While ZBrush excels as soft body and organic modeling, unwrapping these models for UV Texturing can be tricky. Pixologic acknowledges this and has just released a new free plugin called ‘UV Master’ that makes UV Unwrapping a 1-click affair.
With UV Master’s cutting-edge technology you can leave all the technical work to the computer. Because the UV maps generated by the plugin can be in one UV island you will be able to understand your modelís UVs in any 2D image editor and paint or edit them like you would do with manually unwrapped UVs. Amazingly, what needs mere minutes with UV Master could take hours in other dedicated solutions! Just load your model, click Unwrap and you’re done!
If the automatic process is just too convenient for you, you can use other new tools for more manual controls of seams. Alltogether, a must-have addition to ZBrush.
The folks at Pingdom have put together an infographic on The Internet Google. It is a pretty massive set of facts and numbers that have been acquired, so take a look at it.
And let’s face it, Google is a pretty interesting company. In fact, we think it’s so interesting that we put together this infographic with a ton of facts and figures about Google. We’ve been digging through Google’s SEC filings, news articles and the trusty old Wikipedia to get plenty of interesting data to include.
Well just color me jealous. The PC Pro Lab had a chance to play with the AMD Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity6 yesterday. They were able to get six 1080p monitors running at a total resolution of 5,760 x 2,160, or 12.4 million pixels. (For the sake of comparison, a single 30″ monitor is 2560 x 1600, or 4 million pixels.) Take a look at their image to the right, where you can see them playing Race Driver: GRID. They did encounter some problems with the setup of the card, but you will have to read the article for that information. Overall, what did they think of the new graphics card?
There’s no doubt that Eyefinity is an exciting and potentially superb technology: transforming six screens into one giant monitor opens up huge resolutions and could make virtually every game more immersive and, in some cases, easier to play.
Want a 5400×2700 pixel image of our planet earth? Want to celebrate the birthday of the satellite that produced it? Then click on through to the NASA website below as they talk about Terra, a 10 year old satellite that is still producing good science.
On February 24, 2000, after two months of post-launch testing, sensors on NASA’s Terra satellite began opening their shutters and making their first observations. The mission ushered in a decade of observations from NASA’s Earth Observing System, a coordinated series of satellites that monitor how Earth is changing.
The five images of the earth below represent Vegetation, Carbon Monoxide, Aerosols, Elevation, and Net Radiation.
As we have reported before, on March 11, AMD will launch its Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity6 edition with 2GB of GDDR5. This extra memory is needed to handle the larger framebuffer when you are running in 6 monitor mode. In all other respects, such a clock and memory speeds, the card is exactly a stock 5870. Today, AnandTech has posted more information on the new graphics card.
Since this is still being driven by Cypress, the clock source limitation has not changed. Cypress only has 2 clock sources for DVI-type displays, so the 5870E6 can only drive up to 2 DVI/HDMI displays using passive adapters. Furthermore if you want to drive a 2560 display or a 120Hz 1920 display, you’re going to need active adapters regardless of clock sources. So if you’re thinking of buying this as a 2GB 5870 to drive your 2560 DVI monitor, you’re still going to be shelling out another $100 for an active adapter. Even with the dongles, it’s clear that this card really is meant to be paired with DP/mini-DP monitors for the long-run.
The Dell 3008WFP is a 30 inch monitor with a resolution of 2560 x 1600, and it accepts DisplayPort signal inputs. Thus if I want to drive six of these monitors, then I will need to add in six active adapters, at least as I understand it.
One result from Unity’s “Summer of Code” project is now available as Sandor Moldan’s “Terrain Toolkit 1.0″. From his own description:
Unity already has a powerful terrain engine as one of its core features. The Terrain Toolkit expands on this by providing the user with the ability to rapidly create a variety of different landscapes directly within Unity without needing to use third party software. An additional advantage is that landscapes can now be generated dynamically at runtime. This means a Unity game can have a potentially infinite number of levels or landscapes with a negligible impact on the file size.
Basically it adds procedural terrain generation algorithms and UI tool to Unity, letting you get away from manually modeling & importing terrain in other packages. A welcome addition to a continually growing product.
Visualize the history of electronic music with a new interactive installation, controlled by WiiMote with wireless headphones to let you hear the experience. Part of the 3bits Labs, they aim to show the evolution and interconnectivity of the various genres of music (House, Techno, Ambient, Hip Hop) and show how they have mixed to create entirely new styles.
SyncLost is a multi-user installation for immersion in the history of electronic music. From a complex timeline, rhythms and sub-rhythms merge to create new sounds.
The project’s objective is to create an interface where users can view all the connections between the main styles of electronic music through visual and audible feedback. The choice is individual and leads to a collective consequence in the spatial visualization of information.
Sensing they may have stumbled onto something powerful, CBS Sports has partnered with Tableau Software to create a whole slew of new interactive visualization products for fantasy baseball and football fans. But just new visualizations isn’t all, they’ve issued a Call for Ideas to the community to see what new information you want!
Not only will the visuals you see be easy to understand and interpret, but they will also be interactive, allowing users to see exactly what they want while filtering out data not useful to them. We hope you enjoy our latest enhancement to help you win your league in 2010. What are your thoughts on the new feature? What visualizations might you like to see? We’d like to hear your thoughts and suggestions.
A big win for Tableau certainly, and could be a huge tool for fantasy fans (the hardcore fantasy fans spend as much time crunching statistics and numbers as most PhD physicists). What would you like to see?
Wired’s Geekdad has a collection of 20 fun and geeky images captured by satellite and visible in everyone’s favorite map viewer Google Maps. Ranging from air force bases and the GooglePlex itself to crop designs and herds of animals, it’s a great collection.
Space is full of images that make a geek’s heart flutter. But how about when we point those cameras back down at us on Earth?
Google Earth has created a treasure trove of geeky images. Here are some of my favorites
Hit his site for pictures and links directly to the map locations.
Information is Beautiful has a wonderful interactive infographic today. I would not expect any less from them, especially given their name. They take a look at common remedies for certain ailments. For example, Vitamin C is supposed to be good for curing a cold. Cranberries are supposed to be good for curing a urinary tract infection.
Personally I remember when, back in the 1990s, Vitamin E was supposed to be great for you. The Wellness Letter from UC Berkley recommended taking 400 IU per day. Then in 2001, they halved their recommended dose to 200 IU. In 2005, they stopped recommending taking Vitamin E.
Thus the obvious question is, are these home remedies really worth it? Well, that is what the inforgraphic shows you. From the accompanying article:
This image is a “balloon race”. The higher a bubble, the greater the evidence for its effectiveness. But the supplements are only effective for the conditions listed inside the bubble.
Some of the supplements are listed twice, for curing different ailments. Thus Green Tea may be above the “Worth It” line for curing one ailment, but below the line for curing a different ailment. Best of all, the visualization can be updated as new research comes on line.
This visualisation generates itself from this Google Doc. So when new research comes out, we can quickly update the data and regenerate the image. (How cool is that?)
While ZBrush excels as soft body and organic modeling, unwrapping these models for UV Texturing can be tricky. Pixologic acknowledges this and has just released a new free plugin called ‘UV Master’ that makes UV Unwrapping a 1-click affair.
One result from Unity’s “Summer of Code” project is now available as Sandor Moldan’s “Terrain Toolkit 1.0″. From his own description:
Visualize the history of electronic music with a new interactive installation, controlled by WiiMote with wireless headphones to let you hear the experience. Part of the 3bits Labs, they aim to show the evolution and interconnectivity of the various genres of music (House, Techno, Ambient, Hip Hop) and show how they have mixed to create entirely new styles.
Sensing they may have 
Wired’s Geekdad has a collection of 20 fun and geeky images captured by satellite and visible in everyone’s favorite map viewer Google Maps. Ranging from air force bases and the GooglePlex itself to crop designs and herds of animals, it’s a great collection.
VizWorld.com 
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