VizWorld.com

UK’s TimesOnline has a short article talking to some people at Bournemouth University, home of the National Centre for computer Animation, and stomping ground to over 50 VFX artists that helped to create the stereoscopic epic Avatar.  In the article they discuss that not only is graphics and design talent important, but so is a good understand of math and physics.

The skills needed to create stunning computer-generated effects can be attributed to a rare combination of talents. According to Saf Efstathiou, computer animation course leader at Bournemouth University: “When we are recruiting students, we look for high grades in maths and in art. Disciplines like physics, chemistry and IT can also be very important. A lot of maths students don’t realise that there’s a very creative environment open to them.”

via And you thought being a maths geek was going to be boring . . . – Times Online.

Science avatar, education, vfx

Time for another in our ongoing Second Life series, and this time I’m going to tackle Education in Virtual Worlds.  Again, not a particularly new advance.  Several universities have begun to embrace “online courses”, coupling traditional education tools with web-based systems like Blackboard to increase revenue with a minimum of expense.  It allows teachers to very easily re-use class materials (doesn’t get much easier than cut-n-paste, or simply clicking a “publish” button from their library of assets), and enables the university to open classes to students around the world.

Virtual Worlds are becoming the “next generation” of these online courses, and Second Life is on the forefront of the wave.

Read more…

Graphics, Science education, feature, secondlife, virtual worlds

Leslie Hope Jarmon, UT Austin Faculty member and instructor, pioneered instructional uses of virtual worlds in educational environments, co-founding the Educators Corp virtual community of interdisciplinary educators, researchers, and libraries from around the world.  She was instrumental in a $250,000 Grant for “Building Immersive Instructional Experiences and Learning Communities in Second Life” initiative at UT.  But that’s not all:

She was designated principal investigator for the first-in-the-world project that includes 16 academic, medical and health science university campuses. Hosting almost 200,000 students and 7,500 faculty, the UT System has funded the creation of a virtual 49-island archipelago in Second Life (SL), with three islands per campus and one central island for System-wide collaboration and administrative activities. It is designed to foster extensive collaboration within and among the UT System’s campuses by means of an open, online virtual platform that can be networked, customized, adapted and expanded.

Let us hope that someone else will pick up her torch and keep innovating on uses of virtual worlds in education.

UT Austin News

Obituary

Science education, secondlife, virtual worlds

For researchers and educators looking to bring real-time rendering and gaming technology into the classroom, Crytek is now offering free educational licenses to certain individuals.

CryENGINE® 3 Educational SDK is for internal, non-commercial use; and is available only to educational institutions. We do not license individual student or group projects. Course leaders will have access to all available CryENGINE® 3 support materials – and students can access a specialist educational community area of www.crymod.com, to share experiences, showcase projects and help each other achieve amazing results with the CryENGINE® 3.

Eligibility requires special registration and legal documentation, full details on their site.

via Crytek | MyCryENGINE.

Science cryengine, crytek, education, sdk

It makes sense that a lower ratio of students to teachers would result in more “one on one” time with teachers, and therefore result in a better education and smarter students.  This is frequently used as an argument for increased educational spending and hiring additional teachers, but is it true?  FlowingData compares state’s average ratio of Students to Teachers against average SAT scores and finds the truth a bit muddled.

From the picture above, it does look like there is a difference. States that score highest (highlighted in green) on the SAT on average tend to have lower student-teacher ratios. High-ratio states, however, have scores that hover around the national average.

But there are also many states with ratios below the national average (small-ish classes) that score below the national average.

via Class Size and SAT Scores By State | FlowingData.

Science education, infographic

NVidia’s been busy lately, announcing several new additions to their growing “CUDA Centers of Excellence” program which honors schools and universities on the forefront of GPGPU computing.  Most recently they’ve announced:

Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tsinghua University
University of Tennessee, Knoxville

In addition, they’ve announced that they are accepting applications into their NVidia Fellowship Program. (…)

Science cuda, education, nvidia

Jamie Peterson has had enough of browsing demo reels and seeing the same online tutorials represented as original work, and has created a 3-part series where he promises to teach you the same Principles of Animation pioneered in the early years of Walt Disney animation that can be used to take your work to the next level. (…)

Graphics animation, education, tutorial

GOOD Magazine has a feature article discussing how easy it is to manipulate data visualizations to meet any end you prefer, showing examples of the CRATX stock listing. (…)

Science education, good, visualization

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)’s Advanced Visualization Laboratory has announced they are producing some new artful high-definition 3D animations of black holes and other phenomena for the upcoming “Quantum to Cosmos: Ideas for the Future” event running from October 15-25.  The real kicker is that the videos will be narrated by Professor Stephen Hawking, honorary Festival President. (…)

Science education, festival, ncsa

At the Saint Paul College in Minnesota, Warren Sheaffer has created a collection of classes and programs to build degrees based on web2.0 services and Second Life. (…)

Science education, secondlife

Twelve lucky participants will have the opportunity to take the Escape Studios Skillset Visual Effects course, an 18 week course at the London Studios, for free thanks to the Skillset Film Skills Fund, and even receive minimum wage throughout their attendance. (…)

Graphics course, education, escape studios, training, vfx

With all the rage in 3D Stereoscopic displays, be it on computers or in the theater, you might want to spend some time brushing up on just how it works.  Binocularity.org has descriptions and examples of stereoscopic effects on their website, including:

OpenGL Examples
Stereoscopic Camera Calculator
Glossaries
A list of technical papers and report
and more

Hit up their website and get your knowledge on. (…)

Science 3d, education, examples, stereoscopic

CGSociety has announced a pair of new workshops available for enrollment.  First is “Matte Painting” form David Luong:
Matte Painter, compositor and VFX guru David Luong is back with his updated Matte Painting workshop. (…)

Graphics education, maya, painting, training, workshop

JourneyEd, purveyor of high-end software packages to educational institutions worldwide, has added another package to its shelves just in time for SIGGRAPH: Pixar’s Renderman. (…)

Graphics education, journeyed, renderman, software

VR medical simulators have been around for a while, but this is the first one I’ve heard of using Second Life to simulate an entire hospital.  Imperial College London has created a “virtual hospital” inside Second Life containing an O.R., patients, and more. (…)

Science biomed, education, secondlife, training, virtual worlds

A new training video for Side FX’s Houdini focuses on Shading and Rendering. (…)

Graphics education, houdini, sideeffects, training, vfx

The University of Illinois at Chicago is moving the classic laboratory visualization system out of the back-rooms and into the mainstream with their new Cyber-commons high-tech classroom. (…)

Science chicago, college, displaywall, education, evl, uic

A pair of classes will be going on August 10-14th as part of the Summer Institute at Wallenberg Hall.

Data Visualization: Theory and Practice . August 10-11. (…)

Science education, training

Side Effects Software, makers of Houdini, will be at SIGGRAPH2009 this year talking about how you can use Houdini in educational environments for CG training.  They will have Aliza Sorotzkin, Training & School Accounts Manager, and Peter Robinson, Senior Trainer, on hand to speak to you about learning & teaching Houdini. (…)

Graphics education, houdini, sideeffects, siggraph, software, training

Created by Nancy Stock-Allen for students in her History of Graphic Design Class, her website is a great collection of some of the biggest milestones in Graphic Design history. (…)

Graphics education, graphic design, history