Home » Archives for December 2009
360Cities has published what they think might be the World’s Largest Spherical Panoramic image, an 18 Gigapixel Photo from the top of the TV Tower in Prague.
This image was shot on October 3, 2009. It is made from hundreds of individual photographs and stitched together into a single seamless panoramic image.
We have put the entire image, in full resolution, online for everyone to see. It’s possible to zoom in to an incredible level of detail.
In addition they’re having a contest. Follow their clues to find the hidden treasure in the image, and win $100.
Prague TV Tower – World’s Largest Spherical Panorama. via 360Cities Blog
Science 360cities, extreme, panorama, photography
In the newest version of the popular “Rock Band” game, The Beatles come back to life to recreate some of their biggest hits. Promoting the game was a 30-second and 60-second commercial featuring video footage of the Beatles recreating their famous Abbey Road photograph, and highlight the work of Smoke & Mirrors New York. There’s no video of that famous shot, so the entire scene was recreated both physically and digitally using almost every tool Autodesk offers.
For example, there was no archive footage available of Harrison and Lennon sporting the same shoulder-length hair, heavy beards, and mustaches as on the cover. There was also no archive footage available of McCartney with the same clean-shaven, short hairstyle from the cover.
“This meant using heavy camera tracking, distortion, rotoscoping, and virtually every Flame tool we had to do the head reps, and take mustaches, beards, and extra hair and graft them onto the Beatles' heads. We also had to consider subtle facial muscle movements before we added the hair,” Seresin says. “The illusion had to be totally credible because viewers would know if it rang true or not.”
via How Smoke & Mirrors New York brought The Beatles’ Abbey Road album cover to life.
Graphics autodesk, commercial, smoke and mirrors, vfx, video game
The University of Delaware College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment (CEOE) project has built a “Global Visualization Lab” using Google Earth merged with sampled data (in KML files) displayed on four 55-inch Vizio plat panels. The result is navigated with a 3dconnexion space navigator and lets researchers see their data on the fly in high resolution, and share it with others.
Leveraging several organizations’ resources has helped illustrate another strength of the lab: It allows the data-gathering technologies to not just work parallel to each other; for the first time, they can actually work together. That has positive implications for how data is collected and viewed, Oliver said.
In their first test of the system, Oliver and his collaborators used satellites, underwater vehicles, and other devices to study winter algal blooms in the mid-Atlantic over a two-week period in November. As the data came in, computer models automatically analyzed it, created forecasts, and reported directly to the autonomous underwater vehicles to tell them where to sample next.
via Global visualization lab creates world of opportunities for scientists.
Science delaware, renderwall
If you’re in the LA Area looking for a party tonight, then here’s one to check out. BLVD, JD Hot Tub, AdamandEvil, Mid City West, with a special live painting installation by SHRINE and Amanda Sage, and the Editor of URB magazine will all be at the URB & Hunnypot Holiday PArty. If you can’t make it, tho, don’t worry as the entire event will be Webcast live thanks to some sweet new technology the Confluence group is rolling out:
The Confluence will be will be web-casting the evening’s event on a multi-camera HD feed. This will be amazing content for your site’s visitors and it will most likely be in the form of an embeddable player.
This next generation technology is a completely self-contained mobile production unit. Affording all manner of events a means to communicate globally. Leaving no stone unturned in delivering excellence, they have brought on award-winning filmmakers and sound designers to produce the event.
Read the full announcement after the break.
Read more…
Hardware concert, confluence, party
Nick Bilton has posted a pair of videos showing the website traffic of NYTimes.com on June 25, 2009 (The day that Micheal Jackson died). The videos show incoming website visitors as growing circles, yellow are desktop users and orange are mobile users. One video focuses on the US, while the other shows the entire world.
Just watching these maps glow can be a mesmerizing experience, but there’s another fascinating piece of data within this particular day. At about 1 minutes 10 seconds into the video, at 5:20 p.m., you can see a huge pulse of readers coming to the Web site, both from mobile devices and personal computers. This huge traffic bump happened after TMZ.com broke the news of Mr. Jackson’s death. As the news started to filter across the Internet, traffic continued to ebb and flow throughout the evening.
via A Day in the Life of NYTimes.com – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com.
Graphics nytimes, video, Website
The 7th Inernational Symposium on Visualization for Cyber Security, better known as VizSec, has published their details of the upcoming event and this year’s focus on “effective visual interfaces”.
This year our focus is on understanding what makes effective visual interfaces for different cyber security tasks. This involves both advancing our understanding of what cyber security tasks are, and improving our understanding of what it means for a security visualization to be effective. Cyber security visualization tasks cover a wide range, including (but not limited to) obtaining situational awareness in massive datasets; incorporating data from disparate sources during incident handling; producing actionable reports for others; modeling the behavior of systems; and predicting future events.
Submission guidelines are on their site.
via VizSec 2010.
Science conference, vizsec
Avatar opens tonight at midnight in theaters nationwide, but before you go see it watch this special Avatar Exclusive video on YouTube that makes an important point that many people miss: This is not a CG Animated Film, this is all Motion Tracked and CG Rendered. It’s a small distinction but an important one.
Video embedded after the break.
Read more…
Graphics "motion capture", avatar, movie, vfx
Avatar opens tonight, and it’s gonna be big. Already trending on twitter, it’s going to overwhelm the internet tomorrow with either “AWESOME” or “*yawn*” reviews, I don’t see there being any middle ground on a film this hyped.
So once you see the movie, come here and post your own thoughts in the comments and we’ll compile them all for a wrapup next week!
Graphics avatar, movie
The original Star Trek series with Willaim Shatner and Leonard Nimoy may not seem like something worth bringing to BluRay. Footage from that time didn’t have the type of quality that would really make conversion to BluRay very effective, but the folks at MAXON worked with VFX Artist Max Gabl to use BodyPaint3D to remaster the footage by hand.
A key creative challenge was the complete lack of data crucial for visual effects content creation, such as camera type and focal lens that are used to match the virtual camera to the scene. “I quickly realized that successfully bringing elements such as matte paintings of planetary objects from the original series into an HD format and maintaining the visual integrity of the iconic television series would necessitate a 3D software solution that offers stability and customization,” Gabl said.
Read the full release after the break.
Read more…
Graphics bluray, bodypaint, maxon, tv
Here’s the links for today:
VizWorld.com 
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