VizWorld.com

It was quite a while ago when we first talked about World Builder from Bruce Branit.  He sits down with CGSociety to talk about the process behind the 2-years-in-development project.

It was shot on a Varicam in HD and editted using Premiere. All the 3D as well as the pre-vis were done in Lightwave. This project was started about 4 years ago and real-world lighting, and radiosity have become much more affordable time-wise on a project this large. I would love to have the chance to start over with those new tools. It would look twice as real, and probably render twice as fast today. All of the compositing was carried out in Digital Fusion. The greenscreens were a little difficult with the HD footage, but after I had roughly comped all the shots, I took a job for 3 weeks ,again with CafeFX, working on King Kong and learned some really great keying techniques. I went back and re-keyed every shot and got a much nicer key for most of the shots.

via Welcome to CG Channel.

Graphics bruce branit, interview, vfx, video

Large Format Displays, especially Tiled Displays, are becoming more and more popular.  They’re nothing new, having been around for over a decade.  A quick search of the internet finds Princeton’s 18 Megapixel wall back in 1999.  SGI was demonstrating projection-based multi-screen walls back in the mid 90′s, calling them Powerwalls.  Currently, the Texas Advanced Computing Center has a 300+ MegaPixel wall called Stallion in operation.

But what do all these pixels get you?  Is More Pixels like More Horsepower, you can never get enough?  Or is there a diminishing return?  Have we already hit the maximum needed?  How many pixels can the human eye process? Let’s find out.
Read more…

Graphics, Hardware, Science display, feature, powerwall, tiled

Rhythm & Hues returned to the Night at the Museum franchise to generate the fantastic CG effects of Battle of the Smithsonian.  The Visual Effects Supervisor, Raymond Chen, found the scale of the project daunting.

Not only are the new characters staggering in number, but each required a different specialty for Chen’s team to pull off properly. Whether it’s the hair on a photo-real squirrel or the light and luster of a moving, talking marble statue, Chen had to simultaneously deal with characters and events in completely different scales, from miniature cowboys to a gigantic, writhing octopus. That’s in addition to compositing matte paintings and creating CG set-extensions.

Unlike most films which involve a single character in hundreds of shots, Night at the Museum had dozens of characters in hundreds of shots.

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

Graphics movie, rhythm&hues, vfx

A interesting map of the US that distorts state size by population, based on data from the 2005 census estimate.

Mapping Worlds: World Population Map Series.

Science government, map, population

Tim Sweeny is a great name in gaming, currently working on the Unreal Engine and Gears of War. In a recent interview with Gamasutra, he drops the following two fantastic quotes:

There are two parts to the graphical problem. Number one, there are all those problems that are just a matter of brute force computing power: so completely realistic lighting with real-time radiosity, perfectly anti-aliased graphics, and movie-quality static scenes and motion.  We’re only about a factor of a thousand off from achieving all that in real-time without sacrifices.

And then:

So we’ll certainly see that happen in our lifetimes; it’s just a result of Moore’s Law. Probably 10-15 years for that stuff, which isn’t far at all. Which is scary — we’ll be able to saturate our visual systems with realistic graphics at that point.

Read the entire interview at Gamasutra.

Gamasutra – News – Epic’s Sweeney: Games Are ‘Factor Of 1000′ Off From Graphical Realism.

Science interview, tim sweeny

We’ve mentioned the Clinton Climate Initiative film before, but a new press release has come out indicating that the film was made by Kontentreal and Superfad.

“Climate Positive” highlights the impetus for the project, its inspiration and goals. It was directed and produced by kontentreal, the documentary film and strategic entertainment company that previously collaborated with Superfad on the PBS series “e2″ which was narrated by Brad Pitt.

See the full press-release and photos after the break, and be sure to see the film.

Read more…

Graphics infographic, kontentreal, superfad, vfx, video

JVC has just released the new Xiview LT-42WX7, a 42-inch 120Hz 1080p panel that covers 96% of the Adobe RGB color space, making it suitable for image editing.  Even the title of the press release says the display “targets digital SLR users”.   It’s a mere 1 5/8 inches thick, and weighs 41.8pounds.

JVC ships 42-inch LT-42WX70: $2,399.95 for more colors than you’ll ever notice.

Hardware display, jvc, lcd

Ready to further research and implementations of GPGPU and CUDA technologies, NVidia will be hosting its first “GPU Technology Conference” from September 30-October 2.

The conference will encompass three simultaneous events — the Emerging Companies Summit, the GPU Developer Summit, and the NVIDIA Research Summit. Attendees will learn about the shifts occurring in computing, preview disruptive technologies, obtain tools and techniques that could impact mission-critical projects now, and network with experts and peers from across a broad range of fields.

They’ll also be hosting pre-conference tutorials on DirectX11, OpenCL, and OpenGL. The conference will be in San Jose, California.

via NVIDIA To Host Inaugural GPU Technology Conference.

Hardware, Science conference, cuda, gpgpu, nvidia

Digital Domain and ILM were two of the biggest studios involved in the massive quantity of VFX shots required for Star Trek.  They sit down with CGSociety to discuss some of their work.  They start off talking about the new Enterprise and some of the problems with working from a completely CG model.

A lot of times you build a ship and dirty it down and that instantly makes it feel more real, but the Enterprise was supposed to be a new ship. We tried to build it in modules with final LOD (Level Of Detail), built some elements for hero shots, and tricked it out for when you see it up close.”

Later they get into the jump sequence, the snow fracture sequence, and later the engineering bay tube sequence.

via CGSociety – STAR TREK.

Graphics digitaldomain, ilm, movie, vfx

Apparently feeling the heat from the NVidia G300 chipset with 512 processors onboard, AMD is planning three new DX11-compliant cards with up to 1200 processors, all at the (currently flaky) 40nm process.

RV870 will probably be named as Radeon HD 5870 according to AMD’s naming scheme, and RV840 is called as Radeon HD 5850, and R800 is known as Radeon HD 5870X2.

Powered by 1200*2 stream processors, Radeon HD 5870X2 is said to feature GDDR5 memory, core/memory clock of 950/1150MHz, and bandwidth of 286GB/s.

via Three AMD DX11 Graphics Cards Expected Late 2009 – Expreview.com.

Hardware amd