Infographics Summary for 2010-12-31
9:30 pm
StrataConf2011 Contest – Last Chance to Enter!
3:09 pm
Don’t forget that today is the last chance to enter to win a free registration to the Strata2011 Conference! All you have to do is go to the page below, and post a comment telling us you favorite visualization resource of 2010. If can be an infographic, a website, a twitter personality, or even a piece of software. Nothing is off limits, but I pick the winner at Midnight tonight!
A Look back at 2010
3:04 pm
It’s finally the end of 2010, and what a turbulent 2010 it has been for the visualization industry. I made some predictions for what I thought would happen in 2010, and it’s only fair that I look back and see how poorly I performed. Let’s take a look.
Prediction #1: NVidia Slips, but remains #1
On this one, I fared pretty well. NVidia began 2010 losing ground rapidly to ATI (now AMD). While NVidia kept putting the finishing touches on their Fermi offerings, ATI released card after card, each one beating NVidia hardware even more than before.
Finally, Fermi was officially announced at PAX East, to huge fanfare. Since then, their entire product line has been revised to include Fermi’s, including the incredibly powerful Quadro line. NVidia quickly found themselves back on top with the #1 performing card on the market, and they’ve managed to keep it that way.
However, late in the year NVidia began losing ground again to AMD as the ‘Fusion’ systems came out. Combining the CPU and GPU into a single silicon offered unheard of performance gains, primarily through a shared hypertransport offering 51GB/s bandwidth, compared to the fastest PCI-Express of only 16GB/s. While still early in development, they’re currently the only company that can offer such a design.
Just recently, tho, things have begun to settle down in the patent disputes between NVidia and Intel, with discussions of an NVidia & Sandy-Bridge design coming to several laptops next year. 2010 looks to be interesting in this space.
Prediction #2: NVidia ships Fermi “On-Time”
Looks like I was right, but just barely. Announced at PAX-East, that was March 29th, just at the end of Q1.
Prediction #3: Stereoscopic: Wins in Theaters, Flops at Home
This is a tricky one to decide. 2010 boasted a huge number of stereoscopic films, but I don’t think it’s a reach to say that most of these flopped. Hollywood learned the hard way that a film in 3D isn’t a sure hit, and lost millions on a few major flops. This one is neither a Win or a Loss, more of a draw scenario.
Stereoscopic Flopping at home I would have to say is a reality. 3D BluRay hasn’t really caught on yet, with most of the major titles that would help to make it so being locked up in some ridiculously long-lasting exclusives. Much to my surprise, Active Shutter technology still seems to be the standard for stereoscopic viewing in the home, but hopefully some of the new sets from LG and others will bring passive stereoscopic viewing to the forefront in 2011.
Prediction #4: Real-Time Ray-Tracing gets big
I’ll have to say I missed on this one. It definitely became popular in 2010, but not to the degree I had hoped. Companies like Mental Images brought their iray renderer to market, and managed to get it included in the newest versions of 3dsMax, Cinema4D, and several other packages. V-Ray, KeyShot, Bunkspeed, and Lightworks all brought some form of real-time raytracing to market.
However, one company I thought would really make it big in the realtime 3D space was Caustic, which recently got acquired by Imagination Technologies. Their CausticRT system was a great product, but the promised CausticTwo card never materialized.
While real-time rendering did get big, it still seems to be somewhat of a niche area. Hopefully as more users upgrade to newer versions of the software and companies improve the experience, it’ll become more of the norm.
Prediction #5: Next Generation Console News
Another miss. Not a peep from Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo on what the new consoles will bring. Instead, this year was overwhelmed by “Motion Controls”, with Microsoft Kinect being the big winner of 2010. Sony’s Move hasn’t seen much publicity or interest, and Nintendo seems to have been busy with their upcoming 3D-DS system.
Final Tally:
2 hits, 2 Misses, 1 Draw.
And, I completely missed what happened in the VFX industry this year. Major studios closed (Asylum, imagi, and others), VFX employees found themselves struggling to get by, and a formal lawsuit against Lucasfilm for their treatment of VFX artists. It’s been big news, but I feel bad for the VFX artists caught in the crossfire.
2010 is over, Let’s hope 2011 is better!
2010 A Year in Review: Epic Infographic
12:59 pm
Make sure you have Javascript enabled for this one, it uses the zoom.it service to provide interactivity.
2010 Year in Review by Online Schools
| View Infographic Full Screen
ARRI Alexa vs Canon 7D: Color Grading Test
4:00 pm
I originally decided not to post this, but if a 4k Canon firmware is on the horizon then maybe it’s a bit more important. There’s a reason why companies like ARRI keep making incredibly expensive cameras like the Alexa, and this video by Nick Paton shows one of the important differences.
This is a short test comparing a Canon 7d with an ARRI Alexa. The purpose of the test being to test the ability of each camera’s images to be manipulated after exposure. I have graded each output to try to get it back to neutral using Gamma and density’s chart. As you can see the Alexa responds very well where as the 7d footage fails in highlight exposure detail and it’s codec compromises it’s ability to be pulled up in the darker regions. It’s interesting and telling and goes part way to explaining the more than substantial price difference.
Granted, you are probably asking yourself why you’ld ever want to shoot at a 7 stop, but if you did then here’s kinda what you’ld wind up dealing with.
Alexa vs 7d latitude tests from Nick Paton ACS on Vimeo.
4k Firmware for the Canon T2i 550d on 1/1/11 ?
3:30 pm
All of you Canon T2i 550D owners have something new to think about this weekend. If this video is to be believed, then this weekend there will be a new firmware out for you Canon hackers to try that enables 4k video. Granted, you can only record 6 seconds of video on a 32G card, but still.. it’s 4k video. Sounds like it’s a bit complex, but could be huge for folks doing video on DSLRs.
Update: Here’s some more details.
Update 1/3/2011: It’s a Hoax.
QA: You Can run your Magic lantern at the same time. Although Qscale cannot be used. AGC on Lantern can be used with this firmware.
You must, and I mean MUST..get all of your iso, fstop settings and what not…ready. Then you have to input the same settings into our firmware before you do anything.
There’s a feature in our fimware called memory card control. The firmware will adjust the bitrate(constant) to whatever class memory card you are using. There are 3 brands of memory card that work with this firmware and that’s after testing over 50 other memory cards. Sandisk Extreme III class 10 8gb and above. Transcend class 10 16gb and above and Lexar Pro class 10 32gb. Class 6 cards will work, but only up to 3k filming. 4k just won”t happen. Just stick with the same brands.
Using a Sandisk Extreme III class 10 32gb card gave these results.
2k: 175mb/s = 91 seconds of footage
3k: 175mb/s = 32 seconds of footage
4k: 175mb/s = 6 seconds of footage.
Note: Lowering the bitrate for 4k does not give you extra recording time. This is something that we have to work out. Also, you will not be able to shoot 4k in 45mb/s. It must be 65mb/s and above.
For those of you worry about heat…trust me, at first that was an issue but now… It’s not. We’ve actually put our own limiter in the firmware so that way everyone doesn’t brick their cameras.
I’ll be answering more questions through out the day.
Here’s their “demo video”, which is unfortunately more hype than substance.
NewTek ships LightWave 10
1:00 pm
Big announcement from LightWave to wrap up 2010, LightWave 10 is out! With improved linear color space workflow support, a realtime Viewport Preview Renderer, and new virtual studio tools that work with gadgets like the InterSense VCAM and 3Dconnexion 3D Mouse, it’s a whole slew of new features available for only $895 ($495 to upgrade).
“Our goal with LightWave 10 is to deliver workflows that best serve the artist and support their creative discovery process, allowing them to interact with their 3D content like never before,” said Rob Powers, NewTek vice president of 3D development. “Technology should serve the artist, and not the other way around. This is how the Virtual Art Department (VAD) worked, which my team innovated on ‘Avatar.’ It helped transform filmmaking to serve the director.”
Get all the details and some more pics after the break!
IBM’s 5 in 5 – Five Innovations in 5 Years
12:00 pm
IBM has just announced their next “Five in Five”, five innovations that they believe will change the world in just 5 years. Starting with “ubiquitous sensors”, I particularly like their belief of 3D in five years. Not in the movies or TV, but in User Interfaces and Video Chat.
In the next five years, 3-D interfaces – like those in the movies – will let you interact with 3-D holograms of your friends in real time. Movies and TVs are already moving to 3-D, and as 3-D and holographic cameras get more sophisticated and miniaturized to fit into cell phones, you will be able to interact with photos, browse the Web and chat with your friends in entirely new ways.
Watch the video for all 5 innovations, presented with some nice CG to demonstrate what they think will happen.
Boardwalk Empire VFX Breakdowns of Season 1 on Vimeo
11:00 am
Season 1 of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire is finished, and if you saw it then you probably enjoyed some of Brainstorm Digital’s fantastic VFX work. Ranging from bluescreens to scenery and backdrops, through to facial reconstruction and 3d modeling work, they’ve posted a great VFX breakdown video on vimeo. Check it out below.
Boardwalk Empire VFX Breakdowns of Season 1 from Brainstorm Digital on Vimeo.
At a Columbia Lab, Perfecting Animation is Science
10:40 am
In Disney’s Tangled, Rapunzel’s hair is a character unto itself as it weaves through the scenery alternating between a weapon, clothing, background, and plot device. Far removed from other hair in CG movies, it showcases the work of Columbia University’s Eitan Grinspun, who is the focus of a new article on the New York Times about how he and his group have brought real physics into animation unlike anything before.
Mr. Grinspun’s crucial idea was to throw out the jury-rigged models instead of trying to improve upon them, as Apple did with its operating system when it abandoned DOS and command prompts. “The programming had to be rethought from the ground up,” he said. Instead of trying to force a system that was designed to simulate straight hair to produce curly hair too, for instance, Mr. Grinspun created a more sophisticated system that could do both.
VizWorld.com 
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