VizWorld.com

Wellington’s Weta has created a new group “Transfx”, headed by former Autodesk’s senior industry manager Sebastian Sylwan.  The group is aimed at bringing advanced research into movie production, and will be partially funded by the government.

Sylwan told Variety that the goal was to get computer graphics “closer to reality while maintaining artistic control”.

Many visual effects were cobbled together with improvised solutions that looked good in that “shot” but couldn’t be re-used on other shots, Sylwan said.

Transfx would look to find techniques that could be applied more generally in things such as simulations of fire and water.

Weta seeks advanced research for movie graphics | Otago Daily Times Online.

Graphics, Science transfx, weta

NASA has collaborated with Microsoft’s Virtual Earth Team to offer up some pretty 3D photographs on their website.  The photographs include the Space Shuttle and Space Station and the Mars Rover.  Not simulations or renderings, the images are from standard digital cameras used by the astronauts.

“Photosynth brings the public closer to our spaceflight equipment and hardware,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Space Operations at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The space station pictures are not simulations or graphic representations but actual images taken recently by astronauts while in orbit. Although you’re not flying 220 miles above the Earth at 17,500 miles an hour, it allows you to navigate and view amazing details of the real station as though you were there.”

They’ve also integrated a kind of digital scavenger hunt, with a list of hidden items buried in the photographs.

Requires a Silverlight install to use.

via NASA – NASA Releases Interactive 3-D Views of Space Station, New Mars Rover.

Science 3d, microsoft, nasa, photosynth, silverlight

Makar Verigo won a Master Award for his BMW C1 mini-scooter image, featuered in EXPOSE7.  Now, he’s got a walkthrough of the project up on CGSociety showing all fo the details of the modeling, rendering, and environment setup.

CGSociety – BMW C1 EXPOSE 7 TUTORIAL.

Graphics expose, tutorial

Taking a tip from the New York Times, the BBC has released an interactive tool for analyzing statistics of soldier deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.  You can organize the data by date (back to 2001), cause of death, branch of service, rank, gender, and age, allowing an amazing look at the data.  They also have special “markers” in the timeline that allow you to correlate certain spikes in the data with national events.

See an example after the break.

Read more…

Science bbc, flash, infographic

Not wanting to fall behind NVidia, AMD has just released WHQL Certified drivers for Windows 7.   Unlike NVidia’s offerings, these are not a release candidate but rather an official release, with another unified Windows7/WindowsVista driver expected later this month.

AMD Releases WHQL Certified Driver For Windows 7 – Expreview.com.

Hardware amd, driver, windows

gDEBugger has just hit v5.1 and now supports inspection of Vertex Buffer Objects.  Available for Linux, OSX, and Windows, they offer a free 7-day trial for all users, after which it’s $790 – $2500 for a license.

New Features:

• The Textures and Buffers viewer now displays Vertex Buffer Objects (VBOs). The Data View tab displays the selected VBO’s data in a spreadsheet.
• A message box that notifies the user when there is not enough memory left for logging monitored function calls.

Changed:

• All buffers are now displayed in a single pane inside the Textures and Buffers viewer.
• The Textures and Buffers viewer now orders items using a tree UI control.
• Textures and Buffers items icons were changed.

via gDEBugger – OpenGL and OpenGL ES Debugger and Profiler – Realize your OpenGL potential….

Science gdebugger, software

Renderman is the renderer-of-choice for many Hollywood VFX studios, and there are many ways to use the Renderman renderer in Maya.  However, each method has it’s own pros and cons, and can be pretty daunting upon first inspection.  VFXWorld continues its series from the Thomson Course Technology book “Maya Plugin Power” by looking into the pros and cons of various Maya plugins.

RenderMan for Maya, while being able to take advantage of PRMan, cannot read or write RIB files. It internally converts work done in the Maya interface to be used by the renderer. Output to PRMan through Maya allows the imagery produced to take advantage of the quality and speed of the renderer. More expert qualities, such as writing RIB files, are part of the RenderMan for Maya Pro. This is certainly an impetus for upgrading.

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

Graphics education, maya, renderman

At the recent Navy League conference, DRS Technologies demonstrated their Global Situational Awareness product.  It’s a Microsoft surface-esque device, large table-sized touchscreen, that can consolidate data from almost any source (UAV videos, schematics, SAR, photos, IR, etc) and overlaid onto GIS data and used for mission planning, and more.

Want to see what a Predator is watching, or perhaps cameras mounted on a guard post or tower? A tap of the menu along the side of the screen and the streaming video appears on the map screen. Another menu tap and Bridges can use a finger to plot a pathway reflecting the movements of opposing forces. A commander using the Integrated Tactical Command and Control Console could send all, or just part, of the images before him to the computer screens of other commanders.

See a video of the device after the break.

Read more…

Hardware drs, military

Pavel Romsy has a walkthrough of creating his “Hal Tejas” Indian Air Force Fighter aircraft with VIZ2008, Brazil r/s V2, Texporter, and Photoshop.

Making of HAL TEJAS – Indian Air Force Fighter Aircraft.

Graphics photoshop, viz

The VizWorld forums haven’t gotten the traffic I had hoped, so I’ve added some new plugins to add some new features:

• The forums now allow anonymous posts, so you no longer have to create an account.
• To prevent spam (From anonymous posts), there is a “Human Check” that you have to pass, a simple single-digit math problem

I hope that these changes will open the forums to more people.  I haven’t gotten hardly any answers on any of the weekly questions!  So go check out the forums and start posting!

Website forum, Website