InsideHPC has a new video podcast online interviewing Stace Hipperson of Real Status, and a demonstration of their IT visualization system “HyperGlance”.
In this video, Real Status co-founder & CTO Stace Hipperson demonstrates HyperGlance, a powerful software package that uses sophisticated graphics and modelling techniques to create real-time models of complete IT infrastructures in 3D and overlays performance and business metrics.
It looks pretty impressive for at-a-glance visualization of a computer network that could be pretty powerful for large datacenters, and I like the deep exploration tools they’ve integrated. It’s an interesting look at visualization from the Business Manager/CTO side of things, folks that are more interested in “overviews” than deep details. See the video below.
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.
I’ve not used FieldView lots during my career but I know it’s huge in the CFD space, and the new version released today might make me take another look at it soon. The new FieldView 13 adds in support for transparency, modern GPU accelerators, sweep caching, a new Windows 64-bit client, and built-in support for Windows HPC Server if you want it.
Existing FieldView customers can go ahead and download v13 from the Support Area after a login.
The Walt Disney Animation Studios has just added two new software tools to their open-source offerings. The first is a new tool called ‘Reposado’ that will probably appeal more to your Systems Admins than your graphics guys:
Reposado is a set of tools written in Python that replicate the key functionality of Mac OS X Server’s Software Update Service. Reposado, together with the “curl” binary tool and a web server such as Apache 2, enables you to host a local Apple Software Update Server on any hardware and OS of your choice. Reposado is licensed under the new BSD license.
Second is a new tool called ‘SeExpr’:
SeExpr is a simple expression language that we use to provide artistic control and customization to our core software. We use it for procedural geometry synthesis, image synthesis, simulation control, and much more.
It looks very much in the “Made for Engineers by Engineers” stages, but could be a great tool to use with massive geometry & object instancing systems.
“Rango” marks ILM’s first foray into full-cg animated films, and utilized a lot of their in-house expertise with Pixologic’s Zbrush. Over at ZBrushCentral, they have an excellent writeup on how they built it all.
The general flow was to sculpt and texture a three-day ZBrush maquette for each character and after approval, start in on the asset. A first pass model was sent to rigging while the model asset continued to be refined, hair and fur splines added, scales added, UV’s laid out etc. Once the finished model had gone to paint, the modeler would start on the facial library. We had a few weeks for each character model including wardrobe and two weeks on average for making our facial libraries.
Autodesk has posted a pair of videos in The Area detailing the new capabilities of the integrated Real-Time Color Grading in Flame Premium. Showing the effects of volumetric light, 3d cast shadows, lens flares, and the multi-layer timelines, it’s a great way to get a glimpse of what’s available.
In Flame Premium, Total Control in Finishing means Flame Artists now have Real-Time Color Grading as part of their toolset. For Colorists, it’s all about having control over Light in 3D Space. And for Smoke Editors, you get all of the creative tools of Flame you’ve always wanted but with the Timeline workflow you know and love.
Computerworld takes a look at some of the tools presented at last month’s Computer-Assisted Reporting conference and picks their top 22 free tools for visualization & analysis. Many of them we’ve reported on before (like DataWrangler, Google Fusion, and Many Eyes).
There are many tools around to help turn data into graphics, but they can carry hefty price tags. The cost can make sense for professionals whose primary job is to find meaning in mountains of information, but you might not be able to justify such an expense if you or your users only need a graphics application from time to time, or if your budget for new tools is somewhat limited. If one of the higher-priced options is out of your reach, there are a surprising number of highly robust tools for data visualization and analysis that are available at no charge.
It’s a good list, but missing some rather important additions like ParaView & VisIt IMO.
A bit announcement from NAB in the rendering space, Shotgun Software has announced their intent to integrate their impressive web-based project management and collaboration package (discussed here) with Thinkbox Software’s great Deadline render queue management package (discussed here). Both tools offer some great features to users, and together they’re guaranteed to be a huge success.
The Shotgun and Deadline integration enables a seamless render and review data flow. When Deadline starts a render, a “Version” is automatically created in Shotgun with key metadata. When the render is complete, Deadline updates Shotgun with a thumbnail image, paths to frames, render stats, and playback links. Shotgun then dispatches out targeted notifications with links back to the work. Studios can then view the Versions in various contexts, create reports, and organize work into Playlists for review sessions where they can quickly take Notes with Shotgun’s “Note App.”
The system is already available to Deadline users on active maintenance subscriptions, and will be included in the upcoming Deadline 5.
Lifehacker has a short glowing review of the Open-Source video editing program “Lightworks” for Windows.
If you’re looking for capable video editing software on a budget (or not), Lightworks is definitely worth checking out. I tried it out on a Windows 7 nettop, which is about as slow of a computer as you can buy these days, and it performed phenomenally well. Lightworks handles most of what you’d expect from a professional editing application, such as video capture and import, GPU-accelerated real time effects (that you can layer on top of one another), color correction that doesn’t suck (which is more than I can say for Final Cut’s plug-ins), broad format support, and an autosave that just happens instantly without bothering you.
If you want to try it out, you can head on over to their site (currently down, probably overwhelmed).
Announced back at SIGGRAPH, E-On software has just released Carbon Scatter for 3dsMax. Combining their digital nature systems with instancing plugins, you can now create massive populations in your scenes with just a few button clicks.
Carbon Scatter is the easiest and most straightforward solution for creating complex and detailed populations using the native instancing technologies of 3ds Max. Versions of Carbon Scatter for Maya and Cinema4D* will be available shortly (an Open Beta will be released in the coming weeks).Carbon Scatter integrates e-on’s patented EcoSystem™ algorithms directly inside the end user’s favorite 3D application, allowing the population of native scenes with millions of instances and rendering them with the user’s renderer of choice.*Versions for Softimage and LightWave are under consideration.
Key features include automated “smart” scattering, painting, and many ecosystem controls. It’s available for Windows systems now for $195 to $395, depending on features.
InsideHPC has a new video podcast online interviewing Stace Hipperson of Real Status, and a demonstration of their IT visualization system “HyperGlance”.
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.
The Walt Disney Animation Studios has just added two new software tools to their open-source offerings. The first is a new tool called ‘Reposado’ that will probably appeal more to your Systems Admins than your graphics guys:
“Rango” marks ILM’s first foray into full-cg animated films, and utilized a lot of their in-house expertise with Pixologic’s Zbrush. Over at ZBrushCentral, they have an excellent writeup on how they built it all.
Autodesk has posted a pair of videos in The Area detailing the new capabilities of the integrated Real-Time Color Grading in Flame Premium. Showing the effects of volumetric light, 3d cast shadows, lens flares, and the multi-layer timelines, it’s a great way to get a glimpse of what’s available.
Computerworld takes a look at some of the tools presented at last month’s Computer-Assisted Reporting conference and picks their top 22 free tools for visualization & analysis. Many of them we’ve reported on before (like DataWrangler, Google Fusion, and Many Eyes).
A bit announcement from NAB in the rendering space, Shotgun Software has announced their intent to integrate their impressive web-based project management and collaboration package (discussed 
Lifehacker has a short glowing review of the Open-Source video editing program “Lightworks” for Windows.
Announced 
VizWorld.com 
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