Home » Archives for September 2009
Movies get bigger. Budgets get bigger. Explosions get bigger. What doesn’t get bigger? Timelines. As studios try to cram more and more cheap VFX into the same timelines as traditional films, studios find themselves unable to cope with all of the effects in-house. Modern movies now find themselves split among half-dozen or dozens of studios, forcing the studios to cooperate and share their previously proprietary technology. In a new blog post from The Molecule, they discuss this emerging trend.
When we talk about the big players, ILM, Framestore, Digital Domain, etc., it’s without a doubt they dominate many of the large-scale projects, however it is not uncommon for them to collaborate with smaller firms to achieve the best end-result. Whether that collaboration is inspired by skill-set, geography, budget or schedule, this collaboration isn’t anything new to the industry.
And, on a proud side-node, they actually referenced VizWorld! Glad to see VizWorld getting some recognition in the industry.
Update 3:58pm: Fixed the Quote.
via Everything looks better after The Molecule: On Industry: The VFX Playground.
Science the molecule, vfx
A fun animated short from Mike Stern is finally available for public viewing on Youtube. See his tough night at the office in “Distraxion”.
Watch it after the break.
YouTube – Distraxion.
Read more…
Graphics animation, short
For all of those people who still think the US gets most of it’s Oil supply from the Middle East, there’s a new infographic (care of ngoilgas.com) that shows just where it all comes from in barrels per day.
As much as 66 percent of all US crude oil is imported from other countries, and the amount of oil imported from OPEC nations is roughly equal to the amount of oil produced domestically. Petroleum, natural gas and coal are the primary sources of energy consumed in the United States because they are the most energy rich resources available.
via Cool Infographics: Is the U.S. Too Dependent on Foreign Oil? (infographic).
Graphics, Science infographic, oil
Use of Second Life, the popular free virtual environment “sandbox”, in medical education has been discussed before. It’s different, however, to hear an actual MD talking about how great it is. In a new article by Peter Yellowless MD, he discusses his experiences using and creating medical training environments in Second Life with great results:
I have been using Second Life as a teaching and learning environment for several years now. With colleagues I have created a “virtual hallucinations” environment, which demonstrates the lived experience of psychosis and allows participants who travel through the environment to experience both visual and auditory hallucinations; visions and voices. We used this environment to teach this experience to our medical and psychology students.
But that’s not all:
With the California Department of Health and other colleagues I have created a virtual bioterrorism crisis clinic to train health workers, and more recently, as part of our Health Informatics Certificate Program, with University of California Davis Extension, we have taught informatics students in a virtual conference center on our own private island; Davis Island. Students find the environment straightforward to learn to navigate, and within a week of our informatics students being introduced to the environment they were able to travel and tour around Second Life with the rest of us with ease.
Hit his website for the full story.
via InformationAgeHealth: Virtual Reality Medical Education in Second Life.
Science biomed, secondlife, training
A highly technical paper from Guenter Ahlers of the UC Santa Barbara Physics department talks about Tubulent convection in an idealized cylinder. That’s pretty hi-faluting even for me, but the attached images are of such beauty I had to share. If you don’t know what Turbulent convection is, here’s the “scientific description”:
Turbulent convection in a fluid heated from below and cooled from above, called Rayleigh-Bénard convection, plays a major role in numerous natural and industrial processes. Beyond a particular temperature difference, the heated fluid rises and the cooled fluid falls, thereby forming one or more convection cells. Increasing the difference causes the well-defined cells to become turbulent. Turbulent convection occurs in earth’s outer core, atmosphere, and oceans, and is found in the outer layer of the sun and in giant planets
In short, it’s how warm air (above) and cold air (below) circulate between each other. Check out the paper for a few more pictures and more math than you can
via Physics – Turbulent convection.
Science cfd
A new version of SolidThinking boasts several new features such as progressive rendering, real-time rendering, NURBS support, improved manipulators for scaling and rotations, improved precision, and HDRI support. But what really impressed me was the “morphogenesis technology” support:
The new SolidThinking Inspired 8.0 update adds the integration of morphogenesis technology, allowing the software to now mimic processes and physical laws in nature. Designers are given tools for replicating biological growth processes in nature, enabling them to grow efficient shapes in specifically defined environments, and form controls.
Pricing has yet to be released.
via SolidThinking 8.0 adds productivity, rendering enhancements | MacNN.
Graphics, Science software, solidthinking
The New York Times has a new interactive infographic that shows the rise and fall of some of the nation’s largest finance companies from the market peak in 2007.
Since the stock market’s peak in October 2007, Wall Street’s landscape has been permanently altered. Lehman Brothers, gone. Bear Stearns, gone. Merrill Lynch, gone. Main Street’s landscape has also changed. Wachovia, National City, Washington Mutual and Countrywide, all gone. These venerable financial giants all crumbled under the weight of the financial crisis.
Those that were left shrank down to a fraction of their former market capitalizations by early 2009, but since then, they all have grown. While most are nowhere near their former size, two — JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo — are slightly larger than they were at the market’s peak.
It works pretty well showing the size of the market shrinking as the economy crumbles, and you can see that JPMorgan Chase & Wells Fargo each maintain their size, but become a much larger percentage of the market.
How the Giants of Finance Shrunk, Then Grew, Under the Financial Crisis – Interactive – NYTimes.com. via Information Aesthetics.
Graphics, Science economic, infographic, interactive, nyt
A new ad for the Audi A4 2.0 TDIe that recently aired in Spain showcases some fantastic work by Digital Domain as the car slowly is constructed as if locked within a Rubik’s Cube and the pieces slowly come together.
Digital Domain paid extra attention to ensure the parts would fit together as seamlessly and logically as they would in real life, despite the fact that the futuristic Rubik’s Cube was grounded more in fantasy than reality. “We had a few discussions with the engineers at Audi regarding how everything would fit together,” continued Barton. “The further we went along in our animation tests, the build process became guided by the actual construction sequence as it happens at the Audi factory. Our team met with two factory-trained technicians from Audi who broke down a full engine, transmission and headlight assembly for us, laying everything out on a table so we could ask questions and take reference photographs.”
See the commercial at their site.
via Digital Domain and Director Carl Erik Rinsch Make Art for Audi.
Graphics audi, commercial, digitaldomain, vfx
Just a quick note to all of you out there that watch the Podcast: Due to technical difficulties and bad weather, VizWorld Weekly #25 will be delayed.
I’ve got the agenda written up, so hopefully I can get it done tomorrow.
Website Podcast
VizWorld.com 
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