In July of 2012 xRez Studio was contracted to shoot a unique “close up” gigapixel image of the Babbage Difference Engine  at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.

The “Difference Engine No. 2″ was never realized or constructed in the lifetime of famed mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage. However it was funded over 150 years later by former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold. The device required 10 years to build the 8,000 hand-finished machined pieces. It was built, in part to answer the question of whether Babbage’s machine would have been successful had it been built when it was designed between 1847 and 1849. The success in building this device allows us to speculate on whether the combination of his designs for the “Analytic Engine” (a general purpose mechanical computer) would have followed and Ada Lovelaces work in early programing  would have ushered in the computer age 100 years earlier than it occurred. This intriguing idea was explored in a fictional alternate history novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling called “The Difference Engine” that helped define the Steampunk genre. Two copies of the machines exist today; the first is displayed under glass in London, and another at the Computer History Museum, which has daily operational demonstrations for the public.

For many years xRez Studio has specialized in gigapixel technologies, but more typically photographing distant scenes such as landscapes, cities, crowds or in some cases gigapixel textures (1,2,3,4). This shoot introduced a new challenge of shooting a human scaled object from the incredibly close proximity of 7 feet. The combination of a very telephoto lens and shooting at this proximity reduces the depth of field (area in focus) down to the centimeter scale. The challenging shoot required a complex custom solution that orchestrated gigapixel motion control using a Rodeon VR head, computer controlled focus and focus stacking software. Dr. Clauss GmbH provided software for low level control of the Rodeon robotic pan head. It required 2 days to test for and shoot four cardinal views of the complex and beautiful object, each containing up to 1,350 images and as many as 28 images in each focus stack. High speed HD video was also shot by the Computer History Museum to demonstrate some of the many motions of the machine that are too fast for the human eye to see when it is in operation. The work will be combined with interpretation and used as interactive viewing in the exhibit at the museum, as well as upcoming multimedia presentations in conjunction with Microsoft Research using Rich Interactive Narratives.

Gigapixel, Focus-Stacked Images:

Babbage Engine in Operation:

Click here to view the embedded video.

©xRez Studio, 2012. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Babbage Engine, Computer History Museum, Focus Stacking, Gigapixel, Microsoft Research, Rich Interactive Narratives

xRez Studio’s Eric Hanson has completed an experimental film collaboration with SETI artist-in-residence artist Charles Lindsay, entitled CARBON-X. Designed for the planetarium fulldome format, it was a component of an arts grant program entitled Getting Off The Planet, through Ecoartspace curator Patricia Watts. It premiered at the ISEA 2012 Conference, Machine Wilderness at the Intitute for American Indian Art’s Digital Dome in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Building off of Lindsay’s detailed and otherworldly CARBON series of manipulated carbon dust imbued emulsions, the work uses CGI photogrammetry, particle dynamics, projections, and displacements to create a dimensional view into possible proto-worlds and intellegences, one of the defining characteristics of Lindsay’s CARBON series.

Click here to view the embedded video.

©xRez Studio, 2012. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Charles Lindsay, Ecoartspace, Fulldome, ISEA, xRez Studio

xRez partner Eric Hanson recently provided several key CGI sequences for Griffith Planetarium‘s new fulldome visitor film, “Time’s Up“. The film explores the nature of time in the universe, from human to cosmic scales. To provide a sense of humanity’s understanding of time and to dispel certain end of the world prophecies, the first sequence created shows a night time descent into the Mayan city of Tikal at it’s cultural peak, landing adjacent to a carving on Stela 3, a stone monument that shows a typical Maya long count calendar. From there, the viewer is shown the advance of time into the present, causing the city to fall into ruin into it’s present day state. A time reversal of a lightning strike onto a Ceiba tree shows the logic of forward-facing nature of time, and ends with dawn rising over the ruins. The animation shown here is devoid of the live narration element that Griffith typically employs, so appears at a slower pace.

Other sequences produced for the show envision a fanciful imagination of Los Angeles in the year 2512 as an ecotopian reversal of urban sprawl, suggesting cosmic time will do as it will, but humanity is free to determine our immediate fate.

Griffith curator Laura Danly directed the film, and it has received praise from the Los Angeles Times. Griffith art director Don Dixon provided key guidance in the look of the work and xRez contractors Matt Wachter and Kai Solberg provided ace 3d modeling for the job.

Interactive Player:

©xRez Studio, 2012. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Fulldome, Griffith Planetarium, Tikal, Visual Effects

xRez Studio has completed CGI and time-lapse work for Supervolcanoes, a fulldome film for digital planetarium distribution and directed by Thomas Lucas of Dynamic Earth and Black Holes fame. Helping describe the occurrence of past geologic massive volcanoes, the work encompasses visualization of the remnants of the Yellowstone Caldera, a past volcanic event that sent ash as far as Los Angeles. To show what lies beneath Yellowstone, a gigapixel panorama was shot of the Grand Prismatic pool, imported and then carefully reconstructed in Maya, allowing a grand pullback and subsequent cut into the earth, revealing one small channel of the massive magma chamber that sits below Idaho and Wyoming. In addition, fisheye time-lapse sequences were captured of several iconic Yellowstone geysers and locations. Lastly, at the lip of the waterfall of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, a unique stitched video embeded panorama was created, in order to achieve high resolution live-action capture at a resolution of 33 megapixels at 30fps, an ongoing challenge for portraying live-action in the dome. A chartered aerial overflight of the pool was also made to provide additional photo reference and texturing for the pullback shot. Co-produced by Spitz Inc, Mirage3Dand Thomas Lucas Productions, in association with the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, with the support of the PA Film Council, the film will be distributed in the fall of 2012 to a wide range of planetariums.

Update: Review in InPark magazine.

Aerial Images:

VFX Breakdown:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Interactive Stitched Video Embedded into Pano (downsampled for web):

Visual Description of Spherical Video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Night Spherical Pano:

©xRez Studio, 2012. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Fulldome, Grand Prismatic, Science Films, Visual Effects, Yellowstone

xRez partner Eric Hanson was contracted by Glacierworks‘ David Breashears to document the rich cultural and on-trail experience of the Everest Base Camp (EBC) trek in the timeless and spectacular Khumbu region of Nepal during the 2012 climbing season. Joined by ace photographer and DSLR DP Eric Poppleton, the twin Erics shot for 14 days enroute to EBC, shooting spherical and gigapixel panoramas, time-lapse, photogrammetry, and HD video, ranging at an elevation of 9,000′ to 18,500′ over 40 miles and 16,000′ feet of overall gain. The team then met Breashears at Everest base camp for an 8 day photo survey of the 800-strong population of international climbing team encampments. The work will be used in Glacierworks’ current MIT gallery exhibit Rivers of Ice: Vanishing Glaciers of the Greater Himalaya, as well as upcoming multimedia experiences and an xRez HD short.

The team’s trek, schedule, and thematic content was designed by GlacierWorks and was supported by first-rate trekking and mountaineering agency Peak Promotion of Kathmandu, with key sherpas Ang Phula Sherpa, Ngima Sherpa, Kaji Sherpa, and Ngawang Furi Sherpa carrying over 400 pounds of photo gear. Chhoti Sherpa and Wongchu Sherpa provided expert off-trail support in explorations of Kathmandu.

A short film is in post-production, containing rare footage shot in private Buddhist ceremonies, to be released in late Fall of 2012.

Eric Poppleton has a wonderful gallery of stills from the expedition here.

Key pieces of panoramic gear were generously provided by the excellent Nodal Ninja, big thanks go to Bill Bailey.

Everest and Ama Dablam Infrared from Everest View Hotel:

Entrance Portal at Tengboche Monastery:

Tengboche Monastery Interior:

Khumbu Glacier w/ Everest Base Camp in Distance:

Everest Base Camp:

Khumbu Glacier Icefall:

Mt Everest Massif from Kala Pattar, by Eric Poppelton:

©xRez Studio, 2012. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Everest Base Camp, Gigapixel, GlacierWorks, Mt Everest

We are honored to participate in the Annenberg Space for Photography Digital Darkroom exhibition, running from Dec 17 to May 28 2012. We will be lecturing on the evening of Jan 12 in the IRIS Nights lecture series, giving a talk entitled “Post Digital: Expanding the Boundaries of Photography”. We will show examples that illustrates the expansion and erosion of boundaries that digital technology affords the contemporary photographer.

Be sure to get the free tickets as these events have been selling out, online registration for this event begins Wednesday, January 4 at 12pm PT. Please join us!!

Update: If you missed the event you can watch the video now on the Annenberg Space for Photography Iris Nights website!

©xRez Studio, 2011. | Permalink | |
Post tags:

xRez Studio is partnering with GlacierWorks, a non-profit organization that uses art, science, and adventure to raise public awareness about the consequences of climate change in the Greater Himalaya. By comparing modern high-resolution gigapixel imagery with archival photographs taken over the past century, GlacierWorks seek to highlight glacial loss and the potential for a greatly diminished water supply throughout Asia.

Founded in 2007 by mountaineer, photographer, and filmmaker David Breashears, the GlacierWorks team has made eight expeditions to the Greater Himalaya. Retracing the steps of pioneering alpine photographers and explorers George Mallory and Vittorio Sella, among others, the team has captured new images that precisely match the earliest photographic records. The GlacierWorks team is currently in Tibet, gathering information and documentation about the people who will be most affected by climate change.

xRez Studio has been advising GlacierWorks in imaging technology and computational photography techniques as well as performing the post-production used to maximize the information gathered on these expeditions. By using the latest techniques in gigapixel photography, computer animation, and photogrammetry, we hope to help create some of the most detailed documentation of this region ever created. A massive photogrammetry effort is currently underway to recreate precise and highly detailed 3d terrain models from high-altitude helicopter flights taken by GlacierWorks, using a custom multi-camera panoramic rig specified by xRez Studio. The rig has a design requirement of being very light weight due to the thin air found at high altitude. GlacierWorks has already captured over 100,000 aerial photos with this rig and xRez Studio is currently processing these into a highly detailed gigapixel textured 3d map of the region. Additional interactive media is being developed for narrative digital journeys of the area, from insights into local culture to illustrating ongoing scientific glacial research.

Please visit GlacierWorks.org for further information.

Link to BBC David Breashears Interview

Link to Asia Society/ Frontline On Thinner Ice Video

Khumbu Icefall/ Pumori Camp Gigapixel:

Khumbu Glacier Above Kala Pattar Gigapixel:

Concordia Glacier w/ K2 Gigapixel:

Virtual Flight Into Khumbu Icefall:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Misc Images:

©xRez Studio, 2011. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Aerial, Concordia Glacier, David Breashears, Everest, George Mallory, Gigapixel, Gigatexel, GlacierWorks, K2, Kala Pattar, Khumbu Icefall, Photogrammetry, Pumori Camp Gigapixel, Vittorio Sella

xRez Studio’s Eric Hanson and the Yosemite Extreme Imaging Project were featured in August 2011 edition of Popular Science in an article entitled, “The 25 Coolest College Labs in the Country“:

“I worked for all the big effects studios for years, and I hit a point where I was destroying New York for the fifth or sixth time,” says Eric Hanson, a visual-effects instructor at the University of Southern California. “I said, ‘There’s got to be a more constructive use of these tools.’ ”

USC’s Visualizing Science Initiative illuminates scientific concepts through visual effects. The goal is threefold: Students on their way to jobs in Hollywood or the gaming industry will be more likely to inject science into entertainment, scientists will develop better ways to communicate their work to laymen, and digital tools will improve real research.

In 2008, several students, led by Hanson, helped take 10,000 overlapping photos of the Yosemite Valley in California to create a panorama and then projected the photos into a digital terrain model. National Parks Service geologist Greg Stock compares the detailed model with subsequent photos to determine how the valley is changing.

Hanson and his students have also collaborated on a topographically accurate digital model of Catalina Island and the surrounding seafloor. Professor Kathy Smith takes advanced animation students out to Catalina to model biological research being done there. While there, the students might illustrate climate change in 3-D or model how underwater tubeworms convert toxic chemicals from thermal vents into sugars.

LINK

©xRez Studio, 2011. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Popular Science, Science Visualization

We were recently approached by Bay Area design firm Elixir for usage of a series of sections of our Yosemite Extreme Imaging project, toward a new web design for noted outdoor clothing manufacturer Prana. We happily obliged, and enjoyed seeing what was created. Elixir scoured our gigapixel images and assembled a Prana logo from found shadows on El Cap and other walls in the valley. A nice synchronicity with nature.

©xRez Studio, 2011. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Gigapixel Advertising, Prana

With time to burn while camping on recent panoramic photo workshops held on Anacapa Island and Red Rock Canyon led by xRez’s Greg Downing for the Gnomon School of Visual Effects, we enjoyed some decent results using new led light clusters and purple and green lasers. Nothing revolutionary, but it seemed to be a good combination of sources, after years of mixed results in light painting experimentation.

©xRez Studio, 2011. | Permalink | |
Post tags: light painting

xRez recently returned from leading a photo workshop in Santa Fe and Albuquerque for the IAIA, the Institute of American Indian Arts, and the UNM Arts Lab, teaching our techniques for integrating panoramic images into fulldome projection. The IAIA has recently constructed an amazing operable dome for their students, and the UNM Arts Lab has a long history of leading fulldome culture and research. A day at Pecos National Historic Park allowed on-site capture of pueblo ruins and kivas, then two days of classroom instruction in PTGui, Maya, and photogrammetry techniques at UNM rounded the session. Afterward, a visit was made to several locations in New Mexico, including Valley of Fires, Bosque del Apache, Three Rivers Petroglyphs, Sunspot Solar Observatory, and White Sands NM. Thanks go out to David Beining, Ethan Bach, Carlos Peinado, Bill Hanson, Richard Jost, Cody Harrington, and Greg & Angie Schaaf for the warm hospitality.

IAIA Dome:

Pecos NHP Kiva:

Sunspot Observatory Exterior (infrared):

Sunspot Observatory Interior:

Sacramento Mountain Hideout:

Sacramento Mountain Hideout (infrared):

Standard Issue New Mexico Sunset:

Time-lapse Work:

Click here to view the embedded video.

©xRez Studio, 2011. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Cultural Heritage, Fulldome, Institute of American Indian Arts, Kivas, Pecos National Historic Park, Pueblo ruins, Sunspot Solar Observatory, Time-lapse, UNM Arts Lab, White Sands New Mexico

In June of 2010 xRez Studio set out to document one of the oldest rock art panels in North America, known as Shaman’s Panel. Located in a remote side drainage of the Grand Canyon and under the jurisdiction and protection of the NPS, it is a difficult site to locate, which has likely contributed to it’s somewhat limited vandalism. Estimated to be between 3,000 and 15,000 years old, it is extremely fragile and is marked by much wear. In spite of the condition, it exhibits a rich layering of successive and evocative paintings created over a long span of time by many Native Americans. It also displays unique polychrome features, including green suns, mountain lions with red claws, and trademark otherworldly figures.

xRez set out to document the landmark panel with new photogrammetry and gigapixel techniques under development in the studio. Placed on a steeply slanted overhang, camera access was limited, so a base series of 182 vertical overlapping shots were taken at increments across the length. Next, multiple survey angles were methodically shot of the entire geologic surface, in order to later regenerate the topology with dense cloud-based photogrammetry. In post, all 182 3d camera positions were recovered from this process, and used to texture the mesh surface in 3d in Maya utilizing the 182 21MP full-resolution images. Finally, a true orthographic projection was rendered in Mental Ray at over a gigapixel in resolution, viewable below. You can see a visual description of how we do this on our Photogrammetric Gigapixel Images post.

Jon Harman’s excellent ImageJ plugin DStretch was then used to reveal faint and obscured details in the images by manipulating color relationships in the original gigapixel image, which can be seen by clicking on the “false color” buttons in the image below. Some artwork largely undetectable to the naked eye can now be perceived more readily.

In addition, we have now finished earlier rock art work shot in the Great Gallery in Horseshoe Canyon of Canyonlands NP and a few other sites in southern Utah, which can be explored at high resolutions here as well. Lastly, a motion-control rig was used recently to shoot across Sky Rock outside of Bishop, CA in the Owens Valley, one of the few rock art panels which face upward to the sky. Also included in the video is Wahweap Hoodoos in Utah and CalTech Radio Observatory in the Owens Valley, CA.

Reconstructed geometry and mapping:

Shaman’s Panel:

Other rock art documented on the trip:

Great Gallery, Horseshoe Canyon, Canyonlands NP, Utah:

Un-named Panel, Horseshoe Canyon, Canyonlands NP, Utah:

Un-named Panel, Horseshoe Canyon, Canyonlands NP, Utah:

Sego Canyon Panel, Utah:

Sky Rock, Owens Valley, CA:

Click here to view the embedded video.

©xRez Studio, 2011. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Gigatexel, great gallery, Horseshoe Canyon, native american rock art, shaman's panel, sky rock

xRez Studio has completed an animated sequence illustrating the geological forces leading to the creation and carving of the Grand Canyon for use in the new visitor center film “Grand Canyon: A Journey of Wonder”, produced by Aperture Films. Working under direction of noted geologic consultants Karl Karlstrom and Carl Bowman, the animation follows the initial formation of the Vishnu Mountains 1,750 millions years ago (MYA), to sedimentation from ancient seas at 500 MYA, to the uplift of the Colorado Plateau at 70 MYA, and ultimately the act of final carving of the canyon at 6 MYA. Other key geologic concepts such as the supergroup were omitted for brevity in order to allow easy comprehension in a short span within the film. Narration by Peter Coyote further augments the audience understanding in the screenings.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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©xRez Studio, 2011. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Geologic Formation, Grand Canyon, Grand Canyon Geology

We are pleased to announce we are showing select gigapixel prints at the G2 Gallery in Venice CA as the current Nature LA exhibit, running from April 19, 2011 through June 19. We hosted a reception on Friday May 6, and a talk on our work on Friday May 13 entitled “Technology in Service of Conservation”.

update:
G2 just posted a podcast interview with us, check it out http://www.theg2gallery.com/artists/xrez_studio/index.html

Here is the press release:

Venice, CA, March 22, 2010—On Tuesday, April 26, 2011, The G2 Gallery will present Nature LA: xRez Studio, an exhibition of large scale, high definition, panoramic landscapes. xRez Studios is a Santa Monica based collaboration between photographer Greg Downing and visual effects designer Eric Hanson. An opening reception for Nature LA: xRez Studio will be held on Friday, May 6, from 6:30–9:00. The G2 Gallery will donate 100% of the proceeds from photography sales to environmental causes.

xRez Studio are pioneers in the field of extreme resolution gigapixel photography. Panoramic digital photography has long relied on creating panoramic images by stitching relatively few multiple images together. xRez has tapped into recent advances in software, hardware, and digital camera capabilities to create panoramas with resolutions into the range of several gigapixels per single image, thousands of times greater than a standard 10 megapixel still image. The resulting gigapixel image is one that contains a tremendous range of detail, allowing unsurpassed viewing and exploration.

For their exhibition at The G2 Gallery, xRez will present three giclée panoramas ranging in length from 9 feet to 27 feet. The centerpiece of the exhibit is Orthographic Yosemite Valley, part of a 2008 project to establish a baseline image of the Yosemite Valley’s granite walls, where rock falls are a frequent but difficult occurrence to document. By shooting 10,000 images concurrently over sixteen miles of valley walls, 20 separate photographic teams led by xRez created an unprecedented documentation of the valley wall, now used in before and after comparisons to track rock falls and prevent human injury. The massive panorama will be hung in such a way that the viewer is forced to move along the length of the image, and come in close to observe the minute detail captured by the gigapixel technology.

Nature LA is The G2 Gallery’s ongoing series of fine art photography that expresses themes dealing with our environment and identifies the emerging trends in the cutting edge of a new and visually alluring form of nature photography. The series is curated by G2 Gallery director Jolene Hanson.

LOCATION: The G2 Gallery (www.theg2gallery.com)

1503 Abbot Kinney Blvd, Venice, CA 90291-3742
View Larger Map

Tel. 310.452.2842, E-mail info@theg2gallery.com

©xRez Studio, 2011. | Permalink | |
Post tags: G2 Gallery, Gigapixel, Gigapixel Printing

Director Mike Patterson and Eric Hanson of xRez Studio acted as co-organizer of a visual music event at the USC School of Cinematic Arts complex in April of 2011. Several student animation projects were projected onto the building in various forms, from realtime stereoscopic interventions to aligned architectural projections.  Headlining the evening was leading UK visual collective D-Fuse and local LA 3D artist Scott Pagano,  performing live with graphics projected onto scrims and screens. Thanks to many involved, notably producer Thenmozhi Soundararagan.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Press release:

Experience a live visual music sensation on April 22nd, 2011 at the University of Southern California: The School of Cinematic Arts Complex will be taken over and transformed by Rhythms and Visions: Expanded and Live!, a spectacular outdoor live-cinema event merging animation and visual media with live acoustic and electronic music.

Exciting and innovative UK audio-visual collective D-Fuse and Los Angeles artist Scott Pagano will perform with live acoustic and electronic music performed by notable musicians Brian King, Trifonic, Brian LeBarton and MB Gordy. Original compositions by Justin Bell, Vidjay Beerepoot, Andrew Prahlow and Brian Trifon. These cutting-edge performances will span animation, experimental documentary and abstract visual music.

The new SCA cinema complex will come alive with large animation and 3-D stereoscopic architectural projections by faculty and students. 3-D glasses will be provided.

Presented by Visions and Voices: The USC Arts and Humanities Initiative. Organized by Mike Patterson (Animation), Candace Reckinger (Animation), xRez Studio’s Eric Hanson (Animation), Brian King (Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television) and Perry Hoberman (Cinematic Arts).

For more information, please contact us at visionsandvoices@usc.edu or (213) 740-0483.

www.usc.edu/visionsandvoices or www.tinyurl.com/eyemusic

©xRez Studio, 2011. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Building Projection, D-Fuse, USC School of Cinematic Arts, Vision + Voices, Visual Music

xRez Studio was given a unique opportunity to spherically shoot and document the largest engineering project in the US, the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore Labs in Northern California. One of the least publicly known efforts in the search for future energy sources, but most monumental in terms of ramifications, NIF has entered a crucial testing phase after 20 years of design and construction, hoping to achieve a historic benchmark this year. Enormous in it’s implications for relatively clean, safe, and controllable inertial fusion energy, it is the world’s largest optical device, consisting of 192 of the world’s most powerful lasers, all concentrated on a central target chamber, which in effect create a microcosm of the surface of the sun.

The spherical panoramas were captured at a high 35k resolution and then formatted in Autodesk Maya for an immersive fulldome presentation at the impressive Morrison Planetarium in the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, where NIF chief Ed Moses presented the images to a TEDxSF event audience. Special thanks go out to John Densberger at LLNL.

https://lasers.llnl.gov/

-

BBC/Brian Cox Tours NIF:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ed Moses TEDx Talk:

Click here to view the embedded video.

©xRez Studio, 2011. | Permalink | |
Post tags: fusion energy, laser fusion, National Ignition Facility, NIF, Top Demo, VR panorama

We are pleased to announce a joint agreement with SpaceCam Systems, the leader in high-end aerial cinematography. We are currently developing some very exciting technology together and hope to offer innovative solutions for new means of aerial capture in the very near future.

The press release is as follows:

Los Angeles, April 4, 2011: SpaceCam Systems, Inc. and xRez Studio today announced conclusion of an exclusive, long term agreement relating to the hi resolution capture and processing of still and moving images based on new technology developed by both parties.

SpaceCam was established in 1989 and is the foremost aerial imaging company in the motion picture industry offering the widest range of film format and high-end HD stabilized equipment in the industry. Through constant evolution, SpaceCam has captured industry standards for performance, flexibility and reliability. This, coupled with unrivaled customer and logistical support make SpaceCam the clear choice for the majority of serious film, TV, Commercial, Large Format and HD productions.

Their roster encompasses the world’s top aerial cameramen. Spacecam has acquired over its 22 year history, unique abilities in the aviation sector, including advanced mechanical and electronic design as well as software development. Spacecam has received the Academy award for science and engineering.

xRez Studio has a long history of successful production in feature film visual effects and gigapixel photography, with particular skills in the application of emerging computational photography and advanced computer graphics. Examples of xRez still photography productions can be viewed in prestigious museums including the American Museum of Natural History, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Cincinnati Art Museum, and Ars Electronica in Austria.

Further announcements regarding this new technology will be forthcoming.

For further information, please contact Sandra Crawford at Spacecam at 818.889.6060.

SPACECAM LINK

©xRez Studio, 2011. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Aerial Cinematography, Aerial Gigapixel, Helicopter Gigapixel, Photogrammetry, Spacecam, xRez Studio

xRez Studio’s Eric Hanson and BlackboxFX collaborator Ethan Summers have just completed a number of visual effects shots for a film produced by Aperture Films depicting the British war of 1812 at Fort McHenry on the eastern seaboard, where the Star-Spangled Banner was written by Francis Scott Key in reaction to the bombardment of the fort.

The film is presented in a custom 3456 x 1080 projection at the new re-designed visitor center at Fort McHenry National Historic Park in Baltmore, MD. The work ranged from bringing historic paintings to life, to augmenting live-action RED footage, to entire CG recreations of the fort battles. The rendering was performed in Next Limit’s Maxwell, which handled the high polygon counts with ease while rendering complex environmental lighting. xRez contractor Kai Solberg provided additional architectural modeling.

Click here to view the embedded video.

An additional animated sequence was created which traces the physical changes of the fort from present day back to 1814, which is projected in the visitor center onto a custom horizontal circular display.

Click here to view the embedded video.

©xRez Studio, 2011. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Fort McHenry, Fort McHenry Film, Fort McHenry Visitor Center Film, Visual Effects

We at xRez have always had a keen interest in the latest implentations of NUI’s (Natural User Interfaces). Here are a few video examples of xRez imagery being explored with a Gesture Based Interface with the Kinect as part of “Open Exhibits” and a large Multitouch screen at CES.

Kinect Gigapixel Navigation

Above you will see the one of our Yosemite Images being explored using the MT-Kinect module, a part of the Open Exhibits made by the good folks at Ideum, you can find out more info in their excellent blog post about the project. Open Exhibits is a gesture multitouch and multiuser interactive exhibit design platform that is free for students muesums and educational organizations. If your interest is commercial you can license Gesture Works or try it for free to create these interactions.

Multi-touch Navigation

We also recently licensed the same image for use at CES 2011 for a large touch display. You can see it in action below.

©xRez Studio, 2011. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Exhibit, Gesture Based Interface, Gigapixel, Ideum, Kinect, Multi-Touch, Musuem, NUI, Open Exhibits, ZUI

The presentation xRez Studio made for the “Fine International Conference on Gigapixel Imaging for Science” 2010 at Carnegie Mellon is now on-line.Greg Downing of xRez Studio talks at the first Fine International Conference on Gigapixel Imaging for Science, November 11-13 2010 at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA.

This workshop covers visual and spatial data acquisition for real-life locations destined for research or visual reconstruction. The focus was on photographic techniques, such as HDRI capture, gigapixel panoramic background photography, photogrammetry for set reconstruction, and polynomial texture mapping for cultural heritage artifacts. Site survey techniques and the recording of lens information and distortion will be demonstrated as well as a new technique for 3d point cloud data capture based on Microsoft Photosynth software. Objectives: To acquaint the participant with the common techniques used in the feature film visual effects field to acquire information from real-life locations that will later be the basis of 3d reconstructions for visual communication or study. Introductions to field work as well as current software applications will be covered.

More talks from the conference can be found on youtube, or downloaded from iTunes U.

©xRez Studio, 2011. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Carnegie Mellon, Computational Photography, Digital Set, Fine International Confereence on Gigapixel Imaging for Science, Gigapan, Gigapixel, HDRI, Panoramic Photography, Photogrammetry, Science

While doing work on the National Geographic special “Sunken Treasures of the Nile” a significant archaeological find was made. Philippe Martinez discovered what we have been calling “Stela M” that contains the first description ever found of how the 1000 ton obelisks were moved. Philippe needed gigapixel detail documentation of the surface so that he could have a good record of the surface for later study. Unfortunately the Stela had fallen over from it’s original position and was facing the ground making a “head-on” photo impossible.

Due to the tilt of the Stela there was only a few feet of working space in front of the stela, it was impossible to get far enough away to shoot a traditional gigapixel image. To make matters worse thieves had stolen the images of Ramses and rolled boulders under the Stela making it even more difficult to access.  Our solution was to take a 50 mm lens and take 100s of close up macro photos of the surface of the Stela, photogrammetrically calibrate them into a laser scan taken by Carlos Velazquez of Epic Scan and then re-project them onto the surface as a texture. This required getting the exact camera positions and rotations relative to the geometry and was achieved through some custom software written by xRez pal Simeon Basset and xRez Studio’s Greg Downing.  The images were then blended together to create a gigapixel image that would be impossible to capture by other means.

View the following animation (full screen to see the details) to see how this texturing process was achieved. On the left side of the image you will see the camera position when the photograph was taken, in the middle you will see the resulting 21 megapixel photo, and on the right you will see the photo rendered as a projected texture.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is a diagram showing the area of high resolution

This is the final interactive view. Use the “outline” button to turn the Egyptologists drawings on and off.

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Cultural Heritage, Digital Set, Egypt, Gigapixel Texture, Gigatexel, Laser Scan, LIDAR, Lost Treasures of the Nile, National Geographic, Photogrammetric Gigapixel, Photogrammetry, Photosynth, Stela M

While working on the National Geographic Special “Sunken Treasures of the Nile” we were very interested in how we could represent the terrain of the surrounding area. Unfortunately there were no DEM (Digital Elevation Models) of this remote area and we were unable to charter an aircraft due to the designation of military air-space. The only method we had available to us for re-creating this kind of terrain was through the use of Kite Aerial Photography and Photogrammetry. We were able to capture 57 million 3D points of the terrain from this simple aerial platform and a DSLR.

An Experiment

In the time we were waiting to receive permission from the Egyptian government to fly a kite over the site Mark Eakle of Insight Digital and Xenexus was able to assemble a rig that would allow us to hang  a camera beneath the kite to take aerial photos. He then raised the kite close to 200 feet and fired just over 300 shots of the desired landscape via a radio shutter release. Since this shoot, revisions of his rig included motors that would allow control over the exact orientation of the camera. Even from these unstructured photographs we were able to extract an excellent terrain model with an enormous amount of detail. Below you can see a 3D point cloud representation of this terrain. In addition to the 3D data we were also able to color the 3D points from the photographs to help us visualize the scene.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This segment of the project was largely a technology test to see how much data we could extract from an unstructured image set like this. There are 2 holes in the model where we had fewer than 3 photos of the same area and several others where the terrain was too steep for straight down shots to do a complete reconstruction. Both of these issues could be addressed with more control over the camera orientation via remote control motors and a live view of what the camera was shooting.

Merging Land and Air

After processing we noticed that the KAP acquired point cloud contained an underground quarry that we had photographed for photogrammetry from the ground. We decided to see if we could merge the two point clouds using software from Alice Labs. In the following two videos you can see the lighter colored points near the end of the sequence are added from the ground based photogrammetry. You will need red and blue anaglyph glasses to view the 3d stereoscopic rendered video on the right

Next Steps

These point clouds were created using low resolution images that were 1536 to 2048 pixels wide, 1/16th the resolution of the acquired images. We can increase the resolution we use to increase the density and quality of the point clouds. However the point clouds we are getting right now are substantial enough to use automated methods for generating meshes (more on this later). The next step in the process is to create textures for the geometry. We are now not only able to extract good textures but we can extract them at gigapixel resolution. You can read more about this process in an upcoming post “Photogrammetric Gigapixel Images”

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: 3D, Cultural Heritage, DEM, Digital Elevation Model, Digital Set, DSLR, KAP, Kite Aerial Photography, National Geographic, Photogrammetry, Point Cloud, s3d, stereo reconstruction, Stereoscopic, Sunken Treasures of the Nile

xRez’s Eric Hanson was invited to give a workshop on Digital Set and Visual Effects Techniques at Hunan University in Changsha, China. Hunan University is one of the oldest universities in the world, established in 976 AD. At the conclusion of the workshop the university generously offered Eric an honorary professorship. In over a thousand years of operation Eric was the first Westerner granted this honor at Hunan University.

After the workshop Eric had the opportunity to visit Wulingyuan National Park. The park was designated a UNESCO Scenic and Historic site in 1992. In addition to the striking beauty of the 3000 stone columns staggered across the landscape, the region is home to a number of endangered plants and animals.

His visit pre-dated the release of the landmark film “Avatar”. He shot the following gigapixel image of the 150 meter quartz-sandstone formation called “Pillar between Heaven and Earth” (乾坤柱).

This stunning geological park inspired the design of the floating mountains on planet “Pandora” in the film. After it was released and became a worldwide success, the Tourism Bureau of Zhangjiajie renamed the mountain range to the “Avatar Hallelujah Mountains” (阿凡达-哈利路亚山) in honor of their use in the film.

We will be showing a 5 x 7 foot version of this image as a gigapixel print at our upcoming show at the G2 Gallery in Venice California in April 2011.

You can also read about another xRez trip to China here.

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Avatar, Avatar Hallelujah Mountain, Hunan University, UNESCO, Visual Effects, 湖南大学, 阿凡达-哈利路亚山

In November of 2008 xRez Studio was asked to join Insight Digital on an expedition to Egypt to help create a documentary for the French Channel 3 Television show “Le secret des Pharaons bâtisseurs” on “Des Racines & Des Ailes” directed by Frédéric Wilner. Now there is an American version of this film on the National Geographic Channel called “Sunken Treasures of the Nile” The show will be airing August 3rd 2010 at 1PM, and November 8th 2010 at 4pm.

xRez was initially invited to provide photogrammetry (3D reconstruction from photographs) for the post production of visual effects. The visual effects would be used to explain the theories explored in the film of how various monuments were moved from the quarries to the cities where they would be installed downstream along the Nile. The plan was to use an experimental method that would rely on Microsoft’s Photosynth to generate CG versions of the terrain and monuments that would have to be rendered due to not being able to get good aerial footage in areas that had closed airspace. Mark Eakle of Insight Digital and Xenexus was providing Kite Aerial Photography (KAP) to assure we had good high angle photos of the surrounding terrain. Read more about the Photogrammetry from KAP in this blog post. During the shoot we found that Photosynth did an exceptionally good job at recovering point clouds of objects of multiple scales from small sculptures to large terrain elements that were too large for the project’s more accurate laser scanners.

Photosynth played an unexpected role in the film. We initially were using Photosynth only to recover the point clouds and camera poses for creating 3D models, however we found that from the extracted point clouds we were able to create models and test the theories that the Egyptologist Philippe Martinez, the director Frédéric Wilner, and Kevin Cain from Insight Digital came up with during the day. By photographing the sites while the film crew filmed these experts we were able to test some of their theories in 3d by the evening, Photosynth not only played a role in the post for the film but was used in the film directly. In the evenings on a boat moored just off from the site we would process the Photosynth, capture the point cloud and Jun Nagaoka of Insight Digital would mesh the point cloud into a 3d model so we could test the various theories that the experts had come up with during the day. The film crew would set the cameras up behind the computers and now the freshly made models and photosynths became part of the documentary process.

Stela “M”

One especially exciting moment in the process came after a long day of filming in the quarries when Philippe Martinez was taking a new route back to the boat through some talus fields. He noticed that there were a large number of small boulders rolled under a larger boulder. This seemed like a strange configuration and upon rolling them out he found there was a Stela with hieroglyphics on them. To his surprise there was a visual description of how the monuments were moved from the quarries onto the boats. This was a huge discovery! Documentation of how the Egyptians moved these massive monuments (i.e. 1000 ton Obelisks) from the quarries onto boats has never been found before. Until now Egyptologists and others had just had to take educated guesses as to how these were moved. Philippe called Fredrick and the rest of the team on the radio and the film crew came rushing over to film the new discovery. We were also able to capture images for a Photosynth during these exciting first few moments. Next we wanted to get as detailed of a documentation as possible, Carlos Velazquez of Epic Scan provided the laser scanning and xRez worked with Mark Eakle to produce a Polynomial Texture Map (PTM) (below) that allows you to virtual relight the image to better study the surface of the carving.

These Photosynths were recently featured on the Photosynth.net home page, you can read more about it on the Photosynth blog.

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Des Racines & Des Ailes, Egypt, Microsoft, National Geographic, National Geographic Channel, Photogrammetry, Photosynth, Polynomial Texture Mapping

xRez Studio will be presenting innovations in “DIY Time-Lapse Motion-Control Systems” in “The Studio” at Siggraph July 26th from 12:30 to 1pm in room 150. We will be joined by Chris Church from OpenMoco and Dynamic Perception LLC. He will be showing some of the latest hardware for the DIY Motion Control photography audience.

Update:

Siggraph was great! You can see a bit more in the Siggraph Studio blog, but here is a taste from our wire crawling moco timelapse we took during the show:

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: DIY, Motion-Control, OpenMoco, Siggraph, Time-lapse

This is an interactive 33k by 16.5k pixel (550 megapixel), with 28 stops of exposure. The photo is of the interior of the Bradbury Building in Downtown Los Angeles. One of this building’s claims to fame is that the interior was used in the classic science fiction film “Blade Runner“.

This is the same HDRI panorama we showed in the CG Channel Interview. It is being displayed in HD View, this is the only viewer that will let you interactively explore a high resolution HDRI over the web. If HD View does not support your OS scrub to minute 4:42 in the cg channel video to see the effect.

The building has a very interesting history the elevators you can see in the photo were originally powered by steam engines. The water for the engines came from a spring under the building (this is where Spring street got it’s name).

The building was completed in 1892. George Wyman, the building’s architect was influenced by a science fiction novel describing the architecture of a building of the future as a “vast hall full of light, received not alone from the windows on all sides, but from the dome, the point of which was a hundred feet above … The walls and ceiling were frescoed in mellow tints, calculated to soften without absorbing the light which flooded the interior.” He was pretty successful in achieving this with his design. This interior has a very high dynamic range, a unique lighting environment and at the same time is relaxing to look at.

Using HD View:

Be sure to fullscreen the image with . Try the “auto exposure” feature   this also has options for a single exposure  or a tonemapping what is in view . Use your scroll wheel to zoom.

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Bradbury Building, HD View, HDRI, High Resolution, Panorama

Our friends at CGchannel.com have just posted an interview video with us illustrating some recent work, namely the Yosemite Extreme Panoramic Imaging Project, Native American rock art PTM capture, and spherical animation done for the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historic Park. Thanks guys!

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: CG Channel

The new Gigapan Epic Pro (the gigapan for your DSLR) is out! We hadn’t seen any reviews yet and we have gotten so many questions about it after twittering that we had the Gigapan Epic Pro that we have decide to post a “first look” for our friends.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Overall the device makes shooting gigapixel images very easy and the Gigapan seems very reliable, the motors sound really good and seem to be accurate (a good idea for someone to test for a future review).  We are a bit picky as we have been using motion control heads for many years and they have been 5 to 10 times the cost of this unit or required that we build the head ourselves (take a look at our Gallery for some of our finer work with these heads). Topping our list of requests for a product like the Gigapan Epic Pro would be more stability, and more robust parts using pro camera gear as a standard for build quality etc. I mention the vibration from the wind in the video, it was quite windy the day I went out to shoot. Despite the instability I pointed out the Gigapan actually performed fairly well. It seems that the Gigapan did not catch the wind too badly. I did restrict myself to a 1/250th of a second with a 300mm lens to prevent motion blur and you can inspect the result for yourself in the photosynth window below.
Update 3/31/10:
See video below for the parts that need to be tightened to get more stability.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Another interesting development of the last week is the new Photosynth support for gigapixel panoramas. Now we have spherical, perspective corrected, gigapixel support inside of Silverlight. It makes for an incredibly smooth viewer! Right now there is only support for exporting these images if they were stitched inside Microsoft ICE and you are unable to crop or use Photoshop to edit an image you stitch with it. I can only imagine it won’t be too long until these can be integrated into larger Photosynths and made from panoramas stitched and edited in other software. Microsoft ICE has very good support for “Structured Panoramas” so it can work very well with images taken with a panoramic motion control head like the Gigapan Epic Pro. You can see the result of the shoot from the video below.

If you know of any other reviews of the Gigapan Epic Pro, or Photosynth Gigapixel support please add them in the comments!

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: DSLR, Gigapan, Gigapan Epic Pro, Microsoft Ice, Photosynth, Point Dume, Review

xRez Studio’s award-winning “Crossing Worlds” was one of the selected screenings for “Dome Day Asia 2010″ on March 9, 2010. Dome Day Asia was a special event to explore the new possibilities of the world’s highest resolution fulldome digital projection theaters.  

For those of you who may not be familiar with fulldome theater you make want to take a look at this article for more explanation.

Making the 8k S3D Version

By re-rendering the film from higher resolution versions of the original 32k+ photographic images we were able to easily match the extreme resolution of the 8k fulldome projection. The principal photography for “Crossing Worlds” was shot as high-resolution panoramas that were “camera mapped” onto 3D geometry.  Because we used this hybrid of photographs and CG with 3D geometry we were also able to get the parallax needed for a stereoscopic (S3D) render in order to compare these new systems to the older lower resolution monocular systems.

High Resolution and S3D FullDome

At the time of this writing there are only three 8k fulldome systems in the world, with all in China: Hong Kong, Macao, and Beijing. Dome Day was presented by SkySkan and took place over two days, one day in the Stanley Ho Space Theatre in the Hong Kong Space Museum and one day in Macao China’s New Science Center and Planetarium. Both theaters project 35 mega-pixel video, a 8192 x 8192 pixel (8k) image, Macao’s system is S3D.

Both fulldome systems viewed on Dome Day were installed by SkySkan

The first 8k theater in Europe will be coming on-line in May to the LWL Museum for Natural History in Muenster Germany (6 JVC SH4K Projectors on a 20 meter dome).

Additionally there are several S3D domes installed at lower resolutions in Hilo Hawaii and the Tokyo Science Museum. Hong Kong is expecting to upgrade the front half of the dome to S3D with 3 more projectors while leaving the back half of the dome in mono 8k. The Chinese Maritime Museum in Shanghi, the Swedish Norrköpings Visualization Center are also installing S3D domes and the Allosphere at UC Santa Barbara, which is under development but in operation, has several front facing projectors working in S3D. Finally there have been a number of temporary and/or portable installations of stereo dome theaters by a number of companies all over the world.

The Result

Greg Downing of xRez Studio attended the event, screening “Crossing Worlds” in both theaters in 4k and 8k. Even the 4k version scaled up to 8k was incredible and the native 8k version further increased the level of realism. Subtleties such as the lighting on the small crevices in the canyons created a high impact. Considering how much brighter the projection was compared to any previously viewed projections there was surprising little amount of bounce from the bright areas across the screen that would normally fill in the black levels. Overall it was an incredible way to view the work.

The Dome Day Event

After viewing “Crossing Worlds”, we saw a “shootout” between 70mm film projected in the IMAX DOME™ format (70mm 15 perf.) compared to digital 8k projection. The attendees then viewed some stereo pre-rendered and real-time content. After a viewing fulldome content in both the Hong Kong and Macao theaters the group then moved on to the “Bubble Theater” at City of Dreams to see the Visual Effects Society’s special venue winner “Dragon’s Treasure at the City of Dreams”, and lastly viewing some new laser projection systems presented by Joachim Ostermann of Laser Display Technology GmbH. The laser projection system was very bright at a resolution of 1600×1200 pixels, and the incredible saturation that can be achieved with this a laser based system was apparent. Laser based projection also has impressive infinite depth of field. We can look forward to future demonstrations of incredibly large color space, laser speckle elimination technology, and a 1.5 million to 1 contrast ratio.

LINK to “Crossing Worlds” Interactive Viewer

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: 8k, Crossing Worlds, Fulldome, Hong Kong, IMAX, Laser Projectors, Macao, muenster, s3d, SkySkan, Sony T110, Stanley Ho Space Theatre, Stereoscopic, Visual Effects Society

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags:

Park visitors at Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historic Park intending to learn about the Wright Brothers often visit Huffman Prairie, an unassuming open space where the Wrights did much of their formative testing. The field, a large open expanse, challenges a visitors imagination as to how they flew there. In 2010, the park will unveil a unique and unprecedented historic interpretation tool for it’s visitors, the VR Flight Viewer, conceptualized and produced by xRez Studio.

Utilizing earlier CGI assets made for the visual effects sequences from “On Great White Wings”, the park’s centerpiece film on the history of the Wright Brothers, xRez Studio has created a way for visitors to experience the flight of an early aircraft while visiting the actual field used by the Wrights for flight testing. Utilizing computer gaming tracking headsets and interactive spherical animation, a park visitor can chase after and ultimately pilot a Wright 1905 aircraft during a 3 minute flight simulation on-location at the field itself, enhancing their appreciation of the site and it’s place in aviation history. Earlier work for the park from xRez Studio was interactive panoramic content for the park’s website, in effect a non-animated version of the Flight Viewer.

Click and Drag to Pan

LINK to Related Film Visual Effects

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historic Park, Huffman Prairie, On Great White Wings, Spherical Animation, Spherical Video, Virtual Reality, Wright Brothers

Yosemite Valley experiences numerous rockfalls each year, with over 600 rockfall events documented since 1850. Due to the pulverization of the rockfall mass, evaluating and quantifying rockfall characteristics has proved challenging without any high-resolution baseline imagery of the Valley walls, which could act as a useful datum for before/after comparisons. In 2008, The Yosemite Extreme Panoramic Imaging Project, a partnership between geologist Greg Stock, Ph.D. of the the National Park Service and xRez Studio, set out to do so by creating an unprecedented documentation of Yosemite Valley’s granite walls by shooting 10,000 images concurrently over sixteen miles of the valley walls. Base technology used included gigapixel panoramic photography, LIDAR-based digital terrain modeling, and three-dimensional computer rendering. Key sponsorship was provided from Microsoft Live Labs and The Yosemite Fund, and additional sponsors and donors included IVRPA, Canon, Bogen Imaging, LowePro, GigaPan, Autodesk, Wavgen, and Peace River Studios.

The primary gigapixel capture was accomplished by 20 separate photographic teams shooting from key overlapping locations throughout the valley, amounting to 36,000 vertical feet of trail ascended. The shots were taken simultaneously in order to ensure uniform lighting, with each team taking over 500 overlapping shots from each vantage point using an accessible Gigapan device with Canon G9 cameras. Each team’s shots were later assembled with PTGui into 20 separate gigapixel panoramas, viewable here. In addition, all 20 gigapixel panoramas were projected onto a 1-meter resolution digital terrain model in Maya 3D animation software, unifying 16 miles of Yosemite’s walls into 2 single vertical orthographic views. The resulting images reveal the complex geologic interrelation of Yosemite Valley’s monuments in very high resolution and yields a unique, non-perspective elevational view of the valley walls, a first in landscape photography.

In addition, a hang gliding flight was contracted to act as a photographic survey, the glider equipped with 3 time-lapse cameras which provided a point cloud data representation of the valley walls through use of Microsoft Photosynth. The results can be seen in the Siggraph 2009 course on “Computation & Cultural Heritage” Several major rockfalls have already occurred since the project’s completion, and repeat photography of these areas has clearly delineated the rockfall source areas and failure dynamics, ultimately calling for the closing of 300 structures in Camp Curry. Thus, the imagery has already proven to be a valuable tool for monitoring and understanding rockfall in Yosemite Valley, and ultimately providing further safety for the public. It also shows the possibilities of the quality of information a photographic image, enabled with powerful new imaging technology, can provide for the earth sciences.

Click here to view the embedded video.

LINK to Silverlight Orthographic View of North Elevation (zoom in and out of image w/ mousewheel):

LINK to Yosemite Extreme Panoramic Imaging Project Page

LINK to Gigapan Page of Project Results

LINK to Photosynth Hang Gliding Demo (Use the “p” key 2x to turn on 3d point cloud)

LINK to National Park Service Page

LINK to National Parks Traveler Article

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Camera Mapping, Cultural Heritage, Curry Village, Geology, Gigapan, Gigapixel, LIDAR, Microsoft, Mircrosoft, Rockfall, Siggraph, Top Demo, Yosemite, Yosemite Extreme Panoramic Imaging Project, Yosemite Panoramic Imaging Project

Conceptualized over a spirited conversation at a campfire in the High Sierras, Digital Storytelling has evolved to be one of Scandinavia’s leading visual effects annual seminars, co-founded by xRez Studio’s Eric Hanson and Kim Baumann-Larsen of Oslo-based Placebo Effects.  Managed by co-founder Angela Amoroso of the Norwegian Film Institute and held at Filmen Hus in Oslo, Norway, the seminar has grown from a one day gathering into a multiple day day conclave where Norwegian film and design professionals meet with colleagues from around the world to discuss how visual effects and CGI can be used to produce better and more original films. Keynote speakers have included leading production designer Alex McDowell and Oscar-winning VFX Supervisors Rob Legato and Mike Fink. Supplimentary workshops have been offered, several taught by Greg Downing and Eric Hanson of xRez Studio on visual effects and panoramic techniques. The visual identity for the seminar series is created by Oslo graphic designer and illustrator Marius Renberg.

LINK to Program PDF 2006

LINK to Program PDF 2007

LINK to Program PDF 2008

LINK to Program PDF 2009

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Digital Storytelling, Norway, Oslo

The USC School of Cinematic Arts has had an ongoing relationship w/ TBS producer Norico Wada, specifically in the Division of Animation and Digital Arts, where xRez Studio partner Eric Hanson instructs 3d computer graphics and visual effects classes. She introduced USC to the work of Mr. Masaaki Tanabe, a Japanese filmmaker who lived as a child adjacent to the famed “Peace Dome” building at the time of the blast. Returning from the mountains to the loss of his entire family and city, Mr. Tanabe ultimately strove to become a filmmaker and put a human face on what was lost through initiating a 10-year long CGI reconstruction of pre-war Hiroshima. With USC asked to assist in his effort, Hanson was able to teach a Digital Lighting and Rendering class that students could choose to render the Peace Dome model for their final project. Waseda University in Tokyo provided students from their architectural program to interface with USC’s, and several Skype conference meetings were made between all of the students. The students were tasked to provide well-rendered still images by the end of the term, but the collaboration will continue to further develop the work, into strong cinematic, animated, and narrative film sequences.

The Japan-U.S. Hiroshima Reconstruction Project is significant as it is symbolic and meaningful at many levels. First and foremost, it shows a dedication and interest from today’s youth to reinforce common good will and humanity beyond a prior generation of adversarial relations. Secondarily, the acts of barbarism that take place in all wars need to be evaluated and not forgotten, so this project furthers the agenda of facing history, learning from it, and striving for the goal of growing peace between nations.

From an academic level, the work allowed the students to develop their skills in computer graphics, specifically in lighting and rendering, while engaging in a meaningful project versus than a dry academic exercise. They were challenged to base their final work conceptually for the creation of their renders. They produced a rich array of solutions, from illustrating the building at night in present day Hiroshima, to showing it as a museum installation, to an impressionistic watercolor period rendition, and to recreations of period photography based on imagined “sense-memory”.

Ultimately, the work is slated to be presented at the United Nations in May of this 2010 during a speech of Mr. Tanabe’s, as well as on an evolving basis. We are proud to contribute to this historic and important collaboration.

USC students included Angie Nguyen, Laura Stephens, Cecilia Fletcher, Emily Hendricks, and Kendra Ryan.

Link to PDF of project mission statement.

All images ©2010 Japan-U.S. Hiroshima Reconstruction Project.

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Cultural Heritage, Hiroshima Reconstruction, Peace Dome

In November of 2005, xRez Team member Greg Downing was asked to take part in an intensive documentation project of the world heritage site of Tikal. Tikal is an ancient Mayan site located in a wildlife preserve in the Petén region of Guatemala. This was a special opportunity to explore the application of xRez Studio technology for world heritage and to work with teams from UC Berkeley, Cyark, and UNESCO. John Ristevski and Anthony Fassero from the Cyark/UC Berkeley team used a laser scanner to capture a very accurate 3D “point cloud” of the entire temple complex paying special attention to Temple IV. Temple IV looks like a temple on the top of a high mountain, but in fact beneath the dense jungle of the mountain is the largest pyramid in the Americas. The excavation and restoration of the pyramid has just begun and UNESCO had an interest in an intensive 3D and photographic survey of the site before this begins. Berkeley generated the 3D portion that will describe the exact shape of the Temple, while Greg Downing collected photographic data in the form of high resolution panoramas, gigapixel images, and HDRI. This imagery is to be projected onto the 3D model as a texture and can be used to document surface features that the shape alone may not reveal, such as the position of the mortar between the stones. If the site is damaged by natural causes or the excavation the damage can be repaired. This data archive will be available for site managers, archeologists, and the general public via the Cyark portal. While in Tikal Greg took advantage of the opportunity to record some of the sounds of the jungle as well as as capture a fisheye time-lapse sequence that maps out perfectly to screen of a full-dome theater. If you would like more details about this adventure and the technology of laser scanning there is an excellent article describing it on VRMag.

LINK to VRMag Article

LINK to Spherical Pano 1

LINK to Spherical Pano 2

LINK to Spherical Pano 3

LINK to Spherical Pano 4

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Archeology, Cyark, Fulldome, HDRI, Photogrammetry, Temple IV, Tikal, Time-lapse, UNESCO, VRMag

BlackboxFX is a sister company of xRez, acting as a collaboration with ace 3D artist Ethan Summers. BlackboxFX’s mission is to employ highend creative visual effects talent toward socially meaningful projects, both in the entertainment, scientific, and environmental action sectors. With extensive backgrounds in feature film visual effects and illustration, both Blackbox and xRez share an enthusiasm for applying 3D computer graphics to projects which can help educate, illuminate or persuade the general public or policy makers.

History has proven the value of powerful photographic images instigating change, but digital media has yet to rise to that task. Whether recreating historic events in film, revealing complex processes in scientific visualization, or illustrating environmental change, BlackboxFX can offer powerful leverage for filmmakers, scientific researchers, or political activists.

LINK to BlackboxFX Site

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: 3d Animation, BlackboxFX, Scientific Visualization, Visual Effects, xRez Studio

One highly compelling method to reveal the vast level of detail contained in a gigapixel image is to print it in large format over a very long length. Based on our 2008 Yosemite Extreme Panoramic Imaging Project, xRez Studio printed a continuous 40 foot x 5 foot print at 300 dpi for exhibition at Siggraph 2008.The image shown was sourced from a 150,000 pixel render from Maya and Mental Ray, having been derived from several hundred images shot during the project. Placed in the entrance lobby of the Los Angeles Convention Center, it was supported on a custom freestanding frame, and attracted much attention by the conference attendees. Many viewers took up to 10-15 minutes to walk and scrutinize details of the park along the length of the print, having never witnessed the impact of gigapixel prints.

We currently utilize an in-house HP z6100PS 60″ large-format printer, and offer for sale various print output of our gigapixel catalog of images. We can produce stunning prints on a variety of premium archival photographic papers. One advantage of gigapixel resolution is that there are few limits on printed size, with larger sizes creating increasingly compelling impact. We will offer an online store in the near future, but can accommodate requests directly at this point. Please email us for pricing and turnaround times at info@xrez.com. Print selections can be made from our online catalog of images:

LINK to Catalog of Landscape Images

LINK to Catalog of Urban Images

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Gigapixel, Gigpixel Print, HP z6100PS 60, Los Angeles Convention Center, Maya, Mental Ray

xRez principal Greg Downing has been at the forefront of photogrammetry technique for some time, having worked on the seminal ImageModeler while at RealViz. Later consulting and working with major effects studios, Greg has applied photogrammetry in several major feature films, including “Spiderman 3″, and “I Am Legend”. Photogrammetry is the process of deriving original 3D modeling data from 2D source images, known as the sparse technique.

Recent advances in photo cloud technology and an xRez alliance with the Microsoft Photosynth developers have allowed xRez Studio to help explore the ramifications of this newer automated process, known as dense photogrammetry. One xRez application of photo-cloud acquisition was to contract a hang gliding flight to act as a photographic survey device, the glider equipped with 3 time-lapse cameras which provided a point cloud data representation of the valley walls through use of Microsoft Photosynth. We are currently developing of a working process of data and camera extraction, for quick creation of 3d assets for use in visual effects.

In another example you can see how photogrammetry has enabled us to take gigapixel photos of subjects and in locations where gigapixel photography was previously impossible. Read more about this technique in our “Photogrammetric Gigapixel Images” blog post.

LINK to Oslo City Hall Photosynth (hit “p” to see cloud)

LINK to Jefferson Memorial Photosynth (hit “p” to see cloud)

LINK to Yosemite Valley Photosynth (hit “p” to see cloud)

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: I am Legend, Image Modeler, Panorama, Panoramic Image Modeling, Photogrammetry, PhotoModeler, Photosynth, Point Cloud, Spiderman 3

One problem surrounding the needs of cultural heritage research is the acquisition of static on-site photography, which may limit perceived detail in the artifacts later upon inspection. One method which allows re-lighting of artifacts post-shooting is HP Labs researcher Tom Malzbender’s work in polynomial texture mapping, or PTM. With consultation from Tom and Cultural Heritage Imaging in fall of 2008, xRez Studio visited several key Native American rock art sites in the Colorado Plateau, among them Capitol Reef, Horseshoe Canyon, Sego Canyon, and the Rochester and Sinbad panels. Utilizing gigapixel image capture, multi-spectral infrared imaging, photo-cloud imaging, and PTM technique, xRez was able to test a working methodology for site capture of sensitive rock art resources which far surpass simple static photography.

By viewing the PTM below you can see how it is much easier to see the details of an image where damage has occured.

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Cultural Heritage Imaging, feature extraction, Normal Map, Polynomial Texture Mapping, PTM, Rock Art

xRez Studio has long utilized infrared capture of gigapixel panoramic scenes, using modified digital camera backs. Used primarily for aesthetic reasons, IR can also be used in service of cultural heritage documentation work, helping reveal hidded details. Similarly, color matrix de-correlation software such as Jon Harman’s excellent Dstretch has been employed by xRez Studio to help analyze Native American rock art on the Colorado Plateau.

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Digital Infrared, Dstretch, IR

A revolution is currently underway in digital photography with time-lapse capture. Showcased in earlier films such as Koyannisquatsi and Baraka by DP Ron Fricke, filmmakers had to previously rely on cumbersome large-format film-based techniques, where film cameras were advanced incrementally. The advent of high-performance digital cameras armed with intervalometers has changed the field entirely, with greater than IMAX resolution possible from a single high performance SLR camera. An efficient way to quickly wear out a camera shutter perhaps, but the ability to shoot high resolution cinematic sequences with a minimum of weight and gear is remarkable versus older methods.

By further integrating the sequences with 3D rendering, novel and impossible camera moves can be made into the image, allowing large spatial dolly moves. Also, by utilizing the same automated pano head used for gigapixel work, one can pan and tilt the camera throughout it’s capture, imparting motion into the sequence.

LINK to the Excellent Timescapes Forum

Click here to view the embedded video.

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Baraka, Koyannisquatsi, Ron Fricke, Time-lapse

One emerging technology with great promise is spherical video, which is an extension of spherical panoramic imagery, but displaying full rate playback of live footage. Spherical video solutions have been available for some time, but lack resolution and quality. One alternative xRez Studio is developing is spherical animation, using emerging panoramic players to deliver interactive pre-rendered sequences for online or site-specific purposes.

One recent application was the development of a VR headset “Flight Viewer” for the National Park Service’s Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historic Park visitor center in Dayton, Ohio. Utilizing earlier CGI assets made for the visual effects sequences from “On Great White Wings”, the park’s centerpiece film on the history of the Wright Brothers, xRez Studio has created a way for visitors to experience the flight of an early aircraft while visiting the actual field used by the Wrights for flight testing. Utilizing computer gaming tracking headsets and interactive spherical animation, a park visitor can chase after and ultimately pilot a Wright 1905 aircraft during a 3 minute flight simulation on-location at the field, enhancing their appreciation of the site and it’s pioneering history. We are also developing a live-action variation for Fulldome theatre projection utilizing stitched HD video streams.

Click and Drag to Pan

LINK to Crossing Worlds Fulldome Film

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Spherical Animation, Spherical Video

High Dynamic Range imagery (HDRI) is creating a revolution in digital photography, where the full tonal range of a scene’s lighting can be faithfully captured and recreated. xRez Studio has been at the forefront of this technology development, interacting with key researchers Paul Debevec and Greg Ward. Related to our gigapixel photography, we set out to capture a very high resolution HDR image taken simultaneously with the gigapixel image. By taking a range of exposures from the same station point but repeated throughout a sphere, the resulting images can be assembled into a single very high resolution HDR image used for a variety of purposes, from unlimited color correction of the image, to use in 3D animation where the exposure changes relative to viewing direction, to the realistic lighting of 3D objects integrated into the scene. For pure 3D rendering where very high quality reflections are required such as automotive advertising, this technique allows the highest performance solution. Using the same programmable panoramic head for gigapixel work allows an automated, high-resolution approach versus the more traditional and limited method of shooting reflective spheres or expensive scanning back cameras such as the Spheron. More information on HDR technology can be found on xRez Studio principal Greg Downing’s site.

LINK to Greg Downing HDR Page

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: HDRI, High Dynamic Range Imaging

One innovative technique developed at xRez Studio is the integration of digital elevation models (DEM) with high-end 3d rendering and gigapixel images. Another innovation we have developed is to integrate time lapse sequences with DEM data, allowing new, inventive cinematography where a virtual camera can dolly deeply into the image while lapsing in time. These techniques can be combined with visual effects technique to provide a vast range of terrain modification or visualization. On the 2008 Yosemite Extreme Panoramic Imaging Project, these techniques were employed to create a novel and unprecedented orthographic view of the valley walls, draping twenty multi-gigapixel panoramas onto 1M LIDAR DEM data, creating a landscape photograph devoid of perspective, a first in landscape photography.

LINK to Yosemite Extreme Panoramic Imaging Project

LINK to Time-lapse Work

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Camera Mapping, DEM, Digital Terrain, LIDAR, Projection Mapping, Terrain

Digitally projected full dome theaters are a new and growing form of immersive cinematic presentation for small audiences. There are 1000s of these theaters worldwide (see an incomplete list here), and many are domed planetariums that have been retrofitted w/ high resolution digital projectors that “stitch” multiple projections together into one large surround image, allowing very high resolutions at 4 or 8k. Because the moving image completely surrounds the audience it conveys an unusually strong sense of “being there”.

The panoramic media that xRez Studio captures and produces is ideally suited for this type of display. It is often easier to compose a dome image in post using virtual cameras in 3d animation software than composing the image in live production using a traditional motion picture camera with a fisheye lens. Animation software can simulate how the image will project in theaters making it easier to adjust for different dome tilts.

Using high resolution panoramic imagery integrated into 3D software allows us to take advantage of it’s powerful flexibility while presenting real-world imagery. We are currently developing a method utilizing a stitched panoramic HD capture, where we can far exceed even the highest resolution of emerging digital cinema solutions. Our first dome film format film, “Crossing Worlds” won a coveted “Domie” for Best Design in a Dome at DomeFest 09 in Albuquerque, NM and was later shown in the world’s highest resolution dome theater at Dome Day Asia. A visual tone poem designed for the emerging fulldome planetarium format, “Crossing Worlds” utilizes spherical photography from the American desert west to immerse the viewer in a transcendent spectrum of austere landscapes.

Click and Drag to Pan

LINK to VRMag Article

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Crossing Worlds, Dome, DomeFest, Fulldome, Top Demo

With skillsets culled from 15 years of producing feature film visual effects in major effects facilities, we have high level expertise in concept design, digital environment creation, lighting and rendering, matte painting, compositing, and photogrammetry. We have experience from companies such as Digital Domain, Sony Imageworks, Rhythm & Hues, Dream Quest Images, and Walt Disney Feature Animation. We have top-shelf mastery of most leading software used in film, such as Maya, Renderman, Mental Ray, and Nuke, as well as specialized packages such as PTGui. We have authored several books and instructional DVD titles on many of these packages, and have built established pipelines for efficient production. We strive for creative and innovative usage of these powerful tools.

xRez Studio has also developed unique techniques to integrate 3d animation and gigapixel images, which can form a cost-effective basis for visual effects work. This approach can offer an alternative to the expense of conventional location-based second unit shooting by only requiring minimal crew and infrastructure, as well as allowing the possibility to travel and place cameras in otherwise inaccessible locations. Importing the gigapixel image into a 3D animation package, the image can be combined with associated terrain models, scan data, or derived photogrammetric modeling, providing a well developed starting point from which to create digital backgrounds and effects work. Once the image contains underlying 3D geometry, a full range of 3D manipulations can be performed, from re-lighting the scene, to alteration of weather, to re-creating history.

Using the panoramic image as the basis of virtual cinematography offers tremendous opportunites for augmenting matte painting work or construction of 3D digital backgrounds. Cinematically, the image can allow nodal pans and deep zooms with little restriction of focal length due to the gigapixel resolution. Standard dollies and crane movement of the camera can occur with a degree of parallax in some cases. Integrated with 3D geometry, gigapixel backgrounds can provide the foundation for a variety of animation stagings, from vehicles to battles to animal herds, all properly integrating with the real-world terrain and imagery of the scene, while furthering the concept of the digital backlot.

LINK to Eric Hanson’s VFX DVD Titles

LINK to Greg Downing’s VFX DVD Titles

LINK to Ethan Summer’s VFX DVD Titles

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Foundry Nuke, Maya, PTGui, Renderman, Visual Effects

xRez Studio has been one of the pioneers in digital gigapixel photography, moving it from academic exercises into a viable production methodology for use in multiple applications and markets. Panoramic digital photography has long relied on creating panoramic images by stitching relatively few multiple images together. In the last few years, however, advances in software, hardware, and digital camera capabilities have now allowed possible resolutions into the range of several gigapixels per single image, ten thousand times greater than a standard 10 megapixel still image. Resolutions near 300,000 pixels in width are now possible with certain technique and methodology. The resulting gigapixel image is one that has a tremendous range of detail contained, allowing unsurpassed viewing and exploration. This ultimately allows for interactive exploratory online images and large prints that show no softening or degradation from size, while allowing intricate detail to be revealed at close inspection via a variety of media.

In addition, when the image is imported into a 3d animation package, it can be combined with modeled terrain data, which provides a wide range of latitude for the creation of digital backgrounds in visual effects work. The equipment required to shoot spherical panoramic imagery has typically been the use of a simple panoramic nodal head, which is manually turned to dozens of preset shooting positions, covering every possible angle within a sphere of the camera. Gigapixel photography, however, requires many hundreds or thousands of shots to be taken and typically demands the use of an automated motion control head which has the precision to execute the large amount of overlapping images. The resulting shots are then stitched together in dedicated image stitching software, often taking several hours of uninterrupted processing for a single image to be assembled.

Another option versus shooting spherically is to shoot a narrow field-of-view similar to the coverage of a standard lens, but instead sub-dividing it into hundreds or thousands of overlapping images by using a longer telephoto lens. This results in an even higher pixel-per-degree density, and allows the highest resolution afforded to an image.

Update: We are also using a  new technique that allows us to create gigapixel images even in tight spaces or from the air by using photogrammetry. This expands the possible situations where gigapixel imagery can be used. Read more about this technique in our “Photogrammetric Gigapixel Images” blog post.

LINK to Catalog of Gigapixel Landscape Images

LINK to Catalog of Gigapixel Urban Images

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Gigapan, Gigapixel, Panoramic Photography, PixOrb, Rodeon

National Geographic Magazine contracted xRez principal Eric Hanson in 2006 for an artwork assignment to create the pull-out poster insert for the April 2006 issue commemorating the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. A mix of 3d modeling and matte painting techniques were used to create this hypothetical west coast city, while illustrating some of the core science of earthquake dynamics and urban infrastructure preparedness.

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Earthquake Dynamics, National Geographic Magazine, Scientific Visualization

A standard way to view a gigapixel image is with a zooming interface on a conventionally-sized computer monitor. An alternative method, though rarified, is to display and span the image across a large mosaic of montiors arranged into a single grid. The California Institute for Telecommunication and Information technology, or more succinctly Calit2, has a large gigapixel display wall dubbed the HIPerWall, that xRez Studio has provided gigapixel images to for demonstration purposes.

LINK to Calit2 HIPelWall Site

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Calit2, HIPerWall, Tiled Displays

One highly compelling method to reveal the vast level of detail contained in a gigapixel image is to print it in a large format over a very long length. xRez Studio displayed a 28 foot x 4 foot gigapixel print at 300 dpi of Yosemite Valley, at the 6Sight 2008 Future of Imaging conference in Monterrey. The image shown was sourced from a 150,000 pixel render from Maya and Mental Ray, having been derived from several hundred images shot during the Yosemite Extreme Panoramic Imaging Project in 2008.

LINK to 6Sight Press Release

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: 6Sight, Gigapixel Print

One highly compelling method to reveal the vast level of detail contained in a gigapixel image is to print it in a large format over a very long length. xRez Studio displayed a 40 foot x 5 foot at 300 dpi gigapixel print of Yosemite Valley, dubbed the “AIE Mega-Print” at the Photo Marketing Association 09 conference in Las Vegas. The image shown was sourced from a 150,000 pixel render from Maya and Mental Ray, having been derived from several hundred images shot during the Yosemite Extreme Panoramic Imaging Project in 2008.

image copyright http://www.booleansplit.com/

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: AIE Mega-Print, Gigapixel, Gigpixel Print, PMA

One highly compelling method to reveal the vast level of detail contained in a gigapixel image is to print it in large format over a very long length. Based on our 2008 Yosemite Extreme Panoramic Imaging Project, xRez Studio printed a continuous 40 foot x 5 foot print at 300 dpi for exhibition at Siggraph 2008. The image shown was sourced from a 150,000 pixel render from Maya and Mental Ray, having been derived from several hundred images shot during the project. Placed in the entrance lobby of the Los Angeles Convention Center, it was supported on a custom freestanding frame, and attracted much attention by the conference attendees. Many viewers took up to 10-15 minutes to walk and scrutinize details of the park along the length of the print, having never witnessed the impact of gigapixel prints.

LINK to HDRILabs News Article

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Gigpixel Print, Siggraph, Yosemite

Digital Storytelling (co-founded by xRez Studio Pricipal Eric Hanson), is an annual seminar on visual effects and story in Oslo, Norway for the last 4 years. In 2009, we staged the first gigapixel photography exhibition adjacent to the event, in the wonderful Filmens Hus complex of the Norwegian Film Institute. Entitled Ekstremfoto: Gigapixel Images in Print, the show contained work from xRez Studio, Kim Baumann-Larsen, and Kai Solberg of both Norwegian and American landscapes. xRez Studio also held a concurrent workshop entitled, “Live-Action Integration” for the local Scandanavian visual effects community. An historic Stave church in the Oslo Norsk Folkemuseum was documented with a variety of techniques, including gigapixel and infrared imaging, HDR acquisition, photo-cloud documentation, polynominal texture mapping or surface carvings, and basic survey for post-production.

LINK to Digital Storytelling Event Site

LINK to Live Action Integration Workshop

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Digital Storytelling, Gigapan, Gigapixel, Gigpixel Print, Oslo, Stave Church

Ars Electronica, the world’s pre-eminent art and technology organization and festival in Linz Austria, recently completed construction of a new and remarkable dedicated building. In 2009, xRez Studio was asked to provide imagery for the January 2009 grand opening of the new Ars Electronica Center building, with our work to be featured within the central immersive Deep Space installation. The space is projected with 8 stitched stereo Barco 2k projectors, resulting in an amazing amount of detail at 4k x 4k. The audience sits on the floor that is also a projection surface or they can view the work from a balcony. Running for a 5 year duration, our work is shown daily as one of 5 featured artists providing content for the high resolution Deep Space projection area. In the first year of the installation 305,000 visitors saw our images in Deep Space. We also spoke and showed work at the Ars Electronica Festival/Human Nature 2009 as a session on Deep Space- Behind The Scenes. We were honored to be featured alongside such remarkable work of fellow digital artists.

Click here to view the embedded video.

LINK to Ars Electronica Deep Space Site

LINK to Ars Electronica Vimeo Page

LINK to Linz Gigapixel Image

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Ars Electronica, Barco, Boston, Deep Space, Gigapixel, Linz, Yosemite

In 2007 Tierra, a top Swedish outdoor clothing manufacturer, made the decision to create a new website that would vividly reflect the companies connection to the outdoors. Tierra understood the value of deeply engaging their customers. They were looking for a way to go a step beyond the status quo of outdoor product photography.

Tierra enlisted the marketing and interactivity expertise of the award-winning Swedish advertising agency Goss. Goss proposed an innovative design that would both engage the customer in a beautiful and “sticky” website to impart Tierra’s unique brand. Echoing Tierra’s relationship to the outdoors, Goss proposed embedding the product photography and catalog into various regions of a large gigapixel landscape. This interface provokes exploration of the landscape, much as their core market will do in the real world with their products: running, hiking and climbing over the landscape in Tierra outdoor gear.

Goss turned to xRez Studio for its imagery, choosing from our large catalog of gigapixel landscape photography to find the image that would perfectly convey it’s client’s message.

LINK to Tierra Site

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Gigapixel, Gigapixel Advertisement, Tierra

xRez Studio has had a longstanding working relationship with both Microsoft Live Labs and Microsoft Research, having supplied them with content and feedback for their innovative and cutting-edge gigapixel viewing technologies such as HD View, Seadragon, and Silverlight Deep Zoom. In addition, Microsoft played a central role acting as the primary sponsor of our 2008 Yosemite Extreme Panoramic Imaging Project, which they have showcased on the Surface multi-touch unit, as well featuring in their Seadragon web showcase.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Seadragon example taken from a single still with the 40 megapixel Hasselblad H3D.

LINK to Seadragon Showcase

LINK to HDView Site

LINK to HDView Sites

LINK to MS Surface Interview

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: HD View, Microsoft, Microsoft Surface, Photosynth, Seadragon

One of the advantages of gigapixel images is the versatility they can provide for a wide range of applications. In 2008, xRez Studio was contracted to provide licensing of several panoramic images for an animated display system for the lobby of the HP Executive Briefing Center in Cupertino, CA. The primary animation work was done by Core Studio of San Francisco, CA.

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Corporate Art, Gigapixel, HP Executive Briefing Center

Gigapixel images can provide stunningly high resolution large format prints, and are a perfect solution for corporate or hospitality-based corporate art installations. In 2008, xRez Studio was contracted to provide a large 12′ long gigapixel print for the main boardroom of the new headquarters of Intech Investment Management LLC in West Palm Beach, Florida. Taken from the Chicago waterfront, the print shows rich detail of each building of the Chicago skyline.

xRez Studio was also hired to provide 3d rendering services for the proposed architectural design of the new facility, designed by renowned architect Yousef Jalali.

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Corporate Art, Gigapixel, Intech

The Digital Catalina Island Project is an ongoing effort to aid research at the USC Wrigley Institute of Environmental Research, a marine biology lab on the island near Two Harbors. The project utilizes digital 3d modeling of the island for scientific visualization purposes. Technologies used and planned include gigapixel panoramic photography, terrain modeling, side-scan sonar bathymetry seafloor modeling, Xfrog digital vegetation, and Massive AI-driven wildlife, with the goal of creating a working research asset where ecological oucomes can be evaluated from various input data.

LINK to Wrigley Institute of Environmental Research WIKI

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Bathymetry, Catalina Island, Gigapixel, Massive Software, Scientific Visualization, Terrain Modeling, Two Harbors, USC, Wrigley Institute of Environmental Research, Xfrog

“On Great White Wings” is an historic documentary produced by Aperture Films which re-creates the key events of the Wright Brothers development of the airplane. It is installed at the National Park Service’s Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historic Park visitor center in Dayton, Ohio. xRez Studio principal Eric Hanson acted as Visual Effects Supervisor on the film and was contracted as primary vendor for the visual effects, which consisted of over 80 shots of green screen composites, digital environments, and digital period aircraft animation. See a related VR flight viewer project utilizing assets from the film for interactive park interpretation HERE.

Click here to view the embedded video.

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Aviation, Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historic Park, Wright Brothers

“Magnificent Desolation” is a 3D IMAX feature produced by Play Tone/Tom Hanks which faithfully re-creates the Apollo moon landings in stereo 4k high resolution. xRez Studio was sub-contracted from prime VFX vendor Sassoon Film Design for a difficult hero shot which depicts flying through Hadley Rile, a deep trench visited by the Apollo 15 astronauts. Utilizing early panoramic overlapped Hasselblad shots from the astronauts, the work consisted of a massive camera projection of 4k scans of original NASA panoramic photographs laid over photogrammetry-derived lunar terrain. xRez contractor Paul Haman provided skilled expertise, and Jonathan Banta of Sassoon did final rendering and comp.

Click here to view the embedded video.

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Apollo 15, Hadley Rile, IMAX, Magnificent Desolation, Moon Landing, Photogrammetry, s3d, Stereoscopic

A highlight of the 2009 Art Basel Miami Beach event was Cartier’s premiere of David Lynch’s fulldome film on “Diamonds, Gold and Dreams”, shown in a 60′ custom dome pavilion. xRez Studio was contracted to produce the interstitial imagery to play between his hourly showings. Resonating with the theme of Indian Raj influenced jewelry, spherical panoramas were adapted from various prior xRez Studio shoots in Indian temples. Additional abstract images were authored in 3D in Maya of the Eiffel Tower and period French architecture.

©xRez Studio, 2010. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Art Basel, Cartier, David Lynch, Fulldome

Our 2010 Showreel is a broad overview of the work we have been producing.

Click here to view the embedded video.

©xRez Studio, 2009. | Permalink | |
Post tags: 3d Animation, Camera Mapping, Camera Projection, Gigapixel, HDRI, LIDAR, Photogrammetry, Polynomial Texture Mapping

A visual tone poem designed for the emerging fulldome planetarium format, “Crossing Worlds” utilizes spherical photography from the American desert west to immerse the viewer in a transcendent spectrum of austere landscapes. xRez Studio’s first dome format film, “Crossing Worlds” won a coveted “Domie” for Best Design in a Dome at DomeFest 09 in Albuquerque, NM. The beautiful soundtrack was provided by Marconi Union in the UK, and Paul Buehler at the Glendale College Dome provided key assistance in production. Recently, it was shown at The Elumenati GeoDome theatre with 350.org at the COP15 Global Climate Summit in Copenhagen in 2009.

“Throughout COP15 and the KlimaForum, Crossing Worlds served to remind audiences of how extraordinary our home planet is. It was the perfect complement to the data-driven visualizations of global changes, deepening appreciation for the critical importance of the natural world for sustaining us emotionally as well as physically” said David McConville, co-founder of The Elumenati.

If you represent a fulldome theater and are interested in licensing this movie for your venue please feel free to contact us.

You can see the dome master on our Vimeo page, or to get a better sense of the fulldome experience, you may view it in spherical interactive flash below:

Click and Drag to Pan

©xRez Studio, 2009. | Permalink | |
Post tags: 350.org, Canyon, COP15 Global Climate Summit, Crossing Worlds, Domie, Elumenati, Fulldome, Glendale Community College, Global Climate Summit, KlimaForum, Native American, Paul Buehler, Spherical Time-lapse

The Colorado River through the Grand Canyon is the life blood of the Western United States, both spiritually and literally.

Grand Canyon By Nature: River of Life shows the story of the Grand in stunning visual artistry as we join a journey through the heart of one of the planet’s greatest wonders. It’s a journey of adventure — and a metaphor of our journey of life.

Grand Canyon By Nature: River of Life features stunning original film footage, shot in High Definition with state of the art digital equipment, combined with the innovative Fulldome Theatrical Presentation — offering viewers immersion in 360º surround high definition panoramas.

Borrowing from the classic 1982 film, “Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance”, the presentation creates a visual tone poem of the river’s flow, form and energy – mirroring our flow through time and relationships.

Grand Canyon By Nature: River of Life is a collaboration between professional fine art photographer and filmmaker, Vance Howard, and visual effects artists Eric Hanson and Greg Downing of xRez Studio. Post-production work is currently progressing as sponsorship and delivery strategies develop.

Images © Vance Howard.

LINK to Grand Canyon by Nature Site

©xRez Studio, 2009. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Fulldome, Gigapixel, Grand Canyon, Grand Canyon By Nature, Time-lapse

Just a short drive from the southern entrance route to Yosemite National Park, is a remarkable but less-visited deep-carved river gorge in the Sierra Nevada foothills. In spring of 2008, xRez Studio was contracted by BLM park manager Tracy Rowlands to shoot the beautiful San Joaquin River Gorge in gigapixel resolution for the Bureau of Land Management’s visitor center, where a 14′ long high-resolution print was subsequently installed in a new visitor center later that summer. Showing the full wildflower bloom that graces it’s volcanic table mountain slopes, the gigapixel print shows the nature of the region at it’s prime, but remains viewable throughout the year for it’s visitors. Shooting from a survey flight with pilot Greg Rowlands, we were able to capture an aerial view of the spring bloom as well.

©xRez Studio, 2009. | Permalink | |
Post tags: BLM, Gigapixel, Gigpixel Print, Print, San Joaquin River Gorge

One problem surrounding the needs of cultural heritage research is the acquisition of static on-site photography, which may limit perceived detail in the artifacts later upon inspection. One method which allows re-lighting of artifacts during research is HP Labs researcher Tom Malzbender’s work in polynomial texture mapping, or PTM. With some consultation with Tom and the PTM pioneers at Cultural Heritage Imaging in fall of 2008, xRez Studio visited several key Native American rock art sites in the Colorado Plateau, among them Capitol Reef, Horseshoe Canyon, Sego Canyon, and the Rochester and Sinbad panels. Utilizing gigapixel image capture, multi-spectral infrared imaging, photo-cloud imaging, and PTM technique, xRez was able to test a working methodology for site capture of sensitive rock art resources which far surpass simple static photography. Several successful results were made, and sample interactive PTM’s are viewable as Java applets. Also utilized was Jon Harman’s excellent DStretch, which provides color matrix de-colleration to rock art images, helping reveal lost detail from weathering or the use of disprate painting substrates.

By viewing the PTM below you can see how it is much easier to see the details of an image where damage has occured.

©xRez Studio, 2009. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Capitol Reef, Colorado Plateau, Gigapixel, Horseshoe Canyon, Multi-spectral, Native American, Polynomial Texture Mapping, PTM, Rochester, Rock Art, Sego Canyon, Sinbad

©xRez Studio, 2009. | Permalink | |
Post tags: Gigapixel, GIS, Real Estate