VizWorld.com

The winners of the 2010 Visualizing.org Marathon have been announced, and the winner is Christina Beard, Christopher Clark, Chris McCampbell, and Supisa Wattanasansanee  for “One Day Cause + Effect”.

The winning visualization, One Day Cause + Effect, was lauded for its personal narrative and striking design and received the Jury’s top score for ‘understanding’ – the ability to help the reader better understand the impact of humanity’s footprint on Earth. An honorable mention goes to the School of Visual Arts Team #1 for its Pushing the Boundaries visualization that was able to use great interaction design to effectively communicate the impact of humans on our Earth. Another honorable mention was awarded to Maryland College Institute of Art’s Team #3 for its coherent analysis of data and effective storytelling in What Kind of World Do You Want?

The picture above is just one tiny piece of the entire poster, which you can view and download here.

via visualizing.org.

Graphics contest, infographic

GreyScaleGorilla has a great short-post on “The Myth of Faster Computers”, specifically regarding their use in Motion Graphics work. Here’s his comment:

A faster machine isn’t just about speeding up your renders. It also allows you to make more beautiful work. How? Well, it’s not what you think. Being able to turn on more effects or turn up your anti aliasing isn’t what matters. Instead, it’s all about iteration. A faster render time allows you to see your changes in closer to real time. This allows for more experimentation and leads to more creative and beautiful solutions to problems.

That’s a great response, and applies to much more than just Motion Graphics.  This is impacting computer simulation and visualization as well, with scientists able to get results back faster.  When you operate on a deadline, the ability to do more ‘test runs’ is crucial and that’s primarily what faster computers offer.  Being able to render in 5 minutes instead of 10 minutes is nice, but being able to run 12 jobs in an hour instead of 6 is the more important issue.

via The Myth Of Faster Computers | greyscalegorilla/blog.

Hardware computer

Fans of rendering engine Unigine has a whole new world of bells and whistles to check out thanks to some pretty significant improvements in the newest version.  Just check out the first few entries in the very long list of features:

• Completely new vegetation system: trunk bending, rotation of billboard leaves, spatial noise for randomized movement of vegetation.
• Added the motion blur postprocess (takes into the account both the camera velocity and velocities of physical bodies).
• Added indirect occlusion (SSDO) to simulate real-time global illumination.
• Complete shaders refactoring (all texture samplers were shifted).
• Unified LOD system for all objects, parameters are in surface settings (visible and fade distances are removed from objects).
• Smooth transition between LODs for all meshes, 3D GUI objects and billboards basing on the screen space noise. Leaves use fading based on the to alpha test scale.

That’s just the start.  Keep reading and you’ll see info about the new sRGB support, 24-bit Depth Buffers, and support for OpenCL1.1 .  And the images they show are simply jaw-droppingly good.

via Development Log | Unigine (3D engine for games and real-time virtual worlds).

Science software, unigine

Back in July, Alibre announced integration with Luxion Keyshot 2 in most of their products.  They’re back again today with the announcement of their new version Alibre Design 2011.  This new version includes a complete & total code re-write and a native 64-bit version, a must-have for folks working on incredibly large or complex models.    In addition, they have a new Sheet Metal Conversion tool:

New Sheet Metal Conversion Tools with Automatic Conversion - imported or natively designed solids are now able to be automatically converted into unfoldable sheet metal parts, so users can take libraries of solids generated from other applications and convert them into fully native, editable sheet metal parts.  Sheet metal parts can also be designed in a normal part workspace and then converted to sheet metal later, fast tracking many common design requirements

Sounds like some nice features, and it’s pretty reasonably priced at only $99 for the Personal Edition.  It’s available for download right now at the Alibre Store.

Full details after the break.

Read more…

Science alibre, software

Over at the Tecplot blog, Scott Imlay (Director of Research at Tecplot Inc) discusses a bit of what he saw at the recent VisWeek conference and in particular the “Stream Lines as Tangent Curves of a Derived Vector Field” paper by Tino Weinkauf and Holger Theisel.

What Weinhauf and Theisel did was develop an algorithm for computing, from the given vector field, a new vector field to which the streak lines are everywhere tangent. This allows streak lines to be computed in the same way as streamlines and particle paths. This is much faster (once the streak line vector field is computed) and makes a lot of additional analysis possible. The down side is that the new vector field is one dimension higher than the velocity vector field. For unsteady two-dimensional flow, the streak line vector field is four dimensional. If not done carefully, streak line computations using the new technique could be a real memory hog. Still, the benefits will probably outway the costs. Look for implementation of this new algorithm in the future

Yes it’s complicated :)  However, Streaklines are frequently the #1 method for visualizing flow fields.  They do the best of showing time-varying data with turbulent flow, and they are relatively easy to understand.  Hopefully this paper will crop us in the easy-to-use software soon and we can all check it out!

via Tecplot Blog – Notes from the IEEE Vis Conference.

Science algorithm, tecplot, visweek

A neat visualization up on Wired.com visualizes a week’s worth of calls to New York City’s 311 line, and segments them into categories by time of day.

You can see some interesting, although not alltogether unexpected trends, like:

• Noise complaints increase at night (party!)
• Taxi complaints in the week hours of the morning
• Illegal parking complaints during lunch hour

And lots more. If you’re not familiar with the NYC311 Idea:

There was something fitting in this unlikely connection, since 311 is designed to re-create some of the human touch of small-town life in the context of a vast metropolis. Eighty percent of calls connect to a live rep within half a minute, after a brief recorded message summing up the day’s parking regulations (a major topic of 311 queries) and other relevant news. Also crucial to the 311 ethos is the idea of civic accountability: By giving New Yorkers an easy way to report broken streetlights or graffiti or after-hours construction, the service helps them play a role in solving the problems they see in their own neighborhoods.

Read the full article for a great ‘success story’ about how data collected via the 311 line led to the discovery of the source of a new odd odor (Syrup) that pervaded the New York air.

What a Hundred Million Calls to 311 Reveal About New York | Magazine | Wired.com.

Science visualization

LightMap has released HDRLightStudio 2.0 with lots of new features across the board.  I personally love the new feature called ‘Livelight’ which adds some great interoperability with the Autodesk packages (3dsMax, Maya, and Softimage) with MI import and camera syncing.

.MI (Mental Images) files are easy to save from Autodesk 3DS Max, Maya or SoftImage software packages. These files include both the 3D geometry and the camera position so, using LiveLight, users are looking at the same view. Lighting designs can be saved as a HDRI file and used as the environment in the 3D software program. The lighting and reflections seen in LiveLight perfectly match those in the final renders.

If you get the Pro version, that means you can build your scenes in your tool of choice and then use HDRLightStudio’s impressive collection of over 100 light kits and HDR maps to light it.

They have a free trial (render disabled) available, and you can buy it from their store for £399 (Standard) or £599 (Pro).

via HDRI What’s New.

Graphics hdr, lightmap, software

Over at DesignYourWay they’ve collected Demo Reels from 34 of the biggest and best Motion Graphics studios into one convenient list.

You see their work in commercials or in big movies but you never knew who they are or how they do it. They represent the hard working studios which give you those incredible motion graphics effects and animations you love. Most of these made a reel to show off their best work and give you a taste of their capabilities but make sure you watch their full portfolio also cause a few minutes of reel can’t contain their whole work and it would be a shame to miss something.

via 34 Of The Best Motion Graphics Studios And Their Work | Design your way.

Graphics list, motiongraphics, reel

Shown above is the border of Nicaragua and Costa Rica (the grey line) on both Google MAps and Bing Maps.  They’re not identical, but they’re close enough right?  Let me point you to a piece on SearchEngine Land about a recent military ‘event’.

A Nicaraguan military commander, relying on Google Maps, moved troops into an area near San Juan Lake along the border between his country and Costa Rica. The troops are accused of setting up camp there, taking down a Costa Rican flag and raising the Nicaraguan flag, doing work to clean up a nearby river, and dumping the sediment in Costa Rican territory.

There’s a lot to take away from this, most of which people in the field already know.  People rely very heavily on visualization, without properly checking backgrounds, which doesn’t normally result in Military action but frequently results in misrepresentation and poor understanding of the facts.  Being an Expert in visualization is only partly about isosurfaces and algorithms, a large part of it is in understanding how the resulting visualization is be perceived on both a physical (Human Vision) and psychological level.

Let this be a lesson to you: What you think may be a simple data glitch could actually result in a war between neighboring countries.

via Nicaragua Raids Costa Rica, Blames Google Maps.

Science google

Some MySpace engineers have defected and taken their social network expertise to create a new web application called ‘Gravity‘ which attempts to determine your interests from your FaceBook and Twitter streams, and then help you connect with other like-minded individuals.

The company’s ultimate aim is twofold. For users, they can see who, in any given network, actually shares their interests. “For example, if a user tweets about an Interpol concert, the band would show up in their visualization, allowing them to connect to others that share that interest,” says Anand. (Just imagine the possibilities for a dating site.)

In particular, I like their graph visualizations that they call ‘Gravity Interest Graph’.  The real factor behind their success or failure, tho, probably lies in the accuracy of their predictions on Interests.

via Infographic of the Day: Gravity App Scours Twitter and Facebook to Predict Your Interests | Co.Design.

Science facebook, gravity, twitter