VizWorld.com

The opening graphics for HBO’s “25th Anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert” later this week showcases work by Monkeyhead done with NetRender and MoGraph modules of MAXON’s Cinema4D.

“The functionality in the MoGraph module offers an incredibly dynamic range of tools to create motion graphics and advanced features like global illumination and caustics further allowed us to achieve the desired degree of realism. When we showed HBO the final spot they asked which images we created and which ones were pulled from existing sources because they couldn’t believe the photo-realistic quality we had accomplished,” added Sahley.

Read the full release and see the promo and some pictures after the break.

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Graphics cinema4d, concert, hbo, maxon, monkeyhead

Christopher Adajar is the winner of the recent CGArena competition themed “Accident” in which he modeled an unfortunate biker crashing his Kawasaki at high-speed in what could only result in a wicked case of road rash.  He writes up his project for CGArena:

Maya 2008 was the primary software used for building the entire scene, Photoshop for painting textures, ZBrush for sculpting and After Effects for compositing. Since it is a common subject I did not have hard time finding good reference for modeling the motorcycle. Initially I started building curves to draw the initial base of my mesh then I used brail tools to patch up the meshes.

via Making of the Rider by Christopher Adajar.

Graphics cgarena, contest, maya, zbrush

CAPS Entreprise was at sc09 announcing the latest version of their HMPP compiler toolsuite. If you are not familiar with their product, it is a toolsuite to aid in hybrid GPU/CPU software development. They were nice enough to invite us for a talk and give us a demonstration of their product.

At the heart of HMPP, it is an extension to existing compiler to help with GPU compute code. With the wide variety of compilers (Microsoft, PGI, GNU, Intel), IDE’s (Visual Studio, Eclipse, Emacs) and GPU Languages (CUDA, OpenCL, Streams, Brook) it can be daunting to develop applications that efficiently works across the wide variety of environments.. HMPP aims to make this all much simpler by allowing you to insert simple directives into your code indicating data structures and routines to accelerate.

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Science caps, feature, gpgpu, hmpp, sc09

This paper is from 2004 but I’m amazed the technology hasn’t appeared in any mainstream tools yet.  The paper presents an algorithm for colorizing greyscale images with amazing detail with only a few rough sketch marks to use as a guide.

In this paper we present a simple colorization method that requires neither precise image segmentation, nor accurate region tracking. Our method is based on a simple premise: neighboring pixels in space-time that have similar intensities should have similar colors. We formalize this premise using a quadratic cost function and obtain an optimization problem that can be solved efficiently using standard techniques. In our approach an artist only needs to annotate the image with a few color scribbles, and the indicated colors are automatically propagated in both space and time to produce a fully colorized image or sequence. We demonstrate that high quality colorizations of stills and movie clips may be obtained from a relatively modest amount of user input.

At their website they show colorizing not only photos but video as well with startling accuracy.

via Colorization Using Optimization.

Science algorithm, color, research

If you’re a big user of MathWorks products like Matlab and Simulink, you should head on over to their site where you can register as a beta tester for their new GPU acceleration (only for NVidia GPU’s in the first release).  An invite-only beta, it can’t hurt to get your name in the hat and hope you get lucky!

Beta Test GPUs with MathWorks Products – Registration.

Science gpgpu, mathworks, matlab, nvidia, simulink, software

A few weeks ago, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice published the last statements of 444 executed death-row inmates on their website.  Mark Schaver took the data and used IBM’s ManyEyes website to visualize the data in a variety of ways with some interesting results:

The most frequently used words of those about to die were “love” and “family.”

You can also see the most frequently used two-word phrases. Here “stay strong” was used twice as often as “Jesus Christ.”

via Depth Reporting: The last words of condemned Texans.

Science deathrow, infovis, texas, text

Autodesk’s 11th annual worldwide celebration of 3D Computer graphics, 3December, is building up steam.  This year you can virtually attend the conference on the AREA and view masterclasses, learn how Liquid Development created assets for “Rock Band: The Beatles:, and more.  If you’re in the Montreal area on December 3rd, you can attend the “Live Event” at the Marche Bonsecours Ballroom:

Get the inside story as Harmonix’s Art Director, Ryan Lesser and Project Leader & Creative Director Josh Randall, present a “Show & Tell” into their world of music game development. Also on the bill is the company’s Todd Robertson, together with Josh, entertaining you with their alter-egos “RNDM&ROBOTKID” through a unique audio-visual DJ performance. Montreal’s 3December event also includes a previs and an Autodesk© Mudbox™ demo you won’t want to miss!

via The Area :: 3December Pre-Event.

Graphics autodesk, conference

Microsoft is joining the GPGPU bandwagon with the next version of their flagship browser Internet Explorer by moving all of the rendering routines of the future IE9 from the existing GDI systems to Direct2D and DirectWrite, allowing it to take full advantage of the existing GPU.

Although Hachamovitch declined to peg a goal for IE9's hardware-based acceleration, he said early results have been encouraging. “On top of GDI, we were seeing IE render at 5-10 frames per second. Users don't know whether that's [caused by] the network, or a site script, but it just seems kind of slow to them. Using [Direct2D], we're seeing 40, 50 or 60 frames per second. That's game-like responsiveness.”

Of course they won’t be alone, as Opera & Mozilla have announced similar projects to integrate GPGPU acceleration into the browsers, however they will do it in a cross-platform manner.

via Microsoft’s IE9 to tap hardware for speed boost.

Science browser, gpgpu, microsoft

SIGGRAPH2009 is still warm in our minds but the ACM won’t rest, as they’ve just announced the first Call for Submissions for the upcoming 2010 conference for the “People Behind the Pixels”.  A few new additions this year include the “Dailies!” program including images and short animations within the last 18 months, and the new Computer Animation Short Category for any incorporating a “significant percentage” of computer-generated imagery or digital production.

“Each year the technical content presented at SIGGRAPH gets more and more impressive. So it’s the goal each year, to improve upon the years past – a challenging but rewarding task,” stated Terrence Masson, SIGGRAPH 2010 Conference Chair from Northeastern University. “Expanding submission categories and extending deadlines open the pool of contributions to much wider spectrums of the whole industry ensuring the presence of more great content than ever before.”

via SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Conference Announces 2010 Call for Submissions.

Graphics conference, siggraph, siggraph2010

Similar to Strata’s Foto3D CX tool, ProFORMA can reconstruct a virtual model of a physical object from live video and then augment the live video with the wireframe version.  Created by Qi Pan, Gerhard Reitmayr and Tom Drummond of the Cambridge University Engineering Department, the project is the winner of the ISMAR 2009 Best Demo Prize.

The generation of 3D models is very useful for many computer vision applications. This paper introduces ProFORMA, a system designed to enable on-line reconstruction of textured 3D objects rotated by a user's hand. Partial models are created very rapidly and displayed to the user to aid view planning, as well as used by the system to robustly track the object pose. The system works by calculating the Delaunay tetrahedralisation of a point cloud obtained from on-line structure from motion estimation which is then carved using a recursive and probabilistic algorithm to rapidly obtain the surface mesh.

See a demonstration video after the break.

via Cambridge University Engineering Department – Qi Pan.

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Science 3d, algorithm, cambridge, modeling