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Tuesday afternoon I attended the second half of the Advanced ParaView Tutorial lead by researchers from  Kitware, Sandia National Labs, and Los Alamos National Labs.  They talked about some of the in-research projects they’re working on and gave demonstrations of things you can see in the latest CVS (if you enable them specifically).  While not ready for prime-time, they showed alot of new functionality that I think ParaView users world-wide will find useful.

Read up after the break.
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Science feature, paraview, software, tutorial, visweek

Jamie Peterson has had enough of browsing demo reels and seeing the same online tutorials represented as original work, and has created a 3-part series where he promises to teach you the same Principles of Animation pioneered in the early years of Walt Disney animation that can be used to take your work to the next level.

In the growing landscape of online tutorials that promise to teach you how to create “amazing effect X” or “breathtaking effect as seen in movie Z”, it’s very easy to learn the tools of the motion graphics trade. By following a step-by-step guide, you can easily learn how to apply the latest plug-ins and what each of the settings do. These posts are not going to cover anything as exciting as that, but will examine a few basic but essential guidelines to improve your work.

Part 1 and 2 are online now, part 3 coming soon.

via Principles of Animation for Motionographers – Part 1 of 3 | Fuel Your Motionography.

Graphics animation, education, tutorial

projectiondesign, a projector company from Norway, has just announced the first LED DLP Projector, the FL32. Some details:

The FL32 features ReaLED(tm) technology which combines long life LED illumination technology with patented projectiondesign optics for up to and estimated 100,000 hours of low-maintenance, worry-free operation.  It is especially suitable for front- and rear-projection applications such as command and control, simulation and visualization, and any project that requires high-resolution imaging and low maintenance.

Read the full press release and see more pictures after the break.

Updated: Incorrect image originally, fixed now.

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Hardware dlp, led, projectiondesign

iRise, makers of visualization and simulations products for prototyping software, has settled the lawsuit against Axure over US Patent 7,349,837.  The patent, ‘Systems and methods for a programming environment for a simulation of computer application’ has been in dispute since 2008, and the settlement comes after the U.S. District Court found that Axure infringed on multiple claims of the patent.  Financial details were not released, but the motion to invalidate the patent was denied.

So if any of you out there simulate software, your time is limited.

iRise Settles Patent Suit | socalTECH.com.

Science axure, irise, legal, patent

Teeside University’s Computer Graphics and Visualization department has just received a grant for £123,000 to collaborate with Chinese researchers to solve the problems of using Augmented Reality visualizations in advanced surgery.

Dr. Wen Tang of Teesside University said: “The opportunities and applications for Augmented Reality are vast, but at the moment it is still in the territory of research and development.

“However, we’re really hopeful that this collaboration will help bring it out of the laboratory and into the real world where it could be used to instruct surgeons and simulate a range of training environments where the consequences of a mistake are huge.”

via Teesside Uni collaborates with Chinese | Technology and Science | North East business news.

Science augmented reality, biomed

The popular “Skating Babies” commercial for Evian was done by MPC, and their latest podcast shows how they did the commercial and interviews some of the Visual Effects wizards behind the magic.

Promo – MPC Podcast.

Graphics breakdown, commercial, makingof, mpc, vfx

Biologists out there might want to take a look at the open-source MizBee visualization tool.

MizBee is a multiscale synteny browser for exploring conservation relationships in comparative genomics data. Using side-by-side linked views, MizBee enables efficient data browsing across a range of scales, from the genome to the gene. The design of MizBee is grounded in perceptual principles, and includes several techniques such as edge bundling and layering to enhance visual cues about conservation relationships related to proximity, size, similarity, and orientation.

It uses a dual-ring visualization where the outer ring is source chromosomes, and the inner ring is destination chromosomes.  It’s difficult to explain, so just head on over to their site and watch the quicktime demonstration video.

via Overview.

Science biomed, genome, mizbee, software, visweek

On Monday afternoon I attended the VisIt Tutorial, taught by the ever-knowledgeable Sean Ahern and Hank Childs. The tutorial covered all the major parts you could hope for: Basic usage, advanced functionality, expressions, client-server, analysis, and finally development.  I thought I’ld cover some of the highlights for you in case you couldn’t make it yourself.

Read the review after the break.

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Science feature, software, tutorial, visit, visweek

Here at VisWeek, Tableau Software’s Director of Visual Analysis Jock Mackinlay was awarded the IEEE 2009 Visualization Technical Achievement Award for his work on automatic presentation tools and visual metaphors for visualization.

“Selecting just one person to be honored with the Visualization Technical Achievement Award is always difficult for the Awards Committee because there are many worthy contributors,” said Bill Lorensen, Chair of the IEEE VGTC Awards Committee. “Jock’s work developing automatic presentation tools and creating new metaphors for information visualization impressed the committee deeply. He was a natural choice for this honor.”

via Tableau Software’s Jock Mackinlay Honored with IEEE 2009 Visualization Technical Achievement Award.

Science award, tableau, visweek

For years the Mouse & Keyboard have been the standard input methods for all computers.  Recenty, Multi-touch and touchscreens have come onto the scene, and work great for smaller mobile devices but have many problems with prolonged usage (screen obstruction, arm strain, etc).  A new group has come up with a new interface they call 10/GUI:

Many activities today still need only a keyboard and terminal screen—and it’s likely the personal computer could have still evolved, albeit more limitedly, using only those. Most activities today need only a mouse and windowed information display on top of that, and the evolution of software and hardware can and will continue while limited to these.

Eventually, though, the shift to another interaction paradigm is inevitable. Just as the advent of the mouse and windowed GUI opened many new doors, so will the next generation of interfaces after that.

They have an incredibly powerful demonstration video that showcases their proposal of a 10-finger multitouch pad, separate from the screen (similar in use to a Wacom tablet) and a new Window Manager called CON10UUM (Continuum), running a few apps interactively on their system.

See the video after the break.  I personally think it’s pretty impressive, but don’t think it would work particularly well with my type of workflow.  I could be wrong tho.

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Graphics, Science 10gui, interface