Mental Image’s Michael Kaplan has a video online demonstrating what the new iray system, in the latest versions of MentalRay, is capable of. Complete with some impressive real-time interactive, adaptive refinements, and controllable ray specification, it’s a great feature.
See the video after the break.
Ever wonder where the most profitable companies are in the world? Ever wonder how much money you would receive as a Christmas present if they gave you their profits? Well, BillShrink.com has a graphic just for you. Using data from 2008, they show that where the most profitable companies are located, and how much they made. It is no small surprise that oil companies take the top 6 spots, with ExxonMobile taking the top spot.
To see how much money you would get from ExxonMobile’s profit if they gave it to everyone on Earth, click through to BillShrink.com
Cryosurgery, placing cryoprobes in cancerous tumors to instantly freeze and kill them while still inside the body, is a new technique to fight cancer, but training new surgeons in this technology is difficult because of the potential to destroy healthy tissue and cause other potentially deadly complications. Carnegie Mellon Mechanical Engineering professors Yoed Rabin and Kenji Shimada have created a virtual surgery training simulation with the help of a $1.3Million grant from the National Cancer Institute to make training much safer and easier.
Dr. Shimada, in a news release, said the process will allow surgeons to place probes without risk to patients, visualize frozen regions with intuitive 3D computer graphics and benchmark their performance with hundreds of cases stored in a database. “It is a motivational and effective way of learning and improving their surgical skills,” he said.
Darin at the “Viz Worth Watching” blog has posted a little tidbit about a new feature that’ll be available in the upcoming EnSight 9.1, coming directly from one of their engineers.
Some of you know I have been working on a little side feature for awhile now and finally got around to “finishing” it. There is a math function now called “SmoothMesh”. It takes 2D part(s) as input and computes a “smoother” mesh using a multi-pass spring model. The output of SmoothMesh is a vector variable that you apply to the original part as a displacement field. I have attached an image of a computed shock on the shroud dataset that I smoothed this way (upper viewport is the original, lower is the smoothed form). In the example, I used 100 passes with a weighting factor of 0.05.
Some more information is available on their site, but it seems to be a nice combination of mesh decimation with surface smoothing using an iterative approach. Not terribly great for science, but great for those always-necessary marketing and presentation images.
via Viz Worth Watching: Smoother Isosurfaces in EnSight 9.1.
Information Management has some new information to add to yesterday’s data about the power of Weta, including details of the cooling, queue management, and frame render times involved in Avatar.
The queueing system is a Pixar product called Alfred, which creates a hierarchical job structure or tree of multiple tasks that have to run in a certain order. In any single job, there might be thousands of interdependent tasks. As soon as CPUs on the render wall are freed up, new tasks are fired at idle processors.
At the peak of AVATAR, Wilkie was wrangling more than 10,000 jobs and an estimated 1.3 to 1.4 million tasks per day. Each frame of the 24 frame-per-second movie saw multiple iterations of back and forth between directors and artists and took multiple hours to render.
via Processing AVATAR.
Recently, Jeff Heard was approached to convert a 3D Excel Spreadsheet into something more understandable, and allow comparison of columns for balance, comparison of third dimension alternates, comparison of rows for balance, and comparison of overall sums. His solution (shown) : Radial Bar Charts.
Along the ring are the names of the columns of data in the spreadsheet. On each spoke are the rows in the two layers of the spreadsheet visualized as bar charts. Stretching counterclockwise are the bars for senior faculty. Stretching clockwise are the bars for graduate research assistants. In the center, visualized as bubbles of varying radii are the totals from both bar charts along the spoke. Note the light, thin rings connecting each bar. These are designed to draw a viewer’s eye around the chart, connecting bar to bar visually to inform the viewer that comparison is relevant.
Personally, I find the chart borderline incomprehensible. Now, Jeff had limited time (only 5 days) and a rather impressive collection of requirements to meet, but the resulting chart seems to breakdown in several ways:
For an example, quickly try to find the Graduate FTE’s in Research Department 2. The Answer? 0.50 (I think, like I said it’s hard to read).
What do you think? They say hindsight is 20/20, so how would you improve it?
Researchers at the University of Tokyo’s Ishikawa Komuro Laboratory are demonstrating their “Volume Slicing Display” at SIGGRAPH2009 Asia (they were demonstrating it at SIGGRAPH2009 in New Orleans as well, I think) which combines Augmented Reality tracking markers with calibrated projectors to turn any flat surface into a slicing plane in a 3D world.
Currently meant for medical staff & radiologists viewing 3D datasets (MRI’s, CT’s, etc) in a more interactive means than on a computer display, it’s a great demo with a few physical limitations:
Other than that, it shows great promise. Add in more projectors to increase the workable space, and some interaction methods to allow the user to “lock” the display so they can set it down somewhere or lock it into a traditional lightbox on the wall, and I can see it getting some use.
Volume Slicing Display (PDF) via Volume Slicing Display affords untethered 3D views | Crave – CNET.
This week’s recommended resource is a fun pick for everyone who saw Avatar and found themselves wanting more. 108 pages of beautiful 12×10 images and interviews showing everything that went into the multi-year process that was Avatar.
Academy Award-winning writer/director James Cameron, the maker of Titanic and the creator of the Terminator series, has been crafting Avatar for over four years. The film follows the story of an ex-marine who finds himself thrust into hostilities on a distant planet filled with exotic life forms. As an avatar, a human consciousness in an alien body, he finds himself torn between two worlds, in a desperate fight for his own survival and that of the indigenous people. The Art of Avatar, the companion book to this epic 3-D action adventure, explores the developmental and conceptual art used by the creative team to create the original world of Avatar.
With over 100 exclusive full-color images including sketches, matte paintings, drawings, and film stills, The Art of Avatar reveals the process behind the creation of set designs for the imaginative vistas, unique landscapes, aerial battle scenes, bioluminescent nights, and fantastical creatures. Interviews with art directors, visual effects designers, animators, costume designers, and creature makers bring insight into this creative process. The Art of Avatar brings readers behind the scenes of this unprecedented moviegoing experience.
Hurry up and get it today and you can still have it delivered in time for Christmas!
Stargate Studios offers a technology called ‘Virtual Backlot’ that incorporates motion tracking, green/blue screens, and compositing techniques that allow you to easily merge principal photography into your video shoots seamlessly. From their description:
Stargate Studios’ Virtual Backlot™ is a proprietary technology that gives filmmakers unparalleled access to any location through a variety of techniques. These can range from totally immersive sequences shot entirely on green screen to simple set extensions that marry into principal photography.
The common thread between all the variations of the Virtual Backlot™ is that it has been designed as a seamless and unobtrusive addition to the first unit. The goal is to enhance the story as well as solve production issues. Each production has unique challenges and needs and the Stargate Virtual Backlot™ aims to meet those challenges and needs in a creative and cost effective manner.
They’ve posted a video showing how it works, including shots from several shows you’ve probably seen (I recognized Ugly Betty, Monk, and Grey’s Anatomy) that I never would have suspected were edited to such degree. See the video after the break.
Updated 2/23/2010: The Vimeo video included originally is now password protected. Replaced with an HD Youtube Equivalent. Read more…
A new CAD modeling tool is now available for all of the programmer-oriented people out there, the new GPL2 licensed OpenSCAD. Unlike traditional modeling solutions like Blender, AutoCAD, or SolidWorks, it takes simply 2D scripts and builds geometry using 2D Extrusion techniques of Constructive Solid Geometry.
OpenSCAD is not an interactive modeller. Instead it is something like a 3D-compiler that reads in a script file that describes the object and renders the 3D model from this script file (see examples below). This gives you (the designer) full control over the modelling process and enables you to easily change any step in the modelling process or make designes that are defined by configurable parameters.
OpenSCAD provides two main modelling techniques: First there is constructive solid geometry (aka CSG) and second there is extrusion of 2D outlines. As data exchange format format for this 2D outlines Autocad DXF files are used. In addition to 2D paths for extrusion it is also possible to read design parametes from DXF files. Besides DXF files OpenSCAD can read and create 3D models in the STL and OFF file formats.
Binaries for Windows, OSX, and linux are available for download, with Source for the true die-hards.
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