Current digital cameras have limited dynamic ranges. Users typically expose for the highlights or the shadows or a compromise between them, and rarely get everything exposed properly.
To address this, University of Toronto researchers showed their HDRchitecture in the Emerging Technology section of SIGGRAPH last week. HDRchitecture is a real-time visualization system that can handle scenes with dynamic ranges in excess of a million to one.
The demonstration featured a welding scene in which attendees were able to clearly see the object being welded as well as nearby objects without the usual visual distortion. (Take a look at the video demo.)
The real-time HDRchitecture video system processes up to 120 frames per second in groups of three or four frames. Each frame has a different exposure setting. And together in a group, it captures both the highlights and shadows.
The system them composites the images together for viewing at 30fps on a lower dynamic range display. The system can render images at a high image quality up to 1920×1080 resolution and can accommodate stereoscopic vision.
HDRchitecture uses GPUs and multicore CPUs for real-time HDR processing. The system is compact enough that it might eventually be incorporated into eyeglasses.
Finally, the HDRchitecture system may be adapted to current digital cameras. One of the rigs shown consisted of a Canon DSLR with customized firmware. One limitation of that system, however, was a reduced frame rate of only 20fps.
SIGGRAPH 2012 wrapped on Thursday of last week. With extensive reporting from the show floor, fxguide discusses news from Side Effects, the RenderMan user group, NVIDIA, Massive, Open Source, DreamWorks and more.
Side Effects made several key announcements including a rebranding of its flagship product, Houdini Master, as Houdini FX; a new pricing structure ($4,495 for Houdini FX and $1,1994 for Houdini — formerly known as Houdini Escape); elimination of the $800 fee for the Annual Upgrade Plan; and a new asset marketplace called Orbolt, designed to help artists create and sell 3D assets.
The article notes that the new Houdini FX “includes all Houdini features with a focus on particles, fluids, Pyro FX, cloth, wire and rigid body dynamics.”
The Pixar RenderMan User group had an impressive turnout when it met Wednesday night. “RenderMan had a huge release with version 16,” explains the article. “The next release builds on this and improves performance. Gold mastering on the new RMS 4 and RPS 17 is very soon with a ‘wide’ beta starting the week after SIGGRAPH, and the final gold mastering planned for the end of September. Interestingly, with the new rolling release schedule, 17.1 b1 release will follow not long after around the 1st of November.”
NVIDIA unveiled its Maximus second generation workstation platform and the latest versions of its Quadro and Tesla cards.
“Maximus certified workstations (from HP, Dell, etc.) contain two NVIDIA cards — a matched Quadro GPU as well as a Tesla GPU,” explains the article. “This divides the tasks normally done with a single card; the Quadro drives the display and the Tesla card is used for computationally intensive tasks, such as fluid dynamics simulation, GPU rendering, and real-time color correction.”
The new Quadro K5000 will ship in October at $2,249 and the Tesla K20 is slated for December availability at $3,199.
Massive 5.0 was unveiled, the company’s first major release since February 2010. “The new 5.0 aims to address long-term user requests, new features and some interesting extensions,” notes the article.
“What is of even more interest is not just what Massive is releasing but how teams are using it. DreamWorks in particular presented a brilliant paper at DigiPro 2012 (SIGGRAPH co-located event) on accessing the Massive sim output data directly and using it to improve the characters that the agents drive by having a high quality render time deformation engine (RTD), where high quality character geometry is generated on the fly,” explains fxguide.
“This technique required significant changes to DreamWorks’ animation rigs. Character TDs created Multidimensional Rigs, where a character can run in a ‘service mode,’ interfacing with the RTD server to deliver any model in a crowd for any pose as requested by the renderer.”
Stephen Regelous, founder of Massive software, demonstrated the company’s latest work in crowd simulation, the details of which are provided in the article (including related videos).
This fxguide article features tech specs, video demos and performance evaluations for these products and others. An earlier fxguide write-up includes highlights of session reviews, tech papers and notable new software releases.
Taking their cues from natural science, engineers have developed flying drones inspired by birds and swimming robots that emulate jellyfish.
The earthworm is the latest creature to inspire a team of scientists from MIT, Harvard and Seoul National University. Led by Professor Sangbae Kim, the team has created a robotic device named “Meshworm,” that crawls along the ground via the principle of peristalsis.
“The device is propelled by a spiral-shaped coil of artificial muscle made of a titanium and nickel alloy, a material chosen for a particular reason: It stretches when heated and contracts back to its original shape once cooled,” reports Smithsonian.com.
“The engineers used an internal battery and circuit board to apply a weak electric current to different muscle segments within the Meshworm, heating each of them in turn,” explains the article. “When each segment is heated, it expands in length, causing the outer circumference of the mesh to briefly contract, then return to its original size quickly afterward.”
The motion occurs successively at each segment of Meshworm, creating a wave of contraction that enables movement across the ground (the article includes a video of the lifelike movement). Steerage is controlled via lengthwise artificial muscles that are pulled when heated.
Since the Meshworm parts are all fibrous and flexible, it is nearly indestructible.
“The research is funded by DARPA…and some speculate that the robot could someday be used in reconnaissance missions, since it could be air-dropped, launched or thrown over relatively long distances and land without harm,” notes the article.
And since it can navigate rough terrain and fit into small spaces — quietly and inconspicuously — it may serve as a future robo-spy. The shape-changing artificial muscle technology may also be used for medical devices, prosthetics and CE devices such as mobile phones and portable computers.
About 40 percent of the world’s most popular 100 brands are active on photo-sharing service Instagram, according to a new report from Simply Measured.
Facebook boasts a 98 percent rate among the Interbrand 100, while Twitter has reached a 94 percent adoption rate.
While Instagram trails Facebook and Twitter in adoption, the young service has expanded much faster than its social media predecessors. Instagram has grown from 15 million users in 2011 to 80 million users.
Simply Measured expects Instagram to grow to 100 million users this fall. Facebook and Twitter took four and five years, respectively, to reach 100 million users.
“This aggressive growth has provided a massive marketing opportunity and top brands are taking that seriously,” explains Simply Measured CEO Adam Schoenfeld.
MTV is currently Instagram’s top brand with 813,201 users. Luxury brands do especially well, with Burberry, Gucci, Audi, and Tiffany & Co. all in the top ten.
In a related CNET article, Pinterest — the popular social network that encourages its members to “pin” images and videos — has begun open registration, allowing users to join via Facebook, Twitter or email login without having to wait for an invitation.
“We’re really excited to have the capacity to offer Pinterest to more people,” notes the Pinterest blog, “and if you’re a Pinner with friends who’ve been waiting on the sidelines, we hope you’ll let them know.”
From the second quarter of 2010 to the second quarter of 2012, high-definition advertising has risen 150 percent.
Additionally, more than 70 percent of all American homes have an HDTV set and 69 percent of all TV outlets are able to receive and air HD ads, according to a new report from video ad distribution and services provider Extreme Reach Inc.
Even so, HD advertisements still only account for 25 percent of all ads.
“Local broadcasters also continued lag in both viewer adoption and the rest of the U.S. industry, with only 53 percent of local stations being able to accept and air HD ads, much lower than local cable (74 percent), network broadcast (73 percent) and national cable (76 percent),” reports Broadcasting & Cable.
The “Q2 2012 HD Advertising Trends Report” found that political ads created a strong push for HD adoption and that cloud computing has significantly impacted the HD expansion.
“By taking advantage of advanced cloud-based solutions, advertisers have been able to leverage higher performance/lower cost workflows, and those efficiencies have helped fuel the rapid growth in HD advertising,” says Dan Brackett, chief technology officer of Extreme Reach.
Reports from Strategy Analytics and Piper Jaffray indicate nearly half of Americans and iPhone users would buy an Apple television soon after its release.
But beyond the innovative design and simple user interface Apple is known for, the Apple television could very well reinvent how TV is distributed while essentially replacing gaming consoles and computers.
The Olympics has shown the power of social media on viewing as people choose which events to watch based on trending topics. It has also demonstrated consumers’ frustration with the current TV model, like being forced to watch time-delayed NBC coverage.
The Apple television could be the answer to these issues by incorporating multiple windows for social media tracking while also providing more content than just traditional broadcasting.
Many have speculated the TV “would carry channel content through conventional broadcasting, via iTunes and also through individual apps from broadcasters, which raises interesting opportunities,” reports Computerworld.
Companies like the BBC could then provide free apps with some free content and a wider catalog available to monthly subscribers — allowing Americans to access content from networks outside the U.S., such as real-time Olympics.
And from there, the Apple television could completely transfigure how people interact with their TVs — with iPhone or iPad remotes featuring Siri voice navigation — and what they use them for.
“Gaming is an obvious extra string to the bow. In theory any iOS app should be usable on the television. This would devour the console market,” the post suggests. “Image editing seems possible, as does full Web surfing (existing Web surfing on smart televisions remains an unsatisfying experience); email and social media communications; note-taking; FaceTime conversations; time-shifting of broadcast content.”
Last week’s online streaming coverage of the Curiosity rover’s Mars landing drew more viewers than most of the prime time cable news channels.
“Ustream, the website that broadcast the landing, told Mashable that its live-stream reached a peak viewership of 500,000, besting CNN, MSNBC, and HLN,” reports Slate. “A total of 3.2 million people tuned in to the live stream at one point or another.”
The numbers suggest that Americans are very interested in seeing history unfold live, even if the production value is not on the same level as other traditional media.
Additionally, NBC served 1.5 million live streams of the women’s gymnastics team final during its recent Olympics coverage.
“How many were actually watching at any given time is unclear, but the figure suggests sports fans are at least as enthusiastic about watching events online as science buffs,” notes the article.
Although online broadcasts may be starting to reach a mainstream audience, their numbers do not typically come close to those involving television viewers. TV still reigns supreme for now.
SnagFilms, a new media start-up founded by Ted Leonsis (who also co-founded AOL), is hoping to connect lesser known films with audiences via online streaming.
More affordable camera and post production equipment has led to an increase in independent film production. However, effective distribution remains elusive for aspiring filmmakers — and competition within the festival circuit has become fierce.
For example, approximately 9,000 films are submitted annually to Sundance every year, and only a fraction are selected (118 last year). Only about 20 percent of those films selected by Sundance will see a distribution deal. “You have a better chance of getting into Harvard (5.9 percent admittance rate) than Sundance,” suggests Mashable.
“SnagFilms currently has more than 3,200 films in its library, and all are available to watch any time for free,” explains the post. “With investors ranging from Leonsis, to Steve Case and Comcast, SnagFilms is a frontrunner in the indie space online. It also runs the Webby Award winning site, Indiewire, which is a go-to source for independent film news.”
SnagFilms makes its money via advertising and says its video player is highly social. “We were the first streaming service to develop and integrate the Facebook Open Graph,” says CEO Rick Allen.
The post includes a 10-minute interview with Allen from “The Valley Girl Show,” hosted by Jesse Draper.
YouTube may be best recognized for its sports highlights, user-generated content, music videos and classic TV clips available on-demand, but its live streaming of the Summer Olympics may indicate where the video giant is headed next.
YouTube partnered with NBC to provide 34 million live streams during the first week of the Summer 2012 Games. Nearly 1.5 million people watched live streaming of the U.S. women’s gymnastics team winning the gold and nearly 1.2 million watched Michael Phelps beat Ryan Lochte in the 200-meter individual medley.
YouTube built an entirely new platform to support as many as 100 simultaneous high-definition feeds. Jason Gaedtke, YouTube’s director of software engineering, suggests the efforts will not stop at the Olympics.
“While it’s true we built this platform for the Olympics, a better way of characterizing it would be to say we used the Olympics as an opportunity to challenge our capabilities and set some high quality-of-service and streaming goals going forward,” he says.
YouTube has live streamed concerts and last year’s Royal wedding, but now has a larger infrastructure in place for the future. “We certainly see strong demand in a couple verticals: gaming, sports, news increasingly — anything with a realtime or community-driven aspect to it seems to play well in this format,” adds Gaedtke.
YouTube is also looking to increase its social features, as evidenced by its recent hosting of Google+ Hangouts and adding publicly viewable audience analytics. Decreasing the distinction between live and on-demand video is next.
“We’re intentionally blurring the line between live and video-on-demand,” Gaedtke explains. “With the technology we’ve built here — real-time transcoding at a high level as well as how we prepare the media stream — we can immediately go from a live to DVR experience once an event ends.”
PC makers Dell, HP and Lenovo touted products and initiatives last week at the SIGGRAPH conference that target media and entertainment.
“The PC system vendors are absolutely getting more aggressive in the media and entertainment space,” notes NVIDIA exec Greg Estes. “They perceive there is an opening with some of the latest decisions Apple has made.”
HP has teamed with Adobe and Red to launch the Z820 Red Edition desktop workstation, “a customized version of the HP Z820 that comes ready for production with a Red Rocket accelerator card and two Red SSD card readers,” details Carolyn Giardina in The Hollywood Reporter.
“We are not aiming to get away from Mac,” explains Red exec Ted Schilowitz. “But it’s pretty obvious that Apple’s focus is in the mobile computing world. [Filmmakers] drive a lot of data. Mac is viable, but if want the most horsepower, you are now looking at HP.”
Dell announced a new advisory board comprised of industry professionals that use Apple’s Final Cut editing software. “According to Scott Hamilton, Dell’s vertical market strategist for workstations, some of the company’s advisors have stated discontent with Final Cut Pro X and Apple’s workstations,” notes Giardina.
Lenovo showcased its latest ThinkPad and ThinkStation technology at the conference. The company has plans to certify its technology for media tools including Avid Media Composer and Adobe CS6, according to the article.
Montreal-based tech company TeamUp demonstrated its new cloud-based Multi-Optics rendering technology at SIGGRAPH last week in Los Angeles.
“The TeamUp platform is designed so that customers have access to the fastest machines available and do not have to download, install, license or set up anything before working with 3D content,” reports Below the Line.
“3D rendering is traditionally the slowest and most complex process,” notes TeamUp co-founder Thiago Costa. “The back and forth with clients and peers can become tedious and costs a lot of time through miscommunications and scheduling consensus.”
“We built TeamUp to truly improve this experience,” he says of the real-time 3D collaboration system, “so creative teams and their clients can see the same render live, edit and make decisions in real-time on multiple devices, and arrive at the look they want for any 3D asset.”
“One of our techniques to achieve such high quality results is to take physical objects and measure their many optical properties to come up with an accurate representation,” explains scientist and TeamUp co-founder Arno Zinke.
“This way we can make hair, sand, cloth, metals, volumetrics, and many complex materials look real,” he adds. “Besides providing a constantly growing library of materials, users can also create their own materials from these fundamental properties.”
The system is presently in beta for standard OS platforms and Apple iPad OS. TeamUp’s cloud-based, subscription service anticipates a fall launch.
The annual SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference featured a panel on shooting films at high frame rates. The panel attracted in excess of 1,000 attendees (including studio execs) and lasted more than two hours.
Filmmakers such as Peter Jackson and James Cameron are now advocating shooting at 48 frames per second or higher. “Avatar” producer Jon Landau suggested that filmmakers, rather than the studios, need to drive the process in order for high frame rates to succeed.
Landau noted the dip in 3D audiences. “In 3D, studios decided to impose it on filmmakers, and the result suffered and the public picked up on it,” he said.
“We have a responsibility to find what tells story in a better way and drives people out of their homes and into the cinema,” he added. “[With high frame rates,] they will walk away having been more engaged in our movies.”
Cameron plans to produce his “Avatar” sequels at a high frame rate and Jackson has chosen 48fps for “The Hobbit” trilogy. Filmmaker and innovator Douglas Trumbull described Jackson’s pioneering effort as a “bold step” that will hopefully pay off, considering theater attendance is at a 16-year low. “Peter Jackson’s commitment [to high frame rates] is very brave and very important,” he said.
“Supporters of higher frame rates argue that the they create a more lifelike image and truer illusion of continuous movement,” notes Carolyn Giardina in The Hollywood Reporter. “In particular, they improve 3D and action sequences by eliminating or greatly reducing motion artifacts like blur. Others argue that images shot at higher rates look too real, resembling video more than the traditional look of film.”
The panel discussed the strain that additional data places on the post production process, noting the challenges involved with computing, storing and rendering the increased data that results from shooting at higher frame rates. However, panel members did not waver in their support.
“We know these problems are coming,” said Dennis Muren, Industrial Light & Magic’s Oscar-winning VFX supervisor. “We can start thinking about ways to do this more economically and faster.”
Two free apps — EasyShift and Gigwalk — enable users to earn money by doing small jobs for companies. Users submit the work via the apps and then collect the payments through their PayPal accounts.
“EasyShift, made by Quri Corp., launched nationwide in May 2011 as an iPhone app that’s focused on stock-checking tasks in grocery, convenience, drug and discount stores,” explains the Wall Street Journal. “Gigwalk launched nationwide in May 2011 and works on the iPhone and Android phones. It matches businesses or people with workers, so its gigs, like taking menu photos for $4 or testing a mobile app for $20, vary more than EasyShift’s jobs.”
WSJ reporter Katie Boehret took both apps for a test drive: “The tasks I completed were easy and some were even fun, like answering a few questions and taking photos of energy drinks at CVS for $2. I found myself scouring the apps’ built-in maps for nearby jobs as I drove around Washington, D.C., where I live. In cases when the job felt more like work than fun, I got paid enough that I didn’t mind ($8 for taking seven simple photos).”
“I was startled by how much pride I took in doing the task correctly — all for a few bucks and a good reputation within the app’s community, which can lead to higher-paying jobs,” she adds.
Some of the more active workers make $200 to $800 a month. Boehret notes a couple who made $1,000 to pay for their honeymoon.
“With EasyShift, most people who do work during the day get paid that night,” she writes. “Gigwalkers get paid within a day or two of submitting work and no later than five days after finishing a job. Both apps offer simple ways to make quick cash — and no one is overqualified to say no to that.”
As part of its mission to provide “universal access to all knowledge,” San Francisco-based non-profit the Internet Archive has added more than a million torrent files to the BitTorrent ecosystem.
“The torrents link to almost a petabyte of data and all files are being seeded by the Archive’s servers,” reports TorrentFreak.
Starting this week, “all new files uploaded to the Archive will also be available via BitTorrent,” explains the post. “In addition, a massive collection of older files including concerts from John Mayer, Jack Johnson and Maroon 5 and the Prelinger collection are also being published via torrents.”
Founder of the Internet Archive, Brewster Kahle, hopes the next step will be turning the popular file-sharing protocol into a distributed preservation system for the Internet.
“I hope this is greeted by the BitTorrent community, as we are loving what they have built and are very glad we can populate the BitTorrent universe with library and archive materials,” Kahle told TorrentFreak. “There is a great opportunity for symbiosis between the Libraries and Archives world and the BitTorrent communities.”
“In the wake of recent news featuring raids, crackdowns, DDoSes and lawsuits, this announcement from the Internet Archive brings some very welcome positive news about BitTorrent,” notes the post.
Barnes & Noble has begun data collection on its Nook tablets, analyzing how long people spend reading different types of books to determine the best ways to publish popular works.
The company noted that people read non-fiction in bursts, but tend to read genre novels and series all in one go. This suggests that non-fiction authors have a more difficult time of developing loyal fan bases.
Data collection and the subsequent algorithms to determine how to write popular books “may be a boon to the publishing industry, but it’s not necessarily a good thing for writers or literature in general,” comments Mobiledia.
Gathering empirical evidence for the development of “popular” books may lead companies like Barnes & Noble and Amazon to encourage authors to drop their literary ambitions and instead focus on the formula of popular book development.
Mobiledia argues that more popular books on the market could mean higher literacy rates.
Those with privacy concerns may want to take caution by avoiding e-readers, as companies do analyze every book read. “As much as privacy implications may bother people, they are unlikely to put a dent on the e-publishing industry, since it continues to expand at a rapid clip,” the post concludes. “The practice of examining readers’ habits will likely continue and affect the publishing industry, encouraging authors to use the information to craft more popular books.”
