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Animation Arts Computing 

Computer graphics of a bygone era

Werner Randelshofer, a visual computing student at ETH Zurich, has taken it upon himself to archive digital artwork from early computer systems that are no longer with us, such as the Commodore Amiga, IBM clones, the Atari ST and many more.  The site does a great job of archiving systems by type, and artist.  Beside the abundance of game stills and animations, there are some classic demos on display, converted for modern viewing, including an old favourite of mine, Automated Light by James M. Robinson.  Randelshofer took the time to…

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Playstation interview with Sony Canada’s Matt Levitan

This past week, Sony held a public Holiday preview event at the Hummingbird Sony Centre for the Performing Arts, showcasing not only a number of games aiming for the holiday season and beyond, but the PS3 Move and 3D in action. While there, the biggest lineup was probably for Gran Turismo 5, which had a lot of people waiting to get their hands on it.  We got a chance to talk with Matt Levitan, Director of Marketing / Public Relations for Sony Computer Entertainment Canada, about how the Move is…

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Blurring the line between production and post production: NewTek demonstrates Virtual Cinematography in Lightwave

Newtek has long been one of the most innovative digital content creation companies out there. Originally an Amiga based company, with products such as DigiView, the first colour digitizer for a computer, and the Video Toaster which gave users the power of a live switching studio via an add on card , they’ve continued to innovate through the years. This year at SIGGRAPH is no different, as Rob Powers, VP of 3D development took the stage to demonstrate the virtual cinematography capabilities of Lightwave 3D 10, the latest version of…

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PS3 E3 2010 keynote highlights

The Sony keynote at E3 2010 stood in stark contrast to Microsoft’s and in some ways it’s like a mirror universe version.  Which console wore the goatee this year is entirely dependent upon your fanboy predilections.  Why is that?  In the past, Microsoft more than Sony caught a lot of heat for paying for exclusive content on cross-platform titles, though that’s their prerogative. This year was Sony’s time to shine with additional content from titles like Medal of Honor, Dead Space 2 (including compatibility with the Move – more on…

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Ridley Scott on Alien Prequel

It’s no secret that Ridley Scott has been working on making a new Alien prequel. Originally slated to be a film directed by Scott protege Carl Erik Rinsch, Ridley decided to pick up the reins himself, so that Rinsch can spend the time making Small.   Since taking on the director’s role for the movie, rumour has it that the prequel will actually be a trilogy. There’s also new details on where the focus is going to be in the prequel… It’s set in 2085, about 30 years before Sigourney [Weaver’s character…

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Why Android Market Has No Games

After a few days of Nexus One ownership I began looking for games, preparing to be hypnotized by games as amazing as the Nexus One itself. After my first search, the list of games I found was the following: Robo Defense Lite (an ok tower defense game), Labyrinth Lite, Poke A Mole, Pinball and BreakTheBlocks Lite. The list of games after the top five were similar and included many more brick breaker, whack-a-mole, snake and pong games. Underwhelmed hardly describes how I felt…

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Bell bringing 3D Masters to Canada

Bell announced today that it will broadcast a 3D HD version of the Masters golf tournament, at least in a limited time frame.  This marks the first 3D HD broadcast in Canada since January’s Consumer Electronics Show rode the Avatar wave to make 3D an important check box in the tech specs. Bell will be showing 2 hours of the tournament in 3D, between 5pm and 7pm Eastern, on channel 1000.  To watch it, you have to be a Bell HD subscriber with the right package, and don’t bother looking…

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Rightware unveils Kanzi 3D developers tool

Late last year, upstart Rightware acquired futuremark’s Mobile and Embedded Business Unit, and out of that comes the Kanzi development platform. Aimed at providing a complete pipeline from 3D content creation to deployment to mobile and embedded devices that support OpenGL ES 2.x and 1.x, it looks to be very scalable.  What also makes it very interesting is that the 3D format they support, COLLADA, is supported by just about every 3D animation and modeling application out there. Rightwave will unveil more about Kanzi during Mobile World Congress starting February…

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Flickr Generates Virtual Cities

Last year, Microsoft released its Photosynth application, which allows users to build 3D environments based on their photo libraries.  Now, computer scientists at the University of Washington’s Graphics and Imaging Laboratory have one upped Photosynth by using the same imaging algorithms to create full, virtual cities of Venice, Rome and the Croation city of Dubrovnik, by analyzing thousands of photos posted on Flickr. The same labs created the algorithms for the Photosynth software, but have now been drastically enhanced to take pools of photos ranging up to the 100’s of…

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Ash The Potato

This is part of an animation side project I’ve been working on. The site is finished, and the first couple of animations are in the can, so I thought I’d post the latest here for (what I hope will be) your enjoyment.  The website is ashrants.com For those who are curious, the animation is done in the venerable Lightwave 3D, with an able assist in the lip sync department by a program called Magpie Pro.  Magpie makes lip syncing dialogue easy, and can output for just about any 2D or…

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