March 19, 2013, GPU Technology Conference, San Jose, CA– Gerhard Lang from Vizrt described how GPUs are enabling real-time compositing of 3-D graphics. This is an outlook on how GPUs can play an even more important role as content delivery shifts from traditional distribution to IP-based delivery. Data-driven graphics make images understandable and why the [...]
February 4, 2013, Electronic Imaging Conference, Burlingame, CA—Aude Oliva from MIT described her work in identifying characteristics of memorable pictures. This work is becoming more important as the number of photos spreads across the Internet. The number of images continues to grow, and the social media are accelerating the trend. Some estimates are that 90 [...]
February 4, 2013, Electronic Imaging Conference, Burlingame, CA—Alexander Oberdorster from the Fraunhofer Institute of Optics stated the need for adaptive optics in a plenoptic camera. This concept seems counter-intuitive, since these types of cameras are supposed to allow changing focus and depth of field in post processing. The reason for the adaptation is the nature [...]
August 8. 2012, Siggraph, Los Angles—We talked with Larry Paul from Christie about high frame rate projectors for cinema. The changes in projection will be as significant as those from film to digital, and will focus on perceived image resolution. This transition is being driven by the oncoming changes in cinema from 2k to 4k [...]
August 6, 2012, Siggraph, Los Angeles—The production team from Pixomondo described their efforts for Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo”. The size and scale of the production dwarfed previous efforts and the production in 3-D exacerbated the problems. The sets for this movie were very large, some were 4 times larger than the largest studios. As a result, [...]
May 15, 2012, GPU Technology Conference, San Jose, CA—Christopher Horvath, Global Technology Technical Director from Pixar, described the techniques needed to make realistic fire images. Even thought the hardware and software tools have improved dramatically over time, the images still look too “computerish”. Fire images need a lot of artistic interpretation and manipulation to achieve [...]
January 24, 2012, SPIE Electronic Imaging Conference, Burlingame, CA—Pete Bradshaw and Debargha Mukherjee from Google describe their efforts in promoting 3-D videos. The first issue facing adoption of 3-D is that there is very little content available. Some of the first 3-D videos took a lot of work just to get the two cameras set [...]
January 24, 2012, SPIE, Electronic Imaging Conference, Burlingame, CA—William Freeman from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology talked about computational photography. Today’s digital cameras have only replaced the imaging system, using a semiconductor imager versus film. Most of the camera functions are still analog. In computational photography the user can modify any or all of the [...]
November 3, 2011, International Gaming Innovation Conference, Orange, CA–Wolfgang Engel from Confetti Special Effects described the techniques for managing cinematic- quality images on mobile platforms. The biggest challenges for mobile platforms are the gamma corrections and high dynamic range rendering for high definition images. These capabilities are already available in consoles and PCs with advanced [...]
September 22, 2011, 3-D User Experience Technical Summit, Hollywood–Ihor Petelycky from SpecialView described eye tracking technologies to improve single-user 3-D autostereoscopic displays. He reviewed the operation and characteristics of these display types and looked at two implementations. Displays and software for 3-D viewing are improving at a high rate. To meet the new requirements, manufacturers [...]
