It is Alive in the Lab

Cloud Services You Need

[This is Ben Cochran again writing for Scott while he is on Sabbatical.]

For years now, languages, tools and platforms have been making the creation of web-based services easier and more robust. Some of these are IIS, Apache, Tomcat, Java, .NET, WCF, PHP, Ruby on Rails and the list goes on and on and … 

Until recently deploying and hosting these services had been difficult and expensive. This is because any service of value needs to be dependable.  Otherwise, who would use it? I personally have come to expect web services to be highly available. For example, I love on-line banking, but if my bank had flaky on-line services, I would change banks without thinking twice. Thankfully, that is not the case for my bank.

Cloud based services are generally a collection of connected dependent systems that include storage, databases, security, auditing, monitoring and more. The whole system is only as reliable as the weakest link. Traditionally, making these services reliable required lots and lots of hardware. Each server needs to have redundant power supplies, redundant disks, redundant network, redundant load balancers and redundant storage. Then the data-center that houses all this equipment needs to be redundant. Does this sound a little redundant?  With all this equipment, hardware failure is inevitable, requiring teams of IT people to keep everything running smoothly.

The result is that many companies think twice about building scalable reliable services. Companies that do have the needed IT infrastructure are often times not flexible enough to try out new ideas. They require a retooling to support different and out of the box services.  All of this makes the cost of exploring new web based services expensive and risky, for many too risky to try the next crazy idea.

This is changing! With cloud hosting services from companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google providing the backend systems on an as-needed bases the initial cost is a fraction of what it was. For example, servers, load balancers, network, reliable backed up storage and databases are rented by the hour or gigabyte. Instead of buying truckloads of expensive redundant hardware in hopes that a new cloud service idea is successful, companies can spend almost nothing to try out new ideas. If the new idea takes off, the backend systems scales up for the demand. Companies need only pay for resources that are actually used.

Labs had been experimenting with new and interesting cloud services like:
http://labs.autodesk.com/technologies/dragonfly/
http://labs.autodesk.com/technologies/draw/
http://labs.autodesk.com/technologies/freewheel/
http://labs.autodesk.com/technologies/showroom/
and more recently http://labs.autodesk.com/technologies/trials/

What new cloud services are useful to you?  What are your crazy ideas?

- Ben Cochran

Autodesk Single Sign-On System Maintenance

Project Draw, Project Freewheel, Project Showroom, and Project Twitch rely on the Autodesk Single Sign-on login. This provides the convenience of having one user name and password for all things Autodesk. The other side of the coin is that when the Single Sign-on login is down, capabilities on these Labs services are reduced.

1. You cannot save your diagrams on Project Draw.
2. You can view your designs on Project Freewheel but cannot upload or delete designs.
3. You cannot save rooms on Project Showroom.
4. You cannot evaluate AutoCAD, Inventor, or Revit using the internet via Project Twitch.

The scheduled maintenance window will last until Sunday at 8:00 PM Pacific time. Enjoy your weekend. Read a book.

Computer Graphics World: Pictures in the Cloud

Freelance Writer, Kenneth Wong, has a thorough write-up of Software as a Service (SaaS) as it pertains to Project Showroom and Project Dragonfly:

Pictures in the Cloud

Check it out.

Project Showroom 1.0.20 Now Available

We're on vacation this week.

Today is the first day of our company-wide vacation, so I will be brief. On Friday we released Project Showroom 1.0.20. Recall that Project Showroom is our software as a service approach to kitchen and bathroom design software. You just use your browser to configure a room with items you can actually purchase. Project Showroom uses a bank of computers in the cloud to show you what your choices look like by rendering the room photorealistcally. If you did this yourself on one computer, it would take minutes. With a bank of computers, it takes seconds. Project Showroom is in the technology preview stage, but you get the idea.

Whereas Project Showroom 1.0.19 had some dramatic UI improvements, release 1.0.20 is really "under the hood." Many of you have provided direct feedback to us at labs.showroom@autodesk.com with your thoughts on Project Showroom. We appreciate that. Release 1.0.19 is more about indirect feedback. We have improved our metrics gathering. So that our efforts have not gone to waste, please visit Project Showroom today and take it for a spin:

http://showroom.labs.autodesk.com/

It would be great to see if we can get visits from 6 of the 7 continents. Actually if someone visits from Antarctica, maybe we should send him/her some sort of prize. I am also curious as to what operating systems and browsers people are using. These metrics will help shape the future of Project Showroom. If you would also like to see what an integration of Project Showroom into a manufacturer site might look like, here is a mock-up we did for the K/BIS show in Atlanta for Jenn-Air:

http://jennair.showroom.labs.autodesk.com/

Getting even more analytical is alive in the lab.

YouTube Project Showroom Overview Video

Electrolux kitchen appliances with Behr wall paint

Electrolux kitchen appliances with a different Behr wall paint

Project Showroom is a technology preview that establishes a vision for a service for home furnishing suppliers to enable their customers to visualize their products in real-life room settings. It is our software as a service approach to kitchen design software and bathroom design software. The basis of Project Showroom is photorealistic rendering using a farm of computers that are "in the cloud." Accessibility to numerous computers in the cloud makes solutions like Project Showroom practical. Typical consumers would never buy 120 computers just to see a synthetic photograph rendered in 8 seconds. Normally users have one computer and wait 960 seconds (16 minutes). On the other hand, manufacturers might be willing to rent 120 computers for 8 seconds. Eight seconds later, it could be another user's turn. You get the idea.

A tenant of Project Showroom is photorealism. Consumers and manufacturers have to get the sense that they are experiencing something before it is real. The products are real. The manufacturers are real. The computer rendering looks real. Our Product Manager, Noah Kennedy, was keen to point out how blue wall paint reflections appear on white cabinets in his YouTube video:

• YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i15PcjMGLqo
• non-YouTube: showroom_overview.mp4 (5957.0K)

The video also features a demonstration we participated in with Jenn-Air at the Kitchen/Bathroom Industry Show in Atlanta.

Keeping it real is alive in the Lab.

Project Showroom 1.0.19 Now Available

On May 6 the Revit team released the RDB Link Tool for Revit Family via the Autodesk Labs site. Our team also released a Project Showroom 1.0.18 update on May 6. On Friday the Revit team released an update to the RDB Link Tool. Our team also released a Project Showroom 1.0.19 update on Friday. One might think we are copying off of the Revit team's paper, but it is just a coincidence. Another odd coincidence is that the updates of both technologies were on 05/06 and 06/05 in some sort of palindromic convergence.

Actually if anyone was to accuse us of copying it might be Project Dragonfly. Project Showroom now looks more consistent with Project Dragonfly. You can actually tell that both teams work for the same company. I kid. I kid. Actually we all feel that the new Project Showroom look looks fantastic. Thanks to our Product Designer, Mark Anderson, for his design. Thanks to Allen Ban, Ben Cochran, Brian Budge, Eddy Kuo, Frederic Loranger, Garfield Yin, Gyorgy Ordody, Jacky Lee, Jay Gao, John Hutchinson, John Schmier, Lily Gao, Richard Lu, Roberto Ziche, Rosella Conanan, Seema Jaisinghani, Sudheer Guntuka, Sydney Xu, Terence Wang, Tony Xu, and Yongmei Wang who turned that design into the service you see today. That was no coincidence. That was hard work. Make sure you check out the cool new scene fade in/out effect as you customize your own kitchen or bathroom. Remember - what you are seeing is not a photograph, It is indeed a computer rendering.

Updating our software as a service approach to kitchen and bathroom shopping software is alive in the lab.

Project Showroom: Consumers and Manufacturers - win, win

As our software as a service approach to shopping, consumers will benefit from Project Showroom in that they can visualize fixtures, appliances, and surfaces in real world settings as part of making purchasing decisions. Customers can experience these new items before they are real - real as in really purchased. This approach also provides benefit to manufacturers. With the previous blog postings, there has been a small amount discussion of "trickery" related to how real the rendered images are:

• Project Showroom: Life Imitates Art
• Project Showroom: Realism is in the eye of the beholder
• Project Showroom: Life Imitates Art Redux
• Project Showroom: I Can't Believe It's Not Butter

The aim is not trickery. The goal is that manufacturers can experience the fixtures, appliances, and surfaces before they are real - real as in really manufactured. The approach of Project Showroom is to provide views of these models that will approximate the physical objects after they are created. That is why the lighting models in Project Showroom are physically accurate. So a Project Showroom approach allows manufacturers to see combinations of appliances in real life settings with the click of a mouse.

stainless finish

stainless alternative

In addition, it also allows the manufacturer to see their appliances staged in various rooms without the cost of physically changing/remodeling the setting.

swapped lights for range hood

This makes Project Showroom a cost effective approach for all involved - consumers and manufacturers.

Sharing some of our thinking regarding photorealistic rendering is alive in the lab

Project Showroom: I Can't Believe It's Not Butter

Project Showroom is a technology preview that establishes a vision for a service for home furnishing suppliers to enable their customers to visualize their products in real-life room settings. It is our software as a service approach to kitchen design software and bathroom design software. Last week in blog posting Life Imitates Art Redux, I asked if you could tell the difference between a real photograph and a synthetic photograph generated from a computer model.

COMPUTER MODEL

Click for higher resolution view

ACTUAL PHOTOGRAPH

Well 50% of you guessed incorrectly. So it's a safe assumption that the model looks reasonably real. Some of what you told us included:

• This one is much more difficult to figure out than the first round! [Project Showroom: Life Imitates Art]
• The second one appears to be more realistic because of the blown out window. The photographer needs to do some exposure blending (HDR or LDR) to correct this.
• I agree it s very hard to tell. I think the second one is the rendered one. [Oops.] I imagine that a real photographer for a manufacturer should know about HDR, so there is too much light coming from the window in the second one.
• Yeah, I'll second the this one being more difficult. Not being right up on the towels [rendered towels] makes it much tougher to distinguish. Also, the pro photographer doing the light balancing makes them both look almost too perfect. Honestly, I would assume they both were either rendered or heavily photoshoped.
• If I have to choose one, I'll take a stab and say the second one though, but that is mostly because I think you are trying to trick us by using a bloom effect and a shortened focal length to seem more like a camera was involved.
• I'm certainly no expert in this area but my guess is that the top one is rendered. My reasoning is that why would you make a rendering with that much light from the window.
• I was going to say the 2nd one was the rendered image, it's very hard to tell between the 2 though. For me, looking at them, the vase in the 2nd picture, not only seems out of place, but almost as if it's not part of the picture.
• I'm going to go with the second one being the real one. Clearly no one but a silly human would put a flower pot under the table.
• The view angle is the giveaway, the 2nd is the rendering. [Oops.] I've never understood why computer renderers insist on using a more narrow angle than a typical 35mm/digital camera. To me it seems imitating the view angles of a typical camera (54 degrees, give or take, with no zoom) is one of those little extras you shouldn't overlook.
• It would be funny if you put up two renderings and had us debate which one is real or not!!
• I think the bottom one is real, due to the light levels coming from the window. A renderer would surely do something about that. Also to the right of the window are a couple of built in ovens, the display controls look more realistic than the one in the above image.
• I think the second one is rendered. [Oops.] There are a lot of little things in the second that don't seem quite right, like finish on the floor. Even so, the quality that makes it "not quite right" is an over-precision - everything is almost too well defined.
• I’m going for the top one. The bottom one is prettier but the top one is less perfect and looks more ‘Real’.
• It was really hard to tell. The one thing that made me wonder about the top image is that the plates do seem to be floating just above the counter. Other than that, I was pretty sure it was the real deal. Very impressive!

We're happy that this technology shows promise as a virtual showroom for buying household appliances. With regard to the title of this posting, there's a butter substitute product sold in the United States that goes by that name. Based on our results, it's safe to say I can't believe it's not a photograph.

Sharing the results of the feedback you provided is alive in the lab.

Project Showroom: Life Imitates Art Redux

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

In a previous blog posting, Project Showroom: Life Imitates Art, you had the chance to compare a photograph of the bathroom in my house to a photorealistically rendered bathroom of a computer model from one of our Project Showroom scenes. Let's up the ante. Here are two images. One is a photograph of a physical room taken by a professional photographer. The other is a photorealistic rendering from an internal Project Showroom site. Which is which?

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Is it live or is it Memorex? If you thought yesterday's CAPTCHA test was hard on the eyes, how about this? Let us know your guess at labs.showroom@autodesk.com.

Having fun with advances in photorealistic rendering is alive in the lab.

Kitchen Bathroom Industry Show Starts Today

Today starts the Kitchen/Bath Industry Show in Atlanta.

If you are attending this show, please stop by the Jenn-Air booth and talk to our own Mary Hope McQuiston or Noah Kennedy about Project Showroom. Kitchens and bathrooms are the most frequently remodeled rooms of  a home. They are also where people tend to spend the most money on remodeling - so it has to be done right. Hence software as a service solutions like Project Showroom can help homeowners experience their new kitchens and bathrooms before they are real. The old saying applies - Measure twice, cut once. Photorealistically view twice, physically remodel once.

Sharing our excitement about participating in a trade show is alive in the lab.