While people complain about Hollywood VFX studios crumbling under mismanagement, unrealistic deadlines, and tight budgets, studios elsewhere seem to be thriving. Case in point comes from a new announcement out of Canada’s STarz Animation Toronto which has just announced a few new hires, bringing the numbers of 100. They’re working on three new projects for both TV and film, and wrapped up work last year on the currently playing Gnomeo & Juliet.
“It was an easy decision for me and my colleagues to join the Starz team and help develop a new VFX division,” says award-winning Visual Effects Producer/Supervisor Bret Culp, who led VFX for films like Silent Hill and such TV projects as “The Tudors.” “Right out of the gate, this new unit is one of the strongest I’ve ever worked with, both because of the talent we’ve assembled and the great resources and inspiring environment that a place like Starz Animation provides.”
Last week, Luxion announced the immediate availability of KeyShot 2.2, the newest version of their impressive rendering package.
“Version 2.2 is a huge improvement for all Keyshot users,” says Kevin Quigley, principal at Quigley Design, a provider of high-end product development services to many well renown manufacturers and a beta tester of this new version. “Not only does Keyshot 2.2 import SolidWorks 2011 and CATIA v5 files, but there are some great improvements made to other translators as well, with more options and faster import.”
In addition to import of SolidWorks and CATIA files, they’ve improved several other format imports like SketchUp and Inventor. Also, they have an impressive boost of 15x for some of the more complex materials, which should make some of your bigger scenes render even faster!
“The new scene manager tree makes applying and editing materials much easier,” Quigley continues.”Combined with the new part highlighting it makes moving around and editing more complex models a simple task. Not only that but the render times continue to tumble! On some models I noticed a reduction of 50% in render times between 2.1 and 2.2…..and 2.1 was already fast! I won’t be able to use the excuse ‘waiting for the render to finish’ anymore!”
In what sounds like a pretty interesting use of 3D, RealD and the London Opera House have teamed up with Toshiba to package 3D BluRay releases of ‘Carmen in 3D’ with select TV’s, PC’s, and BluRay players. Currently only viewable in RealD Theaters, the Play format is ideally suited for 3D work due to it’s fixed working area and limited range of motion.
A co-production of RealD and London’s Royal Opera House, CARMEN IN 3D gives viewers the best seat in the house, taking them on a magic carpet ride into the heart of the production – immersing them into this exciting story of love, jealousy and betrayal.
CARMEN IN 3D is a dazzling film, filled with some of the best-loved music ever written – and performed by a world-class cast. With English subtitles throughout, it is the perfect event for life-long opera fans and first-timers alike! Available exclusively in RealD theaters beginning in March 2011.
The latest issue of Popular Science magazine has a hidden AR marker that works with the metaio application to show you an interactive 3D display of the new Motorola Xoom tables and Google’s Honeycomb (android) 3.0 OS.
“The Popular Science audience always look forward to reading about what`s next, but this month’s cover gives them an opportunity to experience firsthand the new technologies that are changing the future of magazines,” said David Ginsberg, Integrated Account Manager at Popular Science. “metaio’s software has made it possible for us to keep our readers up to date on the top tech trends in a way that’s fun, dynamic and engaging.”
Check out a demo of the experience below, and read the full release after the break.
Normally the Hudson Bay in Canada is frozen over by November. However, that did not happen until mid January this winter. Why did this occur? Normally the Arctic Oscillation (AO) traps cold air over the North Pole. This year the AO was weaker than normal. It allowed cold air to spill southward, while allowing warm air to move northward. Thus heavy snow fell in North America and Europe, and areas like Hudson Bay had a lower ice levels this year.
This image shows the average Arctic sea ice concentration for January 2011, based on observations from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite. Blue indicates open water; white indicates high sea ice concentrations; and turquoise indicates loosely packed sea ice. The yellow line shows the average sea ice extent for January from 1979 through 2000.
General-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU) is very popular right now, and NVIDIA has the lead in this arena with their Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA). While in the future, it looks like people will be moving from CUDA, which is proprietary to NVIDIA, to OpenCL, which should be available from a variety of vendors.
Morgan Kaufmann has published a new book in the GPU Computing Gems series. As to be expected, this book covers a variety of topics including scientific simulation, life sciences, statistical modeling, ray tracing, rendering, computer vision, video processing, signal processing, and medical imaging. You can buy GPU Computing Gems from Amazon for $59.24.
Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) are designed to be parallel – having hundreds of cores versus traditional CPUs. Increasingly, you can leverage GPU power for many computationally-intense applications, not just for graphics. If you’re facing the challenge of programming systems to effectively use these massively parallel processors to achieve efficiency and performance goals, GPU Computing Gems provides a wealth of tested, proven GPU techniques.
GPU Computing Gems: Emerald Edition is the first volume in this new series from Morgan Kaufmann. Different application domains often pose similar algorithm problems, and researchers from diverse application domains often develop similar algorithmic strategies.
Social media is more and more a big part of online marketing strategies for companies of all sizes and area of activity. The Noob Guide to Online Marketing, made by Unbounce, shows in detail how to use all of the tools available, and Socialcast shares their thoughts on the impacts this new Culture of Collaboration have in Enterprises. According to Postling, Facebook and Twitter dominate the Small Biz Social Media use, and from Kiss Metrics comes a breakdown of Social Media by Demographic. Our last pick goes to the use of Social Media during emergencies, presented by Credit Loan.
To the right is the final image captured from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope. The WISE space-born telescope has a 16 inch diameter and surveys light in the infrared wavelengths. The telescope ran out of the frozen coolant needed to keep it cool it to view the universe in the infrared wavelength. We have covered this space telescope from its first images up until this last image. Thanks NASA, for the beautiful images from the WISE telescope.
On the morning of February 1st, 2011, NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, took its last snapshot of the sky. This “last light” image is reminiscent of the “first light” image from WISE, taken only 13 months prior. WISE’s final picture shows thousands of stars in a patch of the Milky Way Galaxy, covering an area 3 times the size of the full Moon, in the constellation Perseus. In the upper left corner, a faint wispy cloud can be seen bending around a pulsating variable star called EV Persei.
After its coolant ran out in October of 2010, WISE warmed up from -260 degrees to -200 degrees C (-436 to -328 degrees Fahrenheit). This image contains data from the two detectors largely unaffected by the warm-up: 3.4 and 4.6 microns (the 12 and 22 micron detectors are no longer useful at the warmer temperatures). The color is representational: cyan (blue-green) shows light detected by the 3.4 micron channel of WISE, and red shows light seen by the 4.6 micron channel. This region of the sky had been observed by WISE previously in all four of its detectors as part of its primary survey, and it is hard to see any difference in the quality of the last-light images at 3.4 and 4.6 microns.
In the short 13 months that WISE surveyed, it produced millions of infrared images covering the whole sky in its four bands, and covering it twice at 3.4 and 4.6 microns. Now that the survey is complete, WISE is being put into hibernation. While the satellite sleeps and circles more than 500 kilometers above the Earth’s surface, the WISE team is busily preparing its data for two big public releases: one this April, and the final release in the spring of 2012. Even though WISE has taken its last picture, the project will continue to feature some of the best imagery from the survey on a regular basis.
Blunty was able to get some hands-on time playing with the Nintendo 3DS. Unfortunately, he was only able to show video of it in 2-D mode. Why? Because Nintendo asked him to, of course. Showing it in 3-D mode would look weird since he is shooting the video with a 2-D camera, and we are watching on 2-D YouTube. Still, it is an interesting review, even if we cannot see it in 3-D.
Going hands-on with the Nintendo 3DS, which will be releasing soon, for a first impressions review of the hardware, the built in software, and even trying the backwards compatibility with Pokemon on 3DS
Blunty3000 gets some play time with the as yet unreleased successor to the DS, the 3DS. Playing with the built in software including the Mii maker, some Augmented reality gaming using an AR card, Face Raiders using the cameras and the motion sensors, and even popping a DS game into the 3DS, Pokemon to see how the backwards compatibility does.
At the Mobile World Congress 2011 conference in Barcelona, Spain, LG announced their LG Optimus Pad, and the LG Optimus 3D smartphone. The tablet comes with a 5 Megapixel, 3-D capable camera which will allow you to capture either images or video in 3-D. Unfortunately, the tablet is not 3-D capable, unless you count wearing the red/cyan glasses (which I do not count). Instead you will have to watch the content on a 3-D capable TV or PC.
The smartphone also includes a 3-D capable camera. Again, it is a 5 Megapixel camera capable of recording 1080p in 2-D mode, and 720p in 3-D mode. Unlike the tablet, however, it will be capable of switching between 2-D mode and 3-D mode on the display of the phone itself
The 3D Vision Blog has more information on both the table and smartphone announcement.
The phone also features an HDMI 1.4 output that will allow you to play stereoscopic 3D content trough it on a 3D HDTV for example. The phone will also come with a YouTube 3D client that will allow the users to upload the 3D videos they capture directly on YouTube in 3D format thanks to a partnership between LG and Google. The Android-powered Optimus 3D will be available in the second quarter of 2011.
While people complain about Hollywood VFX studios crumbling under mismanagement, unrealistic deadlines, and tight budgets, studios elsewhere seem to be thriving. Case in point comes from a new announcement out of Canada’s STarz Animation Toronto which has just announced a few new hires, bringing the numbers of 100. They’re working on three new projects for both TV and film, and wrapped up work last year on the currently playing Gnomeo & Juliet.
Last week, Luxion announced the immediate availability of KeyShot 2.2, the newest version of their impressive rendering package.
In what sounds like a pretty interesting use of 3D, RealD and the London Opera House have teamed up with Toshiba to package 3D BluRay releases of ‘Carmen in 3D’ with select TV’s, PC’s, and BluRay players. Currently only viewable in RealD Theaters, the Play format is ideally suited for 3D work due to it’s fixed working area and limited range of motion.
The latest issue of Popular Science magazine has a hidden AR marker that works with the metaio application to show you an interactive 3D display of the new Motorola Xoom tables and Google’s Honeycomb (android) 3.0 OS.
Social media is more and more a big part of online marketing strategies for companies of all sizes and area of activity. The Noob Guide to Online Marketing, made by 
VizWorld.com 
Comments