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Pixelux’s Digital Molecular Matter system, which got alot of press for it’s use in the Star Wars: The Force Unleashed game for Xbox360 & PS3, is now available as a Maya Plugin.  The DMM system is far more advanced that basic rigid body physics systems.

Unlike rigid body physics systems where everything looks like its made of styrofoam and things break as though they are very brittle, DMM accurately models the stress within objects, allowing deformation and fracture to occur naturally with all the subtle details the eye expects in physically simulated scenes. If you do want rigid fracture, simply change material properties of your objects to reflect harder and tougher materials. The plug-in comes with a sophisticated set of tools as well as a library of materials ranging from jelly to diamond, making material adjustment a snap.

The plugin also comes with their Pixelux Splintering Technology that can automatically retesselate geometry in fractured areas, to give an extra degree of realism with no impact to simulation time.  A 30-day trial is available for free from their website, and the full plugin is available for $399.

Pixelux via Movie Quality Simulation–Pixelux Ships DMM Maya Plugin – Software News.

Graphics, Science maya, physics, pixelux, simulation

The Science Channel’s “Science of the Movies” is visiting New Deal Studios tonight.  In the recent movie Night at the Museum 2, New Deal Studios helped build the sequence of Amelia Earhart’s escape flight through the museum.  Rather than go the obvious route of CGI modeling and blue-screening, they instead opted for physical models.

A crew of more than 50 artists worked tirelessly over eight weeks to re-create a miniature of the Air & Space Museum based on the real blueprints.  The 80-foot-long miniature filled the entire New Deal stage and included over 50 miniature airplanes and spaceships from various eras, along with the smallest museum details like hanging banners, lit display signs and mini model cases.

A bit different from what we usually cover here on VizWorld, but it’s helpful to realize that CGI isn’t the answer to everything.  Read the full press release and see pictures after the break. The show airs tonight at 10pm, with repeats throughout the week.

Read more…

Graphics model, movie, new deal studios, tv, vfx

A new promotional gimmick for Liongate’s new movie “Gamer” gives you a chance to get your own poster via Augmented Reality means.  Just print out the marker (shown here) and take it to http://www.whosplayingyou.com and watch the poster appear before your ideas in full 3D, complete with sound effects.

Look after the break for Video of the experience, if you don’t want to try it yourself.

Read more…

Graphics advertising, augmented reality, movie, poster

Adam Aston, over at BusinessWeek, has an article up about everyone’ favorite visualization Guru Edward Tufte.  In it he discusses the “less is more” mantra, and the power of “sparklines” (although their example in the sidebar is in my opinion a bad one), and ends with a fantastic example:

Tufte points to a page from Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems to contrast the two views of the solar system. Copernicus’ earth-centered rendering is a tangled knot. Galileo’s sun-centered solar model is elegantly simple. Then as now, clean design reflects clear thinking, and has a way of wiping away junky analysis and poor presentation.

via Tufte’s Invisible Yet Ubiquitous Influence – BusinessWeek.

Graphics, Science sparkline, tufte

David McKinnon, a researcher from Queensland University of Technology, has developed a software tool called 3DSee that can take a collection of ordinary 2D photographs and process them into a 3D model with surprising accuracy.

Dr McKinnon said the software automatically locates and tracks common points between the images allowing a determination of where the cameras were when the photos were taken. This information is then used to create a 3D model from the images using graphics cards to massively accelerate the computations.

A nice application of GPGPU computing.  However, not just any images will do.  According to Dr McKinnon, it requires 5-15 images, each overlapping by a minimum of 80%.  Essentially, it sounds like he needs video slowly panning around the object.

If the accuracy is high enough, I can envision this replacing (or supplementing) alot of 3D Scanning technology used by the graphics and mechanical engineering community.

See your photos in 3D on new website.

Science gpgpu, imageprocessing, modeling, photography, scanner

One of the first entries in the VizWeek Discovery Exhibition is live, and it’s from none other than Microsoft Research.  The team behind the “Hotmap” tool, which tracks usage of Microsoft’s Virtual Earth, released a report detailing how they’ve used their results.  They detail three main benefits:

1. Documenting Usage – Detailed documentation of where users look can be used to determine where to spent money on newer, higher-resolution maps, leading to a more effective allocation of funds in the project.
2. Documenting Errors – The usage shows strange spikes that can be traced to unusual errors, such as the high occurance of viewers looking at (0,0), off the coast of Africa.
3. Documenting Attacks – Strange access patterns, such as a faint squarish area over China, show attempts to scrape data that can then be prevented.

It’s a great read, and the full PDF is available on the Discovery Week website.

via Infovis Discovery Exhibition: The Impact of Microsoft Research Hotmap – information aesthetics.

Science conference, map, microsoft, paper, visweek

Robert Stadd, visual effects supervisor on Public Enemies, found himself in a quandary when it came to the opening scene where John Dillinger breaks into prison to bust out his friends.  Unfortunately, in the background would be a shot of an adjacent building but there was no information on the camera arrangement or distance away to the building.  The solution?  Build a large tiled image that could be zoomed or warped as necessary.

In the final composite, the tiled background has been inserted into the shot. Note the size of the background is larger than in the reference photo, and it was in a different position. Only by using a high-resolution, tiled background could we ensure that it would work in the shot, from a grain size and position standpoint. Approximately eight pictures were used to tile the background, creating a file that was roughly 200MB.

He also covers some helpful tips on creating your own tiled images, such as manual controls for exposure and white balance and maintaining a 30% overlap.

via The Art of Tiling in Public Enemies.

Graphics illusion arts, movie, panorama, photography, vfx

A few weeks ago we brought you the news of Piero Zagami’s UN Security Council Resolutions (UNSC/R) Visualizations Report , a fantastic collection of visualizations and data regarding resolutions from the UN Security Council.  It took a while, but he took some time to sit down and give us some details on the project and some fantastic higher-resolution images from the report.

Read his information after the break.
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Graphics, Science feature, infographics, political

While definately definitely not as impressive as blowing up a building or transforming cars into giant killer robots, fixing gaffe’s in common video is big business.  The Molecule has a short post up showing some recent work they did for Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein to fix a “bad tie job”.

The process involved a few steps in order to make the tie lie in its proper resting place. We began by tracking the tie, this meant we had to bring it into shake and apply tracking points to it. From that point we then rotoscoped the best frame we had of Blankfein’s shirt and tie. After scaling the frame a bit, we were then able to composite the tie and shirt back on top. Final finishing touches were applied, such as graining for continuity of the image, and voila the tie was risen!.

Now, it’s a tiny thing, just removing a shirt button to make the tie look better, but things like this bring rise to questions about how can we tell when Real is Real?  Several photographers have been busted in the last few years for doctoring photos.  How long until CNN or some major news agency finds that their video has been doctored?

Update: Corrected spelling.. Kinda surprised FireFox’s built-in spellcheck didn’t pick it up.

via Everything looks better after The Molecule: The Subtlety of a Button.

Graphics the molecule, vfx

A beta of the 3DCoat modeling program for Linux is now available for download.  It currently only works on 64-bit systems, but a 32-bit version is expected soon.

If you’re not familiar with 3DCoat, you can see VizWorld’s previous coverage (including video tutorials) here.

3D-Coat V3 for Linux (beta) – 3D Coat Forums.

Graphics 3dcoat, beta, linux, modeling, software