VizWorld.com

If you’re considering a job in industrial process control, then you might want to brush up on your Halo skills as new technology from “Eyesim” integrates virtual reality headsets and simulations into training.

By merging virtual plant imagery with screens from asset management or other application software, the Invensys solution creates a computer-generated representation of either a real or proposed process plant. Using a stereoscopic headset, trainees enter a completely immersive environment in which they can move throughout the plant. Such freedom is possible because the virtual environment is rendered at 60 frames per second, significantly faster than what can be achieved by traditional, non real-time rendering.

On a technical level, the system works with a regular PC containins a “specialized graphics card” running a 120Hz projector.  The glasses run in the $600 range (active head-tracked stereo I’m guessing) and the projector about $4000.

via Immersive virtual reality comes to industrial training – 2009-09-24 10:46:10 CDT | Control Engineering.

Hardware, Science eyesim, training, virtual reality

Weta Digital had the task of making the “Dropship” from the end of District 9.  The liftoff, short flight, and subsequent crash landing have now been added to their website in a short video showing the various layers used to create the composition.

Weta Digital.

Graphics district9, movie, vfx, weta

A humorous statement on how you really can go overboard with CGI effects in movies, this short video on Vimeo talks about a “revolutionary” new technology called “CGI-brows”.

I really can’t describe it, so just watch the video after the break.

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Graphics cgi, humor, vfx

Our good friend Eugene Liscio has spent some time trying out some fantastic point-cloud manipulation software from Alice Labs called “Studio Clouds”, and has written a great description and review of the system that we feature here. Also be sure to check out Eugene’s previous contributions.

3D scanning using LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) also known as High Density Surveying (HDS) is a rapidly growing domain with applications spanning across many industries such as aerospace, architecture, film and television, archaeology and forensics. The ability to capture millions and even billions of 3D points means that a vast amount of information can be known about a particular object or landscape. However, all this data comes at a price. There are relatively few software solutions that can easily handle and process billions points on a PC.

Today, PC hardware has made great advances to close the processing power gap, however when it comes to point clouds, it is the software and visualization tools that are still playing “catch up”. There have been several software programs supplied by 3D scanning equipment manufacturers in order to assist in filling the void, but this has mainly been targeted at the surveying market and only recently have developments been made to provide better visualization tools for other sectors of industry such as Forensics and Gaming.

One company that has had an interesting approach to solving these issues is the Dutch based company, Alice Labs. Their product, Studio Clouds offers a different paradigm in preparing, analyzing and visualizing point clouds. Their efforts have been focused in areas where other technologies have been lacking. Studio Clouds can process billions of points of data on a standard 32 or 64 bit PC with ease and it can also allow the import of these massive point clouds in 3DS Max and Maya.

Read the rest after the break.

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Science 3dsmax, alice labs, feature, lidar, liscio, maya, software, studio clouds

The ink’s not even dry on the ATI Radeon HD5870 cards, and AMD is already showcasing their latest powerhouse, the HD5870 X2.

The card will boast 3200 stream processors, a 512-bit memory interface, and requires extra power via a 6-pin and an 8-pin PCIe connector.

The clocks are yet unknown, but the Radeon HD 5870 X2 is said to arrive in November with a price tag of $500.

It features dual 40nm Cypress GPUs, and is codenamed “Hemlock”.

via ATI Radeon HD 5870 X2 Spotted – Expreview.com.

Hardware amd, ati

A trio of new commercials from ATI talk about “XFX Graphics”, DirectX67, .01 nanometer processes and lots of other weird technology.  Related to the slew of announcements coming out of AMD/ATI recently, it seems to be an attempt at viral technology pushing Eyefinity and Stream technology.

Fun for a Friday morning. See the videos after the break.

Optical Gaming Implants Turn Babies Into Killers: A Fun Vision of the Future From ATI and XFX – ATI XFX EyeFinity 2118 D – Gizmodo.

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Hardware amd, ati, commercial, eyefinity, viral

Hiroshi Yoshii has been drawing fun little characters for the last several years, currently amassing a collection of 1671 different creatures.  Originally working in 2D, he’s made the transition to 3D through several software packages and discusses all of it in a great interview at the Luxology forums.

In the year 2000, I met ZBrush and it gave me a good feeling to model like handling clay without being conscious of most polygons. I then switched the ZBrush instead of using Painter when I created some illustration as well. However, I figured out that while ZBrush is a nice tool for creating complex objects very quickly, I felt that I should use a polygon modeler for creating simple objects. So that I started using Cinema4D in 2002. And then, I start using modo for all of my work except animation works when modo came out in 2004.

via Luxology > Community > Member Profile > Hiroshi Yoshii.

Graphics cinema4d, interview, modeling, modo, zbrush

Maxwell Render v2.0 is out of beta and now available for you to get!

This major new version brings you an arsenal of new features, enhancements and additions, among others:

• Major improvements in speed and noise reduction with optimizations in caustics, emitters, mirrors, HDRIs and more.
• Significant quality improvements in roughness, color output, light distribution, sunlight and more.
• Stacked Layers: Materials can now be stacked on top of each other, much like layers in a photo editing application. Each layer can hold a number of components and an opacity mask can be used to determine the influence of each layer. The Stacked Layers system makes it much easier to create extremely complex materials and materials that were simple impossible to create in V1.7.
• Thin SSS: Subsurface scattering in V2 now has a special mode which can handle single-sided geometry. This mode is very suitable for leaves, lampshades, paper, and curtains amongst others.
• An easier to use, more robust, and customizable network system.
• Support for IES and EULUMDAT files.
• Color Multilight™: It is now possible to edit the color of emitters in real-time.
• Built-in compatibility with RealFlow, enabling users to generate procedural geometry and meshes at render time, using Maxwell Render.
• A new plug-in for Modo.
• And much more….

Hit their website for all the details, but licenses cost only $245 for a standard rendernode.

via Maxwell Render • View topic – Maxwell Render version 2 out now!.

Graphics maxwell, software

The latest issue of “Nature” has this interesting infographic aimed to visualize the various things “wrong” with the planet Earth, showing how close we are to imminent destruction by various means.

The green is the safe limit, the red represents more or less where we are. For those having trouble reading the left and right red wedges: the left-hand wedge is Biodiversity loss, the right the nitrogen cycle. Nature’s editors put a number of caveats on the science that informs the image:

Aside from the usual complaints about pie charts, the colors could use some work (as voiced in his quote above).  In addition, the data is rather suspect:

For the most part, the exact values chosen as boundaries by Rockström and his colleagues are arbitrary. So too, in some cases, are the indicators of change. There is, as yet, little scientific evidence to suggest that stabilizing long-term concentrations of carbon dioxide at 350 parts per million is the right target for avoiding dangerous interference with the climate system.

and much much more.

via Latest attempt to visualize the mess we’re in: A wheel of misfortune : The Island of Doubt.

Science earth, infographic, nature

Caustic, makers of the revolutionary CausticRT & CausticOne systems for hardware accelerated ray-tracing, have released a new demonstration video showing the system at work within Autodesk’s 3ds Max with Brazil.

This is our latest interactive demo of “true” global illumination using the CausticRT platform with Brazil in 3dsMax.  Its a fully ray traced interior living room scene with 2,080,957 polygons, and outdoor and indoor lighting that includes classic 3D geometry such as the Stanford Dragon & Bunny.  The poly count for each of the objects are as follows:

• Bunny: 70K polygons
• Dragon: 800K polygons
• Buddha: 1M polygons
• Interior: 22K polygons

The 3dsMax ActiveShade window resolutions are: 400×300 & 800×600

It’s a powerful demo that really shows how companies are embracing the technology, and some of the fantastic features it enables for users.  See the full announcement, with more details, and the video after the break.

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Graphics, Hardware 3dsmax, autodesk, brazil, caustic, raytracing