VizWorld.com

Sony is demonstrating their previously announced 360-degree 3D display, and the results are impressive for a mere 96×128 pixels.  My original thoughts seem correct tho, it’s a cylindrical rotating display.  If you watch the video (after the break) you can see the mismatch in the camera frequency (recording the video) and the screen as a “fade” slowly crosses the image at a regular interval, which I captured in the image shown here.

See the video after the break.

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Hardware 3d, holographic, sony

AMD just released a new plugin for Autodesk’s Maya for all of you Radeon owners, enabling the AMD Tessellation hardware in the popular modeling and rendering tool.

The Maya Tessellator Plug-in allows users of Autodesk’s Maya to take advantage of FirePro Graphics GPU tessellation hardware. The readme.doc file in the package describes how to install and use the plug-in. Binaries are included for XP 32 and XP 64 operating systems.

via AMD Developer Central – Workstation Graphics Developer Tools & SDK.

Graphics amd, autodesk.plugin, maya, software, tessellation

As the capabilities of GPU continue to amaze us, movie studios are the first to jump on the bandwagon as a means for reducing their rendertimes.  The BBC talks to guys at Sony Pictures, LucasFilm, and ILM to talk about what they’ve seen.

“With this system, the creative process has been transformed from tedious to fun,” said Rob Bredow, chief technology officer for Sony Pictures Imageworks, which used Nvidia’s GPU to make “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.”

“When an artist can do 10 times as many iterations of an effect in the same amount of time, the quality of the end product will be that much better. Renders that would have taken 45 minutes or more to run on a CPU, are now cut down to 45 seconds,” he said.

Mr Kerris from LucasFilm is in total agreement.

“In the past, a lot of times the director would say ‘I want this kind of effect’ and the team would go away, do their work and a year later come back with it and if it wasn’t what you as a director wanted, then the whole process had to get re-instated.

via BBC NEWS | Technology | GPUs: the next frontier in film.

Graphics, Hardware gpu, movie, vfx

Researchers from Australia and New Zealand will be meeting at the Monash e-Research Center for OzVis 2009 where they’ll be discussing visualization research and outcomes.

This workshop will provide an occasion for participants to present research outcomes, share innovative ideas, publicize work and meet colleagues. It will be highly multidisciplinary, with participants from fields such as mathematics, geoscience, architecture, biology, medicine and astronomy presenting alongside computer graphics and visualization experts.

They keynote speaker will be Rob Lewis, foundation chair of X-Ray and Synchrotron Physics at Monash University.  The workshop will also be a joint session with the Live Cell Imaging Workshop.  Presentation abstracts are due by November 1st, 2009.

via Announcement – Abstracts due 1 November, Visualization Workshop, Melbourne, Australia.

Science imaging, workshop

Zack Wise has posted a Demo Reel of various infographics in the New York Times during 2009.  He shows clips of their presidential election coverage, drug trafficking through Mexico, private equity, and more.  See the video after the break.

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Graphics infographic, nyt, reel

Fans of Filter Forge, the popular plugin suite for Photoshop, has finally hit version2.0 and released a free beta for everyone to download and check out.  Available for Mac and Windows, the beta is a fully-functional 30 day trial.  New features to check out include HDR support, gamma-aware workflow support, and several new components.

Filter Forge 2.0 Beta.

Graphics filter forge, photoshop, plugin, software

Holograms are everywhere these days, from the trinket in your cereal box to real-time 3D visuals.  The word is frequently used incorrectly tho, so today’s Resource of the Week is aimed at not only correcting that, but in educating you in how holograms work and showing you how you can create your own (if you’re so inclined).  That leads us to this week’s 2 recommendations:

Holography Handbook

The Holography Handbook coincides with the increasing interest in making hologram by individuals with little or no technical background. It serves to educate and is supremely capable of doing so, by explaining in readable and succinct terms how to make numerous different holograms. The illustrations, diagrams and text take you gently through each step, including: the selection of a location to make holograms, how to build or where to acquire the equipment needed, what to do with it once you have it, for how long, and the results to expect. It covers basic and advanced procedures, recommends approaches both optically and chemically and offers alternatives.This would make a useful handbook if it stopped there, but its authors recognize that the process is connected, and can be extended, to other areas of consideration, sot they quickly put it into historical perspective including chapters on light, its perception and properties, the art of holography and philosophical implications. The California humor of its authors comes though with a desire to provide entertaining and understandable explanations, manifest in their “KISS philosophy. Keep It Sweet and Simple”.

In a book concerned with the production of holograms and their properties, the simplest way to demonstrate some of the points covered in the text would be to give each reader a hologram to examine – hence the sting in the tail. On the last page is a small embossed hologram, viewable in white light (a characteristic of most display holography today), which if you light it correctly, provides a 3-dimensional image. Previous publications have included holograms, but this is the first to explain how to make them yourself. To further emphasize the well though-out nature of this book, the back page, if you can bear to tear it out, can be cut, folded and glued to make a stand for the hologram. Any lending library adventurous enough to offer copies of this book would do well to keep a beady eye on the back page prone, as it will be to mysterious disappearance. Seductive things, these holograms. — Andrew Pepper, New Scientist Magazine

The Complete Book of Holograms

Clear, thorough account, without complicated mathematics, explains the two models of holography—the geometric and the zone plate—and different types of holograms, including transmission, reflection, phase, projection, rainbow, and multiplex. They also show basic setups for making holograms and provide step-by-step instructions so readers can make their own. “I predict that Kasper and Feller will become a standard reference on holography for students and interested laymen”—James A. Van Allen. 116 b/w illustrations.

This clear account of holography and its applications offers the novice a rigorous treatment of holographic theory and science with minimal reliance on mathematical explanation. Written in a lively, stimulating style, it explains the geometric model of holography as well as the more elaborate diffraction model, describes various types of holograms, and gives detailed instructions on how to make your own holograms and where to get the neccessary materials. Also covers current and developing applications of holographic techniques in science, industry, and the arts. Includes excellent illustrations throughout, plus a list of sources for further study. –This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Hardware, Science feature, hologram, holographic, resource of the week

A new TEDxUSC talk from Paul Debevec gets into the details of “Digital Emily”, a digitally reconstructed face so realistic is can withstand multiple takes.

Paul Debevec’s digital inventions have powered the breathtaking visual effects in films like The Matrix, Superman Returns, King Kong and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Called “Hollywood’s Master of Light” by MIT’s Technology Review, Paul Debevec leads the Graphics Laboratory at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies, where he directs the development of the Light Stage systems, which capture and simulate how people and objects appear in real-world illumination.

See the talk after the break.

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Graphics, Science digital emily, face, ted

Mr. X did many of the VFX shots in upcoming “Amelia”, a movie about famour female avaiator Amelia Earhart, and has published a new Case Study on their website about how they created the clouds used in many of the flying shots.

The first step in the cloud shot pipeline was blocking. The previz team created cloud layouts in Maya using placeholder spheres that would represent the cloudbanks from the sequence style frames.  Cameras were also animated during this stage and any gaps in the cloudbanks were filled with additional placeholders.

Once blocking was complete, the spheres were replaced with polygonal models matching the desired profiles of the clouds. When these were approved, the surface shapes were passed on to the VFX team to be converted into true volumetrics.

“The VFX team’s first step was to bring the polygon clouds into Houdini and voxelize them,” said Price. “Then procedural volume shaders were used to provide finer detail by modifying the density within each cloud.”

Mr. X Inc. > News & Press.

Graphics amelia, case study, makingof, movie, mr x, vfx

Seen all the hype about modo401 but haven’t been willing to plunk down the cold hard cash to check it out?  No longer a problem, thanks to a free 15-day trial now offered by Luxology.

This is a no frills introduction to modo, useful for testing modo on a particular set of hardware, for example. The modo software is included with documentation for a fifteen day evaluation period.

In addition to the free 15-day trial, they’ve got a $25 “Production Evaluation” option which includes a 30-day trial, Rhino Translator, SDK, and more.

via Luxology > Try modo.

Graphics beta, free, luxology, modo, modo401, software