Dawn (demo)
Encyclopedia
Dawn is both the name of Nvidia
's technology demo
and its main character constructed for performance by Jim Henson's Creature Shop
. The eponymous demo is called "the dawn of cinematic computing", and was used to showcase the capabilities of the GeForce FX
series of video cards.
with two translucent wings, pointy ears, and a pair of antennae on her head. She wears a revealing dress, made of leaves and blue petals. The demo is set in an enchanted forest, with a single tree branch floating in an environment that is created with forest foliage cube mapping
. In animation mode, Dawn walks over the branch whilst a simple tune plays in the background, or sits on a branch smiling, dangling her legs. The demo can be paused so that the user can examine the graphics more closely.
The character model was created by Steven Giesler, a well-known 3D artist, who has also created many characters for Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
, Final Flight of the Osiris, two films by Square Pictures. The model of Dawn is extremely realistic, with high-resolution photorealistic textures, a detailed facial model, and life-like animation. The animation is controlled with vertex shaders. The user can manipulate Dawn's facial expression with a set of sliders, although the number of controls in the released demo was limited.
The demo was first shown in November 2002 at the Game Developers Conference
, running in real-time on a GeForce FX
card. The downloadable demo appeared on Nvidia's website shortly thereafter. The demo was initially intended to showcase the GeForce FX 5800
card, but it may work on any DirectX
9.0 based graphic card from Nvidia.
Aside from hardware emulation; the demo can not be run on older DirectX 8.0 based graphic cards which include the high end GeForce 4 Ti series due to the unsupported of hardware feature. The demo can be run either in "Regular" or "Ultra" (with advanced shaders) mode. Ultra mode (at the time) runs faster only on mainstream FX5600 or high end FX5800 onwards.
A similar demo, named "Dusk" (a.k.a. Dawn's twin sister), was made for the GeForce FX 5900 card. This featured the Dawn character with realistic skin and hair, which was only possible at the time due to the high-performance vertex shaders of the GeForce FX 5900 GPUs.
of a realistic human character, as such demos have been created in the past for game consoles (such as the Dreamcast title Shenmue
) and also some video cards. Nvidia themselves had created a demo featuring the life-like characters of Aki Ross
and Dr. Sid from Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
a year before.
Dawn, however, was innovative in that she operated in real time
. Previous lifelike human characters had been pre-rendered. As with Lara Croft
of the Tomb Raider
games, Dawn's voluptuous curves attracted a substantial amount of media attention .
Nvidia has subsequently repeated this strategy with several more recent real-time female demo characters, including Nalu
(a mermaid), Luna (a cybernetic being), and Adrianne, a digital representation of real-life model Adrianne Curry.
NVIDIA
Nvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
's technology demo
Technology demo
A tech demo is a prototype, rough example or an otherwise incomplete version of a product, put together with the primary purpose of showcasing the idea, performance, method or the features of the product...
and its main character constructed for performance by Jim Henson's Creature Shop
Jim Henson's Creature Shop
Jim Henson's Creature Shop is a company founded in 1979 by puppeteer Jim Henson, creator of The Muppets, and Frank Oz.It was originally created as a result of the observation that the team that had been put together for The Dark Crystal was extremely hard to recreate for Labyrinth, since the...
. The eponymous demo is called "the dawn of cinematic computing", and was used to showcase the capabilities of the GeForce FX
GeForce FX
The GeForce FX or "GeForce 5" series is a line of graphics processing units from the manufacturer NVIDIA.-Overview:...
series of video cards.
Overview
Dawn is a forest fairyFairy
A fairy is a type of mythical being or legendary creature, a form of spirit, often described as metaphysical, supernatural or preternatural.Fairies resemble various beings of other mythologies, though even folklore that uses the term...
with two translucent wings, pointy ears, and a pair of antennae on her head. She wears a revealing dress, made of leaves and blue petals. The demo is set in an enchanted forest, with a single tree branch floating in an environment that is created with forest foliage cube mapping
Cube mapping
In computer graphics, cube mapping is a method of environment mapping that uses a six-sided cube as the map shape. The environment is projected onto the six faces of a cube and stored as six square textures, or unfolded into six regions of a single texture...
. In animation mode, Dawn walks over the branch whilst a simple tune plays in the background, or sits on a branch smiling, dangling her legs. The demo can be paused so that the user can examine the graphics more closely.
The character model was created by Steven Giesler, a well-known 3D artist, who has also created many characters for Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is a 2001 Japanese-American computer animated science fiction film directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of the Final Fantasy series of role-playing video games. It was the first photorealistic computer animated feature film and also holds the record for the most...
, Final Flight of the Osiris, two films by Square Pictures. The model of Dawn is extremely realistic, with high-resolution photorealistic textures, a detailed facial model, and life-like animation. The animation is controlled with vertex shaders. The user can manipulate Dawn's facial expression with a set of sliders, although the number of controls in the released demo was limited.
The demo was first shown in November 2002 at the Game Developers Conference
Game Developers Conference
The Game Developers Conference is the largest annual gathering of professional video game developers, focusing on learning, inspiration, and networking...
, running in real-time on a GeForce FX
GeForce FX
The GeForce FX or "GeForce 5" series is a line of graphics processing units from the manufacturer NVIDIA.-Overview:...
card. The downloadable demo appeared on Nvidia's website shortly thereafter. The demo was initially intended to showcase the GeForce FX 5800
GeForce FX
The GeForce FX or "GeForce 5" series is a line of graphics processing units from the manufacturer NVIDIA.-Overview:...
card, but it may work on any DirectX
DirectX
Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with Direct, such as Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay,...
9.0 based graphic card from Nvidia.
Aside from hardware emulation; the demo can not be run on older DirectX 8.0 based graphic cards which include the high end GeForce 4 Ti series due to the unsupported of hardware feature. The demo can be run either in "Regular" or "Ultra" (with advanced shaders) mode. Ultra mode (at the time) runs faster only on mainstream FX5600 or high end FX5800 onwards.
A similar demo, named "Dusk" (a.k.a. Dawn's twin sister), was made for the GeForce FX 5900 card. This featured the Dawn character with realistic skin and hair, which was only possible at the time due to the high-performance vertex shaders of the GeForce FX 5900 GPUs.
Implications
Dawn was not the first computerized demoDemo (computer programming)
A demo is a non-interactive multimedia presentation made within the computer subculture known as the demoscene. Demogroups create demos to demonstrate their abilities in programming, music, drawing, and 3D modeling...
of a realistic human character, as such demos have been created in the past for game consoles (such as the Dreamcast title Shenmue
Shenmue
is a 1999 open-world adventure video game developed by Sega AM2 and published by Sega for the Dreamcast, produced and directed by Yu Suzuki. Suzuki coined a genre title, "FREE" , for the game, based on the interactivity and freedom he wanted to give to the player...
) and also some video cards. Nvidia themselves had created a demo featuring the life-like characters of Aki Ross
Aki Ross
is a fictional character in the movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, voiced by Chinese American actress Ming-Na. She was expected to be the first photorealistic computer-generated "actress" to appear in multiple movies in different roles....
and Dr. Sid from Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is a 2001 Japanese-American computer animated science fiction film directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of the Final Fantasy series of role-playing video games. It was the first photorealistic computer animated feature film and also holds the record for the most...
a year before.
Dawn, however, was innovative in that she operated in real time
Real-time computing
In computer science, real-time computing , or reactive computing, is the study of hardware and software systems that are subject to a "real-time constraint"— e.g. operational deadlines from event to system response. Real-time programs must guarantee response within strict time constraints...
. Previous lifelike human characters had been pre-rendered. As with Lara Croft
Lara Croft
Lara Croft is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Square Enix video game series Tomb Raider. She is presented as a beautiful, intelligent, and athletic British archaeologist-adventurer who ventures into ancient, hazardous tombs and ruins around the world...
of the Tomb Raider
Tomb Raider
Tomb Raider is an action-adventure video game developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive. It was originally released in 1996 for the Sega Saturn, with MS-DOS and PlayStation versions following shortly thereafter...
games, Dawn's voluptuous curves attracted a substantial amount of media attention .
Nvidia has subsequently repeated this strategy with several more recent real-time female demo characters, including Nalu
Nalu (demo)
Nalu is both the name of NVIDIA's technology demo and its main character. The demo was used to promote the GeForce 6800 GPUs of the GeForce 6 Seriesvideo card.-Overview:Nalu is the daughter of the deep sea, a mermaid...
(a mermaid), Luna (a cybernetic being), and Adrianne, a digital representation of real-life model Adrianne Curry.
Fan work
Impressed with the demo — but disappointed that it wouldn't run on ATI cards — a group of MIT engineering students promptly hacked an OpenGL wrapper to run the demo on R3x0-series ATI hardware. The speed and quality was arguably just as high as on NVIDIA.External links
- Nvidia Dawn demo - official page
- HDPS Wiki: Dawn
- Dawn Sleeps with ATI - instructions for running the demo on RadeonRadeonRadeon is a brand of graphics processing units and random access memory produced by Advanced Micro Devices , first launched in 2000 by ATI Technologies, which was acquired by AMD in 2006. Radeon is the successor to the Rage line. There are four different groups, which can be differentiated by...
cards - Steven Giesler - personal website