VizWorld.com » Graphics

Screening of rare 3-D films at AMPAS’ Linwood Dunn Theater

Paul Adams — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 21:00:11 +0000

Over the past year we have had a glut of 3-D films thrown at the consumer. Avatar was by far the best 3-D film of the bunch. Unfortunately, there have been many films that have been outright bad and that hinders that adoption of 3-D. This is not the first time that 3-D has been tried. I unfortunately remember going to see Jaws 3-D at the movie theater. However, long before that, photographers and film makers were experimenting and showing 3-D pictures and films. Serge Bromberg is a film preservationist who is showing movies that were in 3-D as early as 1900. My favorite quote is this:

In the 1980s, engineers discovered a way to do stereoscopic 3-D with one projector. “Basically the idea was that you would cut the normal frame in two, the right eye would be up and the left eye down. Basically you could use a standard projector. Then you had such films as ‘Friday the 13th, Part 265.’ After a while, the novelty wore off and the films were stupid.”

via Screening of rare 3-D films at AMPAS’ Linwood Dunn Theater – latimes.com.

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The Ultimate Photoshop Toolbox

Randall Hand — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 19:00:53 +0000

Power up your PhotoShop install with the massive collection of “stuff” from noupe. From websites to sample PSD’s, brushes to books, they’ve found everything they could and offer it up as their Ultimate Toolbox.

Below is a collection of invaluable Photoshop resources from the online community that runs the proverbial gamut of available PS content. From toolkits full of templates, shapes, gradients, brushes, and so much more, to individual resource downloads of informative PDFs, usable PSDs, and other content galore, this post has everything you will need to amp up your Photoshop toolbox. So if you are a Photoshop devotee, or even just a newb getting started with the program, take a moment to browse down through these useful downloads that we have amassed.

via The Ultimate Photoshop Toolbox – Noupe Design Blog.

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Stereoscopic Challenges in Video Games, with Killzone 3

Randall Hand — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 17:00:53 +0000

Killzone 3 will be hitting shelves February 22nd, and is expected to usher in stereoscopic gaming in a big way. The developers have spent countless hours tweaking various game aspects to make the stereoscopic experiences one of the best available, and found themselves answering several odd questions about elements typically forgotten, like crosshairs.

When playing a shooting game, cross hairs often appear on the screen to help the player aim and shoot enemies. But these cross hairs aren’t supposed to be an actual physical object a game character could touch or run into. Ter Heide said the “Killzone 3″ team has had to spend time figuring out at what depth to place those cross hairs within the 3-D world and how to make them move across the varying levels of the world’s ever-changing environment in a way that isn’t jarring to the player.
The same goes for other elements of the “heads up display” – a set of menus and items that gamers often see on the screen that give them important bits of information about things like ammunition levels, directions and the state of the character’s health. Ter Heide said they’ve had to figure out where these various informational devices should “live” in the game.

via Technolog – ‘Killzone 3′ makers run into unexpected challenges going 3-D.

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Daily Viz from Visual Loop – 07/09/2010

Tiago Veloso — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 12:00:55 +0000

The smartphone’s battle for market dominance has been increasingly intensified, with RIM, Apple and Google (and Nokia, and Samsung and Microsoft…) disputing the leadership. Today, the world still prefers RIM’s Blackberry, and Cellphones.org brings some facts about the reigning smartphone. We then move on to Hollywood, to look at another everlasting star, Steven Spielberg, with a graphic made by Personal Loans, and ChaCha answers to those who wondered about the perils of being a Lefty. From Slosh Spot comes a nice explanation about the science behind the formation of waves, and, finally, it looks like the U.S. Government is putting Edward Tufte for work, as we see in Mines SF‘s post.

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Read the rest of Daily Viz from Visual Loop – 07/09/2010 (51 words)

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15th Anniversary of the first SolidWorks Sale

Randall Hand — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 17:00:54 +0000

Today marks the 15th anniversary of the first sale of SolidWorks, and SolidSmack celebrates with a short interview with CEO of Barret Technology Bill Townsend.

Today, September 6th, 2011 marks the 15th anniversary of SolidWorks selling the very first seat of their 3D product development software. Over 1 millllliooooon seats have found their way into the talented, and not so talented, hands of people around the world since. It just so happens we found the guy who laid his hands upon that first seat and asked him a couple questions.

via First seat of SolidWorks, SOLD! …15 years ago, today. >> SolidSmack.com.

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Autodesk offers up some G-mask (Garbage Mask) Tips

Randall Hand — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 15:31:59 +0000

Autodesk is preparing for IBC2010, and has just posted a nice little tutorial for the G-Mask feature of Autodesk Smoke.

In the video blog, I am not going to teach you how to use the garbage masks as that is covered in our Smoke Essentials tutorials but there are a few tips that I want to point out which can be very useful in the everyday masking which we all love to call Rotoscoping!
Hopefully there will be a few surprises as well as some refreshes for others.
Finally I have also added a bonus tip on how to rename elements (clips in the timeline) and layers since there has been much recent talk about it online.

via YouTube – G-mask (Garbage Mask) Tips.

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Daily Viz from Visual Loop – 06/09/2010

Tiago Veloso — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 12:00:17 +0000

We begin this week with some Labor Day stats form The Washington Post. Even in this times of crisis, with some of the highest unemployment rates ever, it’s a date always worth remembering. German designer Stefaner Moritz created a great interactive graphic, mapping the immigration fluxes, and from College Scholarships comes the overview on the Student Loans scheme. The FICO frenzy, by Focus, and Mint‘s economy of Human waste infographic close today’s round-up.

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Read the rest of Daily Viz from Visual Loop – 06/09/2010 (45 words)

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Pre-Sim’ed and Realtime Physics in Uncharted 2

Randall Hand — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 19:30:37 +0000

Over at Develop, they have an exclusive excerpt from Ballistic Publishing’s ‘Art of Uncharted 2′, where they get very in-depth on the creation of some of the iconic scenes from Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. I really loved the opening where they discuss the marriage of presimulated physics run in Maya to real-time physics done via their in-game Havok engine.

We also wanted to increase our use of pre-simulated physics so if we had a major destruction effect like a building collapsing, we’d pre-simulate all that in Maya, bake all that animation down, and then run that through the game engine. So you’d have real-time control of the player, but the building collapsing is a pre-simulated event.
To push things further we also wanted to layer our real-time physics objects over the pre-simulated events. So in the collapsing building sequence we’ve also got computer monitors and plants that are rolling around in real-time reacting to the environment.
To add a third layer on top of that, we also added physics-driven particles, so we have sparks that are coming off the light fixtures, that are particles hitting the ground and bouncing. It’s pretty amazing that it actually works.
To complete the effect you’ve got enemies that you’re shooting while the building is collapsing, and when they’re killed they turn into rag-dolls flopping around the environment.
The overall result of all these effects is to overwhelm the player so that they don’t really have time to pick it apart and figure out: ‘Hey, that’s pre-simulated, and that’s real-time.’ We just want them to get caught up and pulled into the whole experience. All they know is they’re controlling Drake and trying to survive.

via How Uncharted 2 set the technical benchmark | Game development | Features by Develop.

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Jim Morris to Receive VES 2010 Founders Award

Randall Hand — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 19:08:30 +0000

First Jim Morris is selected as the SIGGRAPH2010 keynote speaker, and now he’s been named as the recipient of the prestigious 2010 VES Founder’s Award. Currently working on John Carter of Mars, he’s got such successes as WALL-E, Toy Story 3, Ratatouille and more under Pixar, and such familar titles as Forrest Gump and Jurrasic Park all on his resume.

While Morris has been a long time leader in the field of visual effects at both ILM and Pixar, he was chosen as this year’s VES Founders Award recipient for service “above and beyond the call of duty” to the craft of visual effects and to the membership of VES. Jim Morris is the embodiment of this award, as he quite simply kick-started VES into reality during the 1990’s and has given of himself so freely to VES – both his time and unique expertise – ever since.
“Jim Morris was the founding Chair of the Visual Effects Society,” said current VES Chair, Jeffrey A. Okun. “His consistent, tireless efforts have guided the VES to become ‘The Final Word on all things VFX’. His unique talent, insights and generosity of spirit are qualities we treasure,” added Okun.

via Computer Graphics World – JIM MORRIS TO RECEIVE THE VISUAL EFFECTS SOCIETY (VES) 2010 FOUNDERS AWARD.

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Project Overview: Xray Car

Randall Hand — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:28:35 +0000

Over at CGArena they have a step-by-step overview of creating the ‘Xray Car’, done by Houmam Munir.

Hi, my name is houmam munir and I was born in Baghdad, Iraq. I am 18 years old, I’m still studying and where I had most of my experience with technical drawing. For the experience in the industry I decided to enroll for 3d courses where I can learn the tools of the trade and modeling concepts.
Modeling
To model this car I employed a popular technique used by the modelers to achieve the precision, which is poly-by-poly modeling. This car is created without blueprints and likes to mention without blueprints it is quite hard to model.

via Project Overview: Xray Car.

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3D ‘Avatar’ to Blu-ray exclusive to Panasonic 3D TVs

Randall Hand — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 14:43:00 +0000

If the 2D Version of Pandora wasn’t enough to satisfy your Avatar cravings, and you’ve been anxiously awaiting the 3D BluRay to come to market, then you might want to hurry out and get yourself a nice Panasonic 3D Viera plasma. It seems that Panasonic has brokered a limited-time exclusive so that the 3D BluRay will initially only be available to Panasonic Viera owners.

At launch, running through an undisclosed period of time, the disc will only be available to consumers who purchase a Panasonic 3D Viera plasma TV. The promotional offer will likely take the form of a variety of bundles onto the purchase of Viera 3D TVs and related equipment, although exact details are still to be announced, the company said.

via 3D ‘Avatar’ to Blu-ray in December; exclusive to Panasonic 3D TVs | Crave – CNET.

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Daily Viz from Visual Loop – 03/09/2010

Tiago Veloso — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 12:00:05 +0000

Well, sooner or later it had to happen: like we mentioned yesterday, the buzz around the use of web infographics for link-baiting trough Digg as been the hot topic of the last days, specially after Buzzfeed‘s infographic about the subject. Moving on, two other interesting pieces about social media: StumbleUpon’s stats by Blue Glass, and All Facebook‘s surprising facts about death on Facebook. Finally, the state of America’s dental health, brought by GOOD, and Iglu Cruise‘s guide to buying your Private Island. Nice way to close up the week, don’t you think?

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Read the rest of Daily Viz from Visual Loop – 03/09/2010 (50 words)

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Infographics Summary for 2010-09-03

Randall Hand — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 03:30:02 +0000

Transparency: The Health of U.S. Teeth

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33 Books To Reference On Your VFX Journey

Randall Hand — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 22:00:35 +0000

AEtuts has compiled a nice list of 33 books to begin (or continue) your VFX education, several of which have already been the subject of a Resource of the Week post here at VizWorld.

How many books are in your library? I have some of the top rated books for our industry for you guys to pick and choose from depending on your interests! Whether you are into motion graphics or matchmoving… there is something here for everyone!

via 33 Books To Reference On Your VFX and Mograph Journey | Aetuts+.

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Google releases SketchUp v8

Randall Hand — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 19:40:12 +0000

It seems Google has quietly released a new major upgrade for SketchUp that includes model geolocation, color imagery, and a new tool called ‘Building Maker’. They’ve added improved tools for photo matching, and all around seem to have done a good job of adapting SketchUp to be a great tool for architectural modeling.

The pro version adds support for basic constructive solid geometry operations like union, intersection, and subtraction, as well as some CAD-like features such as angular dimensions and volume calculation.

Google SketchUp.

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MAIET and WeMade Choose Autodesk Kynapse

Randall Hand — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:00:46 +0000

MAIET Entertainment is working on ‘GunZ2: The Second Duel”, and WeMade Entertainment is working on a new MMORPG codenamed “LF”, and both have settled on Autodesk’s Kynapse AI middleware to drive the games. It’s a no-brainer of a choice so that now they can dedicate engineering resources to more important systems, and leave the AI and pathfinding to a proven solution.

“We needed a middleware solution for the Unreal Engine that provided efficient data generation processing for path finding, solid AI for nonplayer characters and light run-time search costs,” said Joseph Ryu, managing director at WeMade Entertainment. “Autodesk Kynapse AI middleware was the obvious choice.”
Developers at MAIET Entertainment also adopted Kynapse middleware to help improve efficiency in their engineering efforts. “In the past, there have been many cases when we had to rewrite the AI code for new game titles,” explained Youngho Kim, vice president at MAIET Entertainment. “By eliminating that redundancy, Kynapse middleware will help reduce development time. The middleware offers the performance and flexibility we were looking for.”

Read the full release after the break.

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Read the rest of MAIET and WeMade Choose Autodesk Kynapse (421 words)

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AMD CPUs and GPUs Used to Make ‘Machete’

Randall Hand — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:00:38 +0000

VFX artists from Troublemaker Studios used high-powered 6-core AMD Opterons and FirePro V8800′s to bring all the post-processing work for Robert Rodriguez’s ‘Machete’, over 500 shots work, in a mere 6 months with 10 artists.

Shots from three different digital camera models, one film camera, camera tracking work using PFTrack, 3D special effects work using Softimage, and compositing work using Nuke, all came together through AMD hardware.
Such added effects include extensive set damage, a huge number of bullet holes, and wide-ranging set extensions. AMD hardware also played a part in sophisticated particle simulations helped more accurately render realistic blood spatters that interact with each other, the actors and objects in the environment.

via AMD CPUs and GPUs Used to Make ‘Machete’.

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YumYum London’s Animated Short no.1 on Vimeo

Randall Hand — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:00:54 +0000

Animated Short no.1 from Yum Yum London on Vimeo.

There’s not much to say about this, other than it’s a cute animated short from Yum Yum London. 40 seconds of entertainment, and then be glad your day is going better than his.

Animated Short no.1 from Yum Yum London on Vimeo.

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plugin3D – 3D real-time plug-in for 3ds Max

Randall Hand — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:26:11 +0000

plugin3D, formerly RTRE, claims to bring real-time high-end visualization to the 3dsMax viewports, and do it for free.

Our powerful 3D realtime rendering engine works inside any 32-bit (64-bit soon) Autodesk 3ds Max 2009, 2010 or 2011 viewport. See and interact with your fully rendered scene in realtime, even with hundreds of thousands or millions of polygons. Move around, make changes, improve look and feel, add animations and see changes instantly. Meet “impossible” deadlines. Make last minute changes. Make an image or movie instantly.

The 64-bit support is still in beta, but the 32-bit version is available for free. If you want to take your scene and create a standalone interactive visualization to share with others, that’ll only cost $99.

via What’s New | plugin3D – 3D real-time plug-in for 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design.

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Daily Viz from Visual Loop – 02/09/2010

Tiago Veloso — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:00:52 +0000

Yesterday, Steve Jobs unveiled a bunch of new goodies from Apple, and among them, the new iPod Nano. The guys at Dvice made an infographic on how the gadget has changed over the years. Also celebrating with a graphic is Joomla, completing 5 years of existence, and then we move on to other topics: Money Choices looks down to who’s got all the Gold – and who’s mining it -, School Grants Blog breaks down the state of School Grants in America, and GOOD shows the most dangerous cities for walking.

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Read the rest of Daily Viz from Visual Loop – 02/09/2010 (61 words)

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