15 Things You Didn’t Know about Michael Jackson
8:36 pm
NewTek to demonstrate LightWave3D at SIGGRAPH
4:17 pm
NewTek, creators of LightWave, will be demonstrating the new LightWave3D at SIGGRAPH, along with several industry experts who will be demonstrating how they use NewTek products in their workflows.
- Experience an all new LightWave, with production workflow enhanced versions of Modeler and Layout as well as powerful next generation CORE technologies, including enhanced pipeline integration tools and support for Autodesk’s geoCache file format, Anaglyph Stereoscopic viewport support, interactive display and rendering tools, new UV mapping tools, bullet rigid body dynamics, and new immersive real-time and game tools.
- Meet Rob Powers, NewTek’s director of entertainment and media development, who will answer questions about the next generation of LightWave. Powers was a key member of the team behind James Cameron’s “Avatar,” and also worked on Steven Spielberg’s team for “TinTin.” On “Avatar,” he established the very first Virtual Art Department and supervised the virtual environments.
They also have some of the guys behind “RepoMen” and several Nickelodeon specials. If you haven’t registered for SIGGRAPH yet, 3D artists can simply visit the NewTek Site and apply for free exhibit-only passes.
Full details after the break.
Read more…
Ben & Jerry’s Augment their Ice Cream
3:00 pm
Ice cream gurus Ben & Jerry’s have done the unexpected and entered the iPhone App Market with an impressive new offering that combines two of my favorite things: Augmented Reality and Ice Cream.
And then there is Ben & Jerry’s Scoop of Happiness app [iTunes link], which was just re-released with a new augmented reality-enhanced feature called Moo Vision. Holding up a pint of New York Super Fudge Chunk, Cherry Garcia, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough or Milk & Cookies ice cream to your iPhone will cause vector images of cocoa farmers, Manhattan skyscrapers and, uh, flying chickens to magically spring forth from the lid. You can click to find out exactly why these various images are appearing and — get ready for it — share the information with your friends on your favorite social networks.
Perhaps the most interesting part is that the result is entirely markerless. No Markers, no QR codes, nothing. It seems to recognize the lid of the carton and use that to place the overlays. However, being that is the only function is a bit fat at 21.5Mb on your phone.
Nonetheless, I think I may make a trip to the grocery store just to try this out.
via Ben & Jerry’s iPhone App Gets Even More Psychedelic with Augmented Reality.
Siemens syngo.fourSight for Obstetrics Now Available
2:00 pm
A few months ago, Siemens demonstrated their ‘syngo.fourSight’ product at the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in San Francisco. An impressive demo, it wasn’t available to the public until just now.
While conventional 3D ultrasound technologies use two-dimensional monitors for the evaluation of 3D images, syngo.fourSight Workplace uses NVIDIA® 3D Vision™ technology with NVIDIA Quadro® FX high-end professional graphics solutions, utilizing the NVIDIA CUDA™ architecture, to offer a 3D viewing experience in “real 3D.” Providing additional information to the physician and assisting in communication with surgeons and patients, this quality improvement may also improve paternal-fetal bonding, and aid in treatment or pre- and post-natal surgical planning.
I had the chance to see this in action, and it truly has to be seen to be appreciated. Live reconstruction of sonogram imagery for true “4D Viewing” (3D viewing that animates real-time) truly is impressive to watch. They call it ‘Amnioscopic Rendering Mode’, but it’s essentially a volume rendering algorithm designed with known fetal and biological parameters to create realistic lighting conditions and scattering effects.
Full release after the break.
Assembly/Disassembly with Particle Flow in 3Ds Max
1:00 pm
A neat tutorial from Sachin Joshi shows a clever use of Particle Flow in 3dsMax, using it to map motion of exploding objects like this camcorder and tripod.
Being creative with the dynamic systems in our 3D applications can produce stunning, exciting and elegant results. In this tutorial, Sachin Joshi walks us through one such example using Particle Flow in 3Ds Max, showing us how to assemble and disassemble objects within your scene.
via Assembly/Disassembly with Particle Flow in 3Ds Max | Cgtuts+.
Chaos Group’s V-Ray Public Event
12:35 pm
If you’re heading to SIGGRAPH, then sign up to attend the Chaos Group’s V-Ray Public Event where they’ll be holding presentations and live demonstrations of some of the newest V-Ray offerings. Already they have setup:
- V-Ray RT on GPUs
- V-Ray Pipelines – demonstration on how the V-Ray rendering engine can be successfully integrated with post production tools to create powerful and reliable pipelines.
- V-Ray for Rhino and Sketch up – latest developments and new features
- Pdplayer – the professional image sequence player and viewer for the 3D, CG and VFX industry
- Phoenix FD – the grid based simulator for smoke, fire and haze
- F_BOX picture shooter – High end 3D made easy.Web easy.
And more.. Seating is limited to sign up now at the link below. IF you can’t make it to that then definitely stop by the Chaos Group booth (612) where they’ll have live demonstrations of the new V-Ray RT GPUs running on the 3DBOXX Extreme Edition with 4 GPUs.
Walt Disney Animation chooses Nuke
11:13 am
Another big win for The Foundry as Walt Disney Animation Studios announces their choice to begin doing all of their workflows in Nuke.
“Nuke is a powerful and flexible program that has become the industry standard in compositing for films involving complex visual effects, and state-of-the-art computer animation,” said Dan Candela, director of technology for Walt Disney Animation Studios. “It provides the best available foundational toolset for making stereoscopic animated films. We’re thrilled to be able to adopt this advanced toolset.”
The Cost of Spam: C02 Emissions
10:30 am
It all seems sound except the 0.3g of CO2 per email… How did they get that?
Double Negative Rewinds Time for Prince of Persia
10:00 am
The major plot point in The Prince of Persia is the “Dagger of Time” that can rewind time for the wielder up to two minutes, allowing them to change recent events. While older studios may have simply rewound the film wheel to create the effect, that’s not sufficient for today’s discriminating audience. Double Negative was called in to find a better way to do it, and wound up creating a a new technology called ‘event capture’ that combines photography, video, live action, CG, and a lot of math.
To accomplish this, multiple locked cameras were set roughly along the path of the final camera. “It’s sort of set up like bullet time,” said Ellis. Up to nine witness cameras were used, with each requiring the delivery of precise calibrations, lens, and set details. This was used to record the live action scene. Taking the resulting footage, Dneg roto’d out the character or characters, resulting in nine shots of roto per character which were intersected with each other in 3D, providing a cookie-cut of that person mapped on basic mesh which was accurate to the roto and camera positions with the real-world textures. The technique required a sharp image with little motion blur, but a maximum depth of field. Selection of the appropriate texture per frame was handled by transitioning from one of the nine cameras to the next.
NVIDIA GTX 280 SLI 3D Surround Experience
9:00 am
We have been talking for awhile about ATI’s Eyefinity and how great it is for gaming. Recently NVIDIA has also gotten into the game, as it were, by using 3D Vision Surround. [H]ard|OCP has posted an article looking at the 3D Vision Surround experience using older, and less expensive, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 video cards in an SLI configuration.
Take your 2 year old GTX 280 video card and pair it up with another 2 year old GTX 280 and what do you get? You get an NVIDIA SLI system capable of delivering huge multi-display NV Surround gaming resolutions with the latest games.
How did it turn out? Let’s just sum it up by saying that NVIDIA won the Gold Award from [H]ard|OCP.
VizWorld.com 
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