Hi, this is really a great software. My question is that, how can the video card help to improve the performance.

For example, my video card is GeForce 8500 GT, it needs 25 seconds to track each frame in the sample walk video. I noticed that in the tutorial video it need 7 seconds.

How about a latest GTX275 or GTX285, how much time does it need? How much can it help if I use multiple video cards? Is it possible to increasing the tracking to real time by using extremely good hardware?

Thanks

I don't know what all is in store for the "Big update" they have in store but I can tell you what they've already said.

"We are working to implement faster processing on latest video cards, including CUDA accellerations (a huge update that lays foundation for numerous future improvements)."

They've told me it only supports a single gpu so crossfire or multi-gpu cards are not supported and have not been hinted at... unless that's what they mean by "latest video cards". If you're looking to truly speed things up you might want to wait a month/month 1/2 for the new Fermi cards from Nvidia... they will have 512 'CUDA' cores, which if that's how iPi is rolling then Fermi will smoke them. (wow that sounds really drug related ;P ) I'm guessing crazy fast speeds.... like 15fps processing. :D 'Course that might be a little ambitious but I know what CUDA did for PhysX is no joke. It kicks 3DS MAX's Havok engine to the street (just wish you could cache the frames so you could actually do something with it).

Hi,

Tracking performance directly depends on your video card. Our software is designed from the ground up to be GPU-accelerated. So fast video card results in faster tracking. Difference between low-end cards and hi-end cards is dramatic.

By going from GeForce 8500 (a low-end card) to mid-range GeForce 9800 GT or Radeon 4850 (sub-$100 cards) you should be able to get a 5 times speed up.

By using GeForce GTX 285 and upcoming version of iPi Studio, you will get processing speed of around 2 seconds per frame.

Tutorial video was captured using Radeon 3850. Processing time on that card was actually around 5 seconds, you see 7 seconds in tutorial video because of screen recording software overhead.

We are working on CUDA version of our software. It should improve speed of some operations here and there, but do not expect miracles from CUDA version because current version is already GPU-accelerated and very optimized. CUDA should speed up some operations but not to an order of magnitude.

Multi-GPU configurations are not supported yet. We are working on multi-GPU version but it is not ready yet. Theoretically, multi-GPU configuration should scale well and result in nice speed up.

With our software, it is not yet possible to capture animation in real time. Our software is optimized for use with relatively inexpensive hardware like webcams and gaming-class PCs. Going real-time would require completely different cameras and different computing platform with different camera controllers, and costs would skyrocket.

Hey thanks,
My estimate was way too high then but I'm definitely interested in nvidia's new cards.

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Michael,

Thanks for the heads up! The performance increase sounds very impressive. When the new iPi Studio is released, I'll consider upgrading the video card in my workstation to a GTX 285 or better.

Any estimate for the release? Just looking for a ball park (i.e., month, six months, year...) Thanks in advance for any info.

Greenlaw

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Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!

We hope to release significant update for iPi Studio by end of November. Before that, a minor update with reliability fixes is also expected in a few days.

Thank you for this information; this is exciting news! I see that a new Recorder went up this morning and I can't wait to try it this weekend. :)

Greenlaw

_________________
Greenlaw
Artist/Partner - Little Green Dog | My Demo Reels (2013,) (2015,) (2017,) and (2019)

Watch a one minute excerpt on Vimeo now!