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Over at VFXWorld, Bill Desowitz has a great interview with John Dykstra on their work for Inglorious Basterds, including some real gems as how they made the spectacular burning-projection scene.
His initial idea was to have Shosanna’s image on screen and have the fire consume the image. Well, by traditional standards, you would set about doing that by shooting the screen and then shooting the fire as a separate element and doing an optical composite to put the two pieces together. But he wanted very much to have that happen in the environment with the audience watching the actors, the stunt people and the extras. So it was a challenge because, technically speaking, fire is very bright and if you want to have fire with any detail in it, you have to expose it in an f/8 or an f/11. And when you do a projected image, you’re limited by the brightness of the projector, and, of course, that usually is in the realm of an f/4 or f/5. So it was trying to figure out how to create this image in situ, which was one of his prerequisites, or at least that’s where he wanted to start, and make all of the components synchronize.
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Graphics cis, dykstra, interview, movie, vfx
Every week, the US Patent Office publishes an XML data feed of various patent data including companies, inventors, classifications, and more. Over at Typologies.org, they’ve taken this data and assembled it into an interactive visualization and exploration tool that does a great job of showing some fascinating trends. You can click on any of the icons (shown above) and then see a great graph layout of how various categories interconnect.
A visualization of the United States Patent and Trademark Office data. via Infosthetics
Science flash, interactive, patent
Pushing the power of GPGPU, Jen-Hsun Huang has predicted that GPU computing will see an astounding 570x boost in performance over the next 6 years, while CPU’s will see only 3x.
Huang said at the Hot Chips Symposium in Stanford University that such advances could enable the development of realtime universal language translation devices and advanced forms of augmented reality. A number of applications, including energy exploration, interactive ray tracing and CGI simulations would also benefit from the powerful GPU capabilities.
Of course, these kind of comparisons are kinda like comparing apples and oranges, rather than apples and apples.
via NVIDIA CEO Predicts GPU Performance Boost of 570x – Expreview.com.
Hardware gpgpu, nvidia
If you’re near the University of Nevada, Reno this Thursday then you might want to swing by the DRI CRVB (Computational Research & Visualization Building) where they’ll be dedicating a new 6-sided CAVE, the first in the western half of the US.
The CAVE will be used for computational research programs, such as modeling and simulation based research. In addition, the facility houses a six-sided stereo projection system that provides DRI and Nevada with a unique simulation technology that benefits state, national, and international researchers; federal and state agencies (including the military); and the general public.
via DRI’s new CAVE facility opens Thursday | This is Reno.
Hardware, Science cave, simulation, visualization
Here’s what we didn’t get to today:
Science pixels
The Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has just released VMD 1.8.7, a new version of their amazing molecular simulation package. The big feature in this new version is support for NVidia’s CUDA, with amazing performance boosts.
One of the key advancements included in VMD 1.8.7 is support for GPU accelerated visualization and analysis, based on NVIDIA CUDA. As reported in several publications, the massively parallel architecture of GPUs makes them ideal devices to accelerate many of the computationally demanding calculations in VMD. The range of acceleration provided by GPUs depends on the capabilities of the specific GPU devices installed, and the details of the calculation. Typical acceleration factors for the algorithms in VMD are: electrostatics 22x to 44x, implicit ligand sampling 20x to 30x, molecular orbital calculation 100x to 120x. Details on making best use of the GPU acceleration capabilities in VMD are provided here.
via VMD 1.8.7.
Science biomed, cuda, molecular, nvidia, simulation, vmd
The New York Times is back with another interactive infographic allowing you to explore how various social groups spend their time. The data is categorized into several groups such as sleeping, eating, education, work, sports, television, etc, and you can view all sampled people or only a subset such as single, married, black, white, age ranges, education levels, and more.
How Different Groups Spend Their Day – Interactive Graphic – NYTimes.com.
Science infographic, interactive, nyt
Looks like James Cameron’s “Avatar” won’t just redefine the cinema experience, but may redefine movie tie-in toys as well. Starting in October they’ll be selling “i-Tags”, a small plastic card with an AR component.
In the case of the “Avatar” action figures, AR is being implemented in the form of small plastic cards–the i-Tags–that kids can hold up in front of any Webcam. When they do, a fully 3D digital image is superimposed over the card on the screen. This can be anything from a simple set of information about a character from the film to a full-on, five-on-five shooting battle involving large military helicopters and flying dinosaur-like creatures called Leonopteryx.
The controls range from information overlays to (more expensive) interactive versions, and certain combinations of iTags will interact together for battles.
See a video after the break.
Read more…
Graphics, Science augmented reality, avatar, movie, toy, vfx
Just hear about this and wanted to share: If you’re a fan of Pixar, then you no doubt know “Luxo”, the characteristic little desk-lamp that stomps the I in every Pixar opening. If you go now and get the Up Collector’s Edition on BluRay, it comes with your own Luxo Jr Lamp!
It’s $140 to pre-order it today from Amazon, and scheduled to be released on November 10th.
Up – Limited Edition Luxo Jr Collectible Lamp Pack [Blu Ray]
Graphics bluray, pixar, vfx
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