VizWorld.com

Social media marketing firm Buzzpoint has gathered data about Facebook’s massive reach and compiled a neat infographic showing how it’s grown over the last 3 years.

Among the more interesting stats: as of July 15 2009, Facebook had 250 million active users, which would make it the fourth most popular country in the world. Facebook’s top two traffic contributors are the US (by a large margin) and the UK, but in third is Turkey, which didn’t even have a localized version until last year (though English is fairly common there).

See the full graphic here, and other interesting facebook data at CheckFacebook.com .

via A Look At Facebook’s Reach Worldwide – washingtonpost.com.

Graphics, Science facebook, infographic, social media

A new “Making Of” on CGArena shows the creation of “Goddess”, an Indian Dancer, using 3ds max.  Done entirely on a low-end PC, it’s a great combination of modeling and tradeoffs to get the most impressive rendering results with little impact to render times.

CGArena – Making of the Goddess.

Graphics 3dsmax, makingof

NVidia’s GT300 has been rumored for some time, but this story fits in with what I heard (unofficially of course) at SIGGRAPH:

Just like some media were suggesting that GT200 taped out in March 2008 [while some developers got the GT200 cards as early as three months before that tape out story], GT300 needs time [and human resources] to finish the development. GT300 is the base graphics architecture not just for the standard desktop or notebook graphics, but also as a future graphics base for the Tegra generation of products. And with recent rumors of nVidia implementing ECC feature into the GPU [which is a given, since GDDR5 comes with ECC], Tesla parts should be quite interesting as well.

So you might want to keep your eyes open next month, and catch a glimpse of NVidia’s next generation.

via nVidia plans GT300 demos for late September – Bright Side Of News*.

Hardware gt300, nvidia

The folks over at Pachube.com have connected an AR marker to an arduino unit collecting various data, and created an interesting augmented reality sensor system.

This is a quick augmented reality demo showing live Pachube (www.pachube.com) data displayed in realtime ‘on top’ of Arduino sensor boxes. This could provide an easy way to inspect rooms (or streets) full of environment and sensor data via a camera (e.g. iPhone) or even AR goggles!

See it in action after the break.

Read more…

Hardware, Science arduino, augmented reality, pachube

Another announcement from Assimilate, this time that they’ll be demonstrating 4K RED workflow with Scratch at the IBC09 in Amsterdam.

As RED’s first partner for a 4K post workflow, ASSIMILATE set the post-production standard with SCRATCH for the needed real-time 4K post workflows – simplified ingest of native REDCODE files, streamlined end-to-end workflow, conform, color grading, finishing and mastering.

Now SCRATCH continues that trend with the first support for RED’s latest RED colour science and the latest update from RED – the RED ROCKET board with Quad DVI and Dual Link HD-SDI.

Come see Rocket Science: ASSIMILATE and RED at IBC 09. RED’s Ted Schilowitz and ASSIMILATE’s Lucas Wilson are presenting the latest in red hot, high-rez imagery and the first showing of RED ROCKET in action with SCRATCH. Uncompressed and uncompromising – 4K workflow, latest RED color science, RED ROCKET, and SCRATCH. See rocket science live.

It will be Saturday, September 12 at the RAI Auditorium, from 1-2:30pm.

Graphics assimilate, conference, ibc, red, scratch

At IBC12009 in Amsterdam, Assimilate will be holding a SCRATCH User Group and Press Event Saturday evening.

Date: Saturday, September 12

Time: 7:00pm prompt! (ends 8:15pm)

Place: Debalie, Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 10, 1017 RR Amsterdam

Trams: Tram 1, 2, 5, 7 or 10 to Leidseplein

ASSIMILATE™.

Graphics assimilate, conference, ibc, scratch, software

Just in case Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” has ever confused you, Jeannie Harrell has broken it down for you into an easy-to-understand flow-chart.

Yup, it’s Friday.

Total Eclipse of the Heart (Flowchart) | FlowingData.

Graphics, Science flowchart, graph, music video

“McSanchez” and Jiri Franta have a new video that’s an entertaining combination of Bambi, Kill Bill, and Sin City, all done in a fun live-action on 2D CG rendered environments.

After witnessing the death of her dear boyfriend at the hands of murderous hunters, a vengeful doe decides to find those responsible, and make them pay….

See the video after the break.

Read more…

Graphics movie, short, vfx

Periscopic has built a fun light-hearted website that analyzes all 14 million words of the 110th congress (2007-2008) and lets you pit individual congressmen against each other to see where they stand.  Interesting data contains word counts, frequent words, voting records, tenures, and more.

Congress Speaks.

Graphics, Science congress, government, infographic, interactive, periscopic

No surprise in the title, I know, but a new press release yields some insight into just how ILM uses Autodesk products in some of the big features of the summer, such as Star Trek:

Using the hardware rendering tools of Maya, we were literally able to animate 70 shots in 5 days, a process that normally requires months for production.

Transformers:

ILM used the capabilities of a range of Autodesk software across the Transformers production pipeline: Autodesk 3ds Max software for digital matte painting, Autodesk Softimage software in the art department, Inferno/SABRE for compositing, Autodesk Backburner software for network processing and Maya as the core tool for animation, rigging and layout.

Harry Potter:

And in this summer’s upcoming Harry Potter installment, 80 artists contributed 165 shots to the film using a combination of Maya and Inferno. The scope of ILM’s work on the film includes extensive photorealistic fluid simulations of fire and water as well as crowd duplication scenes, including thousands of animated characters in a single shot.

And more.. Read the full release for all the gory details.

via Autodesk – Film – Industrial Light & Magic.

Graphics autodesk, ilm, movie, vfx