VizWorld.com

A group efford by Kolor, Arnaud Frich Photography, and Extraordinair-Urban robs former champion 360Cities of their “World’s Largest Panorama” title with a new massive 26-Gigapixel interactive panoram of Paris.  No normal camera could capture the detail they needed, so they constructed a custom rig:

Paris 26 Gigapixels was shot with very unique hardware: 2 Canon 5D Mark II (21.1 MP) each with a 300 mm f4.0 with a tele converter in order to get a  600mm /f8.0 needed to beat the record, mounted on a custom-made panoramic head.

The images were then stitched with the program Autopano Giga.

Browse around with the mouse and keyboard and marvel at the detail they’ve captured.  My favorite find so far is that you can actually see the individual people on the upper level of the Notre Dame Cathedral.

Paris 26 Gigapixels – Interactive virtual tour of the most beautiful monuments of Paris.

Graphics, Hardware extreme, panorama, photography

Discovery magazine has collected a few beautiful images generated from large supercomputing simulations into a short 6-image gallery.  Covering DOE astronomical simulations (shown), ITER fusion simulations, the ORNL supernova graphics, and much more, it’s the very definition of ‘viz porn’.

Beautifully Detailed Supercomputer Simulations | Technology | DISCOVER Magazine via InsideHPC.

Science sciviz, visualization

A little Friday Funny from Jesus Diaz of Gizmodo.  Visualizing the meaning of Darth Vader’s famous quote “The ability to destory a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force”.

Infographic: The Power of the Death Star vs. Power of the Force – Data – Gizmodo.

Graphics humor, infographic

Took a lot longer than expected, but the TopoGun OSX Beta has concluded and now TopoGun is officially available for OSX.  If you already have a TopoGun license, then you have the option of using it with either Windows or OSX, you don’t have to buy a new one.  If you do not have one, then licenses are available for $100 for a single license.

TopoGun | Home.

Graphics osx, software, topogun

Intel has a new “Visual Computing” demo online called ‘TickerTape’, which makes use of DirectX10 and the new Intel Core i7 processor capabilities.

Ticker Tape is a tech demo that showcases complex particle movement using aerodynamic calculations such as lift and drag. This is all done at high framerates by utilizing an n-way threaded framework and SIMD optimizations. Included in the demo is the capability to dynamically vary the number of threads and usage of SSE so the benefits of both can be easily seen.

Source code and binaries are available on their site, but you’ll have to be on Windows 7 or Vista, with a DX10 compliant video card.

via TickerTape – Intel® Software Network.

Science demo, intel

Autodesk has released pretty much everything in the 2011 suite this week.  We’ve already told you about Maya & 3dsMax, and now Mudbox, MotionBuilder, and Softimage have all seen updates.  From Autodesk’s website, for Mudbox2011:
Autodesk® Mudbox® 2011 digital sculpting and texture painting software includes the following new and enhanced features:

Deform and pose models quickly and easily to change their design, access occluded regions, present them for approval, or prepare them for map extraction. (…)

Graphics autodesk, motionbuilder, mudbox, softimage, software

Are you a fan of NVidia’s CUDA, but know that you should be using OpenCL instead?  Nobody enjoys porting code between languages, and porting GPU code can be especially nasty.  A new open-source tool called ‘Swan’ aims to make it easier via a completely automated onversion. (…)

Science cuda, gpgpu, opencl, sdk, swan

SmithMicro has just updated their popular Poser character animation product to version 2010, adding support for HDRi, 8 new human figures, and over 2.5GB of included content. (…)

Graphics poser, smithmicro, software

Several months ago, RDECOM issued the “Federal Virtual Worlds Challenge”, challenging the public and contractors to develop innovative virtual world tools to aid in research, education, and collaboration.  Now they’ve narrowed down the submissions to a handful of entries in each of 4 areas: Collaboration, Skill Buildings, Instruction, and Visualization.  You can hit their website for links to each of the websites accompanying the entry for more information. (…)

Science contest, federal, virtual worlds

Not willing to live in the shadow of OnLive, Otoy is back with more details on their own  “games-on-demand” service via a parnership with SuperMicro, AMD, and Intel.  It’s not a complete replacement for OnLive, at least not at first:
The consumer service will be similar to what Steve Perlman envisions with OnLive, the well-financed games-on-demand service backed by big game publishers and AT&T. (…)

Hardware amd, intel, otoy

Digital Vision, Key Code Media, and Avid have been kind enough to send to all VizWorld readers an invitation to an upcoming demonstration and reception celebrating the brand new release of Nucoda 2009.1 for Color Grading and Phoenix Restoration platforms. (…)

Graphics avid, digital vision, invitation, key code media

Nick Haemel has a great short “cliff-notes” version of the new OpenGL 3.3 and 4.0 announcement over at FireUser.com, covering some of the important new aspects in relation to application developers. (…)

Science glsl, opengl

OpenGL programmers at GDC should stop by room 123 of the Moscone Center to see Khronos presenting various aspects of OpenGL, OpenCL, and WebGL, and most importantly get an inside look at OpenGL3.3 and OpenGL4.0.  What’s new in OpenGL4.0 ? (…)

Science gdc, khronos, opengl

Walt Disney Animation Studios has taken a page from Sony Pictures Imageworks and launched a website dedicated to technical publications and open-source software they use in production of their own films. (…)

Science disney, opensource, ptex

A new press release from Luxology and Tripwire Interacative reveals that upcoming WW2 FPS “Red Orchestra: Heroes of Stalingrad” uses Luxology’s modo401 to model the environments and weapons used in the game. (…)

Graphics luxology, modo401, tripwire, video game

If you work in architectural rendering, you definitely need to check out abduzeedo’s latest list of 30 fantastic architecture renders. (…)

Graphics architecture, list

Big news from GDC regarding the widely speculative OnLive remote gaming service.  While speaking at GDC, Steve Perlmen stated that the system will go live on June 17th, during E3 2010, and cost gamers $14.95 a month for 720p gaming. (…)

Hardware onlive, video game

Today’s “Deal Of The Day” at Amazon is the Panasonic HDC-HS250-K HD Camcorder that records to an internal Hard Drive or special SD cards. (…)

Hardware camera, panasonic, sale

This week’s recommended resource comes from Eric Luhta, and his ‘How to Cheat in Maya 2010‘.

Take your animations to the next level with this essential guide to Maya 2010. Packed with character animation techniques and the secrets of professional animators, How to Cheat in Maya 2010 provides the tips and tools to help you create high quality animation in the most efficient way possible. This comprehensive guide to animating with Maya contains gold-mine coverage, including animation techniques, using Maya’s tools with the 12 animation principles, working with constraints, and even foolproof lighting tricks to show off your work.

With this essential handbook, learn which circumstances call for which techniques, and how to get quality results fast. You will not only learn how to be productive in Maya, but also be given access under the hood to the actual scene files of a professional animator. Covering such topics such as pose to pose blocking, layered animation, fixing gimbal lock, facial animation, and much more, How to Cheat in Maya 2010 is an invaluable resource for artists and animators alike.

With Maya2011 around the corner, it can’t hurt to brush up on some of the lesser-used features of 2010 in preparation.  This book is available at Amazon and in the VizWorld.com Store.

Graphics feature, maya, resource of the week

ISGTW has a story about the search for neutrinos at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex, with some detail on the various types of neutrinos and the problems in finding them.  In particular, the Japanese attempt to find the ‘theta13′ neutrino via the T2K experiment. (…)

Science physics, sciviz