Real-time Rendering Lab #3

This is the third lab from our Real-time Rendering module. Our goal was to take the height map material we used for the last lab, and develop further to make height maps for an environment terrain. In this case, we generated height maps, but also textures for the mesh model. I used T2 Texture Generation to generate height maps and textures. I developed the scene using Microsoft's XNA and Visual C# in Visual Studio 2005.

Interactive Entertainment Technology - Realtime Rendering

This is my result for our second Real-time Rendering lab. We had to create a plane mesh of triangles before applying simple pixel and vertex shaders. The project completed using Microsoft's XNA in Visual Studio 2005 and the .fx effects files were created with nVidia's FX Composer. I used Cos/Sin functions to get the wave action and the colours are based on the vertices' position in 3D space.

Interactive Entertainment Technology - Augmented Reality

This is the fruit of my labours for our first Augmented Reality assignment. The pitch was to develop a system that could tell the height of an object from a fixed single camera. I created a small environment and took specific measurements to allow me create a mathematical function to allow me to accurately map pixel space to physical space. The results are pretty accurate, but there's one change I do want to make to it when I get a chance. The measurements on the bottom of the video are actually supposed to be (mm) and (mtrs) as opposed to (cms) and (cms). The system was created using OpenCV in Visual Studio 2005.

The Onion's report on Latest Apple Release...

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

This is quality


UPDATE:
This is even funnier...someone who thinks its an actual product?
http://i42.tinypic.com/2na4syh.jpg

Siggraph 2009 - Visual Music

2009's Siggraph conference will be held in New Orleans between 3-7th August. This year The Computer Animation Festival will exhibit a "Visual Music" collection which invites submissions from both individual film makers and collaborations to showcase their audio/visual concoctions. Music and visuals have gone hand in hand since the dawn of cinema (a live pianist or musician would actually accompany the recorded film). Now, with the digitisation of music into various formats, its possible to visually and graphically represent the music or sound. I'll be waiting eagerly to see what the outcome of it is...

The siggraph Visual Music url is here

Autodesk Marketing Seminar and Stereoscopy in General

So while I didn't get tickets to This Happened #6 (cos they were booked up within 120 seconds or something), I DID manage to attend an Autodesk marketing seminar held in Dublin's Morgan Hotel on Fleet St on November 27th. The seminar, titled "Create Animate Integrate - Dublin", was presented by 3 three autodesk staff showing off new Autodesk tools for 3DS Max and Maya, but also took the opportunity to show off Toxic, their new compositing tool. They also took time to discuss their acquisition of XSI Softimage, which has been debated to quite an extent (I don't think it is good for the industry, but if Avid were in difficulty, then its good news that XSI was acquired rather than discontinued).

The main features autodesk were showing off was the support of STEREOSCOPY effects in their main titles. This really tickled my fancy. It goes without saying that these new effects exceed those that you might remember from the red/green cardboard glasses you got with comic books when younger. Without getting into too much detail on the technicalities, the resutls are really, really great. Jeffrey Katzenberg (Dreamworks) spoke about 3D cinema being as big a break through as colour, and it might well be. I got to see Tim Burton's 'A Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D' before Christmas and the steroscopy effects enhanced it, though the changes weren't INCREDIBLE, but that's because it wasn't originally shot for 3D (it was only shot with one camera, not two). What DID look great were the trailers of Disney/Pixar's 'Bolt' and especially their 'Monsters Vs Aliens'. I'd love to get the chance to develop a 3d/stereoscopy installation or environment using projectors of multiple surfaces. With stereoscopy, I think a really incredible experience could be created...pity people don't happen to have 3D glasses in their breast pocket...

Sharpie and JCDecaux

I came across this interactive billboard on Design You Trust and the post was submitted by adamfuhrer.

The interactive billboard allows the general public to pick up a pen and contribute their own 'graffiti', or whatever it is you want to call it, to the billboard, leaving a (pseudo) permanent mark on the display. The user can choose whatever colour and compose whatever message they want to broadcast to passers by.

I really love this kinda thing. It's a nice simple technology that allows for public collaboration in a really light hearted manner, even Sharpie's choice of using the plaster cast on the poster is a master stroke. I'm really annoyed I didn't think of it first...

Keeping the same theme on public interaction and stuff, I came across CBS Outdoor Alive while I was in London recently. This is a really interesting concept as it's really related to my research topic that I'm going to be doing for my Masters thesis this year.

I'M BACK!

Hello and apologies for being away for so long. Things got a bit academically mental coming up to Christmas, so I had less time to peruse the web and post random and wonderful things I came past. When I actually get around to outputting openGL animations into quicktimes, I'll shtick them up here. In other less exciting news, I've updated my Linked In page and that can be accessed by here...

Anyway, there's a couple of things I can notify you about.

This happened #6

I'm hoping to grab a ticket to This happened #6 at the Southbank Centre in London on the 15th November. This happened is series of talks and seminars in which interction designers/interactive artists present concepts and project productions.

At this event:

United Visual Artists
Markus Kison
Troika
rAndom International

are all making presentations...

The project was started by Chris O'Shea of Pixelsumo, Joel Gethin Lewis and Andreas Muller of Nanika.

Japanese Graffiti

Cool Hunting have posted news on Remo Camerota's new book 'Graffiti Japan'.
Remo's website is here and this is Cool Hunting...