VizWorld.com

HDR photography is all the rage these days, and a collection of 20 great HDR photos is gathered in one place for easy browsing.

These pictures come mostly from the Flickr HDR Group.

20 Beautiful HDR Pictures | Pictures.

Graphics

Chris Murray, Autodesk Training Specialist, has placed a set of 11 3ds Max Training videos online, showing features from using Selection Sets & Groups, through UVW Unwrap procedures, and into things like HDR Rendering settings.

Chris Murray is production veteran. He has created content for well-known clients such as CNN.com, Walt Disney Attractions, CanonUSA, and Sega. He is the founder of CME Gamelabs, a startup video game development studio in Orlando. He has also provided customized training for Boeing, United Space Alliance (NASA), Lockheed Martin, Disney Imagineering, and Westinghouse.

While it probably won’t be anything new to experts, if you’re just getting started in 3d Animation with Max, you might find it a good resource.

3ds max tutorial videos by Chris Murray, Autodesk Training Specialist.

Science

Over at Hack-a-Day, they’ve got a short story about a Motion Detection system written almost entirely in JavaScript.  It uses mjpg-streamer to communicate with the camera & stream images to the client (browser), but all of the motion detection is done client-side by the user.  This allows very low-end hardware (read: Cheap & Expendable) to be deployed at the camera locations, and a larger machine to be deployed for the user client.

He’s got a sample video (above), source code, and a descriptive PDF online.

Remote image processing in JavaScript – Hack a Day.

Science

yU+Co, the company that created the opening sequence for the new Watchmen film, has placed the entire opening sequence online for everyone’s enjoyment.  It’s a fantastic piece of compositing work.

Watchmen: The Best Part Of Watchmen Online Now.

Update: WB ordered Motionographer.com to remove the title sequences from their Web site due to copyright infringement, so the video no longer works.  If I find another working link, I’ll post it.

Science

Just found a new website for anyone interested in Computer Graphics Freelancing work.  The name is a bit, well it’s not the image I’ld want to portray, but it’s still new so now’s the time to get in before it’s overrun.

Digital Sweatshop is an experiment in networking for digital artist and professionals to help facilitate finding employment, outsourcing or collaboration work in a freelance like environment. Members can create albums in their profiles, blog and include resume type information in their profiles to help attract work – OR – They can post projects that they need collaborative or outsourcing help with or even post job positions they need to fill ………………………………….And it is FREE!

Welcome to Digital Sweatshop.

Website

A Fun CG animation from a recent contest.

This is our animation for the past CGS challenge – “Steampunk: Myths and Legends” on which we took the Animation prize.

Our goal was to create a trailer for an inexistent movie, create a world, a conflict and a main character – a flying pig – The Steam Pork!

YouTube – The SteamPork – Framebreed.

Science

GOOD Magazine has been holding a contest for the best Infographic Visualization of the current financial mess, and judging is now underway.  They’ve posted alot of the best entries, and there’s some great work shown.

GOOD » Making Sense of the Financial Mess».

Science

fxguide has a good interview up with John (DJ) Des Jardin, VFX Supervisor for the new Watchmen Film (opening today).  Specifically, they talk alot about the techniques used to create Dr Manhattan.

Instead of creating a character from scratch, we got to take a main character in the story who had to emote with the other characters, so the idea of shooting an actor in place and replicating him in CG was where we started. The unique thing about Doc is him being a light source which was challenging for the shoot and required a lot of R&D to have the environment react properly. First and foremost we needed a performance, so we had to have the actor and cheating didn’t seem the way to go, so we had to figure out a suit. The result was a distributed packing of blue LEDs with a remote power source. Global Effects Inc built the suit for us and it has about 2500 LEDs on his body, gloves. He looks like he’s in Tron.

via fxguide – vfx knowledge – What’s Up Doc? Watchmen.

Science

CGenie has an interview with Marc Petit, Senior Vice President of the Autodesk Media & Entertainment Division, focusing heavily on how the large size of the company affects their interaction with customers and their plans with 3ds Max & Maya.

There’s no doubt that as the number of customers increases, the way a company interacts with them changes and can feel less personal. It’s not possible for Autodesk or anyone to communicate with 300,000 people in the same way as they would with 3000 or even 30,000. Products such as 3ds Max or Maya have a very large numbers of customers in many different industries, while products such as Flame, Smoke, Lustre or our middleware products HumanIK and Kynapse address a much smaller number of users for whom we deliver a high level of personal service.

via CGenie interview Autodesk | CGenie – Professional CG Textures.

Graphics

Just got an email from Autodesk announcing “Autodesk University 2009″ in Las Vegas, NV, December 1-4.

Get all the details on Autodesk’s Site.

Graphics