What a fantastic research project – and presentation video. It not only makes me salivate at teh thought of getting my hands on this type of functionality – easily splicing elements of different video takes together – but also exudes joyful creativity from the research team. Fantastic. From the ETH Zurich and the Disney Research team.

And the Canadian government covers it up. More here.

Here’s a preview of an animation for the project I’m working on… one of the branch layers seems to have gotten doubled up.

Fantastic reconstruction of a chimpanzee from the mill, with very interesting insights into the technology used for muscle simulation, hair interaction and shading. Reminds me of why I prefer to work in stylized looks I also have an inkling that there’s a primate union out there about to strike in protest to now having lost all their jobs.

Animation in a science release about Allosaurus feeding. Wow. Get to the Witmer!

The view outside my window… precarious child-rearing.

Too garish, I know. Scribbled in ~2 minutes while watching documentary.

I’ve been following the debates of Paul Hansen’s manipulated prize-winner (above) with particular interest, but not much understanding. While I can understand the caution in aesthetically overworking images of human suffering, the line between ethical and unethical manipulation lies for me with where you might traditionally achieve in a darkroom situation, using light exposure times and masks to effect tonal brights and color saturations. To my eye, this seems to be the case. The only areas that even approach questionable territory in my opinion are where these masks are drawn so tightly as to effect a perceptional change of the relationship between items, such as the light catching the child victim’s face in comparison with the cloth he is wrapped in.

Science-art interface, anybody? Really cool tracking and visualization platform for dance, which is but a skip, hop and pirouette away from expressive biomechanics. I can imagine the visualization options presented in this toolkit to be of use in scientific analysis. Click to go.

airport doodle while reading the news

At last year’s FMX, I had the honor of interviewing Stuart Sumida, paleontologist consultant to the animation and vfx world, anatomy professor and all-around extraordinary science outreach. I know I should also mention lover of Dimetrodons and dinosaurs , and fantastic person, but you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.

The interviews are available at AWN, though for some reason I can’t view them at the moment. Please post in the comments if you can’t see them.

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I’m digging the modo’s real-time preview. It’s like auto pixelart. I should make a movie rendered in it.

…and the result is anything but reassuring. I find myself wandering the planet thinking “oh cool! Oh cool!” But the impressive eye-candy is all disappearing lakes, forests, nature… so, I felt compelled to make a sexy gif.

also: pay attention to the scale. On the amazon (linked above) you see deforestation as measured in hundreds of kilometers. Ouch.

I’m a fan of all those 3d printers that are being financed on kickstarter and other community funding projects, but they arouse a weird suspicion in me that we’re missing a greater opportunity. A normal printer. An ecologically sound, recyclable and longevity-driven printer. Like, one that spits ink on paper. I suspect the challenge is in the logistics of ink supply, and imagine something that allows people to refill cartridges themselves, or a retanking type method.
But there are certainly a huge amount of people who are fed up with the rigged things we have now, set to deconstruct according to some corporation’s idea of a product cycle and designed to avoid any sort of interaction with free market mechanics – like a ink cartridge standard.

Anyone know of one?

Excuse yet another diversion into the everyday… I can’t resist it when those things that you think are so self-evident of good, common sense – things like not inhaling carcinogens, not giving hedge fond owners blanko bailout checks or not designing public spaces so that people get run over by cars – also make good economic sense. Duh.

Heres a case study of the effect of (real*) bike lanes in various locations on public safety and local retail business. Thanks to boingboing.

*real as opposed to those bad excuses for lanes that are too narrow or magically appear only to get you out of a car owner’s way.

Vice has a wonderful open interview with Runescape gold miner Josh Miroslav.

I went from being someone who had never really wanted money … to someone who had been fully corrupted by this idea of hoarding gold and selling it. / People think gold farming is an awesome job – getting paid to play games – but in reality it’s nothing like that. You’re either stealing money off legitimate players or running massive bot farms, which completely ruin the game. At the end of the day, it’s just a free-for-all on who can make more money through illegitimate means.

Sounds like a trend.

Geoff Lester  shares his experiments in implementing edge-weighted subdivs in unity, as well as getting them there from modo via collada.