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A neat tool from the MIT Media Lab could be useful in tools like ZBrush where 3D Sculpting can be somewhat difficult to imagine when working with fundamentally 2D tools like a Flat Panel.  Using a ‘Collapsible Pen’ and special display hardware, they create an augmented tool that can be ‘pushed’ into virtual reality.

Beyond was created by the MIT Media Lab and is a pretty genius, glasses-less way to create 3D on a 2D surface. The 3D on 2D surface magic uses the collapsible pen, a tabletop display, an infrared position tracking system to track the pen, and a camera to track the user's face so it can tweak the angle of the 3D effect. The collapsible pen is actually rather simple, with only basic electronics and 2 infrared markers behind the magic.

via Collapsible Input Pen Lets You Draw 3D Images On a 2D Surface.

Beyond – Collapsible Input Device for Direct 3D Manipulation beyond the Screen from Jinha Lee on Vimeo.

Hardware, Science virtual reality

The School of Visual Arts (SVA) is playing host to a short course by Shawn Allen on data visualization.  It’s just begun, and the first entry is a brief history of Data Visualization.

Data visualization is a pretty literal term that means, quite simply, the visual representation of quantitative data. In this course we’ll learn common techniques for visualizing data, as well as some strategies for managing information digitally. But first, a brief history.

It begins with the first charts by William Playfair, and goes through modern inventions like IBM ManyEyes and Google Fusion.  After some history, it goes through the usual ‘What is Data’ and various types of charts and data formats.

Worth a read, even for the seasoned veteran.

via Introduction.

Science education, history

We know the World Cup is over, but there’s still time for yet another visualization, this one from Simply Zesty, showing us the size of the social media buzz around the tournament and the brands behind it. Designer Derri Hasmi made a great infographic about the human energy spent on several sports, and our third pick of the day is Loans and Credit‘s informational piece on the great Nevada state. The folks at Campus Explorer surprised a lot of people with their design on the duel between Creationism and Darwinism in American education, and we close this roundup with a look at Microsoft and the state of Cloud Computing from Focus.

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Graphics, Science design, infographic, Visual Loop, visualizations

What Do They Talk About During Supreme Court Nomination Hearings

19 Things you Didn’t Know about Star Wars

Graphics, Science digest, infographics, list

The Last Airbender required several lengthy computations of fluid-like effects for the water and fire scenes, which were becoming problematic for ILM as the scenes required lengthy computation and render times.  Using their in-house tool called Plume, they were able to harness NVidia CUDA and GPU’s to dramatic effect.

“As with everything in high-end visual effects, iteration was essential,” said Olivier Maury, research and development engineer, ILM. “By working within an NVIDIA GPU-based framework, we saw up to eight iterations each day of complex fire, dust and air simulations. That represents speed improvements of 10-15x over CPU-based simulations. Access to CUDA and NVIDIA GPUs has entirely changed the way we approach a variety of complex visual effects challenges.”

They used a 12-machine render farm that included Quadro FX5800 cards, which was capable of the detailed simulations of Aang’s airbending against the Fire Nations abilities.  The end result was near real-time interactive rates.

“Because Plume is accelerated by NVIDIA Quadro GPUs, it’s highly interactive and becomes a tool that relies more on the artist’s eye rather than their technical knowledge,” explained Craig Hammack, associate visual effects supervisor, ILM. “This means you don’t have to understand the underlying algorithms or all of the fine details of how fluid solvers work to drive the detail of a simulation.”

via Nvidia Investor Relations.

Graphics, Hardware cuda, ilm, movie, nvidia, vfx

Southpaw technology has just announced their impressive asset management product TACTIC now integrates with The Foundry’s NUKE compositing software, giving you a 1-stop tool for asset management, workflow, and compositing.

“Securing, tracking and versioning shots is a complete headache for most artists and most productions,” said Dr. Bill Collis, CEO of The Foundry. “As productions grow in size, the headaches will only get worse. We’re really excited about this new integration because it will not only solve many of the file management problems that slow productions down; it will boost the quality of composites by freeing artists to spend more time on shot creation.”

They’ll be demonstrating it at SIGGRAPH in booth #205, and the product is available today.  Full release after the break.

Read more…

Graphics nuke, software, tactic, thefoundry

Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City has just brought up a new CAVE Virtual Environment with the help of Christie, who is using eight Mirage 3-chip DLP projectors to generate acative stereo at 1920-square on each wall.  1920-square doesn’t sound like much, but its’ a huge step up from most CAVE’s that operate in the 1024-square range.

“The ICB’s CAVE facility is a powerful new tool that is helping us attract the best and brightest minds in the world,” remarked Dr. Harel Weinstein. “We are able to explore images at the molecular and cellular level with a clarity and precision that was previously unattainable. Images of tissues and biological objects can be twisted, turned and expanded, viewed layer by layer with the flick of the wrist, allowing for an unmatched level of inspection that engulfs researchers in colors and details.”

Of course, they can now view their medical data in higher and better resolution thanks to these new projectors from Christie.

However, if you run the numbers (based on my previous CAVE experience), at 1920 pixels on a 10-foot screen, that’s 16dpi.  That means each pixel is a 16th of an inch.  Given the blurriness of the active shutter glasses and the distance away that you stand (About 5 feet), that may not be noticable.  I find it interesting that they chose active stereo over a nonstereo 4K projector, which would double the DPI to about 30dpi.  While they don’t provide many details on what they’re doing, I would be interested to know why they chose Stereo over Higher Resolution.

Nonetheless, they do acknowledge the Pixel Density, albeit in a strange way.

Borcherding added, “Pixel density is key to visualizing the vast amount of data we need to analyze. We chose Christie because they were the only company to propose a genuine high definition CAVE solution, which no one else could offer.

Announcements like this I always treat with a bit of skepticism, since I find it hard to imagine what a 4 or 5 wall CAVE offers over a traditional flat display.  Their example doesn’t help the matter much:

The facility has also used the 3D CAVE to study MRI images to successfully identify areas of the brain that are underdeveloped in children whose mothers  engaged in substance abuse while pregnant. Dr. Luis Gracia, Scientific Application Specialist with the ICB, built a fully automated rendering pipeline using software from Harvard to help researchers visualize the brains of these children over time to track the development of various regions.  Being able to get children in therapies sooner based on these study results can correct a large amount of the deficit that they would normally experience if not treated as quickly.

Hopefully such user-studies of how the CAVE was instrumental in discovering these brain deformities will be published in upcoming scientific visualization journals, they make for great Success Stories and Application articles.  Sadly, too often are they forgotten in the ‘we got a new toy’ euphoria and obligatory tours.

via Christie’s 3D CAVE Helps Weill Cornell Medical College Deliver Breakthrough Findings.

Hardware, Science biomed, cave, virtual reality

A couple of websites have picked up the news of an interesting little coffee table book called ‘The Little Book of Shocking Global Facts‘.  Those in the visualization & infographics communities have been shredding it as a perfect example of some of the worst infographics ever made.

Pitched as the combination of “startling graphic imagery with truly shocking facts gathered from the world’s most authoritative sources”, the book seems not to have convinced everyone. Reviewed instead as a “compendium of awful graphics”, its illustrations seem to ignore even the most basic rules of good infographic design, while the lack of any source material does not make the resulting insights trustworthy.

While I haven’t seen the book myself, the graphics floating around truly are bad.  The one above (click for fullsize) is simply ghastly.  From the unreadable text (I honestly thought it was some type of Pictograph at first), to the horrible moire pattern black and white pie chart, with 3 slices that I can’t tell any difference in, it really is an early contender for Worst Graphic of 2010.

via Question: Is This the Little Book of Shocking Infographics? – information aesthetics.

Graphics bad, book

cebas Visual Technology has announced that they’ll be unveiling a new “hardware accelerated rendering technology” to work with finalRender R4 SE, due to be released in Q1 of 2011.

A very first finalRender GPU prototype for 3ds Max will be available for experiencing first hand at the SIGGRAPH 2010 exposition in Los Angeles, California. This product presentation will show off the very early stages of a future product release of finalRender R4 and finalRender R4 SE, both available as an update to finalRender R3.5 which will be also shown for the first time on the show floor, from July 27 to July 29th.

The images look like it’s a new rebranded NVidia Tesla, presumably Fermi-driven, and the press release basically states it’s a CUDA accelerated rendering algorithm.  However, they claim it will also work on OpenCL (presumably opening the way for a future switch to AMD if found worthy).

via finalRender R4 SE Technology Sneak Preview | CG Daily news.

Graphics, Hardware finalrender, gpgpu, siggraph, software

This week’s Resource is the new Beautiful Visualization: Looking at Data through the Eyes of Experts from Julie Steele and Noah Iliinsky.

Visualization is the graphic presentation of data — portrayals meant to reveal complex information at a glance. Think of the familiar map of the New York City subway system, or a diagram of the human brain. Successful visualizations are beautiful not only for their aesthetic design, but also for elegant layers of detail that efficiently generate insight and new understanding.

This book examines the methods of two dozen visualization experts who approach their projects from a variety of perspectives — as artists, designers, commentators, scientists, analysts, statisticians, and more. Together they demonstrate how visualization can help us make sense of the world.

• Explore the importance of storytelling with a simple visualization exercise
• Learn how color conveys information that our brains recognize before we’re fully aware of it
• Discover how the books we buy and the people we associate with reveal clues to our deeper selves
• Recognize a method to the madness of air travel with a visualization of civilian air traffic
• Find out how researchers investigate unknown phenomena, from initial sketches to published papers

Contributors include:

Nick Bilton, Michael E. Driscoll, Danyel Fisher, Jessica Hagy, Gregor Hochmuth, Todd Holloway, Noah Iliinsky, Eddie Jabbour, Valdean Klump, Aaron Koblin, Robert Kosara, Valdis Krebs, JoAnn Kuchera-Morin, Adam Perer, Anders Persson, Maximilian Schich, Matthias Shapiro, Julie Steele, Moritz Stefaner, Jer Thorp, Fernanda Viega, Martin Wattenberg, and Michael Young.

You can find this book and many others in the VizWorld Store.

Science resource of the week