IE Effects has updated their website with a breakdown video showing one of their scenes for the horror movie “Drag Me To Hell”. In it they show the original greenscreen footage, and the several levels of VFX they created (Removing greenscreens, adding backgrounds, removing cables, and adding foreground objects).
Japanese brewer Kirin has a fun visualization of beer consumption by country, drawn from a 2004 survey.
The chart above displays the relative beer consumption per person for the specified countries. As you can see, there are huge variations in consumption by country. The average person in the Czech Republic, for example, consumes about seven times as much beer as the average Chinese person. The chart below shows more detailed statistics (Source: Kirin Holdings Company, 2004).
I’m surprised the US doesn’t even place in the top 5!
via How Much Does Beer Consumption Vary By Country? (via Prague Monitor)
John Goodson has made the difficult transition from physical modeler and painter, to CG modeler and graphic artist. Over at CGSociety, he talks about how he got started back in the mid-80s with classic urethane foam models, and made the transition.
Most recently, he photographed asphalt surfaces to create bump maps and displacements to paint the deck of a CG aircraft carrier for ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’. And now, he’s building digital models as well as painting them. His first formal modeling job was building the MotoTerminators for ‘Terminator: Salvation’. “I always feel like I’m cheating when I build digital models,” he says, “because I get volume for free. It’s a weird process. Modeling is usually subtractive – you take a block of wood and carve stuff out of it. Here, it’s sort of a free additive process. You can take a cube and extrude anything out of it. I totally take advantage of it.”
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What do you get when you combine a small computer, a projector, and a suitcase? You get the “Portable Large Interactive Display”. A prototype, from Hiep Truong, is small enough to be portant and turn any bright flat surface into an up-to 60″ multi-touch display.
For my master thesis at the Faculty of Industrial Design at the University of Technology in Delft I developed a portable system which allows users to create a 60inch multi-touch projection at virtually any flat surface. The concept featured a suitcase containing all the necessary components to create an interactive surface on a flat bright table.
An application is developed to support users in the building industry in performing ad-hoc meetings where large scale building plans can be projected and discussed on a meeting table.
A very impressive project indeed. See video of it in action after the break.
Two award willing directors, Matthew McManus and Andrew MacDonald, have come together and joined forces to create a new VFX studio named “KILT”. But that’s not all, KILT has just finished its premiere project: a commercial for 2K Sports.
Featuring the collision of two trains against a desert landscape, symbolizing the power of baseball, the KILT team was called on to create the train’s collision. The athletes had already been shot on-set, so creative problem solving was needed. The KILT team recommended to Director Berg that they create an entirely computer-generated 3D environment, and then integrate the CG elements with the live-action footage. The director agreed, so a small team from KILT led by Producer Matthew McManus traveled to the high desert and shot reference plates with the Red Camera. They then integrated the cg trains and environments into the commercial’s live-action footage of the athletes. KILT artists were able to create fully CG trains using Maya and Mental Ray, and rendering using Lightwave. They had to custom-write some software for the integration of the three programs, but all this was accomplished on deadline and to budget.
See the video and images after the break, and read the full press release.
Everyone’s favorite OpenGL Software emulator has just released a v7.5 for development. Big feature in this release is the new “Gallium3D” infrastructure with support for Intel 915/945 and Cell. They’ve also added support for a few new OpenGL Extensions (framebuffer objects, vertex_arrays in bgra, etc) and improved a few quirks in the GLSL compiler.
Remember, it’s a development release so you won’t want to try this on anything too critical yet, but it’s a great preview of what’s to come.
Everybody’s favorite fire-fighting animal Smokey the Bear recently got a full makeover thanks to the experts at Ntropic, for an upcoming PSA campaign.
For “Bonfire,” Ntropic was presented with the challenge of redesigning Smokey The Bear to add greater CG realism to the classic icon of fire prevention in an intensive 4-week production cycle. Ntropic’s animation acumen produced a full cinematic treatment for Smokey including lifelike hair and movement and physical proportions appropriate for the ultimate protector of the woods. Ntropic worked hand in hand with both the agency and Jason Zada who directed the charming cautionary tale of the potential pitfalls – from annoyed girlfriend to destroyed communities – of having a casual attitude towards fire and fire prevention.
Read the full press release and see example shots & the PSA, after the break.
The AMD FirePro team is putting out a call to CG designers and animators to enter the OOMPH Design Challenge. The challenge is to create an animated and/or static render depicting a sumo wrestler.
Entries must be submitted by July 29, 2009. The top 5 judges’ picks in each category will be showcased in the OOMPH Lounge at Booth #2417 at Siggraph 2009. Winners receive a FirePro 3D workstation graphics accelerator.
For full contest details, hit up http://www.getmoreoomph.com/ .
One enterprising googler has spent his fabled 20% time developing a 3D video system for YouTube. Supporting Anaglyphic stereo (Red/Cyan or Amber/Blue), and a few funny “manual” modes like CrossEyed, it’s still pretty experimental.
See one video after the break.
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