Archive for category graphics
Pope visited Schrankmonster.de
Posted by bietiekay in graphics, mercantile on February 25, 2007
Postcards with your domain on it you will receive sooner or later if you have any domain registerated by yourself.
Well, merging photos with individual text isn´t a mystic thing since Photoshop or other bitmap processors. But direct marketers are looking for our attention in our days where consumers are overloaded with ads.
The solution offered by DirecType is a software that connects databases with i.e. your data, some fitting photos [1] and the printing machine that produces all the tons of direct mails you’ll find in your mailbox day by day.
Other company told me a price of round about 6.000 EUR per license. May be, because this solution is for really high printing volumes. Interested industries can be traveling, insurances, furniture, automakers.
So, why doesn´t Vatican publishes a direct mailing for all christians with their name on it?
Source: http://www.directype.org
[1] “fitting” means a relation between costumers interests and the chosen photo. I.e. a domain owner of a website for fishing would receive a mailing with a fishing related photo. The owner of schrankmonster.de would receive some explicit pics. *vfg*
medienfloh
writing a raytracer
Posted by bietiekay in Development, graphics, Software on February 21, 2007
SuperJer just had some time to spare and before getting bored he started to write a raytracer from scratch and write about it on the intertubes:
“Ray-tracing works sort of like a camera in real life, but in reverse. With a camera (or your eyes, for that matter), rays of light from the environment enter the lens and hit the film/digital chip/meaty eye cells. Something magical happens where the light hits and we get an image!
With ray tracing, we start at each point on our “film” or image, and blast a ray out of our camera lens and see what it hits. What it hits determines the color and brightness at that spot on the film. Of course by “film” I mean digital image, and by “spot” I mean pixel.
I decided my entire program would be centered around one function, called raytrace(). The idea is this: You give raytrace() a starting point and a direction, and it follows that ray until it collides with something in my virtual environment. It returns the color of the object it collided with.
When generating a 3D image, raytrace() will find the color for just ONE pixel in the result image. By running raytrace once for each pixel, we can get the whole scene! Ray-tracing is kind of slow because, for example, in a 1 megapixel image you’d have to run it 1 million times.”
He even has put up some pictures and videos:
You can even get the whole sourcecode (C++ with no dependencies whatsoever) from his site. Continue at source…
Atari code posters…
Posted by bietiekay in Development, Games, graphics, makes-my-day on February 20, 2007
“Like any other game console, Atari 2600 cartridges contained executable code also commingled with data. This lists the code as columns of assembly language. Most of it is math or conditional statements (if x is true, go to y), so each time there’s “go to” a curve is drawn from that point to its destination.
When a byte of data (as opposed to code) is found in the cartridge, it is shown as an orange row: a solid block for a “1” or a dot for a “0”. The row is eight elements long, representing a whole byte. This usually means that the images can be seen in their entirety when a series of bytes are shown as rows. The images were often stored upside-down as a programming method.”
And it looks like this:
Source: http://benfry.com/distellamap/
Super Mario deconstructed
Posted by bietiekay in Development, Games, graphics on February 13, 2007
“This is a deconstructed Nintendo emulator that shows how sprites and sprite memory are handled while a game is being played. The intent is to show insight for how software and hardware work, given the relatively simple example of a minimal architecture from an old game console system.”
Source: http://acg.media.mit.edu/people/fry/deconstructulator/
there’s a world of sand…
Posted by bietiekay in Development, Games, graphics, Nintendo DS, Software on February 4, 2007
Oh boy I just discovered a very addictive piece of software/game that even runs on my Nintendo DS. You can try it right now:
Source: http://enigmasand.com/pyro2.html
23c3 aftermath – CodingOnCongress
Posted by bietiekay in Development, FeM, graphics, Meetings, Talks and Slides on January 13, 2007
I wrote quite a lot of code for the 23rd Chaos Communication Congress. And because of that I want to make it publicy available for everyone to download and use. It’s all GPL (because of the libaries used) so use it according to the license.
You can learn how to:
-
deserialize the pentabarf schedule.en.xml file
-
create a valid congress filename
-
create and manipulate animations with text and bitmaps
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store those animations in AVI container files
Download: CodeOnCongress.zip
about the 23c3 recording and streaming teamwork
Posted by bietiekay in FeM, graphics, Meetings, Research, Talks and Slides, travelling on January 8, 2007
The planning process started way earlier than last year but as usual some things remain until the very last minute before everything starts. But since this year the teamwork and enthusiasm was extraordinary we finally made it almost as planned. We surely did not reach our goal of releasing the recordings hours after the talk ended. Mainly because we underestimated the amount of knowledge and pain it took to actually get the recordings running on the iPod. It was one of the guidelines for this years official recordings: they had to run on current generation video iPods and they had to have all the metatags. So the team did it and we ended up releasing the first half (nearly) of the 23c3 recordings into the public only 2 weeks instead of the 4-6 months of last year. Even better: we managed to improve the video quality and even got smaller files. That wouldn’t been possible without the encoding-pipeline knowledge that Michael Feiri brought into the team. With that knowledge it also took several days to actually build the working pipeline.(yes the iPod is one special piece of hardware) The complete encoding-pipeline we used will be documented and released soon.
So after all that planning we finally packed our stuff and hit the road:
After some hours and the unpacking the video studio looked like this:
here’s a close up of the Windows Media Encoders, the h.264 encoding machine and the storage (all from behind):
So we surely brought enough processing power to berlin. And this is what did take the picture:
BTW: the black machine in the background just
died during the keynote speech…
Want to see what it’s like watching “out of the window” of the video studio? No problem:
or how about another view of the studio:
So. So you had some pictures of the video studio and the setup. But I bet you want to know some more details about the setup itself. I created an overview for you:
Since last years setup was completely digital (planned) and we ended up using the DV-tape backup since all the recordings were screwed up we thought it might be a good idea to go back one step and use analog video as in FBAS to transport and record the talks. We also had the DV-tape backup this year and to be honest in some cases we have to fall back to that. Less than 10 out of 130 recordings are screwed up so we have to use the DV backup. That means 120 of them worked out as planned. Great! We are currently cutting and encoding them and as you read this more than half of them should be up on the official servers and the mirrors.
Now in the aftermath of the congress we learned a new lesson: there’s maybe one or another speaker that would not allow us releasing their talk recording. In the future we think of having something like a “don’t record me”-list to avoid misunderstandings.
terminal.app corruption
hmm.. all of a sudden this happened:
It want away after a few screen ctrl+a’s but…WTF?
on the road to 23c3
Posted by bietiekay in FeM, graphics, Meetings, travelling on December 26, 2006
FeM e.V. is officially taking the last steps of the “journey to 23c3”. Expect us to arrive in Berlin about 1300.
Stay tuned for more pictures and text about the 23c3 streaming and recording setup/team/…
Achievement Generator available
Posted by bietiekay in Development, graphics, Riot, Xbox 360 on December 22, 2006
Super Mario on XNA and maybe 360
Posted by bietiekay in Development, Games, graphics on December 15, 2006
Yeah baby!! If I’ll ever do a game on the 360, it’ll most probably a 2D jump-n-run. Because that is one of the genres I enjoyed the most.
Christian Liensberger started something which looks nice (and copyrighted) in the first place, and brings back all that love for jump-n-runs in the second place…
“You can control Mario by plugging in an Xbox 360 controller. Use the left stick to move around and A to jump and B to run faster. The keyboard is also supported (added for your guys). Use left, right, down to move around and X to jump and Y to run faster.”
Source: XNA Express + Super Mario is fun! (now with source code)
23c3 opening credit generator done
One more step forward: The 23c3 opening credit generator is done. It’s an application which reads the Fahrplan XML file and generates an opening credit movie file which we will use in the recording and encoding process.
And this is what it finally looks like:
After clicking the “generate” button it’ll create the animation on the fly with all the blending and font rendering and write it to a movie file in it’s own directory. I used the AForge which is GPL v2 which makes the whole thingy GNU v2. Damn, I hate this license crap B-)
Sourcecode: Vorspanngenerator_sourcecode.zip (2,17 MB)
quasi live feed from planet earths orbit…
Posted by bietiekay in graphics, Research, rocket-science on December 7, 2006
“MIRAVI stands for MERIS Images RApid VIsualization and it’s a data-driven system for real time image rendering and quality analysis. Those images, though fascinating, are not suitable for scientific use. Scientists usually prefer to work with MERIS data products, which fully exploit the 15 spectral bands of the instrument, and which are generated with sophisticated algorithms.
MIRAVI generates the images directly from the MERIS raw data (i.e. the Level 0 data), usually available within 2 hours from data acquisition, depending whether the raw data have been transmitted directly to ground stations, or first recorded onboard then transmitted to ground stations.
The MIRAVI image processing does not intend to provide a very accurate geolocation or calibration. The high geolocation accuracy is achieved within the standard MERIS data products (less than ½ pixels).
MIRAVI generates the images using the MERIS Full Resolution (FR) mode (resolution about 260 m) which is activated systematically over land and coastal areas of Europe, Africa and Asia, and non-systematically over America. In its Reduced Resolution (RR) mode (resolution about 1200 m), MERIS operates systematically along its orbit illuminated by the sun.”
Source: http://miravi.eo.esa.int/en/
free VM with XP SP2 pre-activated + IE 6.0
The Internet Explorer Team just released a free, downloadable, pre-activated Windows XP SP2 image with Internet Explorer 6 installed. Grab it here. The image is time-bombed to expire in April 2007, but new versions (including images where Internet Explorer 5 is installed) are expected to be released.
“Many of you have asked how to run IE6 and IE7 in a side by side environment. As Chris Wilson blogged about early this year, it’s unfortunately not so easy to do. There are workarounds, but they are unsupported and don’t necessarily work the same way as IE6 or IE7 would work when installed properly. As Chris said, the best way to use multiple versions of IE on one machine is via virtualization. Microsoft has recently made Virtual PC 2004 a free download; we’ve taken advantage of that by releasing a VPC virtual machine image containing a pre-activated Windows XP SP2, IE6 and the IE7 Readiness Toolkit to help facilitate your testing and development. The image is time bombed and will no longer function after April 1, 2007. We hope to continue to provide these images in the future as a service to web developers.”
Source 1: Download
Source 2: IE Team Blogpost
FeM 23c3 opening credit generator…
At the moment I am writing the opening credit generator which will most likely be used (maybe not… who knows) at the 23. Chaos Communication Congress
As far as I am informed last year an Apple Keynote + DV Video export was used to create the openings and endings of each recording. This time hopefully most of this gets automated and way more comfortable for everyone involved.
Oh, I almost forgot: I am going to release the sourcecode(C#, .NET 2.0)+binaries as soon as possible. But don’t expect too much, in the end it’s just an application that lets you enter or import the lecture data and it then creates a MPEG-2 video file…that’s all folks.
How to draw a car in MS Paint
How to draw a car in MS Paint…
PhotoSynth
It’s quite some days since SIGGRAPH’06 and the article I wrote about Photosynth. But here it is: You can testrun the photosynth viewer by yourself or you can watch this short video:
Video: Microsoft Live Labs Photosynth screencast
Source 1: synthesize your photography
Source 2: http://labs.live.com/photosynth/
Play PACMAN with Excel…
Posted by bietiekay in Development, Games, graphics, makes-my-day, Microsoft on October 3, 2006
“This software works on Excel 97 and 2000. I was absorbed in video game named *pacman* when I was a schoolchild. I would like to reproduce that on Excel. I’ve held the thought from two years before,
and finally…It’s realized.
All actions are expressed by rewriting of a cell background color. Each one of cells as a dot, and move it by make cell’s background color high-speed rewriting. Although I did not think it’s possiblele, but now it’s possiblele by the favor of the improvement in a performance of a personal computer. The window zoom is 10%, so the each cell can not be seen. But it is A CELL.”
Oh…of course Space Invaders is available too…
Kameo Skin Contest Winners…
There was a Kameo Skin contest and the winners are finally announced. You can see my favourite ones below:
Thanks to XboxWorld for the pictures…
Source: Read more of – Kameo Skins, die Gewinner
Your brain will explode from information overload…
“This material represents thousands of man-hours of work, and was presented during last month’s Gamefest 2006 conference (when we announced XNA Game Studio Express).
Good news: These content files represent a colossal amount of up-to-date knowledge, delivered right to your computer. Your brain might explode from the information overload, but you’ll die happy. (FYI: Most of the content is PPT slide decks and audio recordings. You’ll have to page the deck yourself as you listen. There are also a few movie demos and a couple of white papers)
Bad news: These are big honking files. Some exceeding 500Mb. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.”
Gamefest 2006: Graphics Track
- Introduction to Direct3D 10: Coming to a PC Near You
- Using Direct3D 10: Getting the Most from Your Direct3D 10 Engine
- Effects 10: Driving the New Effects System
- Exploiting Direct3D 10: Advanced Techniques Using Direct3D 10
- Advanced Lighting and More from Microsoft Research
- Xbox 360 Direct3D and GPU Performance Update
- HLSL Shader Compiler Update for Xbox 360 and Windows
- Under the Hood: Revving Up Shader Performance
- Seven Ways to Skin a Mesh: Character Skinning Revisited for Modern GPUs
- HDR the Bungie Way
- Cross-Platform Graphics Engine Development
Gamefest 2006: Windows and Xbox 360 System Programming Track
- Designing Multi-Core Games: How to Walk and Chew Bubblegum at the Same Time
- Multi-Core Memory Coherence: The Hidden Perils of Sharing Data
- Sublime C++ for Games
- Games as Malware: Why Security is Your Problem Too
- Hardening the Box: The Xbox 360 and Windows Vista Security Models
- Supercharging I/O: Hard Disk, DVD, and Memory Unit
- Memory Management Internals: Allocation Strategies for High Performance
- Power Debugging: Nasty Bugs and How to Find Them
- Taming the CLR: How To Write Really Fast Managed Code
- Windows Performance Topics for Games
- Xbox 360 CPU Performance Update
- Developing Games for Windows and Xbox 360: Stories from the Trenches
Gamefest 2006: Developer Tools: XNA and Visual Studio Track
- Working Smarter and Building Faster with Visual C++ 2005
- Managing Content Builds with XNA Build
- An Introduction to Agile Development
- Creating Games with the XNA Framework
- A Closer Look at the XNA Framework Content Pipeline
- Managing Content Builds with XNA Build
Gamefest 2006: Visual Arts Track
- Dynamic Animation in Next-Generation Games
- Exporting SOFTIMAGE|FACE ROBOT into a Real-Time Engine
- Procedural Texturing Using ProFX: 2K Textures in 2KB
- How’d They Do That? Graphics Samples Explained
- Creating Captivating Visual Content for DirectX 10
- Shaders and Shader Tools for Artists
- Pushing the Pipeline: Creating a Next-Generation Art Pipeline in Less Than Six Months
- Photorealistic Lighting Solutions for Next- Generation Games using Turtle 3
- Strategies for Coping with the Demand of High Def Art
Gamefest 2006: Cross-Platform Xbox Live Track
- Live Anywhere: Bringing the Live Experience to Windows
- Session Enhancements: Host Migration, Improved TrueSkill™ and More
- The New Xbox Live Server Platform: Opening up the Network
- Community Extensions: Further Options to Customize Your Game’s User Experience
- Achievements and Stats: Adding to the “Just Five More Minutes” Factor
Gamefest 2006: Casual Games Track
- Developing Games for Xbox Live Arcade
- Developing Web-Based Games for MSN Games
- Preparing Casual Games for Windows Vista
- Developing Casual Games for MSN Messenger
- Future Platforms and Opportunities for Casual Games
Gamefest 2006: Audio Track
- Full Service Audio: A Comprehensive Guide to Tools, Libraries, and Services for Audio on Xbox 360 and Windows Vista
- The Fundamentals of Audio Rendering on Xbox 360 and Windows Vista
- XMA Implementation and Aesthetics (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Compression)
- Using the Top Rear Left-of-Center Low Frequency Speaker: How Multi-channel Audio Works on Xbox 360 and Windows Vista
- Distributed Composing: Managing Audio Collaboration and Cross-Platform Deployment for XACT Projects
- An Analytical Study of Audio Implementations for Existing Windows and Xbox 360 Titles
Gamefest 2006: Game Middleware Track
- Adding Camera-Based Gesture and Face Tracking to Games
- Making Your Game Sound More Cinematic
- Extensible .NET Tools for Game Development – Guidelines and Lessons Learned
- An Overview of Voice Recognition Implementation
- Meshing AGEIA and Granny
- Combining Different Middleware Solutions to Create a Customized Platform
- The Convergence of AI, Physics and Animation
- The Dos and Absolutely-Do-Nots of XLSP: A Middleware Perspective
- Advanced Tools and Techniques for Shipping Your Game On-Time
- Creating a DirectX 10 Shader Authoring Sandbox Using SOFTIMAGE|XSI
- The State of the (Audio) Nation: A Conversation with Leading Audio Content Middleware Solutions
Gamefest 2006: Producer and Business Development Track
- Games for Windows Vista: Nail the Essentials, Showcase the Innovations
- Marketplace: Future of Digital Distribution
- Making your Windows Titles Come ALIVE Anywhere!
- Expanding Your Audience Through Accessibility
- Rise Above: Improving Your Game’s Chances for Success by Focusing on What Players Want
Gamefest 2006: Quality Assurance and Certification Track
- Introduction to Windows Error Reporting as a Service
- Games for Windows Vista Compatibility: The Essentials
- Microsoft Games Testing Organization: Testing Evolved
Source 1: http://www.microsoftgamefest.com/
Source 2: http://letskilldave.com/archive/2006/09/11/Gamefes…
panoramic cave…
Namenlos again did some very cool panoramic views:
Wildlife projection
“At night projections from moving cars are shone on the buildings downtown. Each car projects a video of a wild animal. The animal’s movements are programmed to correspond to the speed of the car: as the car moves, the animal runs along it speeding up and slowing down with the car, as the car stops, the animal stops also. The framerate of the movie corresponds to the speed of the wheel rotation, picked up by a sensor. If the presence of a moving object (such as another car or pedestrian) is detected with proximity sensors, its animal “avatar” appears in the projection.
For the ZeroOne ISEA2006 I will be using one vehicle with a projection of a tiger (additional animals will appear in the projection as reflections of passing vehicles and pedestrians).
Projection disappears and flickers as it is supported by the architecture. The city itself is an active partner in creating this alter ego.”
“We are elevated from the everyday reality through this element of fantasy into a world with more dimensions, possibilities and perhaps beauty.”
created by Karolina Sobecka
1000 cars at once…
Ever wondered what 1000 cars at once might look like? Wonder no more!
Source: http://www.gametrailers.com/umwatcher.php?id=12321
real actors redundant soon.
Real actresses and actors? What for? They are expensive and difficult to handle. And since the computer generated graphics really pushing things these days…
Oh..just in case you’re wondering:
“This is a rendering of SongHyeKyo, the Korean actress.”
Infinity evolves…
Posted by bietiekay in Development, Games, graphics on September 3, 2006
“Infinity is a massively multiplayer online game set in a futuristic persistent universe. Players can discover a huge galaxy with billions of planets and can explore, combat, trade, socialize.. the possibilities are endless!”
“Infinity is an open-ended game in which you control a spaceship throughought the entire galaxy, trying to make a name for yourself. You connect to an online server on which thousands of people are playing, 24/7. The game does not stop when you log off, but continues to evolve: it is a persistent universe. The game mechanics do not emphasize any particular gameplay style. Combat, trade, exploration, social relationships.. you are free to choose your own carrier path and goals. The only limit is your own imagination!
Infinity is not a traditional role playing game. Although all players are expected to act in concordance with their avatar’s motivations, there are no classes or skills to restrict your choices. Combat between spaceships is in true real-time, and the outcome is determined by your own intelligence and reflexes. Forget turn-based action and experience the great excitement of a first person experience!”
If you want start playing right now? Well… it’s current development status:
- Generic 3D engine: ~75% (kernel, textures, scene graph, mesh/objects, shaders, etc..)
- Planet/Space 3D engine: ~60% (terrain, planet textures, starfield, nebulaes, water, clouds, vegetation, etc..)
- Astrophysics: ~55% (galaxy generation, system gen, planets heightfields, orbits, parameters, etc..)
- Newtonian physics: ~35% (spaceships physics, collision detection, flight navigation)
- Sound engine: ~60% (3D sounds and musics)
- Networking: ~30% (TCP/UDP, network protocol, login/out, databases, etc..)
- User interface: ~10% (user input, widgets, windows)
- Gameplay: ~5% (actual game logic)
- Content: ~15% (spaceships/stations/cities 3D models and textures, misc. 2D art, sounds & musics)
So think again: If you’re a developer…well get in touch with them!
XNA (beta) available!!!
“What is not in this Beta (but coming soon)
While we’re very proud of this Beta milestone, it does not represent all of the great features we are enabling in XNA Game Studio Express which will be available in final release form by this holiday. Some of the key feature areas that were not able to make it into this beta include:
- The XNA Framework Content Pipeline feature is not present in this release of XNA Game Studio Express (Beta). It will be made available in a future beta release of XNA Game Studio Express
- Support for retail Xbox 360 game development. This feature will be made available upon final release of XNA Game Studio Express later this holiday
- Additional starter kits and tutorials will be made available upon final release of XNA Game Studio Express”
Teasing the new YAPS UI
Posted by bietiekay in Development, graphics, private on August 20, 2006
Now, does this look good or not? I worked the whole day on the graphics…hopefully everyone will like it
freeware photorealistic pinball simulator/editor/…
Posted by bietiekay in Development, Games, graphics, Reallife on August 14, 2006
Pinball fans rejoice! I just found a obviously longer available pinball simulator with integrated editor. Yes, you can create your own pinball tables. There are plenty of them freely available on the internet so you don’t have to create your own – instead just start a nice pinball game… The graphics are fantastic and so is the sound… That’s probably the best pinball I’ve ever played on a pc… Oh, did I mention that this is available for free?
“Future Pinball is a real time Pinball Development System. It allows you to design and play your very own pinball simulation in True real time 3D. It uses Advanced Physics to provide the best possible Simulation of a true to life pinball machine. Tables are built up out of Standard components (Plastics, Pegs, Bumpers, Lights etc..) which are placed onto the playfield via the Editor. Objects like Surfaces, Lights and Rubbers are shapeable within the Editor and generated real-time when the table is played. Other objects (Bumpers, Flippers, Gates, Triggers, Targets etc..) use pre-made 3d Models (of which there is a nice selection of each type).
The Table logic is scripted in Visual Basic Scripting (via the Microsoft Scripting Technology’s built into Windows XP). Scripting is designed to be simple but flexible enough to allow a wide vararity of Original Games to be created. Only a limited subset of the Visual Basic Scripting Language is used as a lot of extra functionality is provided by the game engine. Full Sound / Music Support is also provided with multiple Music Channels to allow cross fading. Future Pinball uses the Newton Game Dynamic Physics Solution (link) for the real time simulation of a Pinball’s Physics Environment. This allows the ball to behave correctly on the playfield and interact with other objects as it does in the real world. Newton has allowed Future Pinball to take the next step into truly realistic play. As Future Pinball is a Game Construction Program it contains some advanced concepts which may require a little bit of time (and patience) to learn and fully understand (such as computer graphics and scripting concepts).”
And here are two screenshots of one of the downloadable pinball tables:
Source: http://www.futurepinball.com/
How to build a panoramic tripod for less than 10 EURO
Posted by bietiekay in graphics, hack-the-planet, Modding, Panorama on August 10, 2006
Stitching software and digital cameras make panoramic photos far easier than ever before. However, to get the best results, you need a special tripod head. These can cost hundreds of dollars, but making your own isn’t that hard. Even better, it’s dirt cheap.
Source: http://www.worth1000.com/tutorial.asp?sid=161123&print=1
Night Windows: Japan at night…
Posted by bietiekay in graphics, Reallife, travelling on August 10, 2006
one more panoramic view from PGR3
and another panoramic view straigt out of Project Gotham Racing 3 (ignore the red Enzo please)…
the first XBOX 360 game that exports user generated content…
Posted by bietiekay in Games, graphics, High Dynamic Range, Motorsport, Panorama, Xbox 360 on August 2, 2006
Gamers rejoice! Today there were some really great updates in the XBOX 360 queue. The most interesting one is the update for Project Gotham Racing 3 – one of the launch titles of the 360. You finally can export the pictures you took in “Photo Mode” to your computer. Just select the picture and send it to your “Your Photos”-Webpage and grab them from there.
I straight went onto the track with the Sagaris to take some test pictures:
yes, HDR…
yes, panoramic view…
I just can say: WOW! That’s what I was looking for when I used the “Photo Mode” over half a year ago for the first time…Oh…I forgot to mention that they are also doing a competition…if you want to take part…here’s the info you need.
Source 1: http://projectgothamracing3.com/photos/PhotoGallery
Source 2: http://www.bizarreonline.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=216755
synthesize your photography…
Once again a technical preview for something really amazing (which was acquired by Microsoft earlier this year)
“Photosynth is an amazing new technology from Microsoft Live Labs that will change the way you think about digital photos forever.”
Mhh…yeah, of course… so what does it really do?
“Photosynth takes a large collection of photos of a place or object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed 3-Dimensional space.”
“Each photo is processed by computer vision algorithms to extract hundreds of distinctive features, like the corner of a window frame or a doorhandle. Then, photos that share features are linked together in a web. When a feature’s found in multiple images, its 3D position can be calculated. It’s similar to depth perception—what your brain does to perceive the 3D positions of things in your field of view based on their images in both of your eyes. Photosynth’s 3D model is just the cloud of points showing where those features are in space.”
“The Photosynth client shows you the 3D pointcloud, but more importantly, it also shows you the original pictures overlaid on the model. Imagine a slide projector placed at each camera position, aimed where the camera was aiming, and projecting the picture that camera took. A screen is placed in the 3D environment at an appropriate distance from the projector. As you move around in the Photosynth environment, projectors turn on and off, giving you a changing perspective on a world built entirely out of the original photos.”
“Imagine being able to see your favorite band from either the front row or the bleachers, walking around that new motorbike you’ve been thinking of buying, or flying over every nook and cranny of a famous landmark.
Photosynth provides easy controls for exploring a collection of photos in 3D with a click of a mouse. If you’ve ever played a 3D game you already know how to use Photosynth.
Seeing your photos displayed in 3D instead of a boring old slideshow changes the way you think of taking—and viewing—pictures. Add the ability to see your pictures together with those taken by other people and you’ll start to see the endless possibilities that Photosynth promises to provide.”
Source: http://labs.live.com/photosynth/
Source: http://www.sandcodex.com/
real time radiosity lighting … soon in a game near you?
Posted by bietiekay in Development, graphics, High Dynamic Range, Research, Software on July 25, 2006
It seems that a company called Geomerics has developed an algorithm that allows real time radiosity lighting in fairly complex environments. They support nearly all the things you would expect, like soft shadowing, infinite light bounces, colour bleeding:
If you don’t know what radiosity is:
Since you of course know how radiosity works you can imagine that it’s dead slow. And getting it up to real time is the important thing about the new algorithm.
They demonstrate their technology in a short movie:
Our technique also supports real-time area light sources, smooth soft-edged indirect shadows, projected lighting, spot lights, colour bleeding and texture-based lighting effects such as normal and bump mapping.”
Source 1: http://www.geomerics.com/index.php?page=lighting
Source 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiosity
several pictures and clips
so finally I’m posting some pictures and video clips I’ve created during the last years. Most of them were created with 3D Studio Max and ZBrush. Postprocessing was done in Photoshop.
“Bushs dinner” (2002)
birthday card (2004)
“das Deutsche Eck” (2003)
“das Deutsche Eck” (2003)
“the hungry cat” (2004)
concept for a poster (2003)
“Laura” – MPEG video – 4,8 Mbyte (2003)
music by Daniel Akkaya
“Starkstrom” – MPEG video – 4,8 Mbyte (2002)
Disclaimer: Hendrik is new to this weblog and will most likely post from time to time.
a captcha a day keeps the spam0r away.
Posted by bietiekay in Blog-o-Sphere, graphics, hack-the-planet, Internet, makes-my-day, Riot, Software on July 19, 2006
“A CAPTCHA (an acronym for “completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart”, trademarked by Carnegie Mellon University) is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether or not the user is human.”
This technology is mainly used to filter all those spammers from the normal commenting users. Schrankmonster even uses this technology. Kiesow doesn’t like very long captchas and I don’t like dumb ones…like this one which was sent in by Tomasz Naumowicz:
Source 1: http://www.kiesows.de/blog/2006/07/19/captcha-2
Source 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captchas
how Google Map/Earth works…
Posted by bietiekay in Development, graphics, hack-the-planet, Internet, Research, rocket-science on July 19, 2006
I want to share with you a fantastic page where Pascal Buire discusses his investigations on Google Earths tiling and algorithms:
“This is my analyse about how google map works, et specially how the tiles are encoded. Google map uses pre-rendered tiles that can be obtained with a simple url. This article explains how to build the url for a tile from its geo coordinates (latitude/longitude)”
Google Earth mirroring anyone?
Source: http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/googlemap.asp
Planets flyby in 720p…
Posted by bietiekay in graphics, Movies, rocket-science on July 19, 2006
I told you that there will be a 720p movie of the planets rendering available soon. And here it
It’s also available through the podcast or directly linked here.
revisited: what’s the size of the earth compared to…and why earth needs a haircut…
Posted by bietiekay in graphics, private, rocket-science, Software on July 16, 2006
A couple of days ago I wrote about a website that has some interesting pictures of the planets of our solar system compared to each other in size. The idea was great but the quality of the pictures was bad. So we decided to push our knowledge about 3D tools a bit and render our own high-quality version.
But first a before-after comparision:
before
Aaaaaand:
after
Tell us what you think of it!
We will add some more pictures in the next hours, beside that a short movie in 720p is in the rendering process at the moment.
Last time I worked with 3D tools they were called “3D Studio Max 3.0″…which is quite a while ago. 3D Studios current version number is 8… You can grab your own trial version here.
We actually experimented a lot with the tools…look what earth became after just seconds of play:
yes,we even hair-styled earth!
Source 1: original article and picture
Source 2: 3D Studio MAX trial
udp multicast to tcp unicast proxy YAPS revisited…and bugfixed
Posted by bietiekay in Development, graphics, Internet, networking, TV on July 14, 2006
Yesterday I had an idea how I could fix the last remaining problem in my udp multicast to tcp unicast proxy server (YAPS).
The last time I had to report this:
“There are some glitches I am afraid to say: one known bug is that there are 12 bytes to much in the outgoing data stream which corrupts the picture. If anyone here can fix it: Do it please 😉 I tried one day and I could not find a solution for the problem.”
My idea was now, that those glitches are possibly there because some bytes of the header remain in each packet and therefore the movie stream itself is destroyed. MPlayer was able to display something, but as I said…glitches.
So I made a method that actually calculates the size of the header of each RTP packet and then removes this header:
1: public byte[] killRTPheader(byte[] b,ref int inlength)
2: {
3: byte[] outbytes = new byte[1600];
4: int headersize = 12+4*((b[0] >> 0) & 0x0f);
5: Array.ConstrainedCopy(b, headersize, outbytes, 0, inlength - headersize);
6: inlength = inlength - headersize;
7: return outbytes;
8: }
The results speak for themselves: A perfect sound and picture.
Beside that I added some additional features. Read the source and you’ll find out.
You can grab the source and binaries here: YAPS.zip (24,74 KB)
what’s the size of the earth compared to…
Posted by bietiekay in graphics, rocket-science on July 13, 2006
…well… any other planet and star…
Yeah I know…the picture is shabby…I’ll maybe create a better looking version…
because he could…3D renderer in PHP
Posted by bietiekay in Development, graphics, Internet, Software on July 12, 2006
People do almost anything just because they can, and this guy is no exception:
“This evening I remembered an idea I had a while ago to make a 3D renderer in PHP (and if anyone’s tempted to ask – “because I can” ). I did a bit of reading on old 3D engines, as I didn’t want something modern and slow, and found out that the “raycaster” rendering used in Wolfenstein 3D is ridiculously easy to implement. A few hours later and it’s up and running I’ve not run any proper speed tests yet, but the images load up pretty much instantaneously. I have a couple of ideas of what this could be used for, so watch this space “
campus world-championship HDR
Posted by bietiekay in graphics, High Dynamic Range, TU-Ilmenau on July 6, 2006
what can you tell in 141 minutes what you can’t in 33?
Posted by bietiekay in graphics, hack-the-planet, makes-my-day, Modding, Movies, rocket-science on June 27, 2006
“2001 seconds is a complete re-edit of Stanley Kubrick’s original Space Odyssey from 141 minutes to 33 minutes 21 seconds.”
Source: http://swith.gazaxian.com/2001seconds.htm
a real piece of art created with MS Paint…
Posted by bietiekay in Drawing, graphics, makes-my-day on June 26, 2006
So, you think MS Paint is just nothing worth mentioning? It’s quite remarkable what this artist did in more than 100 hours of work:
“This drawing was done entirely in MS Paint with a Logitech laser mouse. I did not use the copy and paste tool, or the text tool. There was no color sampling or pasting from other images, but I did view some seperate images as reference, as do most artists. “
it’s 700px x 10.000px in the big version
Source: http://www.ubersite.com/m/84167
HDR campfire…
Posted by bietiekay in FeM, graphics, High Dynamic Range, Meetings on June 25, 2006
We had a great campfire and I played again with my Powershot… here is the High Dynamic Range campfire:
[UPDATE] nature…experimenting with HDR
UPDATE: I added the full resolution versions of the HDR pictures.
During FIWAK I had the chance to play a bit with a Canon EOS 20D. It’s proper DSLR and you can do many great things with it. All the pictures below where done without a tripod. As you can see there are a few ghost pictures but less than I expected in that mode. Nevertheless my Canon PowerShot A400 is better for panoramic views – the EOS is way to big and heavy, you surely need a tripod to do proper panoramic views whereas you can do quite good panoramic views with the A400 without a tripod.
let’s pile it all together…
Posted by bietiekay in Development, graphics, Research, Riot on June 21, 2006
There are often some new ideas of graphical user interfaces. Especially when you have to organise a number of documents you would instantly fall in love with this new idea:
How to make things smaller
No, you won’t need a hammer to do the things I write about in this article. You will need a camera and a special lens.
this actually IS the Roman Colosseum
“To create this effect, Barbieri uses a tilt-frame camera to shift the plane of focus so that it is out of alignment with the film. Normally, this allows wide-angle aerial views to be captured in proper perspective. But used incorrectly, an optical illusion occurs.”