VizWorld.com

Studios keep taking our childhood favorites and “retrofitting” them into stereoscopic 3D productions.  Lacking the true depth information of a stereoscopic camera rig or laser distancing, it’s a lengthy and time consuming process.  One would think that at least new productions would opt for the stereoscopic camera rigs, but at a recent panel discussion assemble by the International 3D Society, it would seem we would be wrong.

“Shooting with a twin-camera setup vs. doing a subsequent 2D-to-3D conversion is a creative choice ” said Rob Hummel topper at Prime Focus which includes conversion among its services. “Both methods are a way to trigger depth cues in the brain.”

They claim that the recent disaster of “Clash of the Titans” was an anomaly, and not indicative of the capabilities of the process when used properly.  They do make one good point about the conversion process:

Hummel said in some situations, especially extreme close-ups, it’s not practical to shoot with a bulky two-camera rig and conversion is the preferred way to give those scenes the illusion of depth.

Having dealt with this personally, I know that’s a particularly difficult thing to shoot with a stereoscopic rig.

However, it still doesn’t make me happy to hear about the Lion King in 3D.

via No end to 3D retrofits – Entertainment News, Technology News, Media – Variety.

Graphics 3d, movie, stereoscopic

Even with all the adverse effects, I’m gonna keep drinking it.

15 Things You Should Know About Caffeine » This Blog Rules | Why go elsewhere?.

infographics

Using graphics processing units (GPUs) to perform general purpose computing (GPGPU) has been all the rage in the past few years. In fact, the second fastest high performance computer (HPC) in the world today uses NVidia GPUs. But for all their benefits, there is a problem with using GPUs to solve problems. The problem is that the bandwidth between the GPU and the rest of the system is limited to what the PCI Express bus can offer. Again, this can be seen in the second fastest HPC system in the world. That machine can only reach 46% of theoretical peak performance, while the fastest HPC machine can reach 80% of theoretical peak performance. The solution is to run as much of your code on the GPU as possible. If a researcher can do that, then they can potentially run their codes hundreds of times faster than on a CPU.

That is what makes the latest paper from Intel so interesting. In the paper, Intel showed that you could only achieve a 14x speedup. That is a nice, backhanded compliment, Intel.

The paper is called “Debunking the 100x GPU vs CPU Myth” and it is indeed true that not *all* applications can see this kind of speed up, some just have to make do with an order of magnitude performance increase. But, 100X speed ups, and beyond, have been seen by hundreds of developers.

via The NVIDIA Blog – “GPUs Are Only Up To 14 Times Faster than CPUs” says Intel.

Hardware gpgpu, intel, nvidia

Another great self-referential infographic on the recent influx of crap infographics.

From airline safety manuals to complex data visualizations, I have always been fascinated by infographics. A well done infographic has the power to capture one’s acute attention span and convey information that would have taken longer to simply read (oh no, not reading!). However, for every brilliantly thought out and well executed mashup of art and data, there now seems to be an influx of mundane and formulaic counterparts infesting the very internet that we hold so near and dear.

Couldn’t agree more.

via An Intimate Look at Infographics « Think Brilliant Media Studios™. via ChartPorn

infographics infographics

Nintendo is using a new graphics processing chip in the its soon to be released Nintendo 3DS. Nintendo selected a graphics processing chip designed by the Japanese company Digital Media Professionals (DMP). The graphics processing core is called the PICA200. DMP has released more information in this press leaflet. The true advantage of this new GPU is that it consume very little power. That feature is important in such portable devices as the Nintendo 3DS. The article also states that Nintendo looked at rival technologies from AMD and Nvidia before choosing the PICA200.

Founded in 2002, DMP has had a goal to develop a high-performance graphics chip that is relatively power efficient, according to Peddie. Peddie describes the technology as “real-time photo realistic rendering with physically correct lighting and shadowing.” Certain techniques that DMP uses allow it to quickly render clouds, smoke, gas, and other fuzzy objects, according to Peddie.

via Nintendo 3DS uses new graphics tech @ CNET News.

Hardware 3ds, nintendo

It has been more than 60 days since the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster started, and still BP has not managed to stop the flow of oil. Several of my vacation spots are now fouled with oil.

On Saturday, June 19, 2010, oil spread northeast from the leaking Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil appears as a maze of silvery-gray ribbons in this photo-like image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite.

The location of the leaking well is marked with a white dot. North of the well, a spot of black may be smoke; reports from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say that oil and gas continue to be captured and burned as part of the emergency response efforts.

Meanwhile, BP is continuing to drill two relief wells. The first well is at 15,936 feet and the second well is at 10,000 feet. The plan is to intersect the primary, blown-out, well at 18,000 feet. Once they do that, BP will fill the primary well with mud and cement to stop the flow. The project is ahead of schedule, but is still expected to be completed in mid-August. That latest development is that BP is now using ranging equipment to home in on the damaged well. This ranging equipment sends out an “electric current from the relief well that will make contact with the well casing in the damaged well, creating an electromagnetic field between the wells that signals information about direction and distance.”, reports Jaquetta White for The Times-Picayune.

via Oil Slick in the Gulf of Mexico : Image of the Day.

Science nasa, oil

Knock Nevis Super Tanker Inforgraphic – BoatOperatorCard.ca.

infographics

How many times have you found a great model either online or in some library and simply want to render a beautiful photorealistic picture?  You don’t want to mess with building materials and fancy caustic or final gather settings, or perhaps you just don’t really understand what all that means.  Maybe you’re just in a big rush and don’t have the hour or two it would take to build the scene, place the lights, build the materials, and then wait for it to render.

If this has ever happened to you, then you should check out this new product announced today: Bunkspeed SHOT 3D Rendering software.  The first ever product released using the mental images ‘iray‘ product, it is a model renderer designed with simplicity in mind.  I had the chance to meet with Mental Image’s Micheal Kaplan and Bunkspeed’s Philip Lunn and see a live demonstration of this, and I have to admit it is impressive.

He had a rather powerful demonstration rig (A BOXX system with 2 Tesla 2050′s and a Quadro) showing off the new CUDA-capable rendering abilities of Bunkspeed SHOT & iray, and could reach a percievably perfect scene in a handful of seconds.  Of course, the solution would continue to compute for some time, but the beauty of their solution is that it is designed to mimic a photographer’s usual workflow.  Simply construct the scene (No modeling is really possible beyond basic geometry placement and scaling), and then enter your camera parameters (focal distance, f-stop, etc) and then “Snap the picture” to begin the full-quality rendering.  Rendering takes just as long as you want it to take, as the iray process is an incremental one and can be stopped early or extended to set the desired level of detail you want.

Beyond just the rendering capabilities, they also have several features you will find interesting.  One particularly useful one is their ability to replicate models.  In the example they showed, he loaded a highly detailed car model and dropped on some default materials to make it lime green with a white racing stripe.  He then simply cut-n-paste it a few more times in the environment.  Selecting all of the cars, he could then select an “arrangement” from a nearby menu to put them in a line, in a V-formation, or several others.  He selected a line, and then added a slight angle so that all of the cars were at about a 30-degree angle.  Then, he simply dropped colors on each car to change them so that he wound up with a variety of cars in a beautiful arrangement, all in a matter of about 10 seconds.

The next demo was even more astounding.  Loading a simple Sketchup scene, you saw the geometry of a small kitchen with stove, lights, countertop, etc.  The SketchUp model was of a good quality, but the SketchUp rendering engine left much to be desired.  With a few mere clicks he started the iRay renderer and generated a scene that would make any CAD designer’s jaw drop.  That is the main focus of the package:  Take CAD Models and render them photorealistically, with a minimum of fuss.  Currently the package supports a wide variety of inputs including COLLADA, FBX, SketchUp, OBJ, and more.

Finally, he built a very basic scene using some of the basic geometry tools.  He added a simple sphere, and then two perpendicular quads (one floor, one wall).  Drop a “Mirror” material on one, select the “Studio” HDR Environent map from their library, and bam the scene is complete and rendered. No more do you have to deal with setting the number of bounce rays, the final gather samples, or the complex shadow parameters.  All of this is done for you, and the rendering is in near real-time thanks to iRay and the NVidia Quadro architecture.

Lest you think this all a gimmick, the cover of the upcoming Watch Journal will, for the first time ever, feature a CG rendering of a watch on its cover.  Who created this rendering, you ask?  Bunkspeed Shot.

The Devon Treat Watch, Cover Image for the Watch Journal

Of course, CUDA isn’t required, the software will run just fine on CPU-only, even on a small laptop, however the performance boost from the CUDA cores is undeniable.  They claim that in their tests they’ve found a single Quadro to be equivalent to 12 Nehalem cores, and their 3-GPU system (a Quadro and 2 Tesla’s) equal to roughly 120 cores.

Bunkspeed Shot is available today for $995.  Full press release after the breakl

Read more…

Graphics bunkspeed, cuda, feature, nvidia, software

15 Things You Should Know About Marijuana [Infographic] | Hail Mary Jane.

infographics

Anton from the 3-D vision blog reports that the NASCAR Coke Zero 400 race will be streamed live in 3-D online on July 3, 2010 at 7:30 pm EDT. If you have a 3-D vision equipped PC, this would be the time to use it.

The requirements for watching the live 3D stream of the NASCAR race is that you have a 3D Vision PC, the latest NVIDIA Driver (257.21 GPU and 3D Vision driver), and the latest Silverlight plug-in installed (v4.0.50401 or newer) as you’ll be watching the event trough your browser. It sounds very easy, and the good news is that there is even a demo of the 3D streaming with the Silverlight already available, so that you can try if everything works fine before the actual live streaming in 3D starts. And hopefully there will be some recorded footage after the event to watch if you happen to miss the actual race.

via NASCAR Live 3D Streaming Online for 3D Vision Owners On July 3rd – 3D Vision Blog.

Hardware 3d, nascar