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If you’ve been holding off on learning much about the new WebGL standards, Opera has a nice piece covering just what WebGL can and can’t do, along with some nice examples and technical details.

This is the first in our series of articles about WebGL. The objective of this series is to provide the information and resources you’ll need to get started learning WebGL. In this piece, we will discuss how WebGL works, what you need to create WebGL applications, and what a simple example looks like.

via An introduction to WebGL – Dev.Opera.

Science tutorial, webgl

If you’ve been keeping up with OpenGL 4.x, then you’ve no doubt heard of the new Tessellation features they’ve added.  Available in DirectX for a few versions now, it’s finally come to OpenGL and offers up some great new features for automatic tessellation and geometry processing.  A new tutorial online shows some example code and techniques behind the new systems, and offers up lots of details along the way.

Let’s take a look at how Tessellation has been implemented in the graphics pipeline. The core components that are responsible for Tessellation are two new shader stages and in between them a fixed function stage that can be configured to some degree but does not run a shader. The first shader stage is called Tessellation Control Shader (TCS), the fixed function stage is called the Primitive Generator (PG), and the second shader stage is called Tessellation Evaluation Shader (TES).

They show lots of code but also get into the details of barycentric coordinates, displacement maps, textured surfaces, and much more.  Get it all at the link below.

via Tutorial 30: Basic Tessellation

Science opengl, tutorial

Russian artist Alexandra Zutto has a great Adobe Illustrator tutorial about the image shown, detailing some of the finer points of Gradients in Illustrator.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to build up many elements to create a vector image with real depth and richness. Zutto explains: “I spend most of the time picking out colours that match each other to form harmonic colour composition. It takes a lot of time, but it’s worth the effort.

via Master dynamic gradient techniques – Illustrator Tutorial – Digital Arts.

Graphics illustrator, tutorial

Over at BlenderGuru they have a nice tutorial on how to create a fireball explosion with Blender.

You guys have been asking for this for quite sometime now so I decided to finally deliver on that request. Think of it like an early Christmas present (that explodes in your face).

The particle effects look a bit cheesy, but the fireball is first-rate.  Check it out.

How to Create an Explosion from Andrew Price on Vimeo.

via How to Create an Explosion | Blender Simulations | Blender Guru.

Graphics blender, tutorial

A great article in The Linux Journal discusses the creation of an OpenGL-based Image Processing system that can analyze video captured from an attached camera in real-time.

This article discusses using OpenGL shaders to perform image processing. The images are obtained from a device using the Video4Linux 2 (V4L2) interface. Using horsepower from the graphics card to do some of the image processing reduces the load on the CPU and may result in better throughput. The article describes the Glutcam program, which I developed, and the pieces behind it.

In the end, he has it running a single edge-detection kernel, but it could easily be modified to do much much more.

via Image Processing with OpenGL and Shaders | Linux Journal.

Science howto, imageprocessing, opengl, tutorial

Photoshop Actions are an incredibly powerful but frequently underutilized aspect of everyone’s favorite photo editing tool.  In a new tutorial on TutsPlus, marvel at the massive action they create to take a single flattened image and turn it into a beautiful 3D box, properly lit and shadowed.

Actions can be used to quickly automate repetitive tasks. In this tutorial, we will demonstrate how to create an action that will automatically create a 3D software box from a flat template.

It’s a big tutorial (72 steps), and the resulting action can take minutes on a slower computer, but it’s a great example of the sheer power of Photoshop Actions.

via Create a 3D Software Box in Photoshop Using Actions | Psdtuts+.

Graphics photoshop, tutorial

Matthew Perez has created a massive 115 page tutorial on surface modeling in SolidWorks over at the SolidSmack blog.

Matthew’s tutorial is for a JBL Duet Multimedia PC Speaker. He shows, top to bottom, the process of laying out planes, lofting surfaces as well as how to work with splines and boundary surfaces to create your very own skull pounding speaker model.

via Turn it Up. Free SolidWorks Complex Surfacing Speaker Tutorial – SolidSmack.com.

Graphics solidworks, tutorial

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

If you want to play with stereoscopy but lack the fancy software or display hardware, then you might want to check out this short tutorial on CGarena that generates some simple Anaglyphic Stereo (Red/cyan) imagery using 3dsMax and Photoshop.

Stereoscopy is one of the great techniques that uses in 3d sofwares to show depth. One of the popular one is Anaglyph, in Anaglyph we use red and blue glasses to watch movie. In this learning package I have shown you how to create cameras and prepare your scene for anaglyph stereo also at the end, use Adobe Photoshop to mix images.

Of course, you can’t do this with Image Sequences (movies), but the techniques he uses in Photoshop could easily be adopted for use in something like AfterEffects to work on a sequence of frames.

via Understanding Stereoscopy in 3ds max.

Graphics 3dsmax, stereoscopy, tutorial

Over at CGHeute, Max von Tettenborn has a short tutorial on using ICE in XSI to simulate a sphere moving through a small body of water and creating waves.  It’s a bit difficult to follow, since it’s written in German and only partially translated to English.  However, it’s got some good graphics and most of the text is understandable (perhaps with a bit of help from Google Translate, particularly PAge 2).

XSI ICE Wellen Tutorial | cgheute.

Science ice, physics, tutorial, xsi