Home » Archives for March 2009
CGSociety has an interview with some of the folks at DreamWorks about the process behind creating the amorphous blob “Bob”.
Five different departments worked on the animation and look of B.O.B.. He was created and rendered entirely in proprietary software, using a new technology. The first decision was whether or not B.O.B. should be created through FX or as a character. In the earlier versions he was much more blob-like, more of a traditionally rendered isosurface, but within a few months it became clear that he couldn’t look like an effect in a world populated by the usual characters. Normally that would mean the design would be entirely an FX task instead of animation, but B.O.B. had to be treated as a main character and not as an effect, while still having character FX handling much of his technology.
CGSociety – Monsters v Aliens.
Graphics dreamworks, interview
“Cat Shit One”, released in the US as “Apocalypse Meow”, is an animated series to air tin 2010 that recreates the current military maneuvers in the middle east with Bunnies. I know, it sounds kinda weird, but the animation is pretty good.
Video after the break.
Warning: The movie isn’t really suitable for younger viewers. Blood, guts, and execution-style killings are shown.
CAT SHIT ONE -THE ANIMATED SERIES-offical site.
Read more…
Graphics animation, vfx
Mesa, the popular software-emulation drivers for OpenGL, has just released v7.4, fixing a few small bugs in v7.3 .
Mesa Home Page.
Science library, mesa, opengl
OpenTK, a C# and .NET wrapper for OpenGL/OpenAL, has just released 0.9.7 .
New in this release:
1. OpenGL 3.1 bindings
2. Improved type-safety for OpenGL 3.0 functions
3. Improved OpenGL error checking (stacktraces, better coverage)
This release contains potentially breaking changes
via OpenTK | Home of the Open Toolkit library.
Science library, opentk, software
If you’ve ever wondered just how much horsepower it takes to make a feature-length animated film, HP has a press release touting their involvement in the new “Monsters vs Aliens”, with some statistics for you:
- 40million Computing Hours, 8x more than Shrek
- Render the nearly 100 terabytes of disk storage.
- Render more than 30 sequences in the movie that would have taken more than 1,000 years to render on a single workstation.
- Create one of the most technically challenging sequences of the film involving a flyover of a town, including houses, hills and trees. In this shot, the background trees had to be broken up into more than 300 layers to render.
- Stage an explosion in one of the battle scenes, which required more than three terabytes of disk space alone.
PRdomain.com | HP| HP Technology Powers DreamWorks Animation’s Breakthrough 3-D Film, “Monsters vs. Aliens”.
Graphics hp
Ford Motor Company has recently upgraded the Powerwall in their Electronic Design Presentation Room (EDPR) and Advanced Visualization Center (AVC) with Sony 4K Projectors, thanks to help from IGI.
The Powerwall at Ford’s EDPR is 60-feet wide. It is equipped with three projectors, model number SRX-S110, which produce 10,000 ANSI lumens each, and produce 8.8 million pixels per unit. The company also uses two additional SRX-S110 projectors for two separate screens in its AVC, which are used for full-scale viewing of vehicle designs.
They say it give stheir engineers better visualizations of their designs, but I think the real purpose is merely to make a great demo to guests.
via Sony’s SXRD 4k Projectors Help Keep Ford Motor Company In The Passing Lane.
Hardware 4k, ford, igi, powerwall, sony
InteliSum has just opened “InteliSum Brazil”, to adapt their 3D Visual Fusion technology to the Oil & Gas industries in the region.
The company uses a technology called “Life Dimensional 3D” (LD3) to capture “as-is” models of existing oil and gas platforms and refineries. LD3 fuses 3D LiDAR information, GCS location, and digital imagery into an instant 3D model at capture. The accompanying software suite, LD3 Studio, also contains piping modeling tools.
via PR-USA.net – InteliSum Brazil Opens Doors to Massive Oil & Gas Industries.
Science intelisum
Sony has released a new version of the PhyreEngine, version 2.40. PhyreEngine is included with the Sony PlayStation3 and is the basis of several games such as Savage Moon, Strength of the Sword, Brookly Stories, and Burn Zombie Burn.
PlayStation LifeStyle » Sony Computer Entertainment Announces the Release of PhyreEngine™ 2.40.
Graphics playstation3, sony
Pix2Mail has gathered 25 amazing HDR photos and put them all into a single list. While several of them suffer from some pretty wild wide-angle lens distortion effects, they’re all breathtaking to see.
25 Amazing HDR Photos around the world.
Graphics hdr, photography
VizWorld.com 
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