VizWorld.com

VisualEconomics has posted a nice graphic talking about the economics of water. While I agree that it is important not to be wasteful of water, or to pollute our water sources, I in no way think that we are in danger of the global water supply drying up. We just may have to become more efficient and resourceful in our use of water, or develop new technologies to desalinize ocean water.

Overall, I like the graphic in the information they portray, and how it is designed. The only problem with the graphic occurs at the bottom. They take the water use by country, and then divide it out by either the domestic sector, industrial sector, or agricultural sector. These three sectors are mapped onto a circle, but not in the familiar pie-wedge shape. Instead, they simply cut out horizontal slices of the circle. It looks neat, but it makes it hard to judge proportions. Are they divided by area, or by height? Generally speaking, much of the use of water in the USA is by industrial and agricultural sources, and not domestic.

Water is such an inherent part in our daily lives that it’s easy to take it for granted. If we’re not mindful of our water use, we might soon find ourselves without it.

via Water(less) World: H2O Use Around the World @ VisualEconomics.

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Graphics infographic, water

When was the last time you ran a fluid simulation for your visual effects shot and when it was done you sat back and thought “Perfect”.  I’ll bet it’s been a while, if ever.  CG Fluids are notoriously hard, and the reason why is best described in this paragraph from FusionCIS:

CG fluid, especially “SPH” fluid (smoothed particle hydrodynamics), suffers from inaccurate physics at the microscopic level, at the scale of individual particles making up the fluid. Even when simulating with very large particle numbers, this becomes a major problem wherever the fluid becomes splashy since it forms thin sheets and strings — or rather, it should form thin sheets and strings, like we see in real water. Hi-speed macrophotography of fluid spashes classically show how delicate, impossibly thin and continuous sheets of fluid fly thru the air and stay coherent for prolonged periods. These produce tiny droplets and hair-like strings of fluid from their margins but otherwise hold together for a long time, before they eventually and suddenly burst apart. CG fluids on the other hand always break apart immediately, forming very unattractive and distinctly un-real cheese-like holes and webbing, never holding together in thin sheets.

So what do you do?  Most people tend to try and hide the effect with careful camera tricks, motion blur, or just add more particles.  A new technology from FusionCIS called “Smorganic” can fix this by closing the holes created during the simulations, and create amazing new life-like simulated results, as shown in the image above of “honey” pouring over a sphere:

The image below is a render of a simulation of pouring “honey”, where we’ve set smorganic to disallowo any holes in the fluid. The results show the smoothness of the resulting meshes despite the high-spec, high-refractive nature of the shader and lighting, and despite a hard impact with a rigid body.

Hit their website for more pictures and sample movies.

via FusionCIS PR Smorganic.

Graphics, Science cfd, fusioncis, simulation, vfx, water

Making realistic looking water is always difficult, no matter what rendering package you use.  If you use Autodesk’s 3ds Max, however, you might want to check out a new tutorial on CGTuts+ by Evan Schaible that demonstrates a great way to do it.

Making Realistic Water in 3ds Max – Cgtuts+.

Graphics 3dsmax, tutorial, water

Circle of Blue, a watchdog group for the “Global Water Crisis”, has posted a set of infographics about water.  They showcase the differences between saltwater and freshwater, how much water various activities consume, and how much water is used by various nations.

With 6,000 children dying every day (water fact #7) from preventable water related diseases, readily accessible and easily understood information is vital to solving the world water crisis. Circle of Blue strives to identify and describe the dimensions of the global freshwater crisis in ways not imagined only a few years ago. Print these graphics and post them in your classrooms, offices, homes, or whereever you think people should know more about water.

via Infographic: Ten Things You Should Know About Water | Circle of Blue | WaterNews.

Graphics, Science infographic, water