Recently, Nickelodeon celebrated Dora the Explorer’s 10th birthday with a special hour-long episode. In the episode, all of the classic characters seen in over 100 countries and 30 languages come together to celebrate Dora’s birthday. The 45-second opener was created by yU+co and Nickelodeon using several miniature pop-up sets, a Camera 5D MArk II, and AfterEffects and Maya.
The whole process of creating the stop motion animation took six weeks from beginning to end — building, shooting, animating and editing the practical sets and characters. Despite certain limitations, Boey is proud of how he and his team brought it all together and created it from nothing. When asked what attracts him to working in this type of animation, which can be so meticulous and time consuming, Boey notes, “You have to have an obsessive compulsiveness and extreme patience to do stop motion animation, which I do, and I absolutely love doing it!’’
Read the full release after the break, or watch the opener here.
Next time you set out to build a 3D package, maybe you should check out the new “PixelLight” project which brings together Newton, ODE, OpenAL, FMod, and more into a cohesive and complete 3D application framework.
PixelLight is an open-source framework that allows you to create 3D applications easily. As a cross-platform library it is designed to create desktop applications for several platforms (Windows, Linux), web applications and even mobile applications for newer mobile platforms. Due to it’s modular design, it is suitable not only for games, but for any kind of 3D applications like e.g. product presentations or simulations.
It’s built entirely in C++ and already runs on Windows and Linux, with test versions already running on mobile devices and web browsers. Definitely looks like something to keep an eye on.
Unbeknownst to me, there’s been a storm brewing behind the scenes of the Annie awards ever since Kung Fu Panda swept last years awards, completely shutting out WALL-E. Previously, any paid member of ASIFA was eligible to vote, which made it relatively easy (and cheap) to stuff the ballot. This year, they decided to change it to only qualified “animation professionals”, but that wasn’t enough for Pixar’s Ed Catmull.
“After more than a year of discussions with the ASIFA board, we have regretfully decided to withdraw from the organization and no longer participate in the annual Annie Awards. We believe there is an issue with the way the Annies are judged, and have been seeking a mutually agreeable solution with the board. Although some initial steps have been taken, the board informed us that no further changes would be made to address our concerns.”
Employees are still free to attend and submit entries, but Disney/Pixar will no longer be sponsoring the event as in years past.
NVidia has just published a paper by Morgan McGuire in the June 2010 issue of High Performance Graphics on Ambient Occlusion Volumes.
This paper introduces a new approximation algorithm for the near-field ambient occlusion problem. It combines known pieces in a new way to achieve substantially improved quality over fast methods and substantially improved performance compared to accurate methods. Intuitively, it computes the analog of a shadow volume for ambient light around each polygon, and then applies a tunable occlusion function within the region it encloses. The algorithm operates on dynamic triangle meshes and produces output that is comparable to ray traced occlusion for many scenes. The algorithm’s performance on modern GPUs is largely independent of geometric complexity and is dominated by fill rate, as is the case with most deferred shading algorithms.
In addition to the paper they’ve released a performance chart adding in the GeForce GTX480 (Fermi) and a few new engines to benchmark against.
We have Word Processors to help us make pretty documents, so why don’t we have Visual Processors to help us make pretty visuals? Smart Draw aims to do just that by creating a simple near-fully automatic system for creating mind maps, flow charts, and several types of graphs that integrates with most of the popular business apps (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Project).
You can view their ‘Features‘ page for a comprehensive list of the many things you can do with the over 70 templates they ship, including flowcharts, or charts, maps, networking digrams, and even crime scene reconstructions. Available for windows only, for $197.
Over at the VizWorthWatching blog (run by some CEI staff), they have an article on an analysis of the underbody of the 1997 Camaro SS. After establishing a baseline with a classic wind tunnel, the simulated the effect with StarCCM+, and then exported the data for use in EnSight.
Some nice pictures, with a few details on the process, over at their site.
YouTube has a great video from the ignite conference series where Sunni Brown discusses the “Power of the Doodle”, and how the classic marginal doodle can be far more than a mental distraction. It’s a great presentation with some interesting use of visual aids, and chock full of details like:
On average, people retain 10% of what they hear, but 90% of what they see
There are 3 learning pathways (auditory, kinesthetic, and visual)
All US presidents have been doodlers, but Republicans are more prolific than Democrats
Check it out, and then shed the shame of doodling during meetings.
Probably, some of our readers weren’t even born when the Voyagers were launched, and Ria Novosti takes a look at those 33 years of space flight. Back on Earth, Travel Insurance shows the World’s Energy Consumption and Resources, and Scores has put together a nice infographic about Google’s acquisitions since 2001. And to close this selection, an overview at vehicular Crime (by The Auto Insurance) and Obesity (by Credit Loan), both in America.
Recently, Nickelodeon celebrated Dora the Explorer’s 10th birthday with a special hour-long episode. In the episode, all of the classic characters seen in over 100 countries and 30 languages come together to celebrate Dora’s birthday. The 45-second opener was created by yU+co and Nickelodeon using several miniature pop-up sets, a Camera 5D MArk II, and AfterEffects and Maya.
Next time you set out to build a 3D package, maybe you should check out the new “PixelLight” project which brings together Newton, ODE, OpenAL, FMod, and more into a cohesive and complete 3D application framework.
Unbeknownst to me, there’s been a storm brewing behind the scenes of the Annie awards ever since 
NVidia has just published a paper by Morgan McGuire in the June 2010 issue of High Performance Graphics on Ambient Occlusion Volumes.
We have Word Processors to help us make pretty documents, so why don’t we have Visual Processors to help us make pretty visuals? Smart Draw aims to do just that by creating a simple near-fully automatic system for creating mind maps, flow charts, and several types of graphs that integrates with most of the popular business apps (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Project).
Probably, some of our readers weren’t even born when the Voyagers were launched, and 
VizWorld.com 
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