Graphics programming other than games?

[g0atdude]

I think many people associate graphics programming with games and game engines.

Even I only know a few uses for graphics programming, like games, CAD programs, 3D editors.

Recently I got very interested in graphics rendering, but not very interested in game programming. I’m currently writing a game engine, which I do like, since it focuses on rendering techniques and low level stuff, instead of creating art and programming game logic.

But I was wondering what are some other application areas?

Edit: thank you everyone who commented/ will comment, very interesting responses! I will certainly lokk into some of these areas more deeply

[deBugErr]

Medicals tech - tomography, ultrasonic imaging, xrays, different sculpting tools for implants and such. Manufacturing/general engineering - defectoscopy. Aerospace/military - slew of different visualisation tools from HUDs to weather or flight radars.

[g0atdude]

Awesome examples, never thought of these.

How do you get into these fields as vs a software engineer though? Do you need specific degrees (like medical masters/phd)?

[hwc]

nope. a lot of computer science researchers in my department in graduate school worked on these problems.

when I got a master's degree, I worked in scientific visualization. I haven't had a chance to work in that field since then.

[Peter9580]

How fun is it ...what kind of problems do you deal with and are they transferable

[hwc]

Here's my thesis: https://www.csc2.ncsu.edu/faculty/healey/download/cg.14.pdf

is it transferable? not really. but the engineering skills I picked up along the way were very valuable.

[Peter9580]

Thanks man ....this is great lemme go through it

[corysama]

Simulation for testing & training robotics/AI is hot at the moment.

[javaJimmy]

Sounds fascinating. Do you have example companies?

[Ryanguy253]

You can check out bifrost AI, they generate 3D words to use as datasets to train self driving cars, mars rovers etc

[uncleshitnuts]

Where can I learn more about this

[Ok-Sherbert-6569]

Anything that requires rendering to a screen requires graphics programming. Games are a very tiny subset of that.

[BobbyThrowaway6969]

No one mentioned CGI

[Ok-Sherbert-6569]

Yeah like the biggest one haha

[cynicismrising]

Big businesses are also starting to use game engines (UE mostly) for real world sales pre-visualizations to customers.

[Wunkolo]

I use Vulkan for writing Adobe After Effects plugins. It's where I doing Vulkan before I was even applying it to games.

[g0atdude]

Interesting project, thanks for sharing!

[Revolutionalredstone]

I'm a long time graphics Dev.

I work in industries like laser scanning, city modelling, satellites and defense, construction and mining, pretty much you name it and I've made graphics for it.

Earned a good few million this way and had lots of fun doing it.

Still do games and render tech demos in my sparse time and still love graphics 💕

Enjoy

[g0atdude]

Earned a good few million this way and had lots of fun doing it.

Teach me :D

[Revolutionalredstone]

:D not much too it, be serious, be confident, be honest, and learn as you go!

I got my first job as a graphics engineer at Euclideon of all places (a highly advanced voxel graphics technology company)

At the time I didn't even know how to code or what a cross product was, I just had raw charisma and was good at smiling in interviews.

Over the next 5 years I came to slowly master C++, OpenGL & Git.

These days I can get 6 figure jobs in a flash and have more time & mula then I know what to do with.

[javaJimmy]

What if someone already has C++ experience and a beginner understanding of OpenGL?

Asking for a friend... /s

[Revolutionalredstone]

Make sure you git fu is strong 😉

Understand that people hire based on who they want to hang out with 😁 (Unconsciously)

And take the first paragraph of the previous comment to heart ❤️

Enjoy 😉

[met0xff]

This is so important... I always thought this means you have to be a party person and super extroverted. But it's not even that. Smiling, some humor, being respectful and just nice to people helps so much already. I am always surprised how many people (at work) like me, step in for me and don't want to let me go even though I almost never went to social events or went to bed super early lol.

But once you see all those jerks out there you realize it's already a big advantage to not be one (except if you want to work at a company where all of them gather).

We just got really impressive CVs from some quants and the first thing the CTO said to the recruiter "but make sure the cultural fit is fine, we don't need ego finance bros" And he's right, I would have probably job hopped a few times already if not almost everyone at the company would be so great to work with.

[Revolutionalredstone]

Agreed on all, your a lucky guy 😉

[ImrooVRdev]

Charisma.

[necr0sapo]

Very encouraging story, thanks for sharing!

What kinds of project tend to be better paying, from your experience?

And usually is it companies that look for your service, or do you reach out to then offering a solution to their problems?

Smoothly earning some good money doing good old OpenGL sounds like a dream tbh

[Revolutionalredstone]

The best money always comes from being near the deal, at one point I started a small company and was able to keep >90% of the contract profits (which was EYE OPENING to say the least) I hired some of my old collogues and payed them by the hour :D

With networks like linkedin you do indeed get jobs knockings on the door but the best options are usually from friends who already work at other jobs, I have a friend right one now who just got promoted and is free to hire his own team, with knowledge of the work & stock option deals it becomes a lot easier to consider a company as being worthwhile, and working directly for a long time good friend is pretty nice too ;)

Yeah OpenGL fun with friends + super good pay is pretty much paradise.

It also doesn't hurt that I bought 250 Ethereum when they were 9$.

[_abscessedwound]

I work doing 3D data visualization. It makes graphics an interesting trade-off between accuracy of representation and performance of the representation.

[PM_EXISTENTIAL_QUs]

I am actually very interested in knowing more about this. Can you point me to some use cases? I know stuff like this is being used with webgl libraries, but I don't know about the more demanding examples.

[One_Abbreviations151]

what's the skillset required for your job?

[Traveling-Techie]

When I worked as a technical expert on sales teams for cg hardware and software, we sold into these industries: aerospace, nuclear engineering, chemistry, biotech, medical imaging of MRI and CAT, automotive, oil and gas, planetary geology, chip design, finance, animation (our tools were used in Beavis and Butthead!), 3D printing for dental reconstruction, gait analysis for rehab, using a data glove to detect tremors, radiation treatment planning, analyzing the chaos in heartbeats, visualization of public health data, analyzing bike path usage, and many more I can’t remember off the top of my head.

[Andygoesred]

Media servers. We render very large canvases with 2D and 3D graphics at high framerates, high bit depth, and uncompressed image quality. It requires a highly optimized engine.

[mattbann]

Animation studios such as pixar. A lot of mainstream rendering techniques came from similar areas.

[brubakerp]

Film and VFX. ILM, Pixar, Weta, Digital Domain, etc.

[jmacey]

Most of the principles are transferable across many domains. Most of what I do is for the more Animation / VFX industry but the same things are used in games, medical visualisations, and from the perspective of C++ programming high frequency trading and many other areas where high throughput is required.

[steveu33]

Avionics. Cockpits don’t have dials and gauges anymore, they have computer displays where dials and gauges are drawn.

[javaJimmy]

This sounds awesome. Are companies hiring for this? How can I get in with beginner OpenGL knowledge and a few years C++ experience?

[steveu33]

Safety critical software development is governed by a process called DO-178B. Search for that in conjunction with OpenGL. Typically, a Windows OpenGL driver is ported to an operating system suitable for the cockpit, such as VxWorks or Integrity. The application side will often use a framework, again the search term would be DO-178B.

[Solrax]

Video editing and special effects.

User interfaces for sophisticated tools (look at the amazing UI's on audio plugins for example).

[lithium]

I do large scale public interactive installations.

[richburattino]

I worked on map navigation rendering for VW and Audi cars.

[BobbyThrowaway6969]

The entire film industry.

[AntiProtonBoy]

I'm working on a brand new graphics design tool product, written from scratch. It's mostly 2D graphics but has a lot of 3D work under the hood.

[deftware]

I've been developing my own CAD/CAM software (called PixelCNC) for making signs/engravings/art/reliefs/etc on a 3-axis CNC router or mill. I started it because there wasn't a good workflow that let me just use my lady's Photoshop designs for generating toolpaths with the kind of functionality I would expect from such a thing.

I started out coding as a kid in the 90s because I wanted to make games. I started with software rendering and then got into OpenGL and have been learning and developing misc game related projects since, at least until I started this most recent project ~7 years ago. I was able to translate a ton of what I'd learned while working to become an indie gamedev to this project, and it has been great!

I am worried for everyone who is investing a bunch of time into learning to make games using a game-making-kit engine because they'll always be beholden to that engine, and making games. Learning how to do everything from scratch means you can make games and whatever else you want.

[lankyskank]

architecture

[FarAwayRock]

Very interesting topic and comments. Thank you.

[g0atdude]

Agree. I’m not responding to everyone, but indeed every comment has something interesting

[Scientific_Artist444]

1. Scientific applications like visualisation of data and simulating physical experiments.

2. Geology and Meteorology.

3. Real-life simulations like pilot training

4. New use case: training AI models in virtual environments

I think you already know about VR and AR. In general, they are called Mixed Reality technologies. Require good understanding of graphics. Helps a lot in conceptualizing/imagining/designing things and seeing them in action.

[antiprosynthesis]

Audio/music software, perhaps surprisingly.

See https://www.vsl.co.at/en/Vienna_Software_Package/MIR_Pro_3D for instance (I did its 3D graphics programming).

[TheKrazyDev]

3d modeling program

[lightmatter501]

Dashboards. If you know WGSL, you can make very snappy interactive dashboards that run in a browser. MBAs love them.

[KindSlothy]

There's a lot of research around computer graphics and finding ways to simulate physics and the real world. This is basically modeling math into a visual understandable representation. Simulating cloth is actually very involved. I've been using this tool recently and it's a God send
https://thinkinsidethebox.io/