Paramount has launched “Experience the Enterprise“, where you can explore and manipulate a model of the new Enterprise in Augmented Reality using a marker either printed or shown on your iPhone. Unfortunately, it requires ActiveX, just like the Topps AR system, but it’s still pretty impressive.
See a video of it after the break.
Well the documents from today’s SGI hearing are now online, and available for viewing. I am not a lawyer, but from perusing them a bit I see:
And that seems about it. I guess we can add about another $1.5mil onto the amount Rackable is gonna pay for SGI, due to these settlements.
Over at Chart Porn, they’ve compiled the Seven Deadly Sins graphs created by geographers from Kansas State University. The graphs were compiled like so:
“Impostering” isn’t a new idea in real-time rendering, it’s been around for quite some time. To put it simply, it’s replacing complex geometry with simple sprites (textures) to reduce the complexity of the scene. If the sprites can be dynamically regenerated upon certain criteria (when the camera exceeds some threshold, usually) or cached locally, then the effect is a huge improvement in render-speeds with almost no impact on visual quality.
Maxis was apparently experimenting with using Imposters, with sprites rendered from 3D Studio Max, in their “Simsville” game. The game was, unfortunately, canceled and never released. But a video has just appeared on Youtube showing the effect in action, and reminding us of the game that never was.
The innocently named “VisualizeIt” blog has gathered a great collection of data visualizations related to sports. Shown above is a great graph of shots taken during the NBA 2007-08 season, showing how much players love making 3-pointers from the corners. There are also links to visualizations of player stats, baseball games, and football games.
In a new press release from Hydraulx Visual Effects, they discuss the use of boujou for motion tracking in several projects, including ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’.
“We use boujou because it s really fast ” said Kruse. “It s been a part of our pipeline since the beginning-so we know it s been battle tested. If a show or commercial comes in that requires quick turnaround we can slam shots through with the control we need to get them in and out of the door in as little time as possible.”
In addition to Boujou, they use Autodesk Flame and Inferno for compositing and Maya for camera work.
Pure Visibility, an online SEO company, recently worked with students at the University of Michigan School of Information to develop a visualization for their Word Market Analysis. What is Word Market Analysis?
The Word Market Analysis is a set of proprietary processes we run to gauge the competition, search volume, and thus opportunities within a given online market. The analysis outputs a pile of data, in the form of statistics on specific queries and competitor website as well as larger categories.
The results are a stunning collection of visualizations compiled into a flash-based interface, allowing the user to interactively dig into the data. Completed by Jasper Liu and Li Li, it’s a great collection of information visualization and analysis tools.
John Gaeta, Academy Award winning visual effects guru, recently spoke to BoingBoing about his upcoming Ninja Assassin project. Along they way, he offers some insight into “hybrid entertainment”, and how he believes video games and movies will soon merge into a new interactive media.
They will become “content simulation engines ” which is something that we re already beginning to see in limited “sand box” games like GRAND THEFT AUTO IV and FALLOUT 3. He suggests that average kids will be able to use these engines to generate reasonably good movies which again is already happening with original machinma films created almost entirely with digital assets found within games like WORLD OF WARCRAFT and HALO.
Something like this has been long predicted, ever since people first began making Machinima videos with the original Quake engine, and groups like Rooster Teeth have proven it viable with the success of their Red vs Blue series. But doing so requires ongoing improvements in Realtime graphics rendering used in engines, and probably a collaboration with realtime graphics hardware companies to optimize performance.
So in the end, all us Vis Scientists and Gamers win either way :)
via ‘Matrix’ visual effects supervisor John Gaeta on ‘Ninja Assassin’ and the future of interactive digital media.
If you’re into VFX, then aetuts has the list for you. They’ve compiled a list of 31 fantastic VFX breakdowns from Heroes, I Am Legend, Benjamin Button, Hancock, Harry Potter, X-Men, and more. Definately worth checking out.
Maplesoft, makers of popular mathematics package Maple, are now offering MapleSim2. Fully integrated with Maple at the core, it delivers 3-D animation and visualization to transform multibody models into visualizations, improving engineer’s insight into the design.
“We need to make more advanced mathematical technology more accessible to everyone because people are rusty in this stuff. Both systems now allow for much more drag and drop and interactive, visual representation of the physical systems. Underneath, we take care of all the math, which allows people to be engineers, not just more accurate mathematicians.”
Single user licenses start at $2995.
via Maplesoft Unlocks Advanced Mathematics – 2009-05-06 20:49:00 | Design News.
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