VizWorld.com

If you’ve always wanted to know more about VTK or Paraview but haven’t had the time, or haven’t been able to convince your management to spring for paid training, Kitware has heard your complaints.

Kitware is pleased to announce the availability of free online courses in support of its open-source communities. The courses, designed to give new and beginning users the skills and knowledge required to effectively use these open-source tools, will provide an introduction to the Visualization Toolkit (VTK), CMake, ParaView, and the Insight Toolkit (ITK). Each 90-minute course will cover one toolkit and be taught by an expert Kitware instructor.

You can hit their Training website and see the “Upcoming Online Courses” to see the list.  They’ll be offering at first one class a month, with the first “Intro to VTK” coming up on October 12th.

via Kitware – News: Free Online Courses Now Available.

Science education, kitware, paraview, training, vtk

CGSociety has just announced a new workshop coming up on Nuke Compositing, lead by industry legend Steve Wright. The $600 course begins later this month and runs for 8 weeks (into September), and promises to get you everything you need to get up-to-speed on 3D Editing in Nuke.

Nuke’s importance to the VFX industry is how it moves compositing to the next level as an extension of the 3D department. This is the current workflow trend in visual effects where more and more of the shot development is moved from the 3D department to the 2D department where they are faster and cheaper to produce and revise. This trend will only increase over time, so compositors who want to stay current will need to learn Nuke 3D compositing to future-proof their careers.

via CGWorkshops.

Graphics education, nuke, training

A new product from Cubic Corporation introduces the concept of “Data Containers”, popular in the datacenter industry, to the mobile training industry with their new mobile virtual small arms trainer.  It’s 40-foot long trailer that folds down into a self-powered and environmentally controlled 5-lane EST 2000.

Manufactured by Cubic’s Simulation Systems Division in Orlando, Florida, EST 2000 is a laser-based system that uses digital video projectors, high-definition screens, game-based computer graphics and ballistically accurate simulated weapons to create highly realistic virtual combat scenarios. It replicates the performance of individual small arms and crew-served weapons. Its geo-specific virtual scenarios can be varied from urban to jungle and mountain terrains to Middle Eastern desert environments.

These units are already scheduled to hit the ground in Fort Knox, the US Army WAr College, and a National Guard Armory.

via U.S. Army Evaluating Cubic’s Mobile Small Arms Trainer.

Hardware army, cubic, military, training

Currently, the US Military runs divisions called “Route Clearance Crews” using large retrofitted bulldozers called “HMDS” (Husky Mounted Detection Systems, from Niitek) that travel important routes through unfriendly territory looking for mines and IED’s.  As you can imagine, these machines are expensive and delicate.  A recent analysis from the military found that 50% of all damages to the ground penetrating radar panels came from simple operator error from users unfamiliar with the equipment.  To fix this, the Army partnered up with the Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) to create a video-game based training package to train users on proper use of the equipment.

“The joint forces have received the HMDS training package with such high marks that we anticipate its use will far exceed its original intent and capability over the coming years,” said Vigus. The HMDS training package’s success exists in its ability to incorporate holistic interactive multimedia instruction with virtual and live training. The result of this approach to training is a lowcost, agile trainer that builds individual knowledge and skills while promoting collective rehearsals of route clearance operations.

It uses an interesting 3-step “Crawl, Walk, Run” approach to training.  Users “Crawl” through multimedia training materials like videos and manuals, before moving through “Crawl” “Walk” portions where they use video game simulators for virtual test drives of the equipment.  Finally, they use “Run” portions of real equipment fitted not with IED sensors, but instead IED simulators showing artificial results to test the operator’s ability to negotiate hazards.

You can get the full details in the JIEDDO press release here (Download PDF, View Online).

Update 3/7/2011 – Fixed the “Walk” portion, as pointed out in the comments.

Hardware military, training

A new press release from NVidia discusses an interesting project from the University College London Hospitals (UCLH) Heart Hospital and UK Visual effects company Glassworks.  Together they build a virtual heart simulator perfect for transesophageal echocardiography (Imaging the heart through the mouth & esophagus) training.  Using the impressive power of NVidia Quadro GPU’s and 3D Vision technology, they’re able to maintain realistic stereoscopic images running at a full 30fps.  In fact, it’s already an integral part of training at Duke University.

“Simulation technology has enabled us to take a quantum leap forward in our teaching,” said Dr. Madhav Swaminathan, MD, FASE, FAHA, of Duke University School of Medicine’s Division of Cardiothoracic Anesthesia. “This particular system essentially simulates the beating heart clearly. To explain how an ultrasound image is formed and how it correlates to anatomical features is extremely difficult. When you’re changing the image plane with a probe it’s hard to understand what parts of the heart you are seeing on the screen — because the heart is three dimensional, and you’re using 3D on a 180 degree plane. A simulator  makes it possible to see side by side not only how an ultrasound image is generated, but what the cuts mean in a controlled, relaxed environment where you don’t have to worry about interfering with a patient’s clinical care or taking too much time. This virtual environment technology gives residents a jump start.”

An interesting note, this is done without CUDA.  Currently, the application simply uses OpenGL and GLSL, meaning it should run on ATI cards as well.  However, in the end they state they’re investigating improving performance by moving lots of the system to CUDA.

Get the full release after the break.

Read more…

Science biomed, nvidia, training

At the University of Leeds, researchers are working on a project called ‘ImREAL’ to bridge the real-world and virtual-world for training environments.  Hoping to avoid inevitable budget cuts that tend to slaughter training programs in every line of work, a virtual-world training program could be more inexpensive, and they’ve found even more effective than the real thing.

The €4 million research project involves an interdisciplinary team of computer scientists, psychologists, business and social scientists, experts in adult learning and two SMEs who produce training software, from across Europe. Radically new intelligent technologies for learning will be developed by adopting the latest advances in computerized learning tools such as Semantic Web, context modelling, and dialogic interaction. Technical implementation will be grounded in sound socio-pedagogical theories, such as ‘activity’ theory, andragogy, and self-regulated learning.

via Virtual training gets real! – University of Leeds.

Science research, training, virtual environment

Virtual Environments in training are a frequent topic of research, but an article in the Washington Post actually gets down to the detail of one in real use: Surgical Training at the University of Maryland Medical Center.

For example, the University of Maryland Medical Center has transformed an entire wing of its seventh floor into the Maryland Advanced Simulation, Training, Research and Innovation (MASTRI) Center, which officially opened at the end of 2006 and has been growing ever since. Every Tuesday, surgical residents meet for training in once-functional operating rooms converted into simulation labs. The trainees are presented an emergency scenario — say, a “patient” with a blocked airway — and must respond using either a virtual reality computer program or a hybrid that includes a mannequin simulator.

There is still lots of research to determine how best to integrate these patient simulators into surgical training, but it sounds like they’re making great strides.  However, the article lost a little bit of credibility from me with this phrase on Page 2:

At Johns Hopkins, Gregory Hager, a computer science professor who researches medical devices, is using the da Vinci Surgical System — the only robot approved by the FDA to help perform minimally invasive surgery — to deconstruct surgical procedures into measurable components and imitable parts.

Now, in my previous life I worked for a medical robotics company (not the da Vinci, however) and I learned a few things:

• There are other robots for minimally invasive surgery.
• The FDA never ‘approves’ anything.  They ‘clear’.  It’s an important distinction, particularly in how the government assumes liability.

As the FDA is a government entity, it never “approves” anything because that would mean the government was endorsing a product (which they won’t do) and they would be liable if something went wrong (which they don’t want to be), so they just ‘clear’ it.  It’s a fine point, but an important one.

Anyway, the article goes into some good detail about the concerns and successes of virtual patient training, should be worth reading.

via Playing doctor: Learning about slips of the knife better on ‘patients’ than patients.

Science biomed, training, virtual environments

Anyone who’s hardcore into Second Life and other virtual worlds can tell you that the potential for instruction and education is huge.  An article over at the LA Times does the same, but visits some of the virtual environments created by the USC Institute for Creative Technologies which combines technologies like CAVE’s, Virtual Reality, and some hollywood magic to recreate some of the toughest and most challengest training scenarios to date.

Maintaining this kind of realism is key to the institute’s success, said Peter W. Singer, author of “Wired for War,” a book that examines robotic warfare. “The stuff that ICT does is really in a class of its own.”

via Technology: Computer simulation is a growing reality for instruction – latimes.com.

Science education, training

Apex Web Media has just announced a new video tutorial for Autodesk Maya 2011 that includes 11.5 hours of demos for everything from basic UI usage to modeling and animation techniques.

Taught by instructor and 3D designer Jason Welsh, all 177 Maya tutorials are presented in a high quality format with full playback controls. The training is Mac and Windows compatible, which allows users to access the training from essentially any computer. At the same time, work files are included to allow Maya users to follow examples directly as they are presented on screen.

You can go to the site and view the first three chapters for free, to give you an idea of the beginning content.  I checked out the part about Layer usage and Pivots.  It’s a good collection of the basics and the details, and somewhat entertaining trying to watch him explain away a few errors (In the Layers example, you’re unable to see the R and T indicators he talks about and attributes it to the Video Encoding process).

The disk is available for $99, but Apex has been kind enough to provide a 10% Discount code for VizWorld readers!  Simply proceed to checkout and enter the code A3459 as your Returning Customer Discount Code for 10% Off!

Read the full press release after the break.

Read more…

Graphics autodesk, maya, training, tutorial

The MUVE Virtual Patient Care Simulation Lab aims to provide a virtual environment for the training and education of medical specialists, based on the tools of Second Life. The fully interactive environment is part virtual world, part test as the user can select individual medications for IV’s and tools for patient care.

MUVE Market Virtual Patient Care Simulation Lab is an outstanding platform for medical training. Here is a compelling and detailed video that highlights some of the great features they offer and which are made possible in the Virtual World of Second Life.

via YouTube – MUVE Market – Virtual Patient Care Simulation Lab.

Science education, second life, training, virtual reality, virtual worlds