Film-Quality Animation on the Average PC

I happened to see this story on MIT Technology Review :

Now, Adobe Systems, the company famous for tools like Photoshop and Acrobat Reader, is developing software that could bring the power of a Hollywood animation studio to the average computer and let users render high-quality graphics in real time. Such software could be useful for displaying ever-more-realistic computer games on PCs and for allowing the average computer user to design complex and lifelike animations.

The Impact of Computing mandates that any computationally driven product or capability exponentially drops in cost by 30% to 60% every year.  Each film that was considered to be a breakthrough in computer-derived special effects, from Toy Story to the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, used technology that continues to become commoditized.  What was groundbreaking from Pixar in 1995 is today affordable to second-tier video game companies designing games on $2 million budgets, and television programs intended for syndication and cable.  Before long, the prices inevitably reach the consumer. 

Needless to say, this greatly enhances the reach of the nascent cottage industry of Machinima, and eventually will lead to small groups of 2-3 people producing full-length animated feature films that can be distributed on the Internet.  I have written about this in detail in my article from 4/1/2006, The Next Big Thing in Entertainment, particularly in Part II.  This development from Adobe is one of the necessary steps towards realizing the vision that I outlined in the original article.  Machinima will be to Hollywood what the blogosphere became to Big Media. 

Related :

The Next Big Thing in Entertainment

The Technological Progression of Video Games

The Impact of Computing

Next Generation Graphics - A Good Intro

Comments

[jeffolie]

At the Los Angeles County Fair, I saw a high definition, 108 inch TV for sale at $104,000. The vendor also had a 65 inch, 1080 high definition TV for sale at about $2000. I wonder what the prices will be in 2009?

[GK]

jeffolie,

For mainstream sizes (27-61 inches), the prices drop about 25% a year. Atypical sizes (108 inches) technically could also drop at the same rate, but won't as that market is very high-end and niche.