Computer Graphics World articles from September 2008

Computer Graphics World archives from September 2008

SIGGRAPH 2008: it's a wrap.(Editor's Note)(Editorial)
September 1, 2008... After a two-year hiatus, SIGGRAPH once again returned to Los Angeles, and attendance was up by nearly 4000 from last year's San Diego show, with more than 28,400 artists, animators, modelers, scientists, researchers, game developers, academia,...

Side effects makes Houdini 9.5 appear.(PRODUCT: ANIMATION)(Side Effects Software Inc.)(Brief article)
September 1, 2008... After a rigorous public beta, Side Effects Software has released Houdini 9.5, which introduces Houdini to the Mac community and improves workflow and interoperability with new shelf tools and a variety of import/export formats. ...

AMD and Havok to optimize physics for gaming.(NEWS: PHYSICS)(Brief article)
September 1, 2008... AMD and Havok announced plans to jointly investigate the optimization of physics effects utilizing AMD's full line of products. Havok Physics scales well across the entire family of AMD processors, including Quad-Core products, such as the AMD...

FacePro automates the task of realistic facial animation.(PRODUCT: FACIAL ANIMATION)(Digital Concepts Group )(Brief article)
September 1, 2008... Digital Concepts Group launched FacePro, a tool set developed to lead experienced and novice motion-capture users through every step of cleaning and retargeting facial animation. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] FacePro, the first commercial...

GPU market drops slightly.(NEWS: GRAPHICS CHIPS)
September 1, 2008... Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the industry's research and consulting firm for graphics and multimedia, announced the smallest drop in second-quarter shipments in eight years for the second calendar quarter of 2008. Traditionally, the second...

New Nvidia Telsa offers double the performance.(PRODUCT: GPU COMPUTING)(Brief article)
September 1, 2008... Nvidia has strengthened its CU DA and Tesla technology platforms with the introduction of its second-generation platform, the new Tesla 10 series computing solutions. Binary compatible and supporting the industry-standard C language, the...

Inside, outside.(Viewpoint MODELING)
September 1, 2008... When building a virtual model of the real world for computer graphics applications, we usually represent solid objects as polygonal, NURBS, or other types of surfaces. This makes the representation, the modeling, and the rendering of objects...

Best of class: five student films compete with three studio entries for Best of Show and Jury Awards at SIGGRAPH 2008.(CGI)
September 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] And the hologram goes to "Oktapodi," which won Best of Show during SIGGRAPH's new (and improved) Computer Animation Festival. To win this honor and the gorgeous holographic image (see "Labor of Love," August...

Force to be reckoned with: LucasArts joins forces with NaturalMotion and Pixelux to unveil a new era in gaming.(Gaming)(Star Wars: The Force Unleashed )(Cover story)
September 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] If you believe Roger Ebert's old adage that a story is only as great as its villain, then you'd have to agree that playing through the stories in most computer games can seem predictable and preprogrammed. Truth be...

Science project: the Henson Company's digital puppetry studio makes Sid the Science Kid a real-time animation reality.(Motion Capture)
September 1, 2008... Sid the Science Kid, a new television series debuting on PBS Kids this month, may be geared for youngsters, but the technology used to create the animation--a puppeteer-controlled real-time motion-capture system--is far from child's play. ...

Digging deep: GPU-powered oil exploration: making sense of massive datasets.(Visualization)
September 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] For those accustomed to thinking in terms of realistic 3D models and animated movies, there would seem to be little connection between a graphics card and a deep-water oil well. Even less intuitive is the notion that...

The big picture: Dassault unveils its big vision, with an eye to the consumer arena, at DevCon in Paris.(Trends & Technology)
September 1, 2008... It's very likely that the average consumer does not think very much about software giant Dassault Systemes, a leader in design and project life-cycle management (PLM) software, but the executives at Dassault Systemes spend a very long time...

Creative challenge: students take 3D designs to the extreme in an innovative annual contest.(Knowledge & Career)(Company overview)
September 1, 2008... "There's a shortage of designers and engineers in the US today," laments Jon Cobb, vice president and general manager of 3D printing for Stratasys. It is among the primary reasons Cobb and his colleagues at The Dimension 3D Printing Group, a...

Updated Silhouette.(ROTOSCOPING)(SilhouetteFX)(Brief article)
September 1, 2008... SilhouetteFX has debuted Version 3 of its Silhouette rotoscoping and paint system, offering an entirely stereoscopic workflow, a new planar tracker, support for X-Splines, and a comprehensive keyer. Its new keying, effects, and compositing...

ToonIt update.(PLUG-INS)(Brief article)
September 1, 2008... Digital Anarchy has updated its ToonIt Film/Video and ToonIt Avid software tools to Version 1.1. The latest editions take advantage of multiprocessor technology to speed the rendering of cartoon-like images from film and video footage. The...

Simulate: Illuma.(PLUG-INS)(Brief article)
September 1, 2008... Digieffects has unveiled Simulate: Illume, a collection of effects plug-ins for creating light and glow effects. Simulate: Illume includes: Halo, a bloom/blur effect with color-channel control; Lightracer, to enhance visible light sources;...

Virtualization servers.(SERVERS)(Dell PowerEdge R805 and R905)(Brief article)
September 1, 2008... Dell introduced the PowerEdge R805 and R905, scalable virtualization servers based on the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor. The new servers employ the AMD Direct Connect Architecture to reduce bottlenecks, minimize latency, and increase the...

SAN for studios.(STORAGE)(CalDigit's storage area network solutions)(Brief article)
September 1, 2008... CalDigit announced a SAN solution for firms ranging from small boutique studios to major broadcast facilities. The system encompasses CalDigit SAN cross-platform software now in development, the CalDigit Switch that uses ePCle (eLane) with...

PNY news.(GRAPHICS BOARDS)(PNY Technologies' XLR8 GeForce GTX graphics cards )(Brief article)
September 1, 2008... PNY Technologies has introduced its XLR8 GeForce GTX 280 PCI-e 2.0 and GTX 260 PCI-e 2.0 graphics cards designed to deliver a dynamic 3D gaming experience. The XLR8 GeForce GTX 280 features 1024MB of GDDR3 frame-buffer memory, a 602MHZ core...