VizWorld.com

VFXWorld has an article about the work done for VFX in the new Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li movie.  Consisting of alot of wire-removal, the main “Digital effect” was Chun-Li’s “Chi Ball”.

Previously adapted into a big-budget blockbuster in 1994, Street Fighter, alongside many other videogame cinematic adaptations, has proved that moving pixels around can be a tricky process and one that tends to require an appropriate measure of vfx work. It’s the job of Visual Effects Supervisor Marc Kolbe to blend the bigger-than-life action and fantasy of the videogame with the film’s verisimilitude, a task that has to be necessarily balanced against the film’s modest budget.

via ….. >> VFXWorld / Feature Articles << …...

Science

Post Magazine has a short interview up with Ben Snow from ILM about the VFX used in Iron Man.  They have a few interesting shots showing the multiple passes used in rendering some of the larger scenes.

Iron_webdoc.swf (application/x-shockwave-flash Object).

Graphics

From the “Functioning Form” blog:

At VizThink 2009, Tom Wujec outlined Why Visualizations Work with an overview of how the human brain manages visual information and how pictures can help drive deeper understanding of complex issues and information.

He’s got a great bullet-list of reasons (mostly Human Perceptual system points) why Visualization works, and a link to AutoDesk’s TED presentation.

via Functioning Form – VizThink 09: Why Visualizations Work.

Science

Just saw this pop up on my Radar. A New Conference, “High Performance Graphics 2009″ has just been announced and will be co-located with SigGraph 2009 in New Orleans, Louisiana.

We are pleased to announce High-Performance Graphics 2009. This conference is the synthesis of two highly-successful conference series:

• Graphics Hardware, an annual conference focusing on graphics hardware, architecture, and systems since 1986.
• Interactive Ray Tracing, an innovative conference series focusing on the emerging field of interactive ray tracing since 2006.

By combining these two conferences, we aim to bring to authors and attendees the best of both, while extending the scope of the new conference to cover the overarching field of performance-oriented graphics systems covering innovative algorithms, efficient implementations, and hardware architecture. This broader focus offers a common forum bringing together researchers, engineers, and architects to discuss the complex interactions of massively parallel hardware, novel programming models, efficient graphics algorithms, and innovative applications.

The conference will run from August 1st-3rd, and they are currently accepting submissions for Papers and the “Hot 3D Systems Track”, a Vendor-track to demonstrated new hardware and technology.

via HighPerformanceGraphics.org.

Science

Some news for all you CUDA GPGPU Gearheads out there:

• CUDA.NET, CUDA bindings for Microsoft’s .NET Frameworks, v2.1 is now available
• Jacuzzi, CUDA Bindings for Java, is now available for testing.

With CUDA about to transition to OpenCL, it’s both good and surprising to see so many people working on CUDA bindings. Hopefully their work will easily translate to OpenCL when it’s released.

Science cuda, gpgpu

Microsoft Research is demonstrating a new technology they’re calling “Augmented Vision” at TechFest today.  It’s an augmented reality video-overlay system, meant to be used with “small portable computers”, and eventually Smart Phones.

Their software which runs on a small portable computer analyzes scenes from a camera matches to those stored in a database and overlays supplementary information on the display. The researchers note that a smart phone with augmented reality could help allow engineers to “see” the pipes or electrical cables below a street. In the demonstration given at TechFest the software will be used to lead people on a treasure hunt to a hidden prize of a virtual pot of gold.

via Technology Review: Microsoft Demos Augmented Vision.

Science augmented reality, microsoft

Studio Daily Blog discusses the “RabbitHole” digital hologram.

“More technically, a RabbitHole is a digital hologram that contains up to 1280 digital frames of CGI or video imagery. RabbitHoles are completely flat (0.7mm thick), yet the 3D imagery appears further in front of, and deeper beyond the surface than people imagine is possible. RabbitHoles can hold motion sequences up to ten seconds long, and viewers’ movement in front of a RabbitHole triggers the immersive and animated content, provided by the image sequence embedded in the surface…up to 1280 frames!”

In addition to the surprising number of frames you can embed in the surface, they also have made huge advances in color support, which is typically not well supported by Holograms.

via Studio Daily Blog » Down the Rabbit Hole for Holographic Posters.

Hardware hologram

Mechdyne announced today that they’re upgrading a decade-old CAVE at the National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health (NIOSH) in West Virginia.

The new CAVE includes three vertical walls and an illuminated floor, with each 10 x 13 ft image surface illuminated by a 1450 x 1050 pixel Digital Projection Titan DLP projector. Mechdyne is also integrating an InterSense wireless tracking system for synchronization of stereo imagery, a Hewlett-Packard PC cluster with Nvidia Quadraplex graphics for image generation, and software modules to provide immersive stereo capability for applications from Multigen-Paradigm and Google Earth.

Don’t hear too much about CAVE’s these days with RAVE’s and NAVE’s stealing their thunder and basic stereo finally reaching down to the consumer level.  Glad to see some people still see the benefits.

via Engineers Use Visualization Environment From Mechdyne for Studies to Improve Construction Worker Safety.

Hardware

Guru3D and expreview have benchmarks of the Radeon HD 4750 (RV740) card from ATI, and it beats NVidia’s comparable card by a hefty 20%.

Based on 40nm manufacturing process, Radeon HD 4750 features 640 stream processors (just as HD 4830), 32 texture memory units (TMUs) and 8 Render back-ends (it’s mistakenly marked as 16 Render back-ends in the chart). Though the memory interface has reduced to 128bit, the GDDR5 memory still ensures its memory clock of 3200MHz, while the core clock keeps at 650MHz.

Their benchmark consists of mainly games (FarCry, Crysis, Left 4 Dead) but they did use 3DMark.  In every test, the Radeon won by a good margin.

via Radeon HD 4750 RV740 Beats GeForce 9600GT by A 20% Margin – Expreview.com.

Hardware ati

Over on DigMo! Joel Simon, one of Ireland’s most successful and award winning animations, posts his top 5 tips for animators.

It’s been 13 arduous year since I first had this ‘eureka’ moment which left me no choice but to throw myself headlong into the amazing world of animation…

Before I adopt my stance behind the lectern and impart entirely subjective advice on how to become an animation ‘pro’, I have to confess that I came to animation, like so many before me, by accident, and by just playing around (with a Super 8 camera, a tripod and some clay models, on a £20 budget).

via Top 5 Tips for Animators | DigMo!.

Science