Amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley of Australia recently captured this image of Jupiter’s rotation. Anthony Wesley was one of two people that captured the recent impact on Jupiter. With that high quality video, it leads me to ask: What is the difference between an amateur and a professional astronomer these days?
via : Birds Astronomy Site
Researchers at ETH Zurich and Disney have created a new algorithm for correcting the type of large 3D disparity in many live events that can lead to headaches and nausea as things “jump out” of the screen too far. The algorithm is simple enough that it could be implemented directly into displays allowing for an automatic correction, or used to post-process video prior to broadcast. The article is in German, but the Google Translation reads like:
Smolic and his team have now found an efficient way, later to change the disparity. With a Smolic developed algorithm, individual picture elements for a balanced depth to be recalculated. With non-linear operations, researchers can also change at individual levels in the image limit or deep structure of a film scene on the basis of individual objects change. In addition, the algorithms include a time component, as our three-dimensional perception of the temporal relationship between the two frames for the right and the left eye also depends.
Looks promising, but I would love to see some more information about the details of the algorithm.
Ein Algorithmus für mehr 3D-Sehgenuss. (Translated to English)
If you couldn’t make it to the various Khronos BOF’s at SIGGRAPH on OpenGL, OpenCL, or COLLADA, then you can at least view the presentations online. There’s several to look at:
Haven’t heard much of PTex in a while since the original announcement, but it was a hot topic at SIGGRAPH this year. If you’re note familiar with it, then read the original paper which discussed a new UV Texture Mapping technique which is fully automatic on arbitrary complexity and size models.
At SIGGRAPH, products like 3D-Coat and Houdini were showcasing PTex integration, and eventually Autodesk demoed a version of MudBox with PTex support. The Foundry’s Mari 1.0 has some limited PTex integration, and with the open-source nature of the algorithm it’s guaranteed to be coming to other systems as well.
Hopefully, PTex will come to MudBox soon and then to 3dsMax and Maya shortly afterward.
E-On Software announced the new Vue9 at SIGGRAPH, as well as two new interesting products: LumenRT and Carbon Scatter. LumenRT is the latest in a big collection of realtime rendering products, this time targeted at architectural and design projects.
LumenRT extends the concept of static rendering by adding the ability to move around inside pictures, in fully photo-realistic quality.
Designed to provide high fidelity visualization with accurate lighting, shadows and reflections, LumenRT is the ideal solution for:
- Creating a virtual interactive showroom,
- Demonstrating and sharing design concepts,
- Visualizing 3D models in client presentations,
- Exposing your projects in fully real-time photo-realistic 3D,
CarbonScatter is a collection of plugins for 3dsMax, Mental Ray, and VRay that integrate e-on’s “EcoSystem” algorithms to enable rapid population of scenes with millions of instances and rendering. CarbonScatter is scheduled to be released later to this year.
SIGGRAPH news today is abuzz with the benefits of 3d modeling in the health field.
LiveScience | 3D Brain Model Could Revolutionize Neurology
A new project aims to produce a Google Maps-like guide of the brain’s labyrinthine structure At a presentation here at the SIGGRAPH interactive technology and computer graphics conference, researchers highlighted how a complete 3-D model of the brain could spark a new era in neurological research.
Called The Whole Brain Catalog, the project compiles data from across the research spectrum, in a variety of forms. It takes MRI data, pictures of stained neurons and theoretical diagrams of brain circuitry and presents them in a way that scientists, doctors and 3-D animators can digest in a unified way. Those users then contribute back to the site, wiki-style, to produce an increasingly full model of the brain at every scale, down to the molecular level.
TechNews Daily | 3D Models To Aid In Mending Broken Bones
Surgically cutting a patient open is sometimes necessary to expose the break and allow a surgeon to manipulate the bone so it fits together accurately. To ease these surgeries, researchers seek to combine state of the art of 3-D imaging, pattern recognition and robotics.
CT scans of healthy and fractured joints will be used to work out the mathematical algorithm for the exact displacement and rotation of each bone fragment. Using this information, a 3-D model of the broken bone will be made on software from the United Kingdom-based company Simpleware that lets doctors better see how to mend the bone during surgery.
The Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20, 2010, killing eleven men. The oil rig then sank on April 22, 2010. Oil geysered into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days before being capped.
On July 24, 2010, the administrator of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Jane Lubchenco, provided a briefing about the anticipated impact of Tropical Storm Bonnie on the Deepwater Horizon oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico. Bonnie was expected to help dissipate and weather the oil on the sea surface, spreading out the slick, lowering surface concentrations, and making the oil more amenable to biodegradation. On July 28, 2010, after Bonnie had passed through the region, NOAA reported less oil observed on Gulf of Mexico overflights.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this natural-color image on July 28, 2010.
Digital Versus posted an interview with ATI last week on their plans for stereoscopic 3-D. They interview Shane Parfitt who is the Product Manager of Infinity and Stereo 3D and Terry Makedon who is the Product Manager of Catalyst. Currently all the news seems to be revolving around NVIDIA. So, how is ATI going to counter that? Click through to read the interview and find out.
What is ATI’s current position regarding 3D? Do you already have products on the market?
SP: There are 2 parts to the answer of that question. The first is that we do already support stereo 3D in some fashion. What we support, have been doing so for a number of years, is what’s considered the older technology, solutions that involve passively polarised glasses and line-interleaved displays and checkerboard displays. The recent 3D hype has been around 3D shutter glasses.
via : 3D films and games with glasses from ATI before Christmas @ Digital Versus
People everywhere are abuzz about the recent news that AMD just barely slipped past NVidia to achieve the position as #1 provider of discrete graphics chips.
AMD’s ATI graphics unit took 51 percent of the standalone, or “discrete,” graphics chip market compared to Nvidia’s share that was just shy of 49 percent, according to Mercury Research, a Cave Creek, Arizona firm that tracks graphics chip shipments. This is a sharp reversal from the same period a year ago when Nvidia had about 59 percent of the market and AMD had just under 41 percent.
If you recall, this is pretty much what I predicted in my “Predictions for 2010“, that ATI would gain some pretty significant market share while NVidia was ‘rallying the troops’ in preparation of Fermi. Now that Fermi is out and shipping, I think we’ll see things return to the state of before as NVidia regains it’s previous position as #1.
via AMD tops Nvidia in graphics chip shipments | Nanotech – The Circuits Blog – CNET News.
Another record breaking panoram, this time 70 Billion Pixels, created by 360world combines the results of 2 Sony A900 cameras with 400mm Minolta lenses on robotic camera mounts shooting straight for two days.
After another two days of post-processing, they wound up with this amazing 200GB file and 15-meter wide print of the beautiful Budapest hillside. Hit their site (it’s a bit slow at the moment) to browse the photo interactively.
70 Billion Pixels Budapest – The largest photo on Earth – created by 360world.eu.
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