So many EVGA GTX480′s..
9:30 am
Siemens to demonstration Stereoscopic Ultrasound
9:00 am
At the upcoming American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) in San Francisco, Siemens will be demonstrating a new OB/GYN imaging system that presents stereoscopic 3D Ultrasound images to physicians.
“This takes 3D/4D ultrasound imaging to the next level,” said Dr. Norbert Gaus, CEO, Clinical Products Division, Siemens Healthcare. “It offers a truly remarkable experience that’s rewarding for parents and their doctors.”
They are using the NVidia 3D Vision technology with QuadroFX cards and CUDA to bring it all together. The result is a system capable of amazing feats of real-time data analysis and visualization, in full 3D.
The latest acoustic technologies deliver a powerful system optimized with superb 2D, Doppler and 3D/4D imaging for the most demanding requirements in maternal-fetal medicine. Unique industry applications, such as Skeletal Rendering, further enhance the clinical excellence of the system. This Siemens-proprietary 3D/4D rendering technique results in true volumetric imaging, with accurate spatial resolution for enhanced visualization of the fetal skeleton.
I’ld love to see this stuff in action, myself. See the full release after the break.
Cubix Visual’s GPU XPander System for Octane
8:00 am
A new gadget from Cubix Visual & GPU Compute Solutions allows you to put several high-performance NVidia CUDA-enabled carads in a single PC via their external graphics host device. Specifically tuned and optimized for the Octane Renderer from Refractive software, some of the capabilities sound pretty impressive.
“We had ten NVIDIA CUDA-enabled graphics cards running multiple Octane Render files simultaneously on one dual processor motherboard last week” says Eric Fiegehen Director of Cubix s Visual & GPU Compute Solutions division. “And we even had one or two PCI Express slots left over. We ll have to try and really push the envelope next time with 11 or 12 graphics cards on one workstation” Fiegehen says with a smile. “
Reminds me some of the NextIO offerings, but sounds like this is very tuned for GPU’s. The system is available for under $2000 (with an Octane Render proof of purchase), but they have a larger version called the XPander Rackmount that allows a single 19″ Rackmount blade connect to 1-4 workstations.
They’ll be demo’ing it at SIGGRAPH2010.
Infographic: The Financial Impact of the Icelandic Volcano
4:00 pm
Over at KnowYourMoney, they’ve compiled the data regarding the airport shutdowns caused by the huge Icelandic Eyjafjallajokull Volcano last month. In the series of graphics they show the size of the volcano and ash cloud, and various shutdowns and closings it caused across the major european carriers.
So far the estimated impact of the volcano is £2.2Billion, with an £80Million bailout from the UK government expected.
Full-size after the break.
Infographics: iPhone Deconstruction
3:00 pm
A great pair of graphics from Ben Millen showcase some of the detail in the Apple iPhone architecture. Far beyond my expertise, I’ll just let you read his description:
In researching the iPhone as a part of Critical Wayfinding, the analysis of the device, the corporation, the vast network of shareholders, technology and the distribution infrastructure that surrounds it yielded an overwhelming amount of information. In an attempt to organize this information into a format that is engaging and reflective of the wayfinding foundations of the project, two large conceptual diagrams in the style of Harry Beck’s London Underground diagram were produced.
The two graphics are huge, and he’s displaying them in a Google Maps-style interactive setting. See them here and here.
BOXX announces renderPRO Series
2:30 pm
BOXX has announced their newest product, the “renderPRO” system (for Personal Rendering Option”). It’s a smallish box designed to sit on top of your existing workstation and provide remote rendering services.
renderPRO makes rendering personal. You don’t need a server room, IT personnel, or budget approval. Forget waiting on your workstation or standing in line for time on the studio render farm. renderPRO is quiet, compact, and fits on top of your workstation, at your desk, or anywhere with a network connection, so now you can render the images you’ve created right at your desk. renderPRO puts dedicated rendering at your fingertips and puts rendering decisions back in your hands.
For independent graphics artists, this might be a useful solution. Any larger user would go straight for the RenderBOXX solution and build a rack. The lowest configuration (the Pro4 with dual quad cores and 6G ram) is $2k, but the highest end (Pro12) runs all the way up to $10k.
An interesting option, for sure, but is it really useful? Would you rather buy one of these, or a full computer?
Cinesite details VFX work on Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
2:00 pm
Prince of Persia, the new movie based on the popular game, comes to theaters next week and features some fancy CG work by Cinesite. DigitalArts talks to Sue Rowe, visual effects supervisor, and they discuss some of the effects and creations they made.
Another sequence required Cinesite to create a full CG lioness. Using Autodesk Maya, the lioness was generated to reflect a creature that looked starved and malnourished.
“We really wanted to present a lioness who was bordering on emaciated to emphasise her need to hunt,” said Rowe. “To achieve this look we graded the lioness to have washed-out coloured fur and deeply emphasised her bone structure around the rib cage and hips.”
via Cinesite details VFX work on Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time – News – Digital Arts.
Infographic: The Rise of Social Gaming
1:33 pm
OnlineSchools.org sends work of a new infographic showing the staggering amount of people and money involved in Social Gaming, specifically Zynga. IF you’re not familiar with Zynga (consider yourself lucky), they are the company behind such FaceBook successes as Mafia Wars and Farmville. Some numbers to whet your appetite:
- Zynga owns 6 of the top 10 FaceBook Games.
- Zynga has 65Million users per day
- They made $200M in 2009, and predict to make $450M in 2010
- But they spend just under $100M in FaceBook Ads
See full-size after the break.
CGschool offering 5 free 1-hour Webinars
1:00 pm
If you want to brush up on VRay, 3dsMax, or Mental Ray then check out these free 1-hour webinars being offered by CGSchool next month. The classes are overviews of their longer, more exhaustive classes, so you’ll get a taste of what you might see in the full (paid) class and maybe learn something for free in the process.
June 7 – Internet Marketing for Arch. Visualization (live from Spine3D in U.S.) – Brian Zajac
June 8 – V-Ray Advanced (live from the Chaos Group in Bulgaria) – Brian Smith
June 9 – 3ds Max Advanced Modeling (live from Spine3D in U.S.) – Alex Gorbunov
June 10 – mental ray Beginner (live from India) – Pete Draper
June 11 – PF Track (live from U.K.) – Mike Merron
Registration details are on their site.
via CGschool | Register.
Infographic: @font-face rendering
12:30 pm
Over at the Typophile community, user ‘miha’ has created this great chart showing how various operating systems and web browsers handle the new ‘font-face’ CSS attribute. Different systems have different methods of handling fonts, from antialiasing effects to subpixel approximations, each one has it’s own little quirks.
I made this just as a general info for those uniformed.
It is simplified, but generally speaking these are main possible paths with default settings.
X axis is market share (with some guessing).
I know a small examples of renderings could be included for better understanding, and I will post this & other refinements later.
I always thought that the Mac was supposed to be the ‘best’, but the font example shown seems a bit heavy to me. What do you think?
VizWorld.com 
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