VizWorld.com

Over at FXGuide, neonmarg had a great writeup on a recent event where the Visual Effects Society invited some experts to discuss the challenges and details of working 1099.  Recently this has become a hot-topic as several VFX companies have been bring in 1099 workers to help with projects, and in doing so these workers find themselves getting stiffed for paychecks if the company goes under or the project goes bust.  The details of 1099 are tricky, but in particular I found this fascinating:

Rogenson pointed out: “It’s really not up to the worker and to the company to determine whether an individual is an Employee or Independent Contractor, it really depends on the facts of that relationship”. This is a complex issue made more complex because the various agencies involved have their own rules and tests (California Labor Commision, Federal Department of Labor, the IRS, State Tax Collector, National Labor Relations Board, etc). As complex as it is “it’s not up to the worker or the company as to how they are going to classify their relationship”.

I personally know a few people who work 1099 because they like the higher paycheck that comes without worrying about benefits, or they have a working spouse who takes care of issues like insurance, but based on the criteria he talks about they are quite clearly ‘employees’.  It’s a tricky issue, with both workers and companies seeing clear advantages and disadvantages in all scenarios.

The discussion has lots of details regarding ‘day rate’, insurance, 1099 tax status, workers compensation, and lots more.  If you work in the VFX industry or are interested in the 1099 situation, you should definitely read it.

via fxguide – after effects vfx – VES: The 1099 Dilemma.

Graphics employment, vfx

CGSociety has a great interview with Kevin Margo of Blur Studios where they discuss some of the hurdles they’ve come across in recent projects.  Recent projects like Firefall, Knights Contract, and Dante’s Inferno began to hit the limits of their rendering capabilities, so they began investigating new products.

“We had RAM issues on large environments without a functioning proxy system, render times were rising unacceptably high attempting to resolve sampling and GI flickering, vector moblur and Z-Depth DOF in post started to feel very dated,” he said. “Blur Studio had occasionally used V-Ray on a few small scale projects, and the results highlighted on those projects were VERY appealing to us. Seeing how V-Ray could easily produce creamy smooth GI lighting, camera DOF and motion blur, fast displacements and BSP instancing/proxy objects caught my attention.”

via CGSociety – ‘Firefall’ Blur Studio.

Graphics blur, interview, vfx, vray

Autodesk has just announced AutoCAD for Mac is now available, after first announcing it back in August.  Even more impressive, it’s free for 3 years, if you can live with a little watermark.  Otherwise, educational institutions can get it (in a Perpetual license) for only $395.

Students and educators have 2 smart options for getting their hands on AutoCAD for Mac. You can download the software for free* on the Education Community or purchase it with a perpetual license and no watermarks for 90%** off suggested retail price from the Autodesk Store.

Way to go Autodesk!  Lots of companies offer educational discounts, but it’s typically through 3rd parties. I’ve never seen anyone offer a “perpetual” license for 90% off.

Education Community.

Graphics autocad, autodesk, mac, software

It’s still a few days until AMD comes out with the new Radeons, but they’re cashing in on the rumors by slowly leaking out pictures of the cards.  While you can’t get any details on performance, you can see some of the external features.

We note with glee that the default output arrangement includes no less than five ports, including two DVI, one HDMI (1.4a), and two Mini DisplayPorts. We’d rather the latter two were full-sized, but it doesn’t look like ATI AMD had the room to fit them in. As to power requirements, the HD 6870 will need two 6-pin connectors to augment the juice it gets from the PCI Express port, while the HD 6850 will sate its needs with just the one.

Engadget has several more pictures at their site.

via AMD Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850 officially pictured, coming this Friday — Engadget.

Hardware amd

When I was young, I was told that we would never be able to image a planet that is orbiting another star. Yet in November 2008, Hubble took the first visible light image of a planet orbiting around the star Fomalhaut, which is approximately 25 light years from Earth. At the same time, astronomers using the Keck and Gemini telescopes imaged three orbiting companions to star HR8799, which is approximately 140 light years from Earth.

Now astronomers have done it again. Using new optics technology, researchers have directly imaged Beta Pictoris b. This planet is about 7 times more massive than Jupiter, and orbits the star Beta Pictoris, which is approximately 63 light years away from Earth. Using this new technology, astronomers are able to image planets that are 7 Astronomical Units (AU) from their host star. One AU is defined as the average distance between the sun and the Earth, or approximately 93 million miles (150 million kilometers).

At the core of the system is a small piece of glass with a highly complex pattern inscribed into its surface. Called an Apodizing Phase Plate, or APP, the device blocks out the starlight in a very defined way, allowing planets to show up in the image whose signals were previously drowned out by the star’s glare.

via Planet hunters no longer blinded by the light: New way to see faint planets previously hidden in their star’s glare.

Science astronomy

We start today with a look at the WWF‘s 2010 Living Planet Report, at a time when the toxic pollution in Hungary keeps taking its toll, as we can see at Ria Novosti‘s graphic. We continue with Tech King decifering all we need to know about Web Designers, and the numbers behind the Chilean Miners rescue, by designer Ciaran Hughes. Finally, Court Report‘s brings us some of the most famous crimes in history.

Read more…

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

Autodesk is now accepting submissions for next year’s demo reels for games, commercials, and animations.

So you’ve done the work, made your client happy, maybe even received an award. Now it’s time to strut your stuff. We want to showcase your work and get you the exposure you deserve. Where could your projects appear? In trade magazines, news opportunities, or promotional initiatives such as international/regional/local Road shows, brochures, and our web site.

They’re looking for animations and high-resolution stills, full submission guidelines are on their site.

via Autodesk – Submit Your Work.

Graphics autodesk, reel

Pitch Interactive has a great writeup on their “US Federal Contract Spending Data” visualization, the winner of the 2010 Design For America award for Visualization of Federal Budget Data.  They show some of the graphics close-up, and discuss the process used to create the two-part graph.

What our government spends vs. how much we talk about it. Two important aspects that help define and shape our society. Most Americans know that our government spends an insane amount of our tax dollars on defense, but how do you show just how much we spend compared to all other areas in our country? We wanted to use a minimal approach with no labeling necessary. The design says it all and shows what almost 70% of Federal contract spending going to defense looks like com paired to all other agencies (Education get’s around 1%). For anyone asking for the numbers, scroll down this page. We’ve added all the data used to create the left visualization above.

For the right visualization, we used the New York Times API to parse through all articles written in 2009. Using general keywords that dealt with characteristics of each agency, we displayed their frequency usage in comparison with one another. The colors on the right rings are representative of their colors from the left. What we see is that all of the much less-budgeted agencies from the left ring are discussed about far more in our news. The Dept. of Health and Human Services, which was a major issue of discussion in 2009 with health care reform being hotly debated only accounts for about 4% of our federal budget, though it’s the most discussed issue in the media.

via US Federal Contract Spending Data Visualization :: Pitch Interactive, Inc..

Science federal, pitch interactive

Last week, AMD’s CEO Dirk Meyer mentioned in a conference call that they would be releasing new graphics cards this week. From Anandtech:

We’ll be introducing our second-generation of DX11 technology into the market with some launch activities actually next week. We’ll be shipping all the family members of that product line I’ll call it, by the end of this quarter, and total volume think in terms of several hundred thousand, or hundreds of thousands of units.

He did not give any further details, but now there are new leaks about these graphics cards that are to be released soon. From Guru3D

Every time, the same accident happens. Someone, somewhere, lists the cards before their official release debut. Hehe, well this time it’s a Dutch etailer called Informatique.nl that got listed Radeon HD 6850 and Radeon HD 6870 at 190€ and 255€ respectively.

The rumor is that these will come out on October 22.

via Radeon HD6870 and HD6850 are accidentally listed

Hardware amd, radeon

Rastergrid has a new OpenGL 4.0 demo released that shows dynamically generated mountains, valleys, and trees all using algorithms in DirectX10 and OpenGL4.  They manage to do level of detail, culling, and and geometry instancing all on the GPU, leaving the CPU almost untouched.

The result is a renderer that does little to no scene management on the CPU, instead uses the GPU for visibility determination that is, in most cases, able to reduce the scene’s geometric complexity from over 400 million triangles under one million triangles providing an interactive experience on a Radeon HD5770 with around 200 frames per second.

Scroll to the bottom to see his performance figures.  It looks amazing, although they test it solely on AMD Radeon cards.

via OpenGL 4.0 – Mountains demo released « RasterGrid Blog.

Science benchmark, opengl, software