Home » Archives for March 2009
If you visit the GoArmy.com website, you’ll see they now have an interactive base that you can navigate around to see all the various jobs and functions of the US Army. CGnews has some information from Click 3X, who collaborated with MRM and Smuggler to model and animate the entire feature.
The Click team provided the 3D animation to help transport visitors through and across the base in an immersive, full motion journey, combining life-like graphics with MRM’s interactive hotspots linked to live action webisodes enhancing the realism and depth of the online experience.
via Click 3X Builds Interactive CG World For Go Army | CGnews.
Science
PCWorld got their hands on a new gadget called the “OnLive”. As they describe it:
This box (that fits neatly in the palm of your hand) has a couple USB 2.0 ports, Bluetooth support, optical audio and HDMI out jacks. That’s about it. The OnLive “microconsole” doesn’t have much in the way of juice (CPU-wise), but it just let us play Crysis at 720p on an oversized HDTV. It blazed through a couple races in Burnout: Paradise City and GRID.
Capable of 720p gaming at 30fps over a 5Mbps broadband link (Standard Def available over 1.5Mbps), and requiring servers within a 1000 mile radius, it probably won’t completely replace console gaming. But the ability for me to run Crysis in HD on my home television, without having to buy a $2000 PC with all the top-of-the-line gaming hardware, that’s impressive.
I wonder if the same technology could be adapted for Remote Data Visualization? IP Video Systems has a box to do this called “V2D”, but it’s a $30,000 investment for the Sender/Receiver pair.
via OnLive: Will it beat Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii at their own game? – PC World.
Hardware onlive
Lenovo has shocked us all by actually showing some interesting new hardware at GDC today. They’ve announced two new ThinkStation desktops (the S20 and D20) that come with Intel’s new Nehalem-based Xeon chips and an NVidia Tesla C1060 (or ATI FirePro) inside, for only $1070 or $1550. They’re available in Q1, and EnGadget has pics and the press release.
Lenovo ThinkStation S20 / D20 sport new Xeon CPUs, Tesla C1060 GPU.
Hardware gdc, lenovo
Andrew Jones, “Rockstar” of computer graphics with a Wacom Tablet slung around him like a guitar, will be speaking at CGCon2009, and they’ve got an interview with him to give you some background.
Some days I’m a digital art evangelist, others I’m a creative motivational speaker. On the weekends I’m visual stenographer of underground culture. Whether I’m airbrushing on a human figure or projecting photonic illusions on a screen, my goal is the same. From pixels to pigment I serve as an aperture for beauty and recapitulate it to the best of my ability, to share the gift of creation and to support and inspire heightened states of artistic potential in the people that I’m fortunate enough to cross paths with.
via CGcon interviews Andrew Jones
Science cgcon2009
In the furniture & home design arena, more and more companies are rolling out product to allow you to “virtually design” the space before you buy. Now it seems Autodesk is joining the fray with their “Project Dragonfly“.
Use our sample room shapes to quickly lay out your floor plan. Simply drag and drop additional rooms, closets, walls, doors, windows, openings, and other items from our Build catalog into your floor plan to rapidly create your design. Project Dragonfly makes it easy to match your existing space or create your dream home.
It has some neat features, and a huge catalog of furniture and items to fill your space with. The most impressive feature tho, is that once you’ve laid out the space you can switch to a 3D mode and see the plan in full 3D. You can see that Autodesk is tapping into some of their more advanced technologies for this, because you get basic shadow and animation effects, and the entire thing is in Flash.
Autodesk Labs Technologies Project Dragonfly.
Graphics autodesk
I’m sure these lists fall into flamebait territory, but they’re always fun to read.
SFX: 20 Best CGI Movie Moments.
With the Abyss, Forrest Gump, Ghost in the Shell, and more, it’s a good list.
TotalFilm: The 20 Worst Movie CGI Moments
Starting with the Deep Blue Sea, passing through Snakes on a Plane, and they even got JarJar, another great list.
So, what’ld they miss? Discuss!
Graphics
If you’ve ever used Virtual Scene Graphs or Pyramid Tile schemes for topographic and terrain data visualization, then you might wanna check out the “GIS in XML” blog. He’s gathered massive amounts of information on the schemes used in Google Earth & Amazon’s services, and has some fantastic resources on designing XML for interactive visualization of terrain data with these services.
GIS in XML.
Science
mental images, makers of Mental Ray, have just announced “mental mill”, an integrated development environment for shaders. It comes two editions (Standard and Artist), and includes debug and preview features along with export features for major CAD packages.
“The mental mill Standard Edition greatly facilitates the creation of complex and visually compelling shaders. In addition thanks to their representation in MetaSL these shaders are future-proof and will not need to be recreated or modified to take full advantage of future technology and performance advancements in GPUs multi-core parallel processing and rendering algorithms ” said Rolf Herken CEO and COO of mental images.
via HPCwire: mental images Introduces mental mill.
Graphics mental images
Thinking Ape’s GmbH have just announced NodeJoe in the Autodesk ACAP program. NodeJoe is a replacement material editor for 3DS Max that offers many new features, yet is completely compatible with 3Ds Max.
Each material, shader and map is represented as a ‘node’ – with input and output connections that can be linked in an infinite number of ways. Users can create these connections between different maps, shaders and materials simply by dragging connection lines between them in the Nodeview. NodeJoe is also intelligent enough to know when a connection can be made, and will let the user know if they try to connect two nodes in a way that is illegal. Once a material has been crafted, applying it could not be easier; straightforward drag-and-drop onto your geometry, into a light or anywhere else a standard material can live inside of 3ds Max™.
via CGSociety – TurboSquid announces NodeJoe.
Graphics 3dsmax
If you’ve ever been in broadcasting, you’ve heard of the NAB show. It’s the premiere US conference for video broadcasting technology and product releases. This year it’s April 18-23 in Las Vegas, Nevada. From their website:
Welcome to the IMAGINation. More than just broadcasting, the NAB Show™ is attended by leading media, entertainment and communications professionals like you who share a passion for delivering the next generation of audio, video, and filmed content across multiple platforms – from televisions, radios and computers to phones, the big screen and beyond.
And thanks to the staff at NAB, VizWorld.com has the honor of handing out a special registration code to get you free exhibits-only registration (normally $150)! To redeem:
This code gets you into the exhibit floor and opening keynote, normally a $150 value! Hurry up and book your tickets, NAB is a huge event and undoubtedly hotels and planes will be filling fast!
Graphics conference, nab, promo
VizWorld.com 
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