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Here’s something I’m definitely going to check out at SIGGRAPH: Alioscopy’s “No-Glasses” 3D Displays in the Autodesk Booth.

At SIGGRAPH this year, in the Autodesk booth (Booth #  2201), Alioscopy USA will be answering both calls to build a community of artists to deliver new 3D autostereoscopic content and autostereoscopic “no-glasses” technology.  As this market takes off faster than Mr. Fredricksen’s house in the Pixar 3D-Stereoscopic summer smash “UP”,  Alioscopy is the leader in autostereoscopic 3D technology.  Come see (and almost feel) the pop-out effects one can experience without glasses on the Alioscopy HD LCD display.

Read the full press release after the break, and be sure to come back to VizWorld next week for more details!

Read more…

Hardware 3d, alioscopy, monitor, siggraph, stereoscopic

The culmination of 5 years of development, Indigo2 is now available.

The Indigo 2.0 series has been in Beta for the last 3 months, and has recently reached a point of sufficient stability to be released as a ‘stable’ version. Indigo 2.0 is the first commercial version of Indigo, and represents the latest results from over 5 years of development.

Back in May they offered 100 reduced-price “lifetime licenses”.  Some of these are still available at the reduced price of 295€ if you act quickly!

See the full press release after the break, with sample images.

via Indigo 2.0 Stable! | Indigo Renderer.

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Graphics indigo, renderer, software

A new press release from Sony Pictures Imageworks announces what you can expect to see from them at SIGGRAPH2009 in addition to the previously announced new Open-Source Software offerings.  In short: Stereoscopic 3D.

Imageworks’ participation includes presentations on the making of Sony Pictures Animation’s upcoming feature film, CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS, the 3D stereo/live action/animation production of the current box office hit, G-FORCE, and a panel deconstructing WATCHMEN. With an eye to the future, Imageworks will be recruiting for current and upcoming productions, including ALICE IN WONDERLAND, ZOOKEEPER, CATS AND DOGS 2, the Aardman Animation production ARTHUR CHRISTMAS, Sony Pictures Animation’s HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA and THE SMURFS, in association with Columbia Pictures.

via Sony Pictures Imageworks: SIGGRAPH 2009.

Graphics imageworks, siggraph, sony

JourneyEd, purveyor of high-end software packages to educational institutions worldwide, has added another package to its shelves just in time for SIGGRAPH: Pixar’s Renderman.

“JourneyEd is thrilled to become Pixar’s connection to the education market,” said JourneyEd’s Chief Executive Officer, Michael Fischler. “RenderMan is the software that Pixar uses to create not only its own Academy Award®-winning animated films, but is also used to render the bulk of visual effects seen in today’s movies. We are delighted that student artists can now access this coveted professional resource among our animation software offerings at a highly attractive price.”

RenderMan® is now available to the education community through JourneyEd at special academic prices, as low as $125 for an annual student subscription, at www.JourneyEd.com.

JourneyEd and Renderman will both be at SIGGRAPH2009 for conference attendees to check out.

via Online Sales Leader Journey Education Marketing, Inc. and Pixar Animation Studios Announce RenderMan® Sales Collaboration.

Graphics education, journeyed, renderman, software

It’s no secret that most of the visual effects work done these days is done in California, but Vancouver got a special shot at the effects in the upcoming summer blockbuster “District 9″, as Image Engine produced over half of the shots in the film.

Image Engine created 311 VFX shots, The Embassy did 70 and Zoic Studios provided 30. The rest were done by Weta Digital, Jackson’s New Zealand company, which was prominent in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Part of the reason may be because the film’s director, Neill Blomkamp, lives in Vancouver and came from VFX studios based there.

via Vancouver visual effects studios manufacture District 9′s alien look.

Graphics image engine, movie, vfx, weta, zoic

The Visualizar’09 conference, subtitled “Public Data, Data in Public”, has issued a call for projects and papers to be presented at this year’s conference, to be held November 12-27.

At the first two annual Visualizar events, almost a hundred participants from Spain and abroad collaborated with international experts in the field of data visualization in developing seventeen prototypes that tell stories through data: from measuring atmospheric pollution in the streets of Madrid to the conversations held by users of social webs such as Twitter. Each year, Visualizar also includes a specialized symposium, educational activities OPEN to the public, and an exhibit of the projects carried out.

In 2009, Visualizar will highlight the importance of data structures today in public decision-making and governance processes. There is a growing movement in favour of making databases generated by scientific research and the vast quantities of data generated by public administrations available to everyone, in formats that make it possible to reuse them and foster citizen innovation processes. What are the social benefits of fostering a culture of free, OPEN data?

Even if you’re not attending the conference, they’ve collected a good list of public databases and visualizations suitable for a wide variety of research and publication, such as Data.gov and OpenSecrets.

via Visualizar 09: Public Data, Data in Public · Call for projects and papers – Medialab-Prado Madrid.

Science conference, data

Vivek Ram recently finished reading the Valmiki Ramayan myth and found himself unable to accept the peaceful images usually associated with it, and decided to instead create an image of the battle-honed warrior with only his rudraksha beads for armor and a layer of grime as a badge.

I wanted to show Ram in a really dynamic pose in the midst of Battle, with a War cry and ready to unleash his anger. I also wanted his pose to be in complete balance like that of a dancer with every gesture to be more deliberate than random. I also paid attention to how he would hold his arrow to show a sense of ease and experience in battle.

He build the fantastic image using Maya.

via CGTantra.com – Making of ‘The Legend of Ram’ – Vivek Ram.

Graphics makingof, maya, tutorial

House Republican John Boehner recently released an infographic describing the Democratic Health Plan proposal.  The graphic is a nightmare of bad color choices, poor layout, and overall obfuscated design.  No doubt some of this was intentional, but it’s another great example of the evils that can be perpetrated through infographics.

Or put in other words: “By releasing your chart, instead of meaningfully educating the public, you willfully obfuscated an already complicated proposal. … So, to try and do my duty both to the country and to information design (a profession and skill you have loudly shat upon), I have taken it upon myself to untangle your delightful chart.”

via Political Chart Wars: Health-Care Reform Obfuscated by Infographics – information aesthetics.

Graphics evil, government, infographic

Pixologic has dashed the hopes of graphics designers worldwide by delaying the much anticipated ZBrush 4 until Q4 2009.  The original August release will instead see ZBrush 3.5.  ZBrush 3.5 has several new features regarding SubTool, displacement and normal map options, and high-definition geometry.  But they’ve saved one ace in the hole to mend our broken hopes:

ZBrush 3.5 will also include one of the still unannounced key features of ZBrush 4. We are very excited to include this very powerful and creative new feature in version 3.5, and are sure that you will be too! An introduction to this feature will be made available here, at ZBC, within the next couple of weeks.

The Windows version of 3.5 will be released by the end of August, followed by a release of the OSX version in September. Following the release of 3.5, we will continue to refine ZBrush 4 and its features (such as LightBoxand Spotlight) for release in the 4th Quarter of 2009.

ZBrush 3.5 and ZBrush 4 will be released as free upgrades to all registered users.

via ZBrushCentral – ***Announcing ZBrush 3.5 and GoZ for Windows and MacOSX.

Graphics pixologic, software, zbrush

The EETimes sits down with NVidia’s chief scientist William Dally and talks about the future of processors and performance.  No surprise that Dally predicts that Moore’s law will prevent us from making single processors much faster, so the future is in massively parallel systems. Then he gazes into his crystal ball and comes up with this:

“Now that we are no longer scaling single-thread processors, you have no alternative,” Dally said.

Throughput processors have hundreds of cores today and will have thousands of cores by 2015, Dally said. By then, Nvidia will have GPUs implemented on 11 nm process technology that feature roughly 5,000 cores and 20 teraflops of performance, Dally predicted.

via EETimes.com – Nvidia chief scientist to EDA: Give us power tools.

Hardware future, nvidia