# nVidia Design Garage Thread!! Raytracing made easy!!



## tkin (Jun 27, 2011)

Hi guys, today I'm presenting to you a much overlooked application that shows us the features of raytracing.

*nVidia Design Garage*



> In Design Garage, you’ll be able to interact with and create incredibly photo-realistic images of some of the fastest and most exclusive vehicles on the road. Using the immense processing power of NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 400/GTX500 Series of GPUs, the exotic vehicles in Design Garage are brought to life through Ray Tracing, a rendering technique usually reserved for Hollywood blockbusters that simulates how light reflects, refracts, and illuminates a 3D scene.
> Design Garage exclusively uses NVIDIA’s CUDA architecture for rendering and performs all of its computations on the GPU. The highly realistic models used within Design Garage are polygonal meshes, with assembled scenes totaling near 2 million polygons. Make sure you tweak the direction of the sun and explore the various vehicle colors available to create the photo-realistic image of your personal dream car.
> Technical Notes:
> •  NVIDIA’s OptiX ray tracing engine and SceniX scene management engine are combined to generate the photo realistic images you see.
> ...



*System Requirements:*
Win Vista and Win 7
A GTX200/GTX400/GTX500 GPU (Min 896 memory, 1.5GB for HD resolution)

*Download Link:* NVIDIA Cool Stuff

*How to use:*
1. Start the software, it'll look pixelated, but don't worry, thats how its supposed to look at first.
2. Click on HQ on top right corner to disable HQ mode for now.
3. Use controls on top to select scenery and customize.
4. Click on HQ again to turn on HQ.
5. Let it render for sometime, pixel artifacts will slowly disappear as rays are traced and drawn on the screen.
6. After you think it looks good enough take a screenshot and post here.

*Notes: *
~The software only renders when in focus, so you can do it overnight or do it while listening to music. The green icon on bottom right of app lights up when its rendering, else its goes gray.
~The software never stops rendering, its an infinite algo, more you render, more detailed the image becomes, I'd say about 1hr of rendering on my card @ 1024x768 looks good enough.
~Overnight runs under right settings looks beyond real
~Be careful with your mouse, if you even click the screen it will start rendering from scratch, so an overnight render might go to waste. So make sure to take the screenshot before doing anything else.
~App may crash with sli or msi afterburner in background, you may need to disable them.

*Important:* This app is very stressful, while not as much as furmark this app stresses both vram as well as gpu core, very much like a game, so passing stress with this is as same as passing multiple stresses with crysis, and it draws a pretty picture while at it, very recommended for testing your card and oc.


Sample Pics Rendered by me:

3 hrs:
*i.imgur.com/gJpPT.jpg

2 hrs:
*i.imgur.com/I1OUH.jpg


So, show us what your gpu can do, post sample pics here.


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## doomgiver (Jun 27, 2011)

the porsche looks awesome!!!

gloss gloss, and even more gloss!!!


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## tkin (Jun 27, 2011)

doomgiver said:


> the porsche looks awesome!!!
> 
> gloss gloss, and even more gloss!!!


Yeah, actually the reflection and gloss can be tweaked, so can be the refraction(glass) as well as color, I overdid it 

The customization features are overwhelming, you can customize everything, and I do mean everything.


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## doomgiver (Jun 27, 2011)

omg, nvidia only, you say?

i bet it wont work on my puny 8400gs


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## tkin (Jun 27, 2011)

doomgiver said:


> omg, nvidia only, you say?
> 
> i bet it wont work on my puny 8400gs


Only nVidia and no 8000 series, sorry, only 200, 400, 500 series with 896mb min vram, so GTX460 768mb is out as well.


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## thetechfreak (Jun 27, 2011)

Is it more Gpu intensive or Cpu intensive. If Cpu I will get it soon


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## tkin (Jun 27, 2011)

thetechfreak said:


> Is it more Gpu intensive or Cpu intensive. If Cpu I will get it soon


Its extremely gpu intensive and quite cpu intensive as well, not as much as IBT, since the rendering is done on the GPU primarily(CUDA).


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## ashis_lakra (Jun 27, 2011)

omg, the porsche and roads look awesome.. near perfect real road...... Its a benchmark.. but Does any game looks so damn good and real ????


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## tkin (Jun 27, 2011)

ashis_lakra said:


> omg, the porsche and roads look awesome.. near perfect real road...... Its a benchmark.. but Does any game looks so damn good and real ????


Its not exactly a benchmark, more like a tech demo, the technology is called raytracing, its the same tech pixar and dreamworks and many other studios use for animation, and you know how lifelike their animations can be.

Now the purpose of this demo is to show nvidia gpu's processing power, a cpu like my 2600k would take a lot of time to generate the images, but gpus with their ability to process massive amount of data in parallel gets the job done in about 30min-1hr. Soon we will have real time raytracing.

Read more:
Ray tracing (graphics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

*And no, no game looks this real or will look this real in a few years. *

For eg: Look at this image, doesn't it look real?



Spoiler



*fuzzyworld.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/computer-ray-tracing.jpg


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## ashis_lakra (Jun 27, 2011)

omg, are u serious ?? awesome real image.. WOW .. the present technology has so much to offer.


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## Jaskanwar Singh (Jun 27, 2011)

tkin awesome man. i will join soon hopefully!


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## comp@ddict (Jun 27, 2011)

Raytracing, looks good, but very demanding, very.


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## tkin (Jun 27, 2011)

comp@ddict said:


> Raytracing, looks good, but very demanding, very.


Not that much, I mean ok, not real time, but GTX580 sli can run that very fast, the first pic that I showed was done in 3hrs, the sli will do it in an hour or so, faster for quad sli.

PS: Due to crippling of floating point operation on fermi fps is not that good, but 4 teslas could pull this off in real time.


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## comp@ddict (Jun 28, 2011)

> but GTX580 sli can run that very fast,



thats a lot to ask um...!!!

But how did you make all this btw?


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## tkin (Jun 28, 2011)

comp@ddict said:


> thats a lot to ask um...!!!
> 
> But how did you make all this btw?


Make what? That tesla thing? Well nVidia in theirs GPU conference or something showed 4 teslas running this demo real time.


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## comp@ddict (Jun 28, 2011)

pretty much like EPIC when they showcased DX11 on UE3, and then said it required 3xGTX580's to run it.


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## tkin (Jun 28, 2011)

comp@ddict said:


> pretty much like EPIC when they showcased DX11 on UE3, and then said it required 3xGTX580's to run it.


It will be epic fail if UE4 needs 3xGTX580s.


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## pulkitpopli2004 (Jul 1, 2011)

i also tried.. its a great tool actually.. 
it took 1hr.. GPU temp - 73

*i.imgur.com/zUooN.jpg


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## comp@ddict (Jul 1, 2011)

^^ that is amazing!


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## tkin (Jul 1, 2011)

pulkitpopli2004 said:


> i also tried.. its a great tool actually..
> it took 1hr.. GPU temp - 73
> 
> *i.imgur.com/zUooN.jpg


Nice, looks fantastic.


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## pulkitpopli2004 (Jul 1, 2011)

thanks... 

this s/w is pretty good for making your own desktop backgrnd..


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## asingh (Jul 1, 2011)

Will this run on ATI adapters..?


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## Jaskanwar Singh (Jul 1, 2011)

asingh said:


> Will this run on ATI adapters..?



i dont think so asingh.

well i am downloading it currently


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## pulkitpopli2004 (Jul 1, 2011)

it should work IMO...


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## tkin (Jul 1, 2011)

pulkitpopli2004 said:


> thanks...
> 
> this s/w is pretty good for making your own desktop backgrnd..


Just my thought.



asingh said:


> Will this run on ATI adapters..?


No, it uses CUDA, so no go with ATI(well, the demo is made by nvidia).


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## Jaskanwar Singh (Jul 2, 2011)

asingh said:


> Will this run on ATI adapters..?



currently on my onboard hd4250 it gives this error -

*img220.imageshack.us/img220/6378/captureoj.jpg
*img6.imageshack.us/img6/3190/capture1ohv.jpg

so it needs nvidia card to start.


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## mukherjee (Jul 3, 2011)

^thats too bad...tho cant blame much since its an nvidia app! :/


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## obhi (Jul 5, 2011)

The thing is current generation hardware can handle realtime GI (ala Monte Carlo raytracers, each frame may take upto 120ms and yes CUDA or GPGPU performance processors will be required), good for only tech demos as large scenes cannot be rendered that fast. Anyway, its not uncommon to see static scenes with pre-lit (baked) lightmaps even today so it will be quite sometime before games come up with realtime GI, though its not far off.


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## tkin (Nov 29, 2011)

This thread is dying, here's some boost:

*i.imgur.com/bzVtq.jpg

I'll post some more pics soon, leaving this running overnight gives great shots.

nVidia will release a new 64bit version soon with a lot more textures and jets/cars etc:
Design Garage for Quadro


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## anthony870 (Sep 10, 2012)

Hi all.  New to this forum due to this thread and not sure if this is the proper place to post this.  I am having trouble finding any information about this program due to how overlooked it is.  I just came across this program today and have been working most of the day at trying to get it to run.  With much searching through the internet i have turned up no answer and many failed attempts.  My problem is that when I start this program it opens up and sits on the splash screen then an error pops up saying the exe has stopped working.  I will list my system specs below.  I have tried some stuff i have found like making a profile in nvidia control panel and setting the cuda to a specific graphics card, disabling my 8800gt in the device manager,  reinstalling nvidia drivers, and even reinstalling the program.  I have also tried a handful of compatibility mode settings.  And so far none have been successful.  So here I am looking for help from a few that I have seen have gotten it working.  Appreciate any help you can give.

My Specs

Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Intel i5 760 (overclocked to 4.0ghz)
16gb Corsair Vengence 1600mhz Ram (4x 4gb)
MSI Big Bang Fuzion mobo
Nvidia gtx 460 (Palif 2gb ram and stock overclocked but dont remember to what) - Running a 24" Sansui LED HDTV plugged in HDMI port
Nvidia 8800GT physx card (512gb ram) - Running a 24" Hisense HDTV plugged in with DVI to HDMI cable

Both monitors are at 1080P res.  Not sure if that matters

EDIT:  Just realized it is creating a "caches" folder on my desktop when I try to run it but the folder is empty.


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## topgear (Sep 11, 2012)

remove the 8800GT and the monitor attached to it.

Try running the app with only GTX 460 and one monitor.


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## anthony870 (Sep 12, 2012)

Thanks for the reply.  I did not actually open the case up and take out the card but i did go into the device manager and disable the 8800 which should be the same and that had now effect.  also since the other monitor is connected to the 8800, once it was disabled it also disconnected monitor.


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## topgear (Sep 13, 2012)

disabling  a gfx card from device manager/bios ( compared to physically removing it ) may sound like the same but actually sometime this can cause issues with certain configs - so if you are expereince such issues it's advised to remve the 8800 you have and test - there's no harm in testing with the 8800 physically removed, right ?? so give it a try.


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## anthony870 (Sep 13, 2012)

oh.  ok.  i have always thought they were one in the same.  but i have now completely removed the 8800 and the second display and still no luck.  still stays on splash screen and then throws up error "exe has stopped working."  I will try downgrading my nvidia driver this weekend (if i dont get to it sooner) to see if this helps.  if you know of anything else that may cause this issue please let me know.

EDIT:

Well i had nothing better to do tonight so i decided to go ahead and downgrade it tonight.  i am now running version 296.10 of nvidia drivers and the program stated no problem.  still have both cards and monitors hooked up also.  thanks much for your help.  now to start playing with some raytracing.

Here are a couple i did just real quick.






second one doesnt look as good as the first but still playing around with it.

and last one for tonight


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## topgear (Sep 14, 2012)

nice to know that you have solved the issue by yourself. how much time it took to render those images ??


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## anthony870 (Sep 14, 2012)

I dont think i let it render any longer then 30 min.  if that.  the rendering did get my 460 up to 79C for the temp so i didnt want to let it run much longer.  but they came out not too bad i think.

I am still having a little crashing problem when changing between scenes and cars. but i remember reading something about that when searching for my other problem so i just gotta look for that info again.


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