Thicken your cortex by just playing tetris
3:23 pm
Twilight Calculator
11:36 am
Photographers are always in search of that magic time they call “Twilight” or “Magic Hour”. Not the fancy glittery vampire kind, but rather that magic time where the Sun and Moon align to give some truly spectacular lighting opportunities for photographs. Now you can predict your own Twilight times with a great Google Maps mashup online.
Simply select your location on the map, and pick a Month and year. Click Submit and then be presented with a slew of information on sunrise/sunset, moonrise/moonset, and much more. A great tool for any photographer.
Visualizing the World’s 1101 Billionaires
11:06 am
Forbes Magazine released a list of all 1101 Billionaires across the world in 2010, with all the familiar names and a few new entries. Venkatraman.S took the data and dug through it a bit deeper and found a few interesting relationships.
One more interesting observation would be to find out how age and the wealth work together. So, i quickly divided age by wealth to find out the most ‘successful’ – ‘Success’ here is defined as those whose age/wealth factor is as close to 1. And i found that top 5 on this race are :
- William Gates III (Rank:2, Age:54, Worth:53, Success Factor:1.0)
- Carlos Slim Helu & family (Rank:1, Age:70, Worth:53.5, Success Factor:1.3)
- Warren Buffett (Rank:3, Age:79, Worth:47, Success Factor:1.7)
- Mukesh Ambani (Rank:4, Age:52, Worth:29, Success Factor:1.8)
- Eike Batista (Rank:8, Age:53, Worth:27, Success Factor:2.0)
via Origin > Identity > Destiny: World’s Billionaires Visualization.
Art of Stereo conversion: 2D to 3D
10:57 am
Stereo conversion in post gets a bad rap thanks to crap jobs like Clash of the Titans, but it’s a necessary part of many live-action 3D projects. Incredible close-ups are hard to shoot in true 3D due to interocular restrictions, and older projects have to be done in post. Over at FXGuide, Mike Seymour has a great article on how it’s done and a case study on the great results seen in the latest Chronicles of Narnia film.
3D animated films, such as Toy Story 3, Tangled and others find it easy to correctly generate stereo imagery from either stereo-RenderMan use or just rendering the entire scene from two similar but offset virtual cameras. For everything else live action, normal stereo production is hard. Even Avatar required tiny amounts of stereo conversion, for example the opening macro eyeball shot was far too close for a stereo camera rig to film, and this first shot of the film was converted stereo from 2D.
Daily Viz from Visual Loop – 13/01/2011
7:00 am
To talk about energy and our lifestyle habits its nothing new, but the folks at GOOD mad a great interactive diagram that helps everyone understand where all that energy is going. Speaking of energy, Wired mapped some of the main nuclear projects, and from The Globe And Mail comes another concerning issue: food production is down, hunger is up and prices are rising. And, to close today’s selection, Zone Alarm puts the cost of a missing laptop into perspective, and Interbent compares elderly and teen drivers.
Zoic helps build NBC’s Universal Virtual Stage 1
3:30 pm
NBC Universal Studios has a great new virtual stage, called Universal Virtual Stage 1 (UVS1), built with help from Zoic Studios. It’s a completely integrated virtual pipeline that can take a shot from pre-production through post through modular design.
“The virtual stage is a pre rig, pre calibrated turn key facility designed for the most simple to the most complex shoots. We are excited to be able to offer UVS1 for both internal and third party clients as well,” says Jeff Berry, Executive Director Virtual Effects and Production Services at Universal. “Working with Zoic was an integral part of developing the facility.”
Developed from Zoic’s experience working on “V”, and enables previsualization on production day, speeding up the process.
“If you have a project that has a virtual set and you have a high volume, not only are you pre-visualizing what you’re doing, but it allows the Director and the talent and the DP to interact with the environment in real time,” adds Gina Fiore Zoic’s Executive Producer of Television. “The DP can see how the shots are laid out and create lighting changes. The big part of what goes wrong I think with green screen is that the talent isn’t lit very well. When you go to integrate talent into a scene it can become problematic. When you can actually see the set, you can light to it and the talent. UVS1 is also very beneficial to talent. They are able to look at themselves in the monitor and line themselves up to the environment.”
You can get more at the UVS1 website, or in the press release after the break.
Shooters Inc and DIVE complete the “Puzzle”
3:14 pm
A new ad for Sovereign Bank shows the interrelationship of the many pieces of Sovereign’s Better Banking philosophy as a giant wall made of puzzle pieces, as actors squeeze ever more into the wall. Shot entirely on RED, DIVE and Shooters Inc brought the concept to reality through some clever post VFX work. One fun scene is when two actor have to squeeze in a piece just a bit too large.
The next creative hurdle came when two actors needed to compress a puzzle piece to make it “fit” into their Better Banking wall. Shooters created an actual flexible puzzle piece, which was then tracked and shot. An additional 3D puzzle layer was also created and Shooters and DIVE artists match moved the virtual piece over the actual physical piece. Lastly, Shooters and DIVE artists created the final fully-3D closing shots of the Sovereign Bank and Banco Santander logos falling into place to complete the puzzle.
Read the full release after the break.
3DVIA Shape 4.0 with Anaglyph, Offline, and MultiTouch
2:22 pm
3DVIA has just released the newest version of their “easy” 3d Modeling software, 3DVIA Shape 4.0.
This release falls into two categories: the extremely useful and the very cool. Useful items include the ability to work offline, screenshot export and increased file size limits on uploading models. Cool features include anaglyph 3D picture exporting and the ability to model with your fingertips on compatible touch screen displays.
It’s a huge update with lots of new features. They’ve added support for the latest generation of Multi-Touch displays, and Anaglyph Display in the modeling area. They’ve added a new offline mode (no more constant internet connection required!) and improved compatibility with their 3DVIA Studio app.
via Let Your Fingers Do The Modeling, Offline! Introducing 3DVIA Shape 4.0 | 3DVIA Blog.
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