Jurassic Park had just six minutes of computer-generated dinosaurs in it, compared to modern blockbusters which can have thousands of shots requiring complex visual effects. It’s no surprise that animators are eager to embrace any shortcut they can—which is why realistic-looking CG mud could be a game changer.
Nvidia and Adobe teamed up to develop a 3D-painting app that is sure to become an essential tool for modern day art forgers. The software accurately simulates the 3D texture of oil paints, and how the bristles of a brush work to smear it across a canvas.
Viewing 3D content without glasses or goggles has proved to be one of the toughest things for interface designers to achieve—it never really looks right. At this year’s SIGGRAPH, a group of researchers presented a display that creates a 3D human in stunning detail using a cluster of 216 projectors.
At this week’s SIGGRAPH design conference, I spent two days wandering among basketball players wearing Tron-like motion capture suits and CGI-rendered freeways. But I spent most of my time in a place called the VR Village, a dark, throbbing corner where I saw the awkward future.
I was skeptical. Two cubes sat side-by-side, looking like stripped-down 3D printers. I sat in front of one as instructed, and reached my hand inside, toward a floating disembodied finger. Just at the moment I knew I’d stab through the illusion, I had the ultimate “E.T. phone home” moment—I swear I could feel the other…
With each passing year, engineers are getting closer to recreating the 3D interface technology that pop culture has rendered so clearly for decades.
You know that incredibly satisfying feeling of seeing a freshly vacuumed carpet with the fibers all perfectly upright and unmarred by footprints? Designer Yuta Sugiura has found a way to take advantage of that effect to print detailed images on a rug or carpeting using a handheld machine he developed and built.
Depth cameras aren't new technology, but shrinking them down to the size of a smartphone so that it can see in 3D the way a Kinect can remains a challenge. New work by researchers at Microsoft illustrates how any old smartphone could be used to sense 3D space.
The reason your favorite cartoon or movie character hasn't appeared in Macy's annual Thanksgiving Day Parade isn't necessarily because they're not popular, it might be that crafting an inflatable likeness has just been too difficult. But to ensure no fad gets left out, the folks at Disney Research have developed…
The Pixie Dust display uses sound waves to create images and animations from real particles that appear to float in mid-air. It probably sounds implausible, but there's video of it in action. And yes, what you're seeing is actually happening, no gimmicks or special effects.
Say you have a 3D-printed item you're selling. Maybe you slap a barcode on it that identifies what it is, where it came from, and how much it costs. However, Microsoft has developed a new technology called InfaStructs that offers a better alternative. With it, you could embed information directly inside of an item.
Some toys look like they're about ready to come to life and stab you. And if Disney has anything to do with it, we're going to see even more toys with creepy, lifelike faces in the future, thanks to a new technology called Papillion that 3D-prints eyes onto toys, robots, and other interactive characters.
It hasn't exactly been a runaway hit with consumers, but on a technical level the Lytro camera introduced some brilliant innovation to the world of digital photography. Its revolutionary optics capture an almost infinite depth of field letting you adjust focus to whatever's in the frame when you're post-processing.…
Computer graphics have come a long way since a T-Rex ate that lawyer in Jurassic Park. But if these glimpses of what the next generation of CG has in store, we ain't seen nothing yet. Cloth simulations with hyper-realistic wrinkling, modelling complex human hair using thermal imaging, and new approaches to smoke…
Last week's annual SIGGRAPH conference was, as usual, a place where dazzling visual displays were commonplace. But solid-state storage firm Fusion-io's demo of an ultra-efficient drive took was perhaps a bit overstimulating, playing 2,000 DVD-quality movies simultaneously. Eyedrops recommended. [Fusion-io via Core77]
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The uncanny Photosketch tool was not the only magic software tool debuting at Siggraph Asia 2009. These amorphous volumes can magically throw three different object shadows, all thanks to a program called Shadow Art. See it in action here:
I used to be excited about iPhone turn-by-turn navigation, but the Pull-Navi system (straight from Tokyo University of Electro-Communications' crazy folks) is way better. It comes with a stylish helmet and will yank on ears until they look like Dumbo's.
Click to viewSome scientists at University of Manchester in the UK and Dolby Canada in Vancouver have worked out a way to capture 3D info of complex-textured objects really simply with a camera flash. You should care about this because it's likely to make the textures applied to characters and objects in computer…
Imagine being able to put a handlebar mustache on Grandma in a home video as easily as you could with Photoshop and a digital image. Microsoft showed off new technology called "Unwrap Mosaics" at the SIGGRAPH trade show in Los Angeles that could make this dream a reality without the need for fancy professional…
Forget Beijing—the future of sports is appearing at SIGGRAPH 2008 in LA. This softball-sized Bouncing Star rubber ball has a cluster of full-color LEDS, an infrared transceiver and an accelerometer under its impact-friendly shell. By combining these components, the ball can create bright interactive games that you…
