CG&Cia

Solar System Scope

2015-05-28T08:46:00.000-03:00

The Solar System Scope is a free solar system 3D simulation that allows you to check the planetary arrangement around the sun in different dates on the past, present or future in real or lapsed time.

The software also let you see the stars and constellations in theoretical or realistic visualisations aside of the earth perspective of the skies.

The systems shows even comets orbiting around the sun and changing their tails direction.

The simulations is also available for mobile.

Murderers of Marvel

2015-05-28T08:26:00.002-03:00

If the de definition of a foe is to be mean and that bad persons kill other persons... Marvel has no heroes!

Than some can argue, yes but the difference is that heroes does not kill good people, only villains... Naa thats not true either, have a look for yourself, some of your favorite hero may be psycho killer my friend:

Carton box fully functional RC plane

2015-05-25T10:25:00.000-03:00

This kind of endeavour inspire us all, a guy put his avionics to work by building a 3 channel functional airplane made out of carton box and duct tape.

This not only proves that you can fly with waste but that you can fly cheap. Of course the guy knows what he is doing and the radio control wasn't one of the cheap ones, no.

But the video worth it for the guy's laugh... wonderful

Daredevil should be named Batman - 8 bit

2015-05-25T10:12:00.002-03:00

This 8 bit shorty brings up a valid point. One of there endless nerd cafeteria discussions about superheroes... but it make sense, one think that DC's and Marvel's writes didn't invest much creativity was to name their characters...

Washington University and Google partner up to create world famous landscape time lapse

2015-05-20T09:18:00.001-03:00

By uniting about 86 million pictures from allover the world this academic experimento was able to generate stable time-lapse videos of famous sights in the world.

The techniques used were able to align images from different angles and light conditions into a stable and relatively uniform video that shows famous landscapes varying immensely over time.

Lean approach - MVP

2015-05-15T09:10:00.000-03:00

After years studying and practicing Design Thinking as a methodology to create new products the "kick starter" startup movement drives me to new innovation methods.

The MVP or minimal viable product summaries design thinking processes already bringing real customer into the product ideation product. But instead of bringing people into the the lab you go out there in the field with your ideas.

This is a very agile approach that also has its dangers of frauds or fakes that are just market research, however if practiced with ethics could lead to minimal risks and effective proofs of concept data.

Have a look:

Microsoft Hyperlapse is now for free...trial of course

2015-05-14T17:05:00.001-03:00

I've talked about Microsoft research project Hyperlapse before but now it became a product for mobile and PC and you can download its Pro version for Windows, of course.

Microsoft will be able to reinvent themselves through the research lab, very cool guys:

Columbia university developed a precise hydrographic printing

2015-05-14T08:38:00.001-03:00

Hydrographic printing techniques are extensively used in mass production industry to paint complex curved surfaces with print patterns.

An example of the techniques application is to apply camouflage into a helmet or geometric patterns into a car's body part for decoration.

What Columbia university did was to develop a software simulation of the hydrographic printing film deformation over the water into a 3D model. An this simulation is used to calculate the UVW (X,Y,Z) mapping of any painting into that specific 3D model.

The result, they can print out the hydrographic film (2D) to stretch and precisely fit the colours into a real 3D printed object.

See the results yourself:

When observing the atmosphere up to 100km hight you can see gravity

2015-05-13T13:59:00.002-03:00

The United States National Center Atmospheric Research has generated a CG model of the atmosphere pressure variations, that according to their observation must be a result of the planet's gravitational field.

This means that what you see when observing the planet from more than 100 km high under the atmosphere pressure values you would see macro disturbance patterns that are not related with the globe air currents that has a complete different pattern way bellow that hight.

Their believe is that what you see in this simulation is the Earth gravitational fields influence over the atmosphere, so what you see here is gravity effects waving in ripples across the globes atmosphere.

Lily is a smily face autonomous drone camera

2015-05-13T08:41:00.001-03:00

We have shown the startup AirDog camera but Lily has taken it to another level.

First because of its sympathetic looks and smily eyes (led lamps), second because of portability and robust design, and the experience... you launch it in the air and boom, it follows you.

Last but not least, this thing is not only waterproof but it can take off from the water.

It seems that among its features you have few different shooting modes, or angles in which the camera will aim at you, you can also trigger still photos.

It is still a pre-order product - (U$ 499), but see some of its specs

Battery

Built-in Lithium-Ion Battery
20 min of flight time
Charging via 5A charger
2-hour charge time

Camera

Video Resolution: 1080p 60 fps / 720p 120 fps
Video FOV: 94º
Video Format: H.264 codec, .mp4 file format
Photo Resolution: 12 MP
Digital gimballing
Image stabilization
Fixed focus

Sensors

Accelerometer
Three-axis Gyro
Magnetometer
Barometer
GPS
Front-facing camera
Bottom-facing camera

Flight

It looks promising, the only thing missing is who is behind it, do we have any assurance, besides its professional presentations that this is a real product and a serious company?

Well i wish the lily guys good luck and hope to have one some day.

2015-04-27T15:32:00.000-03:00

Batz are a remarkable example of how much work is put into the 3D short movies that we love so much.

A crew of almost hundred people, talented artists, writers, producers are needed to produce 7minutes of animation, and what an animation!

Slow mo match Stick Rockets

2015-04-09T09:32:00.002-03:00

These guys have really good slow motion cameras, there was this video in which they blow up a CD by spinning it really fast with a vacum cleaner engine.

But this one reminded me of my childhood with Match sticks rockets. Mine weren't that pretty and realistic and even more when you see it in slow mo, it gets pretty cool:

Animator David Gruwier combines Cinema 4D and After Effects to produce this amazing short

2015-04-07T14:42:00.001-03:00

The animator David Gruwier student at 3D College in Denmark displays his skills in this very didactic making of oh his impressive CG shorty called Round Trip:

Making of "Round Trip" (CGI breakdown) from DGruwier on Vimeo.

And here the Shorty itself:

Round Trip from DGruwier on Vimeo.

Pixar release a FREE version of RenderMan for non commercial use

2015-04-02T10:51:00.000-03:00

RenderMan for you that doesn't know is the Pixar's 3D rendering software in which your favorite Pixar's movies and shorties were rendered.

The famous Pixar shorties that have originated their movies were indeed a showcase for their computer graphics software.

And now its FREE for you and I to tryout for non commercial use... If you have Maya 2015 or Katana 3D tool.

Anyhow their achievements are impressive on global illumination and optimization.

Video dollies doesn't have to be big and expencive

2015-03-25T14:01:00.000-03:00

Video Dollies are those carts that Hollywood mount their cameras on and you get those dramatic steady moving shots of a certain subject.

Of course cinema students and indie movie sets use creativity to build their own tracks and carts or build big slider tracks for their cameras.

But if you are at home, have one of those semi-pro photo cameras with decent lenses that can record hi definition shots of your family but still wants the dramatic shots what could you do?

Pico dolly seems to be an decent versatile option for you, for about 100 bucks:

Building with quadcopters

2015-03-25T08:26:00.000-03:00

An Architect Research company in Swiss is studying possible ways of using robots, in this case drones to be the "robotic arms" in building construction.

This initiative is part of the Dezeen and MINI frontiers initiative in which the Gramazio Kohler Research demonstrates some of their concepts in action.

The first video it's about tensile structure which is not so impressive although it involve drones collaboration in a harmonic dance to create nots and twists into the rope structural element. But in the second video the copters pile up brick into a very organic tower structure:

Those Guys takes FPV flights to another level

2015-03-24T16:06:00.000-03:00

Why do you need race futuristic games if in plain reality you can have a race fpv drone?

And this guys take it to another level, of ability and maybe ostentation, because they must have broken a few drones to put all those stunts together.

And It gets even more fun when you see what the FPV guy is seeing, fuzzy noisy images:

Autonomous drone gyroscope replacement inspired on a fly vision.

2015-03-17T15:15:00.000-03:00

The Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, IOP institute has published an academic article about their spatial orientation for autonomous drones inspired on flying insects.

The basic idea is: "Flying over uneven moving terrain based on optic-flow cues without any need for reference frames or accelerometers"

With this fly like face the drone is able to "see" the moving landscape and learn how to react towards moving obstacles with no need of accelerometer or patterns recognitions.

See it for yourself:

Future cities catapult

2015-03-17T15:00:00.003-03:00

As software developers we tent to believe that the world problems solutions could be solved with an app. Architects things that architecture could solve the urban problems...

Maybe neither are correct but, collaboration... collaboration mai be the key of some real success.

The Future Cities Catapult is a project situated in England that gathers an creative ideas database to propose tech solutions to improve the relation between man and the old designed current metropolis.

This specific video is a proposal to help blind people inclusion and access at the metropolitan life and public services addressing autonomy:

Cities Unlocked from Future Cities Catapult on Vimeo.

Killing in video games as a "Greek Tragedy" on the games industry industry evolution

2015-03-13T13:57:00.000-03:00

Interesting discussion about violence in videogames compares the gross massacres of FPS games with the tragedies of the early ages of dramaturgy and points out a bright future of virtual simulations that not necessarily death or alive, 0 or 1:

Brazilian holographic display company demonstrates their product with no other than Goku

2015-03-12T15:24:00.000-03:00

I've seen some toy stores exhibiting holograms dioramas to bring to life toys such as lego Star Wars.

Cool ha?! Bu these guys from Brazil really move a step forward on their holographic display illusion. And no one better to make it a serious business than Goku!

Now we are talking holographic, check these flames out!!

Wow, this dude has mapped his router wi-fi signal in a 3D color scaled solid!

2015-03-12T14:48:00.000-03:00

This guy has taken a piece of hardware to measure his Wi-fi signal by moving around his homemade gadget, and a RGB led light would inform the signal strength over space being red a bad signal and blue a good one.

Ok, geek, but after playing around a little with his brand new frankens-toy he have notice a noisy pattern that seems random at first but was consistent.

To make long story short, the guy took it to another level mounting his device into a CNC, taking long exposure photos of each of the "z" layers of a square area and compose those heat map layers into a webGL rendering system.

The result, a 3D solid of how your regular Wi-fi signal looks like. And guess what, you were not crazy by thinking that just moving your mobile a little affects your download dramatically.

Thanks dude to prove that I'm not crazy... but you are!

Simple tools that convey the message - BusyBody Quick Pose Animator

2015-03-11T15:43:00.001-03:00

Wireframes and storyboards are widely used to fast prototype and starting a discussion about new ideas. However how to fast prototype character animation ideas?

Of course you can use the good old note book flipping page trick, but ir requires som drawing skills to do so, besides ater a while, the pages on your note book get permanently bended and...

What if you could have a solution as strait forward as a pose doll to be manipulated with your bear hands? No its not a new app for a tablet or smartphone, we are talking high definition analog solution:

This one worth to announce: Unreal 4 - 4 free

2015-03-03T16:22:00.001-03:00

Tim Sweeney, Epic Games CEO has announced, Unreal Engine 4 is now for free!

With the indie games so popular, having space to launch themselves in professional platforms like steam, big game engines are turning their attention to this niche and reinventing themselves and their business model.

Unity 3D was my engine of choice because its free and really ready to fly for dummy developers like me, a designer that knows a few tricks in programming. You could run your games in so many platforms with no native coding (for simple things of course) that it was a perfect tool.

Open source solutions are cool but you gotta have some skills to have it running properly and to really export your game to see it running it is usually a painful process.

Well Unreal is obviously a professional tool that occupy most of our favorite games splash screens out there on the market. But as many other professional tools, it was expensive.

If you imagine that a game engine should correspond to more than 80% of an indie game code, it is more than fare that you pay those hard workers a good slice of your cake. But to learn how to work with the thing you had to pay.

Epic games had taken a ride on monthly fees to get the things going more affordable for amateurs, but still, I manage to work on my hobby game once a moth, when I do it!

But now, what is fair is fair. The thing is for free so you can try out, you learn how the thing works and if you are successful with your own title you share the cake.

Or you get yourself a job and ask your company to buy a licence of your engine of a choice, the one in which you know how to do things.

Guess what Epic, you've just became my tool of choice, and I guess a lot of people are following.

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Unreal Engine 4 Architectural tour

2015-01-30T09:37:00.001-02:00

Unreal Engine that was the most powerful and yet one of the most complicated an unaccessible game engines is renovating their business model creating more accessible revenue models to achieve also indie users.

The result? Professionals like architects that were not able to try out such a tool are stating to develop virtual walkthroughs with it, obtaining amazing pretty results.

There are still orthographic alignments in the scene composition that denounces the virtual reality but still look how the artist solve the speciality in a much more realistic way than what we see at the supersize videogame intern rooms representation.