VizWorld.com

One particularly neat feature of the Autodesk offering is that they offer a type of “inverse” scanning, so that you can stand inside a room and take photos of all the walls, and have the entire room reconstructed.  It’s almost like scanning an object inside-out.

Check out their demonstration video below.

via Autodesk Labs Utilities Project Photofly 2.0.

Science autodesk, photofly

The Foundry has just begun shipping the new MARI 1.3 with lots of new features like a fancy Displacement Preview, support for Tiled Textures, and even full support for Disney’s ‘Ptex’ tool.

Walt Disney Feature Animation introduced the Ptex per-face texture format last year. This technology allows users to paint and render models without having to define a UV map by allocated individual textures to geometry faces. Creating UVs to explicitly map texture coordinates is a frustrating experience. MARI now fully supports a Ptex workflow. Users can load models without UVs, paint using the full set of MARI tools, and export to .ptx files. Our Ptex integration is built on MARI’s world-class data and rendering engine and draws directly from Walt Disney Animation Studios paint technology following a ground-breaking agreement with The Foundry in 2010.

It’s available right now for Linux & Windows for $1,980USD, but there is a 15-day demo you can get from their website.

via CGSociety – MARI 1.3.

Graphics foundry, mari, software

Stereoscopy News brings us a short Press Release from “Zecotek” announcing their newly granted patent #7,944,465 for a “Apparatus and System for Reproducing 3-Dimensional Images”.

The new patent covers the use of equipment for the reproduction of static and moving 3D stereo representations with the capability of recording and transmitting stereo representations of 3D scenes.  Zecotek’s “patented” Real-Time 3D Display System is based on the auto-stereoscopic principle, but with substantial innovative.  It has the capability of simultaneously presenting to multiple users both 3D and 2D images on the same screen with separate views and at different viewing angles.  The 3D display system provides comfortable conditions for viewing a volumetric representation without eye strain.  The viewing of such 3D images does not require the use of any supplementary means such as glasses, does not drastically limit the position of the viewer with respect to the display, and allows simultaneous viewing of the 3D display by many viewers from a sufficiently wide field of view.

But where’s the Beef? From reading the legalese-encrypted claims, it seems their technology is a collection of micro-lenses that  separate the 2D screen behind it into 3D.  This way it can present a uniform 3D image to multiple viewers in multiple locations simultaneously, by letting the lenses separate the two eyes out.  It’s clever, but not altogether new, technology.

ZECOTEK strikes again.

Hardware 3d, patent, stereoscopic, zecotek

As good ole Captain Jack Sparrow returns for his 4th adventure, Cinesite was involved in creating the old classic London and other environments.  Using shots from the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, they used a special proprietary tool called ‘CsPhotoMesh’ to help in geometric reconstruction of the scene.  FXGuide has all the details.

“Given a set of digital images of a static scene, CsPhotoMesh produces a textured 3D mesh accurately representing the scene geometry and 3D cameras matching the original photos positions,” explains Stanley-Clamp. “The tool is fully automatic. All it requires is to drop all the images in a directory and run the command. This kicks off a reconstruction process on our renderfarm resulting in a 3D mesh and camera positions ready for texturing.”

via London calling for Pirates 4 at Cinesite | fxguide.

Graphics cinesite, movie, vfx

One of the year’s top technology events is the eG8, and Synthesio analyzed the Twitter buzz behind the latets edition of the event.Our selection continues with Online Computers Science‘s looks at the future of computers. while TechKing takes us into The Wonderful World of Search. The current state of Open Source, brought by Jordan Open Source, and the role of technology in modern education, by Masters in Education, close this edition of the Daily Viz from Visual Loop.

Read more…

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

The University of Texas San Antonio is getting a new visualization lab on campus funded through a 3-year $482,600 grant from the NSF.  So far they’ve got a 3D monitor (yay, you can tell the announcement came from the PR department, not the actual Viz lab) and a 14.5ft x 6ft visualization wall built from twenty-four 30-inch monitors.  But that’s not all:

The prized possession of the lab, however, is a high-definition haptic device. The device works like a Nintendo Wii for scientists and engineers. It allows researchers to touch and feel digital models they create. It also recreates the feel of a surgical procedure.

 

“If you were a surgeon in training, it’s a device that you could use, with a visual image on the computer screen, be able to feel what it feels like to perform open-heart surgery,” said Frederick.

Won’t put them on even footing with TACC yet, but looks like a battle is brewing for Viz Dominance in Texas.

Advanced Visualization Lab Comes To UTSA – Education News Story – KSAT San Antonio.

Science nsf, utsa

Later this month, June 21-22, at the Millennium Broadway Hotel in New York City will be the second annual “International Conference on Stereoscopic 3D for Media Entertainment”, better known as the SMPTE Conference.  If you’re interested in 3D, either from a research or a production perspective, sounds like this might be a good event to attend.

During the two-day event, engineers, scientists, and researchers will discuss the latest work on human factors and the viewing of 3D materials; stereoscopic image acquisition and production advancements; stereoscopic image metrology and processing, including an open-source camera platform being developed at Stanford University ; and advancements in stereoscopic displays, including those related to live, holographic TV.

That last one sounds interesting: live, holographic TV.  I have a feeling people are thinking holographic as in the “free-standing, multiple simultaneous viewpoint” vision popularized in Star Wars, not the “scattering from laser interference” that is actual holograms.  But still, it would be interesting to see how people propose recording & broadcasting it.

via SMPTE 3D Event Features Leading Researchers in Technical Sessions Spanning Human Factors, Open-Source Camera Platform, Holographic TV | Business Wire.

Science conference, hologram, smpte, stereoscopic

So, for the last week or so the internet has been abuzz with stories about “BitCoin”, the new all-digital currency that’s going to destabilize governments around the world and bring us to a new utopian society.  Well, yeah it’s a lot of hype.  But when I heard about the “mining” aspect of it, and how it’s almost entirely GPU based, I figured I would check it out.

From what I can tell, the “mining” part is really just a brute-force hash attack, looking for specific numbers.  I ran some experiments with this once before as part of my Quadro5000 review using HashGPU.  Using the OpenCL bitcoin miner, I figured I could some up with some nice results.  I had a machine handy with two GeForce GTX285′s in it, and easily managed to eek out about 64Mh/s on each card, for a total around 128Mh/s. (Mh/s = Million Hashes per Second).  I also happen to have the Quadro 5000 card around, based on the Fermi Architecture, so I thought I’ld throw it in as it’s not currently in the Wiki Hardware Results.

I was very disappointed to find that my Quadro5000 could only manage about  58-59Mh/s, a startling 10% less than the GTX285.  This truly baffled me.  The Quadro 5000, which handily beats AMD cards in most benchmarks, falls waaay behind the ATI offerings which easily rake in 100+Mh/s, some hitting 300Mh/s.

All in all, I ran with two GTX285′s for about 4 days, and mined all of 2 BitCoins.  Presumably with a single AMD Radeon 6990, for $700 which claims to rake in over 650Mh/s , I could have make 5x that.  It’s interesting to see that as popular as CUDA is, there are still several problems where AMD’s “stream” design beats NVidia’s hands-down.

And of course, this wouldn’t be a BitCoin article if I didn’t include “If you liked this article, feel free to send some BitCoins to 1HXHDYeQux5BVzwTF5gEwMS2MgaKXwXeft“.

P.S. If anyone actually does send me any, shoot me an email with the amount for a Shout-Out here.

Update 7pm: Wow.. I just refreshed my wallet and thanks to the 3 people who actually sent me a total of 0.12 BTC, the equivalent of about $1 at current exchange rates.

Hardware, Science amd, bitcoin, cuda, gpgpu, nvidia, opencl

I knew AMD’s Fusion would be a force to be reckoned with, but I never expected this.  In just a few short months, AMD has moved 5 million Fusion units, in a recession with slumping netbook sales.

Raymond Dumbeck, product marketing manager for AMD’s mobile products, was quoted as saying that AMD was “sold out” of the Fusion APU, with “demand far exceedingly supply.” Whenever you can sell all that you make, the accounting department is happy. It’s been years since there has been any lasting good news for AMD, and we’re happy to see it. Intel has ran that show for far too long, and it’s about time the Atom got serious with itself.

Amen.. Glad to see Intel finally having a reason to innovate.

via AMD Ships Five Million Fusion APUs – HotHardware.

Hardware amd, fusion

FXGuide has a great in-depth look at the new vampire flick “Priest”, featuring some great new ideas for vampires and some great tech on how to bring them to life.

To create the drone pods, Spin carried out some tech development to  generate crowds and the squirming movement for within the pods. “The tech solution for the pod movements was very similar to bone and muscle simulations,” says Campbell, “except that the skin membranes had more elasticity. We used a cloth envelope with rigid bodies that could be deformed with the vampire drone rigs. Then we would just simulate this solution over the animation of the rigs.”

Maya was used for animation, led by Peter Giliberti, with the pod fluid that gushes out completed with RealFlow. Muscle and skin movement for the drones relied on solid skin enveloping and corrective blend shapes, with rigging lead by Glen Chang. The final shots were rendered in RenderMan.

via Priest: not your average vampire movie | fxguide.

Graphics movie, vfx