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Not satisfied with plain boring business cards, James Alliban took his to a new level and integrated an Augmented Reality system into it.

There’s not really enough space on a business card to explain yourself in any detail so I thought I’d extend it using augmented reality. I recorded a short video bio and created a 3D grid of coloured planes. These colours are updated with the those from the video. The planes are extruded depending on the level of brightness.

Look after the break for Video of the system.  You can visit his website and print out the marker yourself to try it out.

via AR Business card « James Alliban.

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Science augmented reality, businesscards

A press release today from Axceleon talks about a new product called “EnFuzion”.  EnFuzion allows rendering packages to access the Amazon EC2 Cloud for rendering, making it a powerful tool for facilities that are unwilling or unable to manage a personal render farm.

“EnFuzion with EC2 provides “elastic rendering” within the cloud and changes the economics of rendering by allowing studios and end users to pay only for their usage. This notion of “elastic renderingTM” using EnFuzion decreases the management of a studio’s hardware and software stockpile. The EnFuzion render farm in the cloud shrinks and expands on demand. It can start with one render node and rapidly expand to thousands of render nodes transparently increasing the potential of the render farm within minutes using Amazon’s EC2,” said Mr. Duffy, President and CEO of Axceleon.

And the list of supported applications is pretty impressive too:

EnFuzion^3D 2009^TM runs natively on all OS platforms (Windows^®, Linux^®, Mac OS^®) and all 64/32-bit hardware platforms. Plug-ins are available for Maya^®, 3ds Max^®, Toxik^®, Softimage^®|XSI^®, Nuke^™, Combustion^®, After Effects^®, Blender^™, mental ray^®, Vray^®, Turtle^™, 3Delight^™ and more.

via EnFuzion® Optimizes Image Rendering on Amazon EC2, via InsideHPC .

Graphics, Hardware amazon, axceleon, cloud, enfuzion, renderfarm

Combining the forces of CyberSpace, Social Media, and the John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, the new WeChooseTheMoon website will be recreating the history Apollo 11 lunar mission.  You can view photographs and videos from the archives, follow the entire event minute by minute on three separate twitter feeds, and browse thousands of pages of declassified mission documents.

“The undertaking is pretty massive. We’re joking a lot about how sending millions to the moon in cyberspace in 2009 is going to end up taking just as much time as sending three guys to the moon in 1969,” said Joe Alexander, creative director at The Martin Agency. “But truly, we feel honored to be doing it. There’s a real sense of purpose, living up to JFK’s idea that the space race will bring out the best in us. We don’t want to let JFK – in a real sense, our client – down. So there’s a little pressure, which is good.”

Currently in “Stage 1: Prelaunch”, the actual “liftoff” will be July 16th, 9:32am, exactly 40 years after the original launch.  Some high-quality 3D animations have been created that will accompany the various stages of the event.

via Apollo 11 Blasts off Again on July 16th at WeChooseTheMoon.org

Graphics, Science history, nasa, social media, space

GOOD Magazine creates a lot of great infographics, and has now created a Flickr set where you can see their past issues.  Some of these we’ve covered previously:

• The Largest Bankruptcies in History
• Where have All the Fish Gone?
• Who is coming to America?

Currently hosting 82 “transparencies” (their name for Infographic), a new one is posted every Tuesday.

GOOD Transparencies Archive – a set on Flickr.

Graphics good, infographic

MPC provided the VFX work for a pair of commercials for Wrigley’s 5 Gum, and has posted some behind-the-scenes information on their website.

In the Solstice spot our 3d artists used PAPI to develop the ice shattering effect. Maya fluids and particles were used to further enhance the avalanche. For the Zing spot our team used Maya particle instancing and some hand animation to create the bubbles. Maya nCloth was used to make the larger bubble that our hero falls into.

The 35 mm and phantom camera material was extensively re-timed and manipulated to work with the CG environment and animation which were then composited using shake and flame.

via Wrigleys, 5 Gum.

Graphics commercial, makingof, mpc, vfx

FlowingData has compiled a great list of 20 visualizations of various crime statistics.  Most of it is targeted to specific areas (a neighborhood, a city, etc) but some is more diverse like the “Flash Face” sketch artist tool.

There’s a lot of crime data. For almost every reported crime, there’s a paper or digital record of it somewhere, which means hundreds of thousands of data points – number of thefts, break-ins, assaults, and homicides as well as where and when the incidents occurred.

With all this data it’s no surprise that the NYPD (and more recently, the LAPD) took a liking to COMPSTAT, an accountability management system driven by data.

While a lot of this crime data is kept confidential to respect people’s privacy, there’s still plenty of publicly available records. Here we take a look at twenty visualization examples that explore this data.

via 20 Visualizations to Understand Crime | FlowingData.

Science crime, example, list, visualization

In preparation for the release of Harry Potter: The Half Blood Pricen, LaInformation has compiled a trio of interactive infographics showing the timeline of Harry Potter’s life up to this point, changes of the actors over the years the series has aired, and most interestingly a relationship map of all the important characters.

Whether you’re a fan of the series or not, it’s an interesting chart.

All you need to know before watching Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince « Gráficos.

Graphics graph, harry potter, infographic, interactive

A pair of classes will be going on August 10-14th as part of the Summer Institute at Wallenberg Hall.

• Data Visualization: Theory and Practice . August 10-11. The goals of the workshop are to provide both a practical and theoretical introduction to visualization. This will include a primer in the underlying perceptual principles, and presentations describing the use of visualization in various domains, including visual analytics / business intelligence, geometric modeling, and online information visualization. Participants will be guided in hands-on design exercises.
  
• Collaborative Visualization for Collective, Connective, and Distributive Intelligence . August 12-14. This workshop will bring together visualization vanguards from the leading edge of science mapping, collaborative visual sensemaking, social network analysis and the emerging semantic web.  Surrounded by the Places & Spaces: Mapping Science Exhibition at Wallenberg Hall and dynamic maps from Stanford’s Spatial History Project and the Human-Computer Interaction Lab, visual thinkers from four departments on campus, designers and special guests will share a series of case studies of their work to gain a synthetic perspective on the future of visualization for connective intelligence.

Both look to be great events,

Science education, training

Samar Vijay specializes in 3D character modeling for games, and sits down with CGTantra to spill a few secrets of the trade.

Most of the artists use zspheres in Zbrush, but I usually do the base mesh or blocking phase in 3dsmax as I am much faster and comfortable with it. Once I am satisfied with the base meshes I export them into Zbrush and start sculpting. After pulling and pushing some areas with MOVE brush and posing the mesh for giving it a nice gesture, I spend a long time sculpting. For this I primarily use the standard, clay, clay tubes and smooth brush to get the desired results. Once I am done with all the sculpting and other hi-res details I then take the mid resolution meshes back to 3dsmax.

via CGTantra.com – Interview with Samar Vijay – CGTantra Feature Artist.

Graphics 3dsmax, character, interview, modeling, zbrush

Prime Focus recently completed a new commercial for Whirlpool that shows a baby, in the womb, that the new clear Whirlpool Water Purifier can bring a smile to.  It’s a short piece done by 10 animators in 12 days, that exemplifies some of the arguments between making realistic animations and making artistically pleasing ones.

We always stumbled upon healthy debates like how much colour details of blood vessels to be revealed, translucency for the skin during the early stages of production. The lighting and compositing team spend hours experimenting with different passes and how to create them. And finally we decided to do different lighting for the different passes to get to the look. Surface scatter was used in a big way to bring the soft baby skin feeling. The placenta and background were the supporting elements, which gave the feeling of the womb.

via CGTantra.com – Whirlpool Commercial – VFX by Prime Focus Ltd.

Graphics commercial, prime focus, vfx