Around the World - Everything you wanted to know about "silicone".

<b>Around the World</b> - Everything you wanted to know about

Everything you wanted to know about "silicone", but were afraid 
to ask (C) Paul youngster 
Продолжение.________________________________ three-dimensional 
scanning. At present, as well as and in the foreseeable future, 
naiboleesovershennoe: Software for data processing, we obtain a 
three-dimensional scanners that focuses on working stantsiiSGI. 
These programs are designed to re-shat a complex math-ki 
complex tasks, including the US-incomes, widespread 
redundancies, spline approximation and adequate texturing. 
Therefore, they are simply doomed to use in the production of 
Hollywood special effects, requiring For example, the creation 
of virtual twins for real actors.



     Three-dimensional animation and

        Motion Capture.


   Workstation software implements the SGI
complex and sophisticated ways to control three-dimensional 
characters, including a Motion Capture (literally - "grasping 
movement), which represents the technology of removing kinetic 
information from real objects, such as live actors. In recent 
developments in this area is no longer a need enmesh

Actors sverhmehanizmami and wires, hampered their mobility. 
Instead, the key parts of their musculoskeletal

apparatus (elbows, knees, ankles, etc.) are relatively easy to 
visually recognizing labels. The scene was withdrawn 
simultaneously by multiple cameras, and then made

videotape analysis of software, which
draws conclusions about the spatial
moving each of the stickers
The special heuristics can avoid them
entanglement, if they periodically overlap, as well as
likely to fill the missing information about
those times when the labels to be visible
one or more kamer.Poluchennye so the trajectory
may be associated with body parts simulated computer artist 
character (And do not necessarily

anthropomorphic). Impressive
results are obtained as
when removing the same way
information about facial motility
actor.

   Some programs offer the user a much more
simple and cheap but also very
useful mechanism for grasping movements, which does not require
no additional hardware and works
something like this: the script animated film Cinderella at the 
right time and in the right place the heroine must be made

make a curtsy desired depth.
The user is given the opportunity
correlate with this multi-component motion, which consists of
bow, squat, and so forth, moving the mouse on the table in
During the live monitoring of the behavior of other characters. 
Often, this approach is much more efficient traditional routine 
tasks of key personnel. 

   In addition to the Motion Capture, in the silicone world, 
"there are many other ways to communicate natural movement of 
the object. What can you say about the animation of virtual 
dancers with choreographic notation Benes? Some programs allow

visually programmed behavior of some objects, depending on the 
status of other (units sagging anchor chain, rising gas bubbles 
in the water) and also consider the impact of natural phenomena 
(gravity, laminar or turbulent wind, inertia, friction, elastic 
deformation, etc.). It is proposed many different ways

procedural animation of
specific objects, like flocks of
birds and shoals of fish, clouds of dust,
fallen leaves, the waves on the water surface and creeping fog.
Company WaveFront developed
something like a virtual module
cutting and sewing of digital, which allows digital artists to 
create clothing to his will, realistically tight body, 
fluttering in the wind or gather

according to the movements of its wearer
character. There is even a possibility
manage the percentages of fat and muscle in different parts of 
the body animated characters in order to properly simulate 
their behavior under forces of inertia or gravity.



         Visualization.


   Assessing the quality of visualization - a subjective 
question, but agree, it would be surprising

if software
SGI to lead and not here. AND
it really is leading. Set "silikonovskih" software package 
offers a variety of options for the most advanced to date 
visualization technologies high-end, combining trace

ray (ray-tracing - a method that can take into account such 
optical effects as the multiple refraction and reflection of 
light in a curved translucent objects, depth of field, 
aberration, and even Newton expansion of the color components; 
imagine, for example, Glitter teaspoon in a glass of water on a 
bright summer day casts shadows and highlights on a light 
windowsill) and radiositi (Radiocity - how photorealistic 
modeling of the phenomenon, associated with distributed sources 
of light and diffusion light scattering, for example, an 
observer can expect see dull orange glow

from basketball, lying
on a concrete slab). It is a daunting task, with computational
point of view, is to receive
realistic blurring rapidly moving object in a separate frame 
(temporal antialiasing or motion blur), as if he

this was filmed a movie camera
or a camera with a central
or shtorochnym gate (which, incidentally, not quite one and the
too!). To do this, there are algorithms that in order to obtain
most quality blur
interpret the three-dimensional animated scene as a static 
four-dimensional. However, programs SGI to deal with it. Most

advanced software development can even simulate optical 
illusions related distorted image of hot air, according to the 
laws optics to simulate the solar and

lunar rainbow, glowing circles
around street lights during the
snowfall and much more.


    Computer holograms.


   Yes, yes, even for this on SGI
there is a special hardware and software.


    Image processing.


   In some software packages, especially those that are 
designed for nonlinear editing, found a practical application 
of the latest achievements in theory pattern recognition. For 
example, the user can put a picture in front of a real actor's 
virtual prison bars and to ensure that its

the face of it fell relatively
realistic ten.Raspolagaya workstation SGI, can be a 
semi-autonomous mode for a couple of minutes to repeat the 
immortal feat Eisenstein, snyavshego first

the history of film color film by
own repainting
waving black-and-white flag in red. You can align the sequence 
of frames on key sites. For example,

there is footage of the prince
Charles, who is so frisky and
nonstop prance on his horse, his face struggling to consider, 
besides in the filming of the operator for some reason, shaking 
hands. Attempting to isolate in each frame of the original 
image face Prince Charles as a key

object, it transforms
the story so that
key object was always in a specific location frame, such as in 
the center. 


   Alternative technologies

   three-dimensional modeling.


   Under such is the condition to understand all the ways to 
specify the actual volume of bodies other than their 
approximation of the multi-faceted, spline or polynomial

surfaces, as well as the logical operating with spatial 
primitives (that is to say their union, intersection and 
subtraction). These methods there is much more than it seems 
computer artist, of course, if it works not on the SGI. 
Consider, at least, so called blobs (blobs - something

like "bubbles"). Mathematically
this isothermal surface
surrounding the point at different temperatures. And for 
computer artist blobs represent something like a sort of 
biomass - infinitely soft and ductile

material, which is particularly appropriate to use when 
creating a living animated characters, likable and 
warm-blooded. After all, even Lord God chose to sculpt people 
of pliable clay, not cubes with the cylinders! Another example 
of such technology could serve bill kub.Eto three-dimensional 
array of data, consisting of voxels, the essence of spatial 
pixels, and it is intended to simulate three-dimensional

objects of unlimited complexity, especially if significant
provide information on their
internal structure. It is clear that
organization of such an array with
acceptable spatial resolution requires a huge amount of RAM, 
and its treatment at a reasonable rate - a huge performance and 
bandwidth ability. It's up to the recent

time hindered democratization bill cubes, and application 
software for work with them actively used only for analysis and 
visualization of medical data, coming from nuclear magnetic

resonators (scanners), but
apparently, in the near future, Cuba will join the bill of 
exchange creative tools and digital artists will

as actively used for
creating special effects.


      Broadcast server.


   It is still unfamiliar to our
hearing the phrase is associated with
older models of the family "silicones" - menacing machine,
that the full allowance of ammunition
not much inferior in size
SM-4, and spread
means for television revolution of the same magnitude as the 
transition from celluloid film to video.Buduchi connected to a 
computer network, Challenge makes a television studio in the 
computer center, a routine work with the videos - in

exciting and fun
like a computer game. Disk array server studio
can store the digitized video of broadcast quality for several 
days in advance. When mounting is unnecessary

repeated rewinding tapes
For access to any movie made instantaneously,
and with frame accuracy.
When you create special effects with the layered overdubs Video 
engineer does not have to limit the complexity of the project 
for technical reasons and dry your head above combinatorial 
problems optimize the number of rewrites, because if the fifth 
copy of the analog video format Betacam conventionally 
considered unsuitable for broadcasting, the digital way of such 
a restriction, of course, does not exist. The emergence of 
broadcast servers Challenge gave opportunity to organize studio 
of cable television, providing its customers video on demand ", 
ie any film starts to go on home

TV user immediately
after he made a telephone
call (or time ordered)!
Such a service already available to several tens of thousands
people.


       SGI and the Internet ...


   However, here the author's time and
the honor of knowing, because this theme, as
Perhaps no other, deserves a separate article.
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