I’m a bit late to the party, noticing that Mikko Kallinen, co-founder of Praxis, wrote a series of articles presenting an overview of the tech involved in the rendering engine he’s writing.
Shading and atmospheric effects in Praxis’ engine
The results are visually impressive, so it’s very unfortunate he doesn’t give more details. This video in particular, showcasing real-time atmospheric effects is outstanding.
In a much less detailed way than the cinematography analysis I previously mentioned, yet still very interesting, the film-making site Mentorless covers the visual composition used in the independent film Primer. The article, The Art of Framing Primer, outlines in particular how simple techniques allowed to make up for the extremely low budget (the film was completed for $7000).
Revision is a big demoparty held each year at Easter, in Saarbrücken, Germany. Whenever possible, it is a custom in the demoscene to release a production dedicated to officially announce upcoming parties: an invitation.
Last weekend at the Ultimate Meeting, the invitation to Revision 2014 was presented. The quality of invitations can vary wildly, from rushed and uninspired to works of art (Kings of the playground or You Should are two examples that come to mind); this new invitation is rather on the higher end of the spectrum. Aiming for epic feeling, and nailing it, it imagines a time when the mostly unheard off sub culture has become a dominant one and the reason for a major Super Bowl like event in a Tron like set.
Enjoy it and its dry wit jokes. :)
On his blog, director Ron Doucet presents a thorough analysis of the visual constructions in the Pixar animation film, The Incredibles. The articles include breakdowns of complete scenes in term of visual components. It is a great read on how the picture can be designed to support the storytelling.
Base jumper Subterminallyill posted on his Vimeo page a very impressive, immersive (seemingly a helmet mounted GoPro) slow motion footage of his last jump off a cliff, which as it happens didn’t go well at all. As the seconds slowly pass by, the moment almost feels like a soft, skimming interaction. But as soon as the actual speed is revealed, it shows a brutal, violent accident happening in a split second.
Cliff Strike 11/24/2013 from Subterminallyill on Vimeo.
The compressive sensing blog Nuit-Blanche reports this publication: First-photon imaging. The technique allows to capture depth and (limited) reflectivity information using only a small number of photons (virtually in the dark).
Abstract:
Imagers that use their own illumination can capture 3D structure and reflectivity information. With photon-counting detectors, images can be acquired at extremely low photon fluxes. To suppress the Poisson noise inherent in low-flux operation, such imagers typically require hundreds of detected photons per pixel for accurate range and reflectivity determination. We introduce a low-flux imaging technique, called first-photon imaging, which is a computational imager that exploits spatial correlations found in real-world scenes and the physics of low-flux measurements. Our technique recovers 3D structure and reflectivity from the first detected photon at each pixel. We demonstrate simultaneous acquisition of sub-pulse duration range and 4-bit reflectivity information in the presence of high background noise. First-photon imaging may be of considerable value to both microscopy and remote sensing.
In this (slightly over) one hour talk, 1½ hour including Q&A, John Carmack walks through the physics of light, the early days of rendering, the current state of the art, and the direction it is headed at. In short: until we can afford path tracing, we’re approximating it.