3D Graphics Authoring System: CGI Studio

 Gerhard Roos  Gernot Reisinger  Roland Winkler

Systems that apply 3D graphics are beginning to become common in automobiles, as in instru-
ment clusters integrating full-color LCDs. Fujitsu Semiconductor Embedded Solutions Austria
GmbH, a group company of Fujitsu Semiconductor, has developed CGI Studio as a tool for de-
veloping these systems. As a framework of authoring tools to develop 3D graphics content for
automotive systems, CGI Studio provides a workflow for embodying a designer’s ideas in an
actual target system (such as an actual product and prototype for product development). CGI
Studio can also be used in combination with other widespread graphics authoring tools, and
thus consolidate the existing tools used by customers. CGI Studio integrates multiple pieces of
software and includes analysis tools for identifying performance bottlenecks in the execution
of applications on the hardware used. They include software for 2D and 3D composition, au-
thoring tools, scene generation, the Candera software graphics engine and scene player. This
paper outlines the trends in automotive application of graphics and describes the features of
CGI Studio and the collaborative workflow between designers and embedded system develop-
ers realized by CGI Studio.

1. Introduction addition to mechanical meters or indicate everything

Along with the recent evolution of microelectron- with graphics. As the third display, head-up displays,
ics, high-function and high-performance computer which project images on the windshield, are also be-
graphics have come to be realized as inexpensive and ginning to become widespread.
low-power-consumption system-on-a-chip (SoC) prod- These displays are becoming an essential part of
ucts. These new SoC products have made it possible the brands of automakers or vehicle models. This is
to improve user-friendliness by having graphical user because these systems constitute a vital portion of the
interfaces in embedded devices, and the diffusion of interior of automobiles and are an important factor in
these devices have accelerated the development of differentiating automakers or vehicle models from their
even more sophisticated graphics SoCs. rivals. Figure 1 shows an example of an instrument
This trend is mostly driven by mobile devices. cluster that entirely uses graphics.
High-performance graphics have already given sophis- The functions of displays include not only indica-
ticated graphical user interfaces and game applications tion of basic information such as the speed, number of
comparable to dedicated machines to smartphones engine revolutions, and fuel level but also operation
and tablets. This trend is spreading to other embedded of a navigation map and entertainment devices such
devices and, among automobiles, applications with as an audio system. These were conventionally shown
graphics features are rapidly spreading to low-end cars, by animation with bitmap images drawn in advance,
not to mention high-end cars. In many cases, these au- which is called 2D graphics. Recently, new applications
tomobiles have two or more displays including the car have come into existence including those that offer at-
navigation system and instrument panel. Instrument a-glance notification to the driver about self-diagnosis
panels may provide some graphical indication in and failure points in the vehicle by means of real-time

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 G. Roos et al.: 3D Graphics Authoring System: CGI Studio

Normal mode

Sports mode Stopped

Figure 1
Instrument cluster using graphics.

3D graphics. Figure 1 incompatible with the rendering technologies of target

Instrument cluster using
Fujitsu has developed and offered CGI Studio as graphics.
systems (such as actual products and prototypes for
a software tool that assists graphics content develop- product development). Image effects that can be used
ment for embedded devices including automotive by tools are not necessarily portable to target hardware
devices. and the created preview may not be available with the
This paper gives an overview of CGI Studio. target hardware or a slight change to the content may
have a serious impact on the performance.
2. Issues with HMI development by Furthermore, the actual HMIs need to be capable
customers of providing different indications depending on the
In operating various devices in automobiles, the driving conditions in an easy-to-understand manner,
interior and human-machine interface (HMI) need to which requires an appropriate structure to be designed
reflect the corporate image and identity of the respec- so that the views and indications can be changed ac-
tive automaker. For this reason, many automakers cording to the situation and controlled, in addition to
define their own HMIs and graphics content used in simply displaying content.
them. However, the actual development of instru-
ment clusters and car navigation systems is often taken 3. CGI Studio framework
charge of by system suppliers for automobiles, and CGI Studio, which is a 2D and 3D graphics inter-
workflows of content production tools are required to face software development platform, has the following
support such joint development. features for resolving the issues described in the previ-
In addition, there has conventionally been a ous section.
separation between designers who design the content 1) Provision of authoring tools specialized for HMI
and engineers who actually develop the devices. For applications of embedded devices including auto-
example, the feasibility of the expected appearance motive devices
and operability was not determinable in the early 2) Creation of scene composition using both 2D and
stage of development due to limitations such as costs 3D graphics
and device hardware, and a large amount of reworking 3) Seamless porting of graphical content design to
and revisions were required to bring the actual devices target hardware
closer to the expected results. 4) Linking with existing graphics tools
Specifically, tools used by designers are generally 5) System solution by provision of both hardware

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G. Roos et al.: 3D Graphics Authoring System: CGI Studio

and software visualizing performance during application execution

CGI Studio is composed of the following compo- and an offline mode for examining the performance
nents (Figure 2). log after application execution.
1) CGI Scene Composer 4) CGI Translator (optional)
CGI Scene Composer is the key tool of CGI Studio CGI Translator is a Web-based tool for online trans-
and is used for inputting graphical images created by lation of multilingual text with the HMI application.
designers. Then, it combines control logic and scenes 5) CGI Interaction Framework Courier (optional)
and creates a scenario for displaying those images on CGI Interaction Framework Courier is a tool for
the target system to ultimately output the content for connecting multiple application components by mak-
the target hardware. This is a 2D/3D development tool ing use of the high extensibility and programmable
that assists drawing designers with intuitive creation of messaging environment. This framework provides
sophisticated HMIs. message-based view control, data binding and interac-
2) CGI Player tion with external systems for linking application logic
CGI Player provides a runtime environment for dis- (e.g., state machine) with the external environment.
playing and controlling the HMI created with CGI Scene
Composer in the systems for image content develop- 4. Candera graphics engine
ment and the target. CGI Player uses multiple views Candera, which is at the core of CGI Studio, is a
to display interactive scenes and allows the creator to software graphics engine independent of the execution
execute the sequences of animations, tests and specific environment such as hardware and OS. By being em-
applications. bedded into the tool on the PC and the target system,
3) CGI Analyzer (optional) this engine allows exactly the same representation to
CGI Analyzer is a performance analysis tool that be reproduced in an embedded system as the content
provides an intuitive graphical user interface for easy created with the tool.
identification and tracing of bottlenecks in perfor- Candera3D is implemented in OpenGL ES 2.0, an
mance. CGI Analyzer supports both an online mode for industry standard graphics library, and highly portable

Digital content creation Image data Library Software development

(DCC) tool environment
Visual Studio
CGI Studio development Eclipse
environment
Scene Composer Scene creation

Player Simulation

CAN simulator Virtuoso Performance analysis

Export

Control Resources Customer GUI Application

logic state Application
library
Interface

Interface

machine
Assets Widgets & Animations
Network
Candera 3D Engine
Real-time OS
CAN-Stimulus OpenGL ES 2.0 OpenGL ES 2.0
Host development Host CPU/GPU Target CPU/GPU
environment
Target system

Figure 2 Figure 2
CGI Studio configuration.
CGI Studio configuration.
80 FUJITSU Sci. Tech. J., Vol. 49, No. 1 (January 2013)
 G. Roos et al.: 3D Graphics Authoring System: CGI Studio

content can be created. Together with Candera2D, it • Additional effect settings

allows easy creation of content that integrates 2D 3) Scene and scenario composition
graphics optimized for the target system and 3D. Scenes are composed with an editor while check-
ing operation in the target system.
5. Workflow of graphics content • Verification of the composition by real-time
production graphics engine rendering
The following describes a workflow of a graphi- • Scene graph and widget composition, and con-
cal HMI development using CGI Studio (Figure 3). The firmation of operation of animation, shader and
workflow consists of five steps: effect
• Content creation • Viewport and display setting
• Adaptation to the target system 4) Application development and execution
• Scene and scenario composition Application development and execution are car-
• Application development and execution ried out in the target platform.
• Result analysis • Implementation of the application flow and logic
CGI Studio provides a framework for repeated (e.g., state transition)
implementation of this workflow in a prompt and • Definition of connection operation with the
seamless manner.
1) Content creation
Creation of 3D content involves many more pro-
cesses and has a higher complexity than 2D content
and requires creation of the types of data listed below.
An example of content production using CGI Scene
Composer is shown in Figure 4.
• Mesh (polygon) attributes, conversion, material
and texture
• Light and camera
• Animation
2) Adaptation to the target system
The content must be adapted to the following re-
strictions and requirements of the target system.
• Restrictions on the structure and data volume of
polygons and drawing objects Figure 4
• Texture size and mapping method settings Example of use of CGI Scene Composer.

Design
engineer
• HMI design • Design
• Content production • Scene creation • Content implementation
• Performance analysis • Application development

Software
Designer engineer

Figure 3
HMI production workfl3
Figure ow.
HMI production workflow.
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G. Roos et al.: 3D Graphics Authoring System: CGI Studio

Figure 5
Linking with target system.

external (signal messages) designer was actually implemented in the embedded

5) Result analysis target hardware, the results expected by the designer
To detect any bottleneck in the performance, the were often not achieved in terms of the performance,
content execution and performance are analyzed di- appearance and operational feel. Hence, there was a
rectly on the target device. need to make design compromises and great efforts
• Load balance between the CPU and GPU for tuning on the target system. With this tool, the
• Experiment and verification with the rendering content created by designers can be run as it is on the
settings changed target hardware, which allows the results of execution
of the application to be shared and allows the develop-
6. Benefits of tool introduction ment workflow to be efficiently implemented. Figure 5
As an HMI creation tool intended for embedded shows an example of an HMI created on a PC (left) run
devices such as automotive devices, this tool also as- on the target hardware (right).
sumes it will be used by developers who are not very
familiar with graphics. This is because the introduction 7. Conclusion
of graphics for HMIs and other purposes is in progress Fujitsu has been continuously developing and
among applications that conventionally did not use providing LSI products intended for automobiles and
complicated graphics, such as automobile instrument embedded devices. In addition to LSIs, we are com-
clusters. Accordingly, this tool allows designers and mitted to offering system solutions including software
engineers who are new to the development of HMIs to such as libraries and tools. The tool presented in this
develop systems easily. paper has been developed as part of such activities and
In addition, this tool assumes that designers allows customers to easily develop HMIs and embed
who produce the content are not the same people as them in equipment.
the engineers who embed it in the actual target hard- We intend to work not only on enhancing the
ware. Furthermore, because work is often shared by functions of this tool and offering support for the next
different organizations and enterprises as in design by LSI products but also on development with a view to
an automaker and its implementation by an electrical linking this tool with other tools offered by Fujitsu.
equipment supplier, this tool has been developed to
offer ease of such collaborative work. Especially, in the
past, when the design developed on a workstation by a

82 FUJITSU Sci. Tech. J., Vol. 49, No. 1 (January 2013)

 G. Roos et al.: 3D Graphics Authoring System: CGI Studio

Gerhard Roos Roland Winkler

Fujitsu Semiconductor Embedded Solutions Fujitsu Semiconductor Embedded Solutions
Austria GmbH Austria GmbH
Mr. Roos is currently engaged in develop- Mr. Winkler is currently engaged in devel-
ment of graphics authoring systems. opment of graphics authoring systems.

Gernot Reisinger
Fujitsu Semiconductor Embedded Solutions
Austria GmbH
Mr. Reisinger is currently engaged in de-
velopment of graphics authoring systems.

FUJITSU Sci. Tech. J., Vol. 49, No. 1 (January 2013) 83