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Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is out in theaters now (I saw it today, great film) and contains a host of fun food effects,  Popular Mechanics sits down with the crew at Sony Imageworks to get the details on how to properly animate falling hamburgers.

“It was fun to do,” Bredow says, “but it wasn’t what we wanted them to look like in the movie.” VFX artists opted to create a stylized version of the cheeseburgers using a physics simulation with invisible springs that held some of the burgers together when they hit the ground. For the ones that broke apart, animators had to create digital versions of lettuce, pickles, cheese, buns and burgers that had all the characteristics of their real-life counterparts.

via VFX for Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 3D – Photo-Real Food Effects in 3D – Popular Mechanics.

Graphics movie, sony, vfx

Rhythm & Hues was brought in to make several of the effects for “Aliens in the Attic”, and talks about it to FXGuide in a new interview.

We use an HDRI camera that was specially built by Rhythm & Hues. It’s a cube-shaped camera with a lens on each side of the cube, which measures five inches on each side, so it’s fairy small. It mounts on a tripod on the corner of the cube. The HDRI camera takes a series of exposures that go from the deepest blacks to the brightest highlights and get the colour information out of the scene in a wide exposure – what we call a wedge. In addition to that, we use a chrome and gray ball pass.

Read the full article for the rest of the details, and various in-progress shots showing the composited frames.

via fxguide – visual effects school – Aliens in the Attic – Rhythm & Hues.

Graphics rhythm&hues, vfx.movie

IEEE.tv has created a short promotional video for the upcoming VisWeek conference, talking about some of what you’ll see this year and containing statements from some of the pioneers in the field.

IEEE Visualization 2009 (IEEE Vis) is the premier forum for visualization advances in science and engineering for academia, government, and industry. This event brings together researchers and practitioners with a shared interest in techniques, tools, and technology. The year 2009 marks the 20th anniversary of IEEE Vis and it will celebrate the maturation of visualization into an established scientific discipline.

See the video on their website.

via VisWeek 2009: The Premier Forum for Advances in Visualization.

Science conference, visweek

The trailer for James Cunningham’s newest CG film is out, called “Poppy”.  From the description:

Poppy is a CGI drama set on France’s western front in World War One. Two New Zealand soldiers are trapped behind enemy lines and are trying to find their way to safety. They find an orphaned baby under itʼs dead parents in a ditch. One of the men wants to save it, the other does not.

Poppy is based on a true events – the writer’s great-grandfather was one of the soldiers.

Written by David Coyle, it’s a great mix of Motion-captured action with CG graphics mapped over it.  The motion capture was done in a single day at Weta Digital Studios, and the resulting movie took 15 months to complete.

You can watch the trailer at their site, and read the director’s notes and see some high-resolution stills after the break.

Read more…

Graphics "motion capture", animation, short, supercollider, vfx, weta

Autodesk has taken the surprising step of releasing their popular sketching tool “Sketchbook” on the Apple App Store as SketchBook mobile ($2.99) for iPhone and iPod Touch.

“Mobile apps are becoming increasingly advanced, moving beyond simple entertainment or utilitarianism,” said Robert “Buzz” Kross, senior vice president, Manufacturing Industry Group at Autodesk. “We are delighted to offer an app on the App Store for industrial designers and the creative community. With the SketchBook Mobile App, Autodesk continues its long-standing tradition of bringing cost-effective professional design technology to the market.”

The SketchBook Mobile App uses the same engine as Autodesk SketchBook Pro painting and drawing software, delivering much of the same power and functionality as the desktop application. A combination of high-quality digital pencils, pens, markers and airbrushes, as well as an artist-friendly, gesture-based user interface, enables users to create everything from quick sketches to print-quality production artwork.

It supports images up to 6 layers, comes with 25 preset brusnhes and supports various other import functions.   Hit their website for a collection of example images.

via The Area :: Discussions.

Graphics apple, autodesk, iphone, sketchbook

I’m gonna take the easy way out of Twitter’s #followfriday by referring to a great list compiled by Randy Krum on his Cool Infographics site, where he has collected a list of 37 people (36 if you don’t count VizWorld, you’re already following us right?) that talk about infographics on twitter.

Instead of featuring an infographic today, I thought I would embrace the Twitter tradition of Follow Friday and share the list of people and companies I follow related to infographics. So here is my list of who to follow for infographics on Twitter (in alphabetical order):

via Cool Infographics: 37 People You Should Follow for Infographics on Twitter.

Graphics infographics, list, twitter

A new FireFox extension from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab collects web browsing behavior and compiles some interesting graphics showing your usage history.

Eyebrowse [csail.mit.edu] is an add-on for Firefox developed by the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT, which has the ability to record, visualize, and share one’s browser history in real-time. The resulting data is represented as a collection of insightful data visualizations, such as individual profiles, tickers, page stats or more data-heavy bar graphs, timelines and dot charts that highlight day-by-day usage patterns (e.g. top URLs, #websites over time and time patterns respectively).

Such data could one day supplement (or replace) information from search engine companies like Google & Alexa, making targeted information and detailed analytics more accurate.

via EyeBrowse: Record, Visualize and Share your Browser History – information aesthetics.

Science firefox, infographic, internet, mit, web

A new press release from metaio announced that they will be launching a new Augmented Reality application for the iPhone, named junaio, on November 2nd. From the release:

By combining innovative online and mobile technologies, junaio will allow users to see location-based content through the display of a mobile device. Users can leave traces, messages or objects and visually interact with their friends or anyone else in the world. Already existing web services can be enhanced and completely new ways of interaction can be created. Whether it is social networks, multimedia content or game concepts – virtually anything can be embedded in the real world and connected to a certain place. “The possibilities are endless, we are taking the Internet outside to the real world,” says Thomas Alt, Chief Executive Officer of metaio.

Given that this is for the iPhone, the November 2nd date is probably a “Best guess” given Apple’s typical 2-week turnaround.  After the iPhone version is out, they expect to release an Android and Symbian versions as well.  Read the full press release after the break.

Read more…

Hardware, Science augmented reality, iphone, junaio, metaio

Queens University has build a pool-playing robot called “Deep Green” (a play on IBM’s Deep Blue) that uses a ceiling-mounted robotic arm on tracks and clever image processing routines to line up shots with .. well, mechanical accuracy.  An interesting offshoot of the project, however, is an Augmented Reality pool-table overlay that can track a hand-held que to project ball trajectories onto the table (as shown above).

See the video of the system after the break, the AR part begins at the 2-minute mark (and watch the volume, it’s rather LOUD).

DEEPGREENROBOT.ORG. via Gizmodo

Read more…

Science augmented reality, pool, robot

Over at aetuts+, Topher Welsh has compiled a great list of famous names in the AfterEffects community with the likes of Creative Cow, Video Copilot, and more.

We learn from a lot of people on the internet, but a lot of us don’t really know WHO they actually are. I have been fortunate enough to befriend some of the aforementioned members of my list, but just for you, now you know who is filling your brains with all that AE-goodness.

via Who’s Who in the After Effects World – Aetuts+.

Graphics aftereffects, list