VizWorld.com

The big story of the weekend was the newest Wikileaks release, about the ongoing Iraqi conflict and the U.S military involvement. All the major newspapers and agencies released online graphical versions, and we picked up Channel 4‘s one. We move on with our selection with a disturbing question, posed by Clean Technica: what if Solar got the same subsidies as Coal? Impressive. Also impressive is the explanation on how El Nino affects South Florida’s weather, by Belinda Long-Ivey, and we close today with two opposite graphics, one looking at the past – Critical Thinkers trough History, by Think Watson – and the other to the Future – more precisely the Travel Goldrush, by Amadeus, looking into the future of the Industry as far as 2020.

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

Apex Web Media has just announced a new video tutorial for Autodesk Maya 2011 that includes 11.5 hours of demos for everything from basic UI usage to modeling and animation techniques.

Taught by instructor and 3D designer Jason Welsh, all 177 Maya tutorials are presented in a high quality format with full playback controls. The training is Mac and Windows compatible, which allows users to access the training from essentially any computer. At the same time, work files are included to allow Maya users to follow examples directly as they are presented on screen.

You can go to the site and view the first three chapters for free, to give you an idea of the beginning content.  I checked out the part about Layer usage and Pivots.  It’s a good collection of the basics and the details, and somewhat entertaining trying to watch him explain away a few errors (In the Layers example, you’re unable to see the R and T indicators he talks about and attributes it to the Video Encoding process).

The disk is available for $99, but Apex has been kind enough to provide a 10% Discount code for VizWorld readers!  Simply proceed to checkout and enter the code A3459 as your Returning Customer Discount Code for 10% Off!

Read the full press release after the break.

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Graphics autodesk, maya, training, tutorial

An interview with CIS vfx supervisor Randy Goux discusses some of the work behind the movie ‘RED’.  I particularly like the discussion around the popular trailer scene where they stop an RPG with a well-placed bullet to the tip.  Explosions are a dime a dozen in VFX, but the slow-motion closeup of the exploding tip presenting some new challenges.

fxg: How did you bend the metal like that?

Goux: We actually used Maya’s cloth simulation. It’s weird telling people we bent metal that way, but it’s basically the dynamics module in Maya we’re using. We modelled the RPG, set it up as a cloth object and then you can define its tearing properties. You can have it tear like a paper bag or sheet metal or you can give it whatever threshold you like for the simulation. The sims went back and forth on how tense that metal was and how much we would reveal as the fireballs come out. There was also some fluid dynamics going on in the inner core, basically fire effects that curl around the ‘cloth’ objects. We also had to define how much mass the bullet going in had and how that correlated with the RPG. We pushed it a little further by animating a few hero pieces coming out towards the camera. The bulk of it was a dynamic simulation where you let the software do its course, but then we augmented that with some hero pieces animated in Maya and also in Nuke.

via fxguide – after effects:flame:nuke – R.E.D CIS Vancouver goes Badass.

Graphics cis, movie, vfx

IEEE VisWeek is underway, and viz guru Robert Kosara has a great list of some of the fantastic theory presentations you can take in during the week.

Theory is a big topic at VisWeek this year. You can get through almost the entire conference purely on theory papers. Whether that’s a good idea is another question of course, but here’s a guide how to do it.

Unfortunatley, I couldn’t make it to VisWeek this year.  If anyone wants to submit writeups of sessions or talks, feel free to send them in and we’ll publish them for you.

via The Theory Guide to VisWeek 2010 | eagereyes.

Science conference, visweek

Next month, Disney will release their next non-Pixar CG Animated film ‘Tangled’, featuring a fun retelling of the classic Rapunzel story.  Over at the Wall Street Journal, they talk with the directors and discover just why they decided to go with CG over Disney’s classic hand-drawn animation.

“Tangled” directors Nathan Greno and Byron Howard say that CGI technology allowed them to capture the Rapunzel story’s most essential element: her flowing locks. In the original Brothers Grimm tale, Rapunzel is a long-haired girl imprisoned in a tower by a witch. In “Tangled,” Rapunzel’s tresses can act as a ladder, a whip or a third arm. “We could have drawn the hair in 2-D but it would have been just a yellowish shape on screen,” Mr. Howard says. “With CGI, we can render 100,000 strands of hair—it’s almost a character in itself.”

Nice to see the CG used as a way to enhance & reinvent the story, and not as just ‘CG Rendering is faster than Hand Drawn’ or ‘People don’t like Hand Drawn anymore’.  Of course, we’ll have to wait a month to see if the CG really helped any.

via A Tech Hair Day for Rapunzel in Disney’s ‘Tangled’ Animated Movie – WSJ.com.

Graphics animation, disney, movie, tangled

Oakley is cashing in on the 3D Hype with their new TRON-centric ’3D Gascan’ eyewear, boasting ‘industry leading lens technologies’.  Check this out:

To engineer Oakley 3D eyewear, Oakley combined its industry-leading frame innovations with lens technologies that maximize the 3D experience by offering unprecedented levels of clarity and visual fidelity. “TRON” Limited Edition 3D Gascan features HDO-3D™, a collection of proprietary lens innovations that have achieved the first optically correct 3D eyewear on Earth.* Oakley 3D lenses virtually eliminate the ghosting or “crosstalk” between images that reach each eye from one moment to the next, a potential problem with inferior 3D eyewear.

If it’s true, it’s a big deal.  My bet is that it’s mostly marketing hype, tho.  Nonetheless, you’ll be able to buy these circularly-polarized passive 3D glasses through the website and Sunglass Hut stores for a cool $150 starting next month, just in time to take them to see TRON in theaters.

Not that I’ll be wearing them.  Looks like they didn’t count on folks wearing these over glasses.  Score one for Samsung.

via Oakley Debuts TRON 3D Eyewear « Hugh’s News.

Hardware glasses, oakley, stereoscopic

Seems Samsung is trying to bring a few more people into the 3D fold by offering prescription 3D Glasses.

Samsung has recognized the fact that the majority of people require corrective lenses, and a great many choose to wear glasses, and therefore have an impeded 3D viewing experience. Their answer is prescription 3D glasses which are custom-made by an optometrist and take about a week to make.

Details are slim (Circularly Polarized or Active?) but as a member of the Glasses-wearing club I have to admit I can’t see this going anywhere.  The big JVC Glasses (Circularly Polarized) do a decent job fitting over my glasses, and I particularly like Panasonic’s 3D Glasses (Active Shutter), which cleverly separate the lenses from the legs, making plenty of space for regular glasses underneath.

Nonetheless, I wish a company would start selling more comfortable “over glasses” stereo glasses.  Seems that would be far cheaper to product, and far more useful.  Who knows, maybe a return to “clip-on” glasses.

Update: Well lookee here.  Only $10 even.

via Samsung introduces 3D glasses that eliminates painful “six-eye” experience for prescription glasses wearers « Akihabara News.

Hardware glasses, samsung, stereoscopic

AlphaDogs Post Productions was brought in to complete the new reality show K-Ci and JoJo Come Clean.  It’s a non-scripted 9-episode series for TVOne about the duo’s hard road back to sobriety.  Everything went well, until post-production came along and they realized one of the primary cameras used in the project suffered from a Dead Pixel.

All shots from this camera had to be repaired by finishing editor Sean Stack who used a special filter to seamlessly fill in the dead pixel area. Stack comments; “Being able to overcome production challenges in post makes for a rewarding experience as an editor. We kept the client happy and delivered a perfect master on time to the network”.

The show aires Tuesdays at 9pm EST.  Read the full press release after the break.

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Graphics alphadogs, television, vfx

It is hard to believe that water can change the gravitational field of Earth. However, by using the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite, researchers are able to compute the changes in gravity due to changes in the amount of water in an area. This satellite has been measuring the changes in Earth’s gravity since it was launched on March 17, 2002. As part of its Image of the Day, NASA has published a series of images of the changes in gravity due to the changes in seasonal precipitation.

Though it is distributed over the landscape, water has mass; the greater the mass, the greater the gravitational attraction. Blues indicate increases above the normal water storage (mass) for an area, while browns indicate decreases. Water storage changes are measured in centimeters because they are, according to NASA hydrologist Matt Rodell, “expressed as an equivalent water level change, as if all the land’s water were ponded on the surface.”

via The Gravity of Water : Image of the Day.

Science nasa, scientific visualization

A few days ago we brought you news of the Lumiere Awards handed out at the International 3D Society awards.   NVidia has a new press release out announcing that they won for 3D Vision, and giving details on several of the other winners.

3ality Digital was honored for its Stereo Image Processor (SIP) technology; Autodesk for its “Maya®” 3D visual effects software technology; Dolby Laboratories for its “Dolby 3D” system; Steve Hines and The Walt Disney Studios for the “Disney Dual Camera Rig”; In-Three for its “Dimensionalization®” technology; MasterImage 3D for its “Digital 3D Cinema System”; Nvidia for its “3D Vision™” technology; Quantel for its “Pablo” 3D color correction and finishing system; Sassoon Film Design for its “2D to 3D Conversion” technology; Sony Pictures Imageworks for its “3D Pipeline”; The Walt Disney Studios for its “3D Pipeline”; and XpanD for its “Active 3D Cinema System.”

Get all the details after the break.

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Science autodesk, award, nvidia, panasonic