VizWorld.com

The movie ‘Salt’ chronicles the hunt to find the true identity of Evylyn Salt, played by Angelina Jolie, and takes the moviegoer on a wild ride through countless stunts, car chases, and explosions.  Framestore NY worked on some of the most impressive and difficult shots, and CGNews has the details on how they pulled it off.

Framestore created a variety of CG crowd extensions, vehicles and set extensions to achieve the scale that the Director was after. Framestore’s VFX and animation work was vital to several key moments in the film, assisting the storytelling as well as making the action more compelling. Framestore even built, cracked and eventually disintegrated the floor of St. Patrick’s Cathedral using advanced CG and VFX techniques.

via Framestore Gives More Than a Pinch of Salt | CGnews.

Graphics framestore, movie, vfx

Glare Technologies has just released version 2.4 of their Indigo Renderer, the unbiased physically-based photorealistic renderer that offers a super-realistic materials system and complex lighting simulations via Metropolis Light Transport.  In addition to some significant performance improvements over the previous 2.2, they’ve improved the interface, added image histograms, support for OpenEXR, and images over 2GB in size.

Most interesting, however, is the new network features.  Version 2.4 comes with the “Indigo Network Manager” for scaling across networks and parallel renders with the mere click of a button, along with (the often requested) Floating License support.

Go hit their website for all the details.  Get a full license with a 15% reduction through the end of this month.

Indigo 2.4 Press Release | Indigo Renderer.

Graphics indigo, software

Earlier this week, someone posted on twitter a possible HDCP Master Key.  Since then, speculation has run rampant on whether or not it is legitimate, or just a nerdy prank.  Today, Intel has confirmed that yes it is the actual HDCP Master Key.  Intel spokesman Tom Waldrop:

“We have tested this published material that was on the Web,” Waldrop said. “It does produce product keys… the net of that means that it is a circumvention of the code.”

As a practical matter, the most likely scenario for a hacker would be to create a computer chip with the master key embedded it, that could be used to decode Blu-ray discs. A software decoder is unlikely, “but I’d never say never,” Waldrop said.

“It’s really hard to predict 100 percent, but that seems to be the prime scenario,” Waldrop said of the possibility that a chip might be created.

Basically, now anyone has the capability to create “product keys”.  Product Keys are what the HDCP control group “Digital Content Protection LLP” would issue to manufacturers for use in BluRay players and televisions to enable encrypted communications.  These keys could then be revoked if necessary, allowing them control of the technology in case one of them is compromised.  With the ability to generate product keys at will, someone could write software or build hardware that randomly generates product keys at will, making them impossible to be revoked.

So in short, HDCP is well and truly broken.  Although, I bet that the entertainment industry will continue to use it for the forseeable future, nonetheless.  Afterall, a change to the Master Key would most likely require changes to every single piece of HDCP-equipment in the field, guaranteed to be a consumer support nightmare.

via HDCP Master Key Confirmed; Blu-Ray Has Been Cracked | News & Opinion | PCMag.com.

Science hdcp

Move over Fusion-io, there’s a new PCI-Express SSD in town and it puts paltry ioXtreme to shame.  PhotoFast has a new blindingly-red PCI-Express SSD that boasts read speeds of 1.4GB/s and write speeds of 1.5MG/s.  It comes in sizes up to 960GB, with OS support for pretty much every operating system currently breathing.

However, from viewing their Specs page (Google Translation here), I find a few inconsistencies:

• An MTBF of 1.5Million Hours? That’s 173 Years.
• It’s only x8 PCI-Express 2.0, not x16
• “Crashworthiness” of 1300G?  I don’t know what that means, but I’m sure something got lost in translation.

No pricing on their site yet, but it looks interesting.  Personally, I’ld stick with something a bit more “industry proven” myself, but this is one to watch.

BRIGHT RED 1400MB/s SSD Drive from PhotoFast « Akihabara News.

Hardware photofast, ssd

Everyone knows there’s a co-relation between technology and productivity. Well, it even seems kind of obvious, but GOOD has made a transparency about it, just in case. Also in the timeline format comes the Green through the Ages infographic, by The San Diego State University, and Term Life Insurance released two graphics worth checking: the statistics on Police Brutality in America, and a look at the World’s most dangerous sports. The last pick of the week is The Economics of Star Wars, provided by Personal Loans.

Read more…

Graphics, Science design, economy, environment, infographic, infoviz, Visual Loop, visualizations

Infographic: Sexy Halloween Costumes That Shouldn’t Be

The Most Powerful Colors in the World by COLOURlovers

Graphics, Science digest, infographics, list

It’s that time of year again, Autodesk University.  This year from Nov 30-Dec 2nd at the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas, they’ve already got 600 topics and 400 speakers on the books.

The Autodesk University conference and exhibition brings together Autodesk users, developers, executives, solution providers, and strategic partners from around the world this year at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.

No other conference offers Autodesk users so many possibilities plus a wealth of real-world, practical solutions and important professional connections to help them stay competitive in today’s global economy.

via Autodesk University – 600 Topics, 400 Speakers, 3 Special Days.

Graphics autodesk, conference

Another real-time raytracer is on the streets, this time from Numenus.  Their ‘RenderGin’ product can load 3D models from a CAD systems and then use their ‘direct NURBS’ technology to render them in seconds without any triangulation.

RenderGin is the best application for rendering extremely large scenes. It requires around 2 GB of memory to hold a scene with 25 Million polygons. That makes around more than 200 Million polygons on a 16 GB machine. Imagine the possibilities. And the best is: The number of triangles does hardly affect the performance – that’s right, even massive scenes are rendered just as fast as one with only one million.

via About RenderGin.

Graphics numenus, rendergin

I got my newest toy today, the Panasonic AG-3DA1 stereo camera.   Still need a lot of time to experiment with it and get the hang of it, but the in-hand convergence control alone is nice :)

Hardware panasonic

Sexy Halloween Costumes That Shouldn’t Be | Killer Infographics by Submit Infographics.

infographics