VizWorld.com

Randy Krum has created a fun chart showing just how much caffeine is in the various frosty and warm beverages that it takes to keep us up and moving throughout the day.

You are what you drink. With so many drinks today claiming to be “energy drinks”, I wanted a little visual clarification, so I made The Caffeine Poster. With coffee drinks on one side and canned cold drinks on the other, you can quickly see how much of a caffeine “hit” (in mg) you will get after consuming. What’s especially interesting is many of the drinks have a very high caffeine mg/oz ratio, but the drink is so small you don’t get that much total caffeine.

I find it humorous that 300mg is the “Caffeine Intoxication” point, but by his own chart I consume approximately 5-6 8oz cups of coffee and 2 diet cokes a day, putting me somewhere around 700mg.  Anything less and I can barely function.  Where do you fall?

via Cool Infographics – Cool Infographics – The Caffeine Poster, How Much Caffeine Are You Drinking? [new infographic].

Science infographic

Light Blue Optics, which is located in Cambridge, UK, has released a new product called the Light Touch. This device was shown at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week. The Light Touch system projects up to a 10 inch image onto a flat surface, with a WVGA (probably 800×480) resolution. You can then interact with the image, effectively making it a touch screen. Light Touch accomplishes this by using an infra-red touch sensing system.

Videos after the break.

Read more…

Hardware touchscreen

Keep hearing about Nuke and Nuke Site Licenses, but don’t really understand what’s so great about just another compositing product?  Well now’s your chance to find out, as the Center for New Media Studios will be hosting a 90-minute webinar, FREE, with one of the big names in visual effects to discuss everything awesome about Nuke.

You’ve heard about Nuke and how it is taking the visual effects industry by storm. You’ve heard that Nuke site licenses have been purchased by such VFX power hitters as ILM and Weta Digital. But what is it exactly that makes Nuke so much more powerful than any other compositing programs?

In this webinar Steve Wright will lift the hood of Nuke and reveal those unique features that make it the power-on winner in the VFX community. This is NOT a sales presentation designed to get you to buy Nuke, but a hands-on revelation of the production power of Nuke by a senior production artist. Attend this free one-hour webinar and you will find out exactly What’s so Hot About Nuke!

In addition to the webinar, there are several prizes and giveaways, including one lucky attendee will receive one free Nuke license with free support for a year!  The actual webinar is 1/26/2010 @ 10:00 AM PST to 11:30 AM PST .

via What’s so Hot About Nuke? – Center For New Media Studies.

Graphics foundry, nuke, webinar

Another release from CES, MSI was on-hand demonstrating three new concept PC’s that show some interesting combinations of technology for gaming or home media.  The first is an “All-In-One” 3D PC, similar to an iMac (completely integrated monitor, PC, everything) but with a 3D display that uses wireless glasses.  The second is a similar design, but has a sliding design for storing the mouse and keyboard.

The third is,perhaps, the most interesting as it’s another all-in-one PC, but instead of a monitor it comes with an HD-resolution projector.  Meant for home media, I have to wonder how well it would work for things like display-walls or virtual reality environments.

Full release after the break.

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Hardware ces, msi

A nice new interactive visualization up on the New York Times allows you to pick a movie from 2009 and then see how often it was rented in various US metropolitan areas. The movies can be sorted by most to least rented, alphabetical, or by Metacritic score, and the resulting heatmaps cover 12 cities across the US and break the results down by zip code.

The visualization itself is impressive, but the data is a bit creepy.  Any NetFlix users see this as an invasion of privacy? (even thought it was presented as aggregate data, the top 50 rentals in each zip code).

A Peek Into Netflix Queues – NYTimes.com.

Graphics interactive, netflix, nytimes

One surprise at CES comes from EnGadget, who got some hands-on time with the coveted RED Scarlet and Bomb, and have pics and video to prove it.

Ted Schilowitz from RED popped in with a RED Scarlet and the Bomb EVF for a quick hands-on! Our video producer Chad Mumm basically attacked him, as did the rest of the crew — pretty much everyone surrounded him as he pulled the Scarlet out of its pack. Chad actually shot video and did a little interview — we'll get that up ASAP, but check out the pics in the gallery below.

Hit their site for the pics, or see the video after the break.

via RED Scarlet and Bomb EVF surprise hands-on! — Engadget.

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Hardware ces, red

Alex Roman has a video on Vimeo, you may have seen it advertised other places as well, showing a fully-CG film of architectural beauty and splendor that rivals films like Avatar for detail and realism.

A FULL-CG animated piece that tries to illustrate architecture art across a photographic point of view where main subjects are already-built spaces. Sometimes in an abstract way. Sometimes surreal.

See the video, and with some behind-the-scenes videos of how it was built, after the break.

Read more…

Graphics architecture, cg

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences have announced their Scientific & Technical Awards winners, and lest you think there’s no science in Hollywood, check out the winners:

Technical Awards Winners:

• To Mark Wolforth and Tony Sedivy for their contributions to the development of the Truelight real-time 3D look-up table hardware system.
• To Dr. Klaus Anderle, Christian Baeker and Frank Billasch for their contributions to the LUTher 3D look-up table hardware device and color management software.
• To Steve Sullivan, Kevin Wooley, Brett Allen and Colin Davidson for the development of the Imocap on-set performance capture system.
• To Hayden Landis, Ken McGaugh and Hilmar Koch for advancing the technique of ambient occlusion rendering.
• To Bjorn Heden for the design and mechanical engineering of the silent, two-stage planetary friction drive Heden Lens Motors.

Scientific Awards Winners:

• To Per Christensen and Michael Bunnell for the development of point-based rendering for indirect illumination and ambient occlusion.
• To Dr. Richard Kirk for the overall design and development of the Truelight real-time 3D look-up table hardware device and color management software.
• To Volker Massmann, Markus Hasenzahl, Dr. Klaus Anderle and Andreas Loew for the development of the Spirit 4K/2K film scanning system as used in the digital intermediate process for motion pictures.
• To Michael Cieslinski, Dr. Reimar Lenz and Bernd Brauner for the development of the ARRISCAN film scanner, enabling high-resolution, high-dynamic range, pin-registered film scanning for use in the digital intermediate process.
• To Wolfgang Lempp, Theo Brown, Tony Sedivy and Dr. John Quartel for the development of the Northlight film scanner, which enables high-resolution, pin-registered scanning in the motion picture digital intermediate process.
• To Steve Chapman, Martin Tlaskal, Darrin Smart and James Logie for their contributions to the development of the Baselight color correction system, which enables real-time digital manipulation of motion picture imagery during the digital intermediate process.
• To Mark Jaszberenyi, Gyula Priskin and Tamas Perlaki for their contributions to the development of the Lustre color correction system, which enables real-time digital manipulation of motion picture imagery during the digital intermediate process.
• To Brad Walker, D. Scott Dewald, Bill Werner and Greg Pettitt for their contributions furthering the design and refinement of the Texas Instruments DLP Projector, achieving a level of performance that enabled color-accurate digital intermediate previews of motion pictures.
• To FUJIFILM Corporation, Ryoji Nishimura, Masaaki Miki and Youichi Hosoya for the design and development of Fujicolor ETERNA-RDI digital intermediate film, which was designed exclusively to reproduce motion picture digital masters.
• To Paul Debevec, Tim Hawkins, John Monos and Mark Sagar for the design and engineering of the Light Stage capture devices and the image-based facial rendering system developed for character relighting in motion pictures.

Full details of their contributions can be found on the AMPAS website, linked below.  Congratulations all!

Scientific & Technical Awards Winners | Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

Graphics, Science ampas, movies, vfx

An XGP connector, which stands for eXternal Graphics Platform, is an external graphics solution for laptops. The idea was to give notebooks with lower end graphics chips the ability to play the latest graphics intensive games. One benefit of this technology is that you could upgrade to the latest graphics card while keeping your same laptop. ATI announced this technology at the Computex trade show on June 4, 2008, but it only worked on laptops with an external PCI Express 2.0 connector. Unfortunately, very few laptops came with such a connector. In fact, Fujitsu Siemens is the only one that I know of that used this connector. The Fujitsu system was called the Amilo GraphicsBooster. It used a PCI Express 2.0 x8 external connector, and was powered by ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3870.

Bright Side Of News is reporting that ATI is showcasing a new laptop from Acer with an XGP connector. The Acer Ferrari One is a cross between a netbook and a notebook. With an XGP connector, this laptop is connected to a Broadway XGP box. The box has one DVI port, three DisplayPorts, an HDMI port, and two USB ports. Inside the box is an ATI Mobility Radeon 5870 graphics card.

When it comes to performance, seeing Tom Clancy’s H.A.V.X. on three displays in Eyefinity configuration is nothing else but sweet. To play the game on three displays using nothing else but a puny netbook gives us hope that there is decent performance out there.

via : AMD showcases 5870 Eyefinity XGP box on a Ferrari netbook

Hardware amd, ati, eyefinity, xgp

[H]ard|OCP has an editorial today with some information about Nvidia’s 3D Surround multi-display gaming setup at CES. Nvidia has its 3D Surround technology running on a pair of 285 GTX graphics cards in the lobby. This is being displayed on three projectors at 720P and is using VGA connectors. In the booth, they have a pair of 285 GTX graphics cards running across three 1920×1080 displays using three dual-link DVI connectors. It is great to see the technology available to current generation graphics cards. Nvidia also has its 3D Surround technology running on a pair of GF100s graphics cards in the booth. This too is being displayed on three projectors at 720P and is using VGA connectors.

However, the best part of the editorial is at the end. [H]ard|OCP really smacks down Nvidia. Here is just a taste of it.

For god’s sake NVIDIA, if you pull this bullshit where 3D Surround “games” will not work on Eyefinity configurations, we are going to beat NVIDIA down repeatedly and publicly for harming the PC gaming industry.

via : NVIDIA 3D Surround Multi-display Gaming Editorial

Hardware 3d, ces, fermi, nvidia