Green Lantern featured hundreds of aliens, several of which had important speaking roles in the movie. Animating each of these individually and realistically would have taken months of time, but thanks to some new facial capture technology from Mova, they were able to accurately track real actor’s faces.
“We create more facial data than people are used to getting,” said Pearce. “In markers you can get maybe 100 or 150 data points tops, and we are giving people hundreds of thousands of points of data,” requiring the FX house to come up with a process that can use the exceptional amount of information and Mova to decide what data needs to be sent.
The article gets surprisingly in-depth into the workflow and technology, and makes a great read.
This first week of car-related infographics finishes with some of the (many) recent illustrations about the importance of car insurance. The Auto Insurance, CarInsurance.com, CarInsurance.org, Fat Wallet and Confused explain the many aspects to consider when it comes to choosing your insurance, comparing it to the rest of world and even imagining what would an insurance for some fantasy cars cost. Next week we’ll continue with the second half of this compilation!
I just found this interesting example (with Source Code) of a new anti-aliasing technique called “GBAA”, or Geometry Buffer Anti Aliasing. It uses a separate buffer to store geometry information as two-channel edge distance data , then uses a pixel buffer to select which pixel to show at rendertime.
The advantage of GBAA over GPAA is that it gets rid of the second geometry pass. It also does not require any line drawing, something that consumer level GPUs generally suck at. Additionally, having geometry information in a buffer allows us to anti-alias other edges than just geometric ones, most notably alpha-tested edges. The shader just needs to output the distance to the alpha-edge, something that’s easily approximated using gradient instructions. This is also demonstrated in the demo. On the down side it requires additional memory for the geometry buffer, but does not balloon up in the same way as MSAA does.
I’ve got to admit, the results are impressive. You can get the Windows Executable and source code at the site. DirectX10 required (Sorry XP’ers).
Alberto Cairo, directory of infographics for Epoca magazine, is launching a course for reporters with the Knight Center for Journalism in the America that hopes to teach journalists the importance of visualizing data and information.
In the course, Cairo will show journalists how to use graphics to communicate and analyze data. “You don’t need to know how to draw, nor how to use complicated software,” he said. “Instead, you need to educate yourself to think in a more visual way, something that is within everyone’s reach. This change in mentality is fundamental for the future of journalism. I will also explain how to create computer graphics/display departments, which professionals to hire and how to train them.”
A new special for Discovery TV shows the story of Seal Team Six and their famous raid on the Osama Bin-Laden compound that resulted in the death of the terrorist leader after a decade of searching. Of course, video of the actual raid is too sensitive to show so Pixeldust Studios got the deal to recreate the raid in CG, animating much of the raid for the new special.
For the special, Pixeldust provided animations depicting the compound hiding Osama Bin Laden, as well as the recreation of Seal Team Six’s aggressive attack withinthe compound, resulting in the killing of Bin Laden and the taking of his body. Pixeldust’s work also detailed a variety of equipment that members of Seal Team Six use during their secret, highly dangerous excursions underwater, through the air, and under various climate and geographic conditions on the ground. To view some of this work, please see:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57lYxh2Qa7Q
Fast forward to around the 1:30 mark to see some of the work.
Green Lantern featured hundreds of aliens, several of which had important speaking roles in the movie. Animating each of these individually and realistically would have taken months of time, but thanks to some new facial capture technology from Mova, they were able to accurately track real actor’s faces.
This first week of car-related infographics finishes with some of the (many) recent illustrations about the importance of car insurance. 
A new special for Discovery TV shows the story of Seal Team Six and their famous raid on the Osama Bin-Laden compound that resulted in the death of the terrorist leader after a decade of searching. Of course, video of the actual raid is too sensitive to show so Pixeldust Studios got the deal to recreate the raid in CG, animating much of the raid for the new special.
VizWorld.com 
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