutes 25,
at 30 frames per second, that's 6150 frames. Given, say, a hundred
computers, you could have each render six or seven frames of the movie
and then reassemble them. That's not exactly novel, though; just about
any half-decent 3D package supports networked rendering because it
literally takes forever to render anything even slightly complex.

If you're using a scanline renderer, you could even have an actor
render part of an image and another render another part of the image
and composite it later.

If you're asking if Akka does 3D rendering, I don't think it does. :P

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Akka User List" group.
> To post to this group, send email to akka...@googlegroups.com.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> akka-user+...@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit this group at
> http://groups.google.com/group/akka-user?hl=en.

[Giovanni]

Thanks for your reply.

I know that Akka is not doing 3D rendering and I didn't mean that.

Probably in the near feature I have to start to build a full new system for producing 3D computer animations. In order to evaluate the technology to use for it, I was thinking about using Akka for the distributed computing.

Unfortunately, I am not expert about 3D animation and Akka yet. So I need to study both of them and understand if they are a good match each other.

I really like the concepts/ideas at the basis of Akka and I would like to use Akka for this brand new system.

Your answer is encouraging.

Thanks a lot.

Best regards,
giovanni

[Henrik Engström]

Hi Giovanni,
I'm building an experimental ray tracer in Akka and Scala. Perhaps you
can get some ideas or inspiration from this?
https://github.com/henrikengstrom/roygbiv

Best of luck on your 3D adventure.
//Henrik

[Edmondo Porcu]

According to some private information I had from Typesafe guys,
Akka 2.1 it will be able to make tea, coffee and cappuccino in a
distributed manner. You will be able to distribute these tasks in
parallel among a cluster of Nespresso's machine and combine the
results in a purely asynchronous way.

Furthermore, you can register an asynchronous callback to drink the
coffee when it is ready.

Best regards

Edmondo

2012/3/16 Henrik Engström <henrik....@gmail.com>:

[Giovanni]

Thanks Henrik for your reply.

I will have a look.

Best regards
giovanni

[Jean-Francois Im]

I'll have to look into getting a Typesafe subscription when 2.1 comes
out, then. :)