In the aftermath of Matt Wedel‘s collision with the Discovery Channel’s dubious documentary editing, many ideas were exchanged about how to gain more control over the way science is propagated to a wider audience. One of them suggested the institutions spread the word themselves. I think this is not only a great idea, but also doable. Cameras and the internet make it possible, and I even see potential to tap a portion of the fan base which has professional or prosumer experience in media production.

In this context, the following press releases deserve some extra attention. Edit: videos now below the fold…

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Great companies need to balance art with economics. Tension isn’t necessarily a bad thing if it leads to a great product in the middle.

The need to control and know everything as a manager can stifle innovation. Having great people you trust is a far more scalable method.

Playing it safe doesn’t lead to long-term, consistent success; staying in the middle — the “unstable” place where new ideas are formed and art, economics, time, and technology are all being balanced — does.

Catmull paraphrased by mashable. Thanks to Heribert!

Physical exercise is not only crucial for someone who spends the majority of his life on a chair in front of a monitor, its also a good way to get in touch with your mind. As opposed to one-on-one competitive sports, thoughts are free to wander. I find that every time I go for a run, my thoughts drift about subjects of production management. And since the recent job posts here have apparently triggered an inordinate amount of interest, I thought I’d deal with issues of project management more specifically.

And to view all the posts as they come together, just click on the category.

Filters usually adjusts a pixel based on the values of neighboring pixels with the goal of controlling the image’s representative quality in some creative manner. But what happens when you through representation to the wind? Inspired by losslessprocessing, author of the animated Hiroshi Sugimoto image rewrite above, Mikael Hvidtfeldt Christensen got some groovy stuff. The rules are simple:

1. Pick two pixels from a random column. Swap them if the upper pixel has a higher hue than the lower pixel.
2. Pick two pixels from a random row. Swap them if the left pixel has a higher saturation (or brightness) than the right pixel.
3. Repeat the above steps until the image converges.

The results are fantastic. Here are a few, left the original, right the result.

Again and again, the motion communities such as processing.org show where the possibilities of non-photorealistic representation and animation are being explored – amongst VJs, motion designers and artists. I can’t wait to see what 3D artists such as Peter Blaskovic come up with once these possibilities are combined with 3D technologies. Check out his website of processing experiments for a taste of things to come. I’ve highlighted 3 pieces here. Above, fields – make sure to activate the field controls and change their ranges, move them about, etc. Also, leave it to render out a while to get dark, deep colors.

Biolab also seems simple, but the movements and affiliations of the individual points can become quite complex and beautiful. After filling your petri dish with some colorful populations, play with the membrane, separation and magnetic field strengths. Explosive!

And finally, ember. As the artist says:
Every small entity has its friend, which he wants to meet but he doesn’t want to meet another entities. Every entity is sometimes changing its friends, so life looks like this…
I highlighted one such entity above. Ain’t he cute! It would be even cooler if you could mark one in order to track it, or have a slider to control its cooperation level / mood.

Be sure to check out the others, quite a few simulations and interesting interface ideas.

The better the portrait, the easier it is to forget all the complexity to the science behind it.

Ah… finally a Carl Zimmer quote on my blog. The authority of a well-crafted image is easily transferred to the science it represents, and photorealism heightens this effect by literally appearing real and therefore true. Dave Hone also describes this effect of  ‘proof by illustration‘.

Apparently, soldiers who grew up in either tough urban environments or rural areas with hunting experience both excel at sighting roadside bombs. Sgt. Maj. Burnett explains why these groups have an innate “threat-assessment” ability so much greater than suburban gamers, for example. “Video game enthusiasts are narrower in their focus, as if the windshield of their Humvee is a computer screen.”

In one way, this is non-news; it’s obvious that those who’ve had to rely on subtle visual cues in a real environment will have an advantage spotting such cues. In another way, its a reminder that the graphics we create and the context that we place them in does concretely affect the way we perceive our environment.

MyPenName pointed me to this from the comments section at GurneyJourney.
Related item of interest: Culture and Diverging Views of Social Events by Hannah Faye Chua.

I’m a freelance cg artist, as are many of my friends. Yet we have in part diametrically varying experiences about working the market. The reason is that many are hired-gun type freelancers. They hire on at a day-rate and work as long as requested. This is low-stress  in some very important ways. Decisions are relatively easy – is the job interesting, the company well-structured, the project high-profile? Its more stressful in other ways, as you have limited influence on larger processes and have to keep a keen eye on job market fluctuations.

I sometimes work in his way as well, generally in long-term assignments in varying roles of production management. But usually I work as a freelance subcontractor. The difference sounds simple… instead of quoting a day-rate, I quote a job. Simple, right? As you may suspect, no. Even a  job calculation for relatively simple tasks can easily take a week of work – and that’s hard to stomach if the job doesn’t come through. Should the job takes 2 months instead of one, I’ll per default be expected to foot that bill myself – so I have to 1) be able to show why it went over budget and 2) communicate this eventuality in advance. And this is the crux of making yourself desirable, no matter what mode of freelance you work under… participation and communication.

Participation means thinking along. This means being a generalist and stepping back from your own specific task on a project, keeping the larger goals and priorities in mind. In my experience, artists are initially completely engaged in this bigger picture but we have a finely tuned awareness for the receptiveness of our observations within the management. If management views its artists as operators, that’s a key signal for how much feedback is welcome. Communication means more than vocalizing issues to management, it means availing yourself to colleagues and management… signaling an understanding of concerns beyond your specific task will increase the chances of you observation being received in context. For example, understanding the importance of a production’s look for marketing might play an important role when suggesting that another 3D pass would smoothen process in compositing.

As a subcontractor, these things take on an existential meaning. If feedback loops aren’t  designed to take place within a specific time frame, animators will be sitting idle instead of working productively. This eventuality has to be clearly established in the beginning of a a cooperation. If communication is smooth – defined as sign-offs by a specific person within a specific time frame – costs are lower and the self-same client is happy. Likewise, you also need to have an understanding of the issues your partner is dealing with. I consider an ad agency a partner, not a client. They have a hard time themselves, trying to tailor a message in a specific visual for a client that may or may not know or appreciate what it is that they want, in a poorly paid pitch in which they compete with numerous competitors. So I often contribute to their pitches, demanding only for expenses to be covered and in the understanding that if they win the pitch, so do I. Its a win-win situation: they are able to present their ideas in a more sophisticated visual package  and I have a chance to create my own jobs. The icing is that certain cooperations – such as mine with Etwas Neues – we exchange ideas, and contribute mutually to each other’s work… so that technical innovations can be sculpted to fit a campaign and vice versa. This works for other realms, and I’m currently exploring what this means for publishing – as animation techniques flow out to enhance a realm that is rapidly becoming digital. I’m sure we’ll be seeing some very cool partnerships in the near future.

Also see:
Jobs; specialization vs generalization
Jobs; where to find ‘em

I think I speak for most users of 3D applications when I say that I look a most music app interfaces with green-faced envy. This one, the Sample Toy by Marek Bereza is yet another demonstration of beautiful interface. Here, the hardware becomes part of the interface – but this app shines not just because of the iPhone. Beautifully intuitive interaction decisions. Thanks to CreativeApplications for the coverage.

Net Logo seems to be a flexible network for visualizing mathematical simulations. It was originally authored by  Uri Wilensky and is being further developed by the Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling which Wilensky directs. The site collects numerous community models, one of which – called Fur - can be used to create typical animal patterns such as tiger stripes, leopard spots and giraffe splotches…  what a fantastic way to demonstrate the underlying workings of graphic structures!

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get to to run yet so this is all a bit of conjecture on my part. But judging from the many community models on the site, the problem is local (sic: me). Above are 3 representatives of a teeming community: Evolution (a fitness/mutation simulation) by Iain Weaver , a cooperative countries simulation by Julia Verhoeven and ForestFire3 (simulation of forest recovery after a fire) by Qasim Siddique.

Cristóbal Vila follows up his Escheresque Snakes and Falling Water visualizations with a new film called Nature by Numbers. It’s a fantastic piece visualizing the mathematics of patterns recurrent in nature. The music is very dramatic. On second watching I turned it off to concentrate on the graphics and the a third time. There are many very clever decisions in there, particularly during transitions in which Cristóbal manages to create an abstracted layer separate from the represented organisms. Great work, and a wonderful example of how dramatic such visualizations can be made.

Ed Yong reports on a study by Ibrahim Senay on the effect of grammatic formulation on motivation and performance. Briefly summarized, if you concentrate on the possibility of a task, you are more engaged in the doing of that task than if you concentrate on its certainty. And you’re more likely to repeat that task if its described via the imperfect (“I was doing”) rather than the perfect (“I did”).

Cool. But what’s this got to do with my blog? Well, I can’t help but suspect that this is relevant to the differences in perception between realistic and non-realistic imagery. What better way to envision the difference between the two than as the possibility of something versus its certainty?

I stumbled upon this dedicated medical simulation software while checking out the open source dynamics engine Bullet. This is cool for a number of reasons… first, its a great example of the current tendency for animation technologies to target specific markets and second, its a wonderful example of the degree to which visualization must take temporal concerns into account. The leap from illustration to animation demands that we tackle an object’s movement as well as its static visual representation – and the quality of these two elements need to be synched with each other. All too often, the visuals are pushed to an extreme and the movements lag behind, resulting in a disconnect within the viewer. Click the heart to visit physigenics.

Matt van Rooijen dissects his “pretty exciting gig“. Its great that an artist allows a detailed look at the processes that led to a reconstruction, in this case of Linheraptor exquisitus. Matt goes into the acquisition (via internet) and communication with Dave Hone. Thanks Matt!

At yesterday’s AR demo, a very important issue was discussed. I proposed that in 5 years or so, a visitor would pick up virtual reality goggles at the front counter much like the earphones many museums distribute today. Dr. Eder, director of the museum, took offense to this idea. Rightly so, assuming the use of virtual reality to be like the case presented… entombing the bones in a cg costume. I had something much more graphic in mind, a layered informational screen that shows up when a visitor passes by a breath-taking specimen and offers to highlight why the troodont wrist is so bird-like, to call up a constantly accessible timeline and world map or to outline that hardly discernible but oh-so defining skull feature. Complementary and secondary, therefore. Not barging to the forefront. Similar to this interactively annotated Ida fossil, but with the additional options of animated, interactive 3 dimensional content and audio. (3D skeletal reconstruction from the production house ZOO).

I’ve witnessed unfortunate behavior that 3D productions can develop when the winds of the market are at their backs and a traditional “old school” methods before them. I’ve also seen many new techniques unfairly dismissed because the are ‘cold’ or just because that’s not the way you do things. That was the entertainment industry, which isn’t flatly comparable to a museum. Still, its important that issues of representation are discussed and awareness raised.

One aspect is the content – as alluded to above. To what degree does digital work remain in the background, when does it take a step forward, when does it leap on stage…  I’ll leave that for a later post – but suffice to say, we’ll need to be creative and sensitive, both resisting and following the urge to be bold. (How’s that for solid advice?)
To see how cool that urge can turn out, check out this virtual operating room:

Who wouldn’t want to get their hands dirty on that!?

The other aspect is how this content can be presented and here I concentrate on the visualization of things… bones, organs, organisms and artifacts. How can a reconstruction truthfully convey information about what is scientifically accurate and what is conjecture? How can the elements of that reconstruction be prioritized so that it conveys the information we want to convey?

These questions lie at the heart of non-photorealistic rendering… abstraction of data, prioritized level-of-detail, etc. (Image sources a, b, c) Above, for example, we have a traditionally illustrated heart, a modeled & textured 3D geometry and a scanned heart rendered so that the surface color is determined by its curvature. Each method represents a heart, and each can be altered in a myriad of ways. Each has advantages and disadvantages, so the only way to approach an evaluation is to establish criteria. What do we wish this representation to achieve?

I’ve talked before about my distaste for 3D skeletons that visually purport to be real, when they in fact are inexact artistic constructions. This is a major gripe of mine – both with skeletal and life reconstructions. They often have fine surface details with no relevance to the actual fossils. They present a realism which not only creates a disconnect with the quality of animation, but which aims to convey exactly those uncertain bits as fact, while fascinating key features are saran-wrapped into a slick cg skin and therefore disguised.

I hear some of you saying “yeah, but the budget didn’t allow for that kind of quality”. That argument doesn’t cut it, in my opinion. Quality documentary filmers and exhibition designers must develop a feel for how to select and present content in ways that fit the given budget.

Today I was invited to view the beta setup  for a very interesting augmented reality presentation system by Canon at the Loewentor Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart. The presentation touched on so many aspects of computer visualization and presentation that it was in itself a true cross-over event. The technology – while innovative – won’t be new to anyone in the industry. What is good, is that Canon is approaching production readiness for an off-the shelf hardware solution. The setup wasn’t a tech demo – it was an audience screening of sorts. A mounted dinosaur skeleton was presented in front of a prehistoric landscape and loads of unsightly tracking markers (don’t worry about those – Canon has numerous tracking options in development). Before all of this are the visitors and two hand-held bulky goggles (don’t worry about the bulky, either). Over the weekend, the museum is overrun with visitors and these were the star of the presentation, because the whole setup served to research the reception of technology and content among the audiences.

Visitors of all ages had the chance to encounter a dinosaur in 3D, moving around it while an informational ‘film’ was run. As a finale, it then came to life, jumped off its podium and greeted its viewers. Prof. Dr. Stephan Schwan (Knowledge Media Research Center) directed the studies, with the intent of finding out about how this kind of presentation affects short-term and long-term reception. Psychology, education, exhibit design, perception studies, AR technology and paleontology, all in one bunch! Its not often that disciplines rub elbows this way, and I was thrilled by the authenticity of the occasion.

Masahide Hamatani (Canon) laid out Canon’s future in augmented reality with exemplary projects not only in exhibit design, but product testing, archeology and architecture. Its likely all us computer artists will be getting up from our desks in the near future and working with airCAD. For my back – it can’t happen soon enough! A highlight was Dr. Makoto Manabe of the National Science Museum in Tokyo as he talked about exhibit design, including such inspired inventions as the “pig roast” theropod mount which allows the viewer to explore the skeleton from all angles, and the comparative a man/bird mount. Fantastic!  Thanks as well to Tomotsugu Kondo (Open University of Japan). And extra thanks to Richard Leheis for tipping me off to this event in the first place!

Click the teal and orange palette above to read Todd Miro‘s astute observation that – yes – evil has us firmly in its color correcting grip.

Edit:
And then check out yet another chunk of Gurney wisdom… very related and using an interesting bit of software to visualize color ranges.

Edit2: Thanks to Alex for the heads up!

Some fantastically modern artwork from 1959. Use the contents drop-down menu to go the the “Where Evolution Stands Today” article. Check out the ads along the way. I adore the way that evolution is embraced by this popular magazine and – yeah, feel nostalgic.

A large part of presenting yourself to the industry as a potential employee or resource is defining yourself. What am I, what do I have to offer and how might I fit in to various types of teams. That’s basically what you’re doing when you apply for a job. (Its also a good way to explain that no one should take a job rejection personally – a top talent doesn’t do an employer any good if that talent’s abilities don’t compliment those of the existing team. Nor will a less experienced applicant get a chance if the basis skillset and interests don’t match – or if the time isn’t right.)

One of the most decisive ways of defining yourself is in terms of being a generalist or a specialist. This will seem obvious in the context of direct skillset… an animator that can’t find a slider if the rig’s interface hasn’t been prepared ‘properly’ is a specialist, a technical director that not only rigs, programs and shades but also animates is a generalist. Both have advantages and disadvantages and fortune or misfortune when looking for a job.

But there’s another way of viewing this distinction that has no direct correlation to skillset. Content. Take a hard-body nurbs auto carriage modeller – there’s a classic specialist based on techniques and task. But then there’s the specialist that models, textures, rigs and animates sauropods. And only sauropods. Or intestinal lining. Or criminal reconstructions. Animation technologies are currently overflowing into countless other industries – its truly a golden age. The more generalist your scope in skillset, the more likely you’ll be able to fill one of these niches. You’ll also make yourself attractive to cooperations with that theropod animator over there, or that heart visualization expert – just in case a client calls and wants something beyond the range of your offering.

And there’s a third specialist/generalist distinction; you can be a specialist or generalist within the production workflow. A specialist will shrug his or her shoulders when confronted with the “bigger picture”. A generalist will tend to be aware of how his or her work integrates not only with those directly before and after him or her in the pipeline, but with the film as a whole. A generalist is usually a better communicator because of this, though not necessarily so. A pipeline generalist will be more capable of assessing priorities and consequences and therefore tends to make the better supervisor. They also make the better subcontractor. In contrast to the day-rate freelancer, the subcontract freelancer assumes part of the risk that a job contract proposes by putting a fixed price on it, and therefore appeals to a much wider range of employer. Sounds good, and it is – but this breed of employer is the most difficult of all – the partner.

Next: jobs as partnerships
Also see:
Jobs; where to find ‘em

Ricardo Cabello is Mr. doob, and his work is – contrary to my headline – very harmonic. But since his harmony application is getting so much attention, I thought it fitting to call some well-deserved attention to his other experiments. Click the images to play (more below the fold). I love the bold graphic approach he takes, there’s no excuse for sprites that don’t  like perfect water drops – nor interest in having them do so. Perfect NPR therefore. Offers great background feel for his popular harmony tool.

Oh, and my harmonic drawing is at the bottom.
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