UK’s TimesOnline has a short article talking to some people at Bournemouth University, home of the National Centre for computer Animation, and stomping ground to over 50 VFX artists that helped to create the stereoscopic epic Avatar. In the article they discuss that not only is graphics and design talent important, but so is a good understand of math and physics.
The skills needed to create stunning computer-generated effects can be attributed to a rare combination of talents. According to Saf Efstathiou, computer animation course leader at Bournemouth University: “When we are recruiting students, we look for high grades in maths and in art. Disciplines like physics, chemistry and IT can also be very important. A lot of maths students don’t realise that there’s a very creative environment open to them.”
[H]ard|OCP has been a huge fan of the latest line of AMD Radeon graphics cards, and they have especially been fond of Eyefinity. However, not everything is perfect with the Radeon graphics cards, and [H]ard|OCP writes an editorial about these issues. In particular, there are two things that AMD is working to correct.
Some users have problems with 3-screen Eyefinity when using dongles
Some users report a Grey Screen of Death with the latest Radeon card.
Another issue, but one that is not AMD’s problem, is the question of when Samsung’s thin bezel LCDs will come to market, and how much they will cost. [H]ard|OCP’s editorial addresses all three topics. From the editorial:
The current “dongle problem” is such. Some users have issues with the dongle-attached display blinking on and off. We tested with three 30″ DVI panels back in October without issue. If you are one of the unlucky ones to have the problem here is some information about it.
The main cause of the issue seems to be USB powered dongles that are not getting enough power from its USB power source.
From reading the editorial, it looks like AMD is working hard to take of the two items that it has control over. AMD has released a list of dongles that are guaranteed to work, and the latest 10.2 drivers should take card of the Grey Screen of Death for most users, though there may be some that still are having problems.
Last night, the International 3D Society handed out their ‘Lumiere Awards’ at the Mann Chinese Theater to the best stereoscopic technology and productions of 2009.
International 3D Society president Jim Chabin stated, “The First Annual International 3D Awards represent the first time in motion picture history that achievement in the 3D art form has been recognized,” said International 3D Society president Jim Chabin. “We believe tonight’s event was just the beginning of a lasting and appropriate recognition of 3D professionals by the international filmmaking community.”
Some of the big winners were Avatar (of course), Coraline, Up, and Brendan Fraser who received the ’3D Talent Award’ honoring his role as both actor and executive producer of ‘Journey to the Center of the Earth in 3D’, despite the Meteor Studios debacle.
New details have emerged about the AMD Radeon HD 5830. The Radeon HD 5830 GPU was to have launched on January 25, 2010. As we reported earlier, the reason for the delay was that a problem on the circuitboard was triggering an error when it underwent testing. Now more details about the 5830 have been revealed. The 5830 is to have 1280 1120 unified shaders running at 750 800 MHz, 64 56 texture mapping units, 32 16 render output units, and 1 GB of GDDR5 memory running at 1 GHz. As a comparison, the more expensive 5850 has 1440 unified shaders running at 725 MHz, and 1 GB of GDDR5 memory running at 1 GHz. You will notice the specifications have changed since we last talked about the 5830, and they have not changed for the better. Meanwhile, the 5850 sells for about $310 on NewEgg (all the $300 ones are back-ordered).
The on-line magazine Good has published an infographic on American’s religion. They break down the composition of each religion in America by the salary range of its members. What you do not see is which religions are the wealthiest, and therefore the title is misleading. I am curious as to where the data came from.
It’s no secret that the distribution of wealth is inequitable in the United States across racial, regional, and socio-economic groups. But there is a distinct variance among and within America’s faiths as well. This transparency takes a look at the income levels of America’s major religious groups, as compared to the average U.S. income distribution.
As the collapse of financial sector became imminent, the US government approved use of $700 Billion dollars under the “Troubled Asset Relief Program” (TARP) to stave off disaster. Time has passed, and now we all want to know “What Happened?” . A new infographic from VisualEconomics tries to answer the question “How does 700 Billion Dollars disappear”?
Annosoft has just released the new Lipsync 4.0, bringing a whole new level in high-end lip syncing effects to movies and videogames.
Advanced Phoneme editing – Tweaking phonemes for 3D lipsync just got a whole lot easier. A mixer approach that is easy to use and generates smooth lipsync curves without curve editing.
Improved Autodesk Maya integration –The Maya toolset has been rewritten from the ground up with production environments in mind.
Project System – New project system creates a centralized management point for all a projects lipsync needs.
New text based languages supported – Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
Customizable and improved UI – Toolbars can be customized and the entire “brightness” of the tool can be adjusted to taste.
This new package isn’t cheap, at prices from $500 (the Lipsync Desktop tool) to $11k (Full Fundle).
Over the past several decades, I have watched as scientists argue over the anthropogenic climate change. One of the consequences that they predict is that the sea level will rise by a certain level. Since many people live near the water, this will displace them as the land disappears under the sea. One problem with this is scenario is that no one really understands what a sea level change will mean. Information is Beautiful solves this problem by showing in an infographic what a change of 1 meter all the way up to a change of 80 meters would mean to the world over the next 8,000 years. Not only that, but they also look at where the main contributors to that sea level rise would be coming from. From the article:
Another day, another set of bewildering climate figures. Today, key climate scientists withdrew their predictions. of a metre sea-level rise by 2100. Other scientists meanwhile claimed the 1m figure was way too conservative anyway. They predict anything up to 2m sea level rises over the next century.
NASA has released a free 3-D app for the iPhone that allows users to have a live view of the sun. The app allows users to orbit around the sun, zoom into active solar flares, and even receive alerts when something interesting happens. For example, recently users were alerted to a comet approaching the sun. The app played a movie of the comet’s last hours as it was destroyed by the sun.
The views of the sun are not in the visible light spectrum. Instead the views are in the extreme ultraviolet portion of the spectrum, which explains why the sun looks green in the image to the right. It is this spectrum that gives a person the best views of solar flares and sunspots. Recently a strong solar flare erupted on the far side of the sun. While it was not viewable on earth, it was viewable by those with this app.
Planned improvements to the application include higher-resolution images and multiple extreme ultraviolet wavelengths. From the news article:
Realtime images used to construct the 3-dimensional sphere are beamed to Earth by the Solar-Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO), a pair of spacecraft with a combined view of 87% of the solar surface. STEREO-A is stationed over the western side of the sun, while STEREO-B is stationed over the east. Together, they rarely miss a thing.
Linden just updated their Second Life blog with details on the new SL Viewer application, releasing it in beta. The application itself is impressive, but then they let this little morsel slip:
Shared Media™, a standard capability in Viewer 2, makes sharing standard Web-based media and content in Second Life easy, and enables content creators to make more compelling, interactive experiences. Content creators can now place Web pages, video, Flash content, and other web media, onto any surface in Second Life. We expect that Shared Media will inspire a creative renaissance in Second Life as Residents explore more immersive and integrated inworld experiences and business opportunities such as gaming or theaters. And, for enterprises using Second Life as a work environment, Shared Media allows everyone to more effectively collaborate and share documents.
So it sounds like now you can independently map interactive web content onto each side of a Prim. Should be interested to see what new uses this brings inworld.
As the collapse of financial sector became imminent, the US government approved use of $700 Billion dollars under the “Troubled Asset Relief Program” (TARP) to stave off disaster. Time has passed, and now we all want to know “What Happened?” . A new infographic from VisualEconomics tries to answer the question “How does 700 Billion Dollars disappear”?
Annosoft has just released the new Lipsync 4.0, bringing a whole new level in high-end lip syncing effects to movies and videogames.
Linden just updated their Second Life blog with details on the new SL Viewer application, releasing it in beta. The application itself is impressive, but then they let this little morsel slip:
VizWorld.com 
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