VizWorld.com

In a recent interview with AMD’s Tom Sonderman, X-bit labs records the following statement:

“We intend on competing for AMD’s graphics business in the 32nm/28nm technology node,” he said. However, as X-Bit pointed out, AMD is obliged to require both microprocessors and GPUs from Globalfoundries, as AMD is one of the owners; using the term “competing” may have been inaccurate. Still, Sonderman’s answer hints to the possibility that the company may be ready for 28nm processing soon.

ATI just released the 40nm card today, and it sounds like they’ve got 28nm chips in the pipeline.  32nm silicon is rolling out now, and they will be accepting customer designs later this year.

via AMD and Globalfoundries to Make 28nm Parts – Tom’s Hardware.

Hardware amd, ati, globalfoundries

Prince’s new “MPLSoUND” album was released March 29th.  Creative studio Fulltank worked on the music video for “Chocolate Box”, the feature single on the album.  Inspired by the dark visuals of “Sin City”, they built a pipeline similar to a feature movie production.

Fulltank relied on a software toolkit comprising primarily of Adobe After Effects and Apple Shake for compositing, with Autodesk Maya and MAXON Cinema 4D for modeling, all running on Macintosh and Windows platforms on a 15 quad core render farm.

See the video on Fulltank’s Site.

via Fulltank Sweetens – Computer Graphics News, Digital Arts News, 3D News, Compositing News, Editing News.

Graphics fulltank, music video, vfx

3D Television is becoming a reality.  We’ve discussed a few of the Televisions coming out that support it, and now a 3D Network has emerged to carry the programming.

Signet Intl. Holdings, a publicly traded company led by former NBC and PBS exec Tom Donaldson and boxing promoter Ernie Letiziano, is buying AMG TV, a modestly sized net that feeds syndicated programs to some 200 terrestrial station affiliates, some of them carrying programming only part of the day.

Simultaneously, Signet has pacted with Kerner Broadcast Corp. for exclusive use of Kerner’s 3-D TV technology. Kerner, a spinoff from Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light and Magic, is also taking an equity position in Signet.

3D Televisions are still a in limited supply, so part of their deployment plan is a special set-top box that will turn any HD television into a 3D television, and retail for about $50.  AMG plans to be broadcasting several hours of 3D Programming a day by year’s end.

via AMG to become first 3-D network – Entertainment News, TV News, Media – Variety.

Hardware 3d, television

Janimation was given the task of creating the in-game cinematics for the Quantum of Solace video game, and being long-time aficionados of Softimage, they had hoped to use it again.  However, the tight work-schedule necessitated a change of plans, and they switched to Autodesk’s Face Robot tool.

“Face Robot helped streamline our workflow,” says Michaud. “We knew that standard face rigging was going to take too long and cost too much. We ended up using Face Robot for over 85 percent of the facial animation.”

They also praise the “GATOR” product, which they used to quickly rig and map character animations onto dozens of models simultaneously.

via Autodesk – Games – Janimation.

Graphics autodesk, janimation, video game

It’s April 15th, and for all of us in the US that means it’s Tax Day.  That makes today the perfect day to remember the “Death and Taxes” infographic poster.

Death and Taxes” is a large representational graph and poster of the federal budget. It contains over 500 programs and departments and almost every program that receives over 200 million dollars annually. The data is straight from the president s 2009 budget request and will be debated amended and approved by Congress to begin the fiscal year. All of the item circles are proportional in size to their spending totals and the percentage change from 2008 is included to spot trends and disproportion.”

It’s currently available for $24 dollars.

via WallStats – Death and Taxes & Taxes.

Graphics infovis

In the forums this week we’re asking “What’s your preferred visualization package? And why?”

• ParaView?
• OverView?
• CEI’s EnSight?
• ViSit?
• Vapor?

There’s lots of em out there, and each one has it’s own pros and cons.. So speak up! Which one do you prefer and why?

What’s your preferred Visualization Package? « VizWorld.com Forums.

Website forum, infovis, software

Kap Lab is presenting 5 impressive & free visualization components for Flex.

All components are AS3 based & some of them offer multiple layout options which makes them very flexible in means of presentation.

Science as3, flex

Director James Wong and Visual Effects Supervisor Ariel Velasco-Shaw needed alot of visual effects for the upcoming Dragonball Evolution, and were able to round up a small army of VFX houses to do the work.  VFXWorld sat down with three of them, Hybride, Frantic Films VFX, and CafeFX, to discuss their contributions and some of the special challenges of this project.

“Being involved in the very early stage of the production was great for Hybride because it gave us the chance to work on R&D in order to develop the look of the different energy blasts such as Ki Shadow Crane and Ma Fu Ba ” Raymond offers. “We also worked on look development for the Dragon Temple as well as for the Flying Hummer and Lord Piccolo s dirigible. Having our staff on-stage working closely with Ariel Velasco-Shaw alongside director James Wong was very helpful in achieving our goal.”

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

Graphics cafefx, frantic films vfx, hybride, vfx

Ian Hunter, special effects master from New Deal Studios, recently spoke at the International Film School about his work on The Dark Knight, Spiderman, the X-Files, and X-Men.  He goes into great detail about the process of VFX production, the importance of a good relationship with the directors and producers, and some fun insights into his work.

Video after the break.

Read more…

Graphics ian hunter, new deal studios, vfx

Some information is trickling out about the ATI Radeon HD4770, in the form of a slideshow presentation.  Some interesting things about the card :

• “World’s First 40nm Chip”
• Targeting a $99 price point
• DirectX 10.1 compatible
• Benchmarks show it beating a GeForce 8800GT and a GeForce 9800GT
• 826Million Transistors
• 750Mhz Clock, 640 STream Processors
• 800Mhz GDDR5 memory

Originally via HD 4770 (RV740) performance and price – VR-Zone.com: News and Reviews., but no longer available.

See the slides at The Inquirer.

Hardware amd, ati