VizWorld.com

Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany have created a physically accurate rendering system capable of visualizing the effects of metamaterials designed to create “invisibility cloaks”.  Previously theorized “ostrich effect” is plainly visible in the never-before-seen renderings.

The problem is that metamaterials may have optical properties that vary over their length. Rendering a room with such an object in it requires building hundreds of thousands of distinct volume elements that each independently interact with the light in the room. The standard software that scientists and engineers use to simulate light in a room only allows for a few hundred volume elements, which is nowhere close to the complexity needed to handle many metamaterials such as the carpet cloak, says Halimeh.

So he and his colleagues built the software needed to do just that. Wanting to demonstrate it, they rendered a virtual museum niche with three walls, a ceiling, and a floor. In the middle of the room, they place the carpet cloak — leading the observer to perceive a flat reflecting floor, thus cloaking the bump and any object hidden underneath it.

via Invisibility Visualized: New Software For Rendering Cloaked Objects.

Science engine, invisibility, raytracer, research, software

CUDA and GPGPU developers can head on over to the NVidia Developer Zone and, if you’re a registered developer, download the beta of the new CUDA Toolkit 3.0 features early support for the upcoming Fermi architecture.  Also:

• CUDA Driver / Runtime Buffer Interoperability, which allows applications using the CUDA Driver API to also use libraries implemented using the CUDA C Runtime.
• A new, separate version of the CUDA C Runtime (CUDART) for debugging in emulation-mode.
• C++ Class Inheritance and Template Inheritance support for increased programmer productivity
• A new unified interoperability API for Direct3D and OpenGL, with support for:
  • OpenGL texture interop
  • Direct3D 11 interop support
• cuda-gdb hardware debugging support for applications that use the CUDA Driver API
• New CUDA Memory Checker reports misalignment and out of bounds errors, available as a debugging mode within cuda-gdb and also as a stand-alone utility.
• CUDA Toolkit libraries are now versioned, enabling applications to require a specific version, support multiple versions explicitly, etc.
• CUDA C/C++ kernels are now compiled to standard ELF format

CUDA Toolkit 3.0 beta released – NVIDIA Forums.

Hardware, Science api, cuda, library, nvidia

The Center for Public Integrity worked with Stephen Rountree to create an interactive infographic visualizing emissions of various countries, and overlays it as bubbles onto a world map.  However, as datavisualization.ch points out it has some flaws:

The data is plotted as a bubble chart on the wold map which makes it basically easy to read. Unfortunately the interface isn’t right where it would need to be, for example hovering over the same data twice restarts a growing animation that doesn’t convey any obvious information thus slowing down the reading process.

But even more critically is a flaw pointed out by Paul of colorful-data.net.  If you look closely at the map (pictured) and compare the bubbles over Brazil (meaning 1,028) and the EU (5,342), the EU has approximately 5x more emissions than Brazil right?  Well why is the circle so much bigger for EU then, far more than 5x:

Now when I use a bubble chart to compare values, I should remember that every viewer will use the area of the circle as representation of that number, not the radius. Example: the circle of Brazil’s current emmissions should fit about 5 times into the one of the European Union. Visually, this map is simply wrong.

Sometimes it’s not sufficient to make the results mathematically correct, they need to be observationally correct.

Mapping Emissions by Country.

Graphics, Science bad, infographic

PSFK has a short interview with Sun Haipeng (孙海鹏), chinese CG animator and creator of “Dragon Fist” and “Super Baozi vs. Sushi Man”.

It took me about 2 years from initial designs to final product. It took such a long time because I did it all by myself and only in my spare time. If I really pursue it as a proper series, I think I will need to wait until I get some sort of sponsorship. Otherwise, it will just be me, and the process is just too slow with one person.

See his animations after the break.

via Interview with Sun Haipeng, Chinese Computer Graphics Star & Creator of the Super Steamed Bun – PSFK.

Read more…

Graphics animation, interview, short

In an exclusive 3-part interview with 30Ninja’s, the VFX guys of 2012 talk about some of the biggest effects and some of the happy accidents they stumbled upon along the way.

MW: Because you look at something sometimes and say, “Wow, it’s not quite right, the scale doesn’t fit right,” so we would watch it at half-speed, and then suddenly it would be, Aha! That’s it. Now the wave looks bigger …

30 NINJAS: And you would leave it in the finished product at half-speed?

MW: Yes. What we’d have to do then, unfortunately, is redo it. You can’t just say, Well, we’ll do it at half-speed. It’s literally, if it’s water and so on, it has to be resimulated; it’s a big deal, but it happened a lot and we had to do that. And very rarely something happens like with this one shot in Yellowstone, where something comes back that looks so cool that we didn’t expect it that way.

via 30ninjas » Video » Exclusive Interview: 2012’s VFX Wizards Reveal How They Flattened the White House With an Aircraft Carrier and Scared the Bejesus Out of Director Roland Emmerich (Part 3).

Graphics 2012, vfx

Up in Iowa, doctors at Marshalltown Medical & Surgical Center are getting the new BodyViz 3D Visualization software to view CT and MRI scans of patients in full 3D interactive glory on their laptops.  KCCI Des Moines has an interview with the software developer, Eliot Winer, and some of the doctors.

He showed an example of how the BodyViz software can make a difference in helping doctors between understand a case. With the scan of a 6-month-old baby's abdomen, the software highlights dense tissue in bright white, drawing attention to something unusual.

“What you're seeing is this tumor,” Winer said. “What it's actually doing is squishing, moving her other organs to make space.”

via Iowa Docs To Soon Use New 3D Scans – Health News Story – KCCI Des Moines.

Science biomed, bodyviz

In a bit of a comical twist, Playboy interviewed James Cameron about his upcoming Avatar and cleverly steered the discussion into their familiar territory: sex.  James Cameron was undeterred, however, as he began to discuss the detailed work and physics simulations of the breasts of the lead CG Female character.

PLAYBOY: Are her breasts on view?

CAMERON: I came up with this free-floating, lion’s-mane-like array of feathers, and we strategically lit and angled shots to not draw attention to her breasts, but they’re right there. The animation uses a physics-based sim that takes into consideration gravity, air movement and the momentum of her hair, her top. We had a shot in which Neytiri falls into a specific position, and because she is lit by orange firelight, it lights up the nipples. That was good, except we’re going for a PG-13 rating, so we wound up having to fix it. We’ll have to put it on the special edition DVD; it will be a collector’s item. A Neytiri Playboy Centerfold would have been a good idea.

via James Cameron Reveals His Quest to Build More Perfect CGI Boobs – Avatar – Gawker.

Graphics avatar, interview

Visualizar started yesterday at the Medialab-Prado in Madrid, and information aesthetics covers the event with a great writeup of some of what happened on the first day.

In the following lecture it became clear that having the right to access information is not enough in order to make such data public. According to José Manuel Alonso, it is necessary to put the information where people are looking for it – e.g. the Library of the Congress that published photos on Flickr. He presented the benefits of making public data available through structured formats instead of through official portals. In this way information can be turned into well used applications, such as Facebook.

Read the full report (with links) on his site.

via Visualizar’09 Kick-Off: Discussing Public Data, Data in Public – information aesthetics.

Science conference, visualizar

YouTube is using the muscle of Google to up the ante in the online video wars, rolling out 1080P HD Streaming next week for qualified content.

We’re excited to say that support for watching 1080p HD videos in full resolution is on its way. Starting next week, YouTube's HD mode will add support for viewing videos in 720p or 1080p, depending on the resolution of the original source, up from our maximum output of 720p today.

As resolution of consumer cameras increases, we want to make sure YouTube is the best home on the web to showcase your content. For viewers with big monitors and a fast computer, try switching to 1080p to get the most out of the fullscreen experience.

No word on how well this will work and what kind of bandwidth will be required.  Perhaps now is a good time to reconsider your position in the Net Neutrality fight and visit SaveTheInternet.com ?

via YouTube Blog: 1080p HD Is Coming to YouTube.

Graphics hd, streaming, youtube

Dr. Dobb’s Journal asks the question: Is Larrabee For the Rest of Us? Larrabee is the code name for a new microprocessor developed by Intel for GPGPU programming. Larrabee is meant to compete against the threat posed by AMD with its Radeon series of graphics chips, and NVIDIA with its line of GeForce graphics chips. Intel’s chip is also of particular interest to the High Performance Computing world. However, both the GPGPU world, and the HPC world are very small at the moment. Thus the question is asked, “Is Larrabee of any benefit to the rest of the programming community?”

The author of the article is Daniele Paolo Scarpazza. He works at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. Mr. Scarpazza takes a look at Larrabee’s instruction set (LRBni) and shows how to map code onto this design. In particular, he shows that data-parallel techniques from SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) architectures are effective on Larrabee. He also warns that if you do not use such techniques, then you will probably only utilize 7% of the computational power of Larrabee.

Hardware, Science gpgpu, intel, larrabee