Happy New Year and Merry Christmas!среда, 30 декабря 2009 г.
четверг, 10 декабря 2009 г.
Anything3D News!
Hello and good day to you!
Christmas is coming and the companies set discounts for their products. Anything 3D Corp. sets the unbelievable discounts for their software!
Please, feel free to visit the home website www.Anything3D.com and see the great discounts of the A3D Christmas Sale!
Christmas is coming and the companies set discounts for their products. Anything 3D Corp. sets the unbelievable discounts for their software!
Please, feel free to visit the home website www.Anything3D.com and see the great discounts of the A3D Christmas Sale!
вторник, 24 ноября 2009 г.
ProFORMA 3D Scanner builds 3D Textured Models
ProFORMA is a 3D scanning system that uses a regular webcam to capture an object and automatically build a 3D textured model from the real object. All the user needs to do is hold an object in front of the camera and rotate it around while the computer calculates all the information needed to represent it in 3D. ProFORMA, meaning “Probabilistic Feature-based On-line Rapid Model Acquisition” was designed by Qi Pan at the Cambridge University and both Linux and Windows versions of the test software are being made available soon.
The system appears to work well from what I can see in the video. Although they are not high resolution meshes showing all the fine details, they still capture enough information to represent a 3D model that looks good. Check out more images and a video below showing the system in action. The video also shows an augmented image where the user can rotate the physical model and the 3D model be rendered in real time.
The system appears to work well from what I can see in the video. Although they are not high resolution meshes showing all the fine details, they still capture enough information to represent a 3D model that looks good. Check out more images and a video below showing the system in action. The video also shows an augmented image where the user can rotate the physical model and the 3D model be rendered in real time.
понедельник, 16 ноября 2009 г.
Windows 7 could hasten touch-screen computers
Hey all! For today I've found the article by Edward C. Baig, USA TODAY. Touch-screen monitor! Wow! It's my dream!
Most every computer user is a whiz at pointing and clicking with a mouse. If Microsoft (MSFT) has a say, you'll become equally adept at touching and tapping the PC screen directly with your fingers.
As part of the company's recent launch of Windows 7, the vastly improved successor to Windows Vista, Microsoft hopes to usher in a new era for touch-based computing. And that means smudging your paw prints all over the surface of the screen – to finger paint, play music, spin a globe or enlarge and rotate photos.
VIDEO: Watch the touch features of Windows 7 in action
TV: Tune in to Baig on ABC's 'America This Morning' Fridays 4:30 a.m. ET or check local listings
Multitouch, or the ability to manipulate the display screen with one or more fingers, is built directly into Microsoft's latest operating system. "We believe in touch," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says.
You'll need hardware with special touch-capable screens. Acer, Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Lenovo, Sony, Toshiba and other PC makers have or will shortly trot out touch-ready computers with Windows 7.
TOUCHING: Three multitouch models get a look
With the technology fused into Windows 7, PC companies and software developers can apply their own touches on top of the operating system.
On HP's TouchSmart 600t all-in-one PC, for example, you can tap tiles to launch Twitter and recipe applications. In a Rhapsody music application, you can search for an artist or song by "writing" the name directly on the screen with your fingers.
The SimpleTap feature on Lenovo's ThinkPad T400s laptop lets you turn on Wi-Fi, alter volume and brightness and handle other basic functions by tapping onscreen tiles.
"Direct manipulation is easier to interact," maintains Ian LeGrow, a group product manager on the Windows team at Microsoft. "Our task is to make these habit-forming."
Such a task won't come easy. Because of years of doing it one way, you may well be inclined to reach for the mouse and keyboard even when there's a touch alternative.
While the ergonomics may seem unnatural at first, the truth is that folks touch computer screens all the time, getting cash at an ATM, receiving boarding passes at the airport or printing pictures at a photo kiosk. And you're a master of touch if you carry an iPhone or certain other smartphones. HP has suggested that touch is great for "walk-up computing" – quickie behaviors such as browsing photos or consulting a family calendar.
"The great thing about touch is you don't have to teach anybody," says John Cook, a marketing vice president at HP. Joe Roberts, an executive vice president at Corel, adds, "I think it's unlearning –that you don't need your mouse and keyboard to do this."
The demand for touch-screen PCs is rising. Amy Leong, research director at the Gartner research firm, says the number of touch-screen PC units shipped will surpass 6 million in 2010, nearly quadrupling 2008 shipments. She says about 10% of the new PC models coming this year will support touch technology. According to iSuppli forecasts, the global market for touch-screens will reach $6.4 billion by 2013, up from $3.4 billion in 2008.
'In search of an application'
It'll take time for the software to catch up. "Touch is technology in search of an application right now," says Michael Cherry, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, an independent research firm.
Some software – digital drawing programs, for instance – lend themselves naturally to touch. For example, Corel Paint it! Touch is a new $40 program designed specifically with touch in mind. You can take a photograph and apply a painting style to it (watercolor, impressionist, etc.) by tapping the screen.
SpaceClaim is about to bring out sophisticated 3D modeling software for engineers that exploits multitouch. It's not for consumers, but it shows off the possibilities. You can pan, rotate and zoom in on 3D models. "It's like something out of Minority Report," says Blake Courter, co-founder of the Concord, Mass., company.
Ubisoft has been previewing R.U.S.E., a wartime strategy game that will be among the first to take advantage of multitouch in Windows 7.
But turning the mouse and keyboard into benchwarmers is, at best, a touch-and-go proposition. In fact, touch is meant to augment and complement the mouse and keyboard rather than supplant them.
"Some things are just inherently easier to do with touch," says Al Monro, CEO of NextWindow in New Zealand, a supplier of optical multitouch displays for major manufacturers. For example, rather than click through menu commands to resize fonts on the screen, you can just touch the text directly to make it happen. From Microsoft's point of view, touch is one of the "natural user interfaces" – vision, ink and speech are others – that reflect a longtime passion of co-founder Bill Gates. The touch capabilities built into the latest Windows share elements with the 30-inch interactive tabletop computers known as Microsoft Surface, which Microsoft first deployed in 2008.
Early Surface tables are in hotels, cruise ships, retail stores and other businesses. From the tabletop, you can order drinks or display maps. Eventually, some cheaper version of the tables might show up in your living room; you or the kids might use them to play games or splatter digital photos across the surface.
Touch has barely scratched the surface on home computers, but putting the capability in the operating system ought to make it more accessible to consumers – and it opens up all sorts of possibilities for programmers. "I think it helps any technology get more popular if it's included in Windows," Ballmer says.
There are still challenges. Take price. "If it costs me an extra $20, I'll probably get (touch)," Monro says. "If it's an extra 500 bucks, probably not."
Dell (DELL) says the rough premium on its touch-ready Studio 17 notebook will be about $100 over a similar system without touch. The Lenovo premium is about $400. If touch machines gain traction, you can expect prices to fall.
Microsoft has been championing touch in Tablet PCs for some time. But though useful for students who take handwritten notes or among business users who must fill out forms, the machines barely make a blip among the masses. Tablets use a digital pen or stylus. That's not the case with the new crop of mainstream-oriented touch PCs.
Despite the push from Microsoft, the main impetus behind touch these days, at least for ordinary folks, comes from rival Apple. "The iPhone is the real kicker to the touch industry," says Amichai Ben-David, CEO of Israel-based touch-screen hardware maker N-trig.
For its part, Apple (AAPL) has resisted the kind of touch-screen computers now emerging from the PC camp. But there's speculation, if no actual confirmation from Apple, that the company might unveil a multitouch-based tablet computer relatively soon.
In the meantime, Apple is marketing touch technology in other ways, apart from the iPhone or iPod Touch. The entire top surface of its brand-new $69 Magic Mouse is a multitouch sensor. You can run your finger across the surface of the Bluetooth mouse to scroll in any direction. Or you can use swiping gestures with two fingers to navigate Web pages or to browse pictures. It takes a little getting used to, and you don't get the full multitouch experience as on an iPhone.
Let your fingers do the talking
To help make touch easier to grasp on PCs, Microsoft has enlarged icons in Windows 7 for the Start Menu, Taskbar and Windows Explorer. In lieu of the mouse, you can open and shut programs by directly tapping or double-tapping with your fingers. You can summon a virtual onscreen keyboard, too, though it's nowhere near as natural as typing on a physical keyboard.
You can also zoom in on a picture by spreading two fingers apart, or zoom out by pinching them back together. And you can "right-click" by holding down one finger while you tap the screen with a second finger.
Windows 7 can support up to 100 touch points, Microsoft says, though there are hardware constraints (screen size) and the genetic reality of having just so many fingers with which to perform gestures. The behavior on the screen changes depending on how many fingers you use.
Microsoft is making available a free Windows 7 Touch Pack with a Surface-like photo collage application and a few simple games. The idea is for you to become more proficient at using gestures. In Blackboard, you're meant to solve a puzzle by dragging and rotating gears, seesaws and other game pieces with your fingers against a virtual blackboard. In Garden Pond, the object is to move origami around a pond by creating ripples with your fingers.
If touch ever takes off in a big way, consumers may have to shop differently. Just as you now might eyeball a screen and bang away at a keyboard when comparing models side by side, you may eventually also test a new variable: how responsive a screen is to your touch.
The sense of touch on home PCs is still evolving. But a strong commitment by Microsoft via Windows 7, along with improvements to touch-screen hardware, makes it intriguing technology whose time may have finally come.
Most every computer user is a whiz at pointing and clicking with a mouse. If Microsoft (MSFT) has a say, you'll become equally adept at touching and tapping the PC screen directly with your fingers.
As part of the company's recent launch of Windows 7, the vastly improved successor to Windows Vista, Microsoft hopes to usher in a new era for touch-based computing. And that means smudging your paw prints all over the surface of the screen – to finger paint, play music, spin a globe or enlarge and rotate photos.
VIDEO: Watch the touch features of Windows 7 in action
TV: Tune in to Baig on ABC's 'America This Morning' Fridays 4:30 a.m. ET or check local listings
Multitouch, or the ability to manipulate the display screen with one or more fingers, is built directly into Microsoft's latest operating system. "We believe in touch," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says.
You'll need hardware with special touch-capable screens. Acer, Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Lenovo, Sony, Toshiba and other PC makers have or will shortly trot out touch-ready computers with Windows 7.
TOUCHING: Three multitouch models get a look
With the technology fused into Windows 7, PC companies and software developers can apply their own touches on top of the operating system.
On HP's TouchSmart 600t all-in-one PC, for example, you can tap tiles to launch Twitter and recipe applications. In a Rhapsody music application, you can search for an artist or song by "writing" the name directly on the screen with your fingers.
The SimpleTap feature on Lenovo's ThinkPad T400s laptop lets you turn on Wi-Fi, alter volume and brightness and handle other basic functions by tapping onscreen tiles.
"Direct manipulation is easier to interact," maintains Ian LeGrow, a group product manager on the Windows team at Microsoft. "Our task is to make these habit-forming."
Such a task won't come easy. Because of years of doing it one way, you may well be inclined to reach for the mouse and keyboard even when there's a touch alternative.
While the ergonomics may seem unnatural at first, the truth is that folks touch computer screens all the time, getting cash at an ATM, receiving boarding passes at the airport or printing pictures at a photo kiosk. And you're a master of touch if you carry an iPhone or certain other smartphones. HP has suggested that touch is great for "walk-up computing" – quickie behaviors such as browsing photos or consulting a family calendar.
"The great thing about touch is you don't have to teach anybody," says John Cook, a marketing vice president at HP. Joe Roberts, an executive vice president at Corel, adds, "I think it's unlearning –that you don't need your mouse and keyboard to do this."
The demand for touch-screen PCs is rising. Amy Leong, research director at the Gartner research firm, says the number of touch-screen PC units shipped will surpass 6 million in 2010, nearly quadrupling 2008 shipments. She says about 10% of the new PC models coming this year will support touch technology. According to iSuppli forecasts, the global market for touch-screens will reach $6.4 billion by 2013, up from $3.4 billion in 2008.
'In search of an application'
It'll take time for the software to catch up. "Touch is technology in search of an application right now," says Michael Cherry, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, an independent research firm.
Some software – digital drawing programs, for instance – lend themselves naturally to touch. For example, Corel Paint it! Touch is a new $40 program designed specifically with touch in mind. You can take a photograph and apply a painting style to it (watercolor, impressionist, etc.) by tapping the screen.
SpaceClaim is about to bring out sophisticated 3D modeling software for engineers that exploits multitouch. It's not for consumers, but it shows off the possibilities. You can pan, rotate and zoom in on 3D models. "It's like something out of Minority Report," says Blake Courter, co-founder of the Concord, Mass., company.
Ubisoft has been previewing R.U.S.E., a wartime strategy game that will be among the first to take advantage of multitouch in Windows 7.
But turning the mouse and keyboard into benchwarmers is, at best, a touch-and-go proposition. In fact, touch is meant to augment and complement the mouse and keyboard rather than supplant them.
"Some things are just inherently easier to do with touch," says Al Monro, CEO of NextWindow in New Zealand, a supplier of optical multitouch displays for major manufacturers. For example, rather than click through menu commands to resize fonts on the screen, you can just touch the text directly to make it happen. From Microsoft's point of view, touch is one of the "natural user interfaces" – vision, ink and speech are others – that reflect a longtime passion of co-founder Bill Gates. The touch capabilities built into the latest Windows share elements with the 30-inch interactive tabletop computers known as Microsoft Surface, which Microsoft first deployed in 2008.
Early Surface tables are in hotels, cruise ships, retail stores and other businesses. From the tabletop, you can order drinks or display maps. Eventually, some cheaper version of the tables might show up in your living room; you or the kids might use them to play games or splatter digital photos across the surface.
Touch has barely scratched the surface on home computers, but putting the capability in the operating system ought to make it more accessible to consumers – and it opens up all sorts of possibilities for programmers. "I think it helps any technology get more popular if it's included in Windows," Ballmer says.
There are still challenges. Take price. "If it costs me an extra $20, I'll probably get (touch)," Monro says. "If it's an extra 500 bucks, probably not."
Dell (DELL) says the rough premium on its touch-ready Studio 17 notebook will be about $100 over a similar system without touch. The Lenovo premium is about $400. If touch machines gain traction, you can expect prices to fall.
Microsoft has been championing touch in Tablet PCs for some time. But though useful for students who take handwritten notes or among business users who must fill out forms, the machines barely make a blip among the masses. Tablets use a digital pen or stylus. That's not the case with the new crop of mainstream-oriented touch PCs.
Despite the push from Microsoft, the main impetus behind touch these days, at least for ordinary folks, comes from rival Apple. "The iPhone is the real kicker to the touch industry," says Amichai Ben-David, CEO of Israel-based touch-screen hardware maker N-trig.
For its part, Apple (AAPL) has resisted the kind of touch-screen computers now emerging from the PC camp. But there's speculation, if no actual confirmation from Apple, that the company might unveil a multitouch-based tablet computer relatively soon.
In the meantime, Apple is marketing touch technology in other ways, apart from the iPhone or iPod Touch. The entire top surface of its brand-new $69 Magic Mouse is a multitouch sensor. You can run your finger across the surface of the Bluetooth mouse to scroll in any direction. Or you can use swiping gestures with two fingers to navigate Web pages or to browse pictures. It takes a little getting used to, and you don't get the full multitouch experience as on an iPhone.
Let your fingers do the talking
To help make touch easier to grasp on PCs, Microsoft has enlarged icons in Windows 7 for the Start Menu, Taskbar and Windows Explorer. In lieu of the mouse, you can open and shut programs by directly tapping or double-tapping with your fingers. You can summon a virtual onscreen keyboard, too, though it's nowhere near as natural as typing on a physical keyboard.
You can also zoom in on a picture by spreading two fingers apart, or zoom out by pinching them back together. And you can "right-click" by holding down one finger while you tap the screen with a second finger.
Windows 7 can support up to 100 touch points, Microsoft says, though there are hardware constraints (screen size) and the genetic reality of having just so many fingers with which to perform gestures. The behavior on the screen changes depending on how many fingers you use.
Microsoft is making available a free Windows 7 Touch Pack with a Surface-like photo collage application and a few simple games. The idea is for you to become more proficient at using gestures. In Blackboard, you're meant to solve a puzzle by dragging and rotating gears, seesaws and other game pieces with your fingers against a virtual blackboard. In Garden Pond, the object is to move origami around a pond by creating ripples with your fingers.
If touch ever takes off in a big way, consumers may have to shop differently. Just as you now might eyeball a screen and bang away at a keyboard when comparing models side by side, you may eventually also test a new variable: how responsive a screen is to your touch.
The sense of touch on home PCs is still evolving. But a strong commitment by Microsoft via Windows 7, along with improvements to touch-screen hardware, makes it intriguing technology whose time may have finally come.
вторник, 10 ноября 2009 г.
Gimmick or Gee-Whiz: Esquire Augments Reality
A new article by Steve Smith. Found it interesting.
For those looking for the next bright, shiny object to catch their short attention span, augmented reality is it this season. “AR” merges digital/virtual data with the physical world by layering the two together on a computer or mobile display. When a webcam or cell phone can recognize a designated physical object, the view of the object on screen will be “augmented” with a movable 3D rendering, videos or any other kind of digital data overlay.
In their never-ending hunt for ways to reenergize the print environment (especially to the dwindling advertiser pool), magazines are incorporating AR tricks into their pages this year. Last summer, Popular Science offered readers a cover that, when held up to a PC webcam and running the appropriate software, would superimpose computer-rendered images on their view of the cover.
This basic AR technique is being used more robustly in the December issue of Esquire, in which the Robert Downey Jr. cover and about half a dozen interior pages will use the technique. According to an AP report on the issue, when held up to a webcam, the cover will show Downey popping out from the page to do some improv antics. Two Lexus auto ads will include AR, and their sponsorship is helping to finance the project. Regular Esquire features like a fashion spread and “Funny Jokes From a Beautiful Woman” will activate clever video accompaniments. Rotating the fashion spread, for instance, makes the models change seasonal garb or suffer a snowball pelting.
The current state of print-to-Web AR techniques suffers the usual weaknesses of blending physical and digital realms. Magazine readers need to be near their laptop or PC, armed with a webcam and the right intermediary software/Web site that recognizes the captured image. Are people browsing a magazine going to be motivated to pull over the laptop or carry their magazine over to the nearest PC to make this bridge? Experience with the ill-fated CueCat hand scanner of the early 2000s suggests that publishers are more enamored of making this bridge than are their readers. Without compelling content to lure the user to the effect, there is little reason for them to make the effort.
Which is not to say that AR has no future with magazines. The cell phone is the obvious answer to the problems that have hampered similar print-to-digital connections in the past. Using a cell phone camera with the right software to activate a print AR experience would be a more likely reflex than firing up the PC webcam. Then again, mobile platforms also require some kind of easy and ubiquitous software bridge that makes the AR connection possible. Magazine publishers have had a hard enough time getting their users to scan ad pages and 2D bar codes with their mobile devices.
The print-to-digital connection continues to fascinate publishers because of its potential appeal for advertisers. But for consumers, unless and until the publisher provides a real reason to bother activating these links, AR, mobile scan codes and the like will continue to offer a bridge to nowhere.
For those looking for the next bright, shiny object to catch their short attention span, augmented reality is it this season. “AR” merges digital/virtual data with the physical world by layering the two together on a computer or mobile display. When a webcam or cell phone can recognize a designated physical object, the view of the object on screen will be “augmented” with a movable 3D rendering, videos or any other kind of digital data overlay.
In their never-ending hunt for ways to reenergize the print environment (especially to the dwindling advertiser pool), magazines are incorporating AR tricks into their pages this year. Last summer, Popular Science offered readers a cover that, when held up to a PC webcam and running the appropriate software, would superimpose computer-rendered images on their view of the cover.
This basic AR technique is being used more robustly in the December issue of Esquire, in which the Robert Downey Jr. cover and about half a dozen interior pages will use the technique. According to an AP report on the issue, when held up to a webcam, the cover will show Downey popping out from the page to do some improv antics. Two Lexus auto ads will include AR, and their sponsorship is helping to finance the project. Regular Esquire features like a fashion spread and “Funny Jokes From a Beautiful Woman” will activate clever video accompaniments. Rotating the fashion spread, for instance, makes the models change seasonal garb or suffer a snowball pelting.
The current state of print-to-Web AR techniques suffers the usual weaknesses of blending physical and digital realms. Magazine readers need to be near their laptop or PC, armed with a webcam and the right intermediary software/Web site that recognizes the captured image. Are people browsing a magazine going to be motivated to pull over the laptop or carry their magazine over to the nearest PC to make this bridge? Experience with the ill-fated CueCat hand scanner of the early 2000s suggests that publishers are more enamored of making this bridge than are their readers. Without compelling content to lure the user to the effect, there is little reason for them to make the effort.
Which is not to say that AR has no future with magazines. The cell phone is the obvious answer to the problems that have hampered similar print-to-digital connections in the past. Using a cell phone camera with the right software to activate a print AR experience would be a more likely reflex than firing up the PC webcam. Then again, mobile platforms also require some kind of easy and ubiquitous software bridge that makes the AR connection possible. Magazine publishers have had a hard enough time getting their users to scan ad pages and 2D bar codes with their mobile devices.
The print-to-digital connection continues to fascinate publishers because of its potential appeal for advertisers. But for consumers, unless and until the publisher provides a real reason to bother activating these links, AR, mobile scan codes and the like will continue to offer a bridge to nowhere.
среда, 4 ноября 2009 г.
Volumetric 3D display
The High-Tech comes to our life day-be-day. Now it is new and inbelievable, but a couple of years later it will be must-have item in every home. Why noy? ;)
During the CEATEC trade fair in Tokyo, Sony unveiled a volumetric 3D display. The cylindrical glass body with a diameter of 13 centimeters and 27 centimeters in height are placed small LED corresponding to the presentation of the image. LED-s are controlled by 24 bits - probably at 8 bits per color - and reach a resolution of 96 × 128 image points. On the surface, everything looks like a modest, but the image of the presented video clips makes a decent impression.
The manufacturer has not provided information on the principles of operation of the display, but it can be assumed that followed was the rotating cylinder form with its embedded LED-RGB. LED grid that is rotated so fast that it is imperceptible to the human eye. When the market changes the brightness of LEDs, and thus presented an image. Volumetric display with a similar operating principle has been developed by students in the research project Felix3D.
Walking around a cylindrical screen, we can see from all the currently presented image of the object - and this without any special glasses three-dimensional. Sony uses ready-made 3D images or create 3D presentation of images showing objects from different perspectives. During this fair events for volumetric display was presented, inter alia, the form of comics, head, brain and models of cars. As explained in an interview, acting as President of Sony Ryoji Chubachi, shown in the display is only a prototype, whose areas of application are still completely open. He gave an example of application in science and research, and Sony Japan's website refers to medical applications, technology, Digital Signage, online stores, virtual three-dimensional animal and the image - and of course the three-dimensional television.
Despite all the prospect of using this type of equipment in a 3D television seems rather remote. Much closer to achieving market maturity - probably in less than one year - a three-dimensional television based on the traditional Sony LCD technology and the concept of glasses snapshot. The prototype of the TV was also showcased at the CEATEC.
During the CEATEC trade fair in Tokyo, Sony unveiled a volumetric 3D display. The cylindrical glass body with a diameter of 13 centimeters and 27 centimeters in height are placed small LED corresponding to the presentation of the image. LED-s are controlled by 24 bits - probably at 8 bits per color - and reach a resolution of 96 × 128 image points. On the surface, everything looks like a modest, but the image of the presented video clips makes a decent impression.
The manufacturer has not provided information on the principles of operation of the display, but it can be assumed that followed was the rotating cylinder form with its embedded LED-RGB. LED grid that is rotated so fast that it is imperceptible to the human eye. When the market changes the brightness of LEDs, and thus presented an image. Volumetric display with a similar operating principle has been developed by students in the research project Felix3D.
Walking around a cylindrical screen, we can see from all the currently presented image of the object - and this without any special glasses three-dimensional. Sony uses ready-made 3D images or create 3D presentation of images showing objects from different perspectives. During this fair events for volumetric display was presented, inter alia, the form of comics, head, brain and models of cars. As explained in an interview, acting as President of Sony Ryoji Chubachi, shown in the display is only a prototype, whose areas of application are still completely open. He gave an example of application in science and research, and Sony Japan's website refers to medical applications, technology, Digital Signage, online stores, virtual three-dimensional animal and the image - and of course the three-dimensional television.
Despite all the prospect of using this type of equipment in a 3D television seems rather remote. Much closer to achieving market maturity - probably in less than one year - a three-dimensional television based on the traditional Sony LCD technology and the concept of glasses snapshot. The prototype of the TV was also showcased at the CEATEC.
вторник, 20 октября 2009 г.
Simplygon 2.8 Review
Hello. I've found the review of the new software by Kelly L. Murdock. This is Simplygon 2.8 and it helps to create 3D object.
Introduction
Simplygon was developed and released in 2007 with one single purpose, to simplify and optimize complex 3d meshes. Whether used to create LOD models for games or to crunch a heavy model for transporting over the Web, the original program succeeded in this goal and now a couple of years later, the developers at Donya Labs have recently released version 2.8 of the software.
The new version includes a number of improvements including support for the Collada format, a plug-in for 3ds Max, and the release of an versatile SDK that can be used to integrate the Simplygon technology into your favorite software tools.
The Simplygon GUI
Once licensed, Simplygon ships with a stand-alone application that can be used in lieu of a plug-in. The Simplygon program is incredibly easy to use. The interface includes buttons for loading and saving models, several standard buttons for changing the render view including vertices, normals, wireframe, shaded, textures with a checkerboard pattern and textured. You can also switch between the standard viewpoints such as Top, Bottom, Left, Right, Front, Back and Perspective.
The Simplygon application can load in meshes saved in either the Wavefront (OBJ) and the Collada (DAE) formats. This is a limited set of formats, but the SDK allows you to build support for any format you'd like.
The model can be manipulated in the view window using the left (rotate), right (zoom) and middle (pan) mouse buttons allowing you to focus in on specific areas of the mesh. The interface also features a split-screen mode that lets you see in real-time the mesh before and after being optimized (Figure 1).
Figure 1: When split-screen mode is turned on, you can see the results of the optimization in real-time.
Decimation Mode
To the right of the view window are two panels that hold all the various optimization settings. The first of these is Decimation mode. This mode is the standard reduction mode. It allows you to specify the mesh reduction based on the pixel size of the object (which is great for LOD work), the total number of triangles in the mesh, or within a given distance value. There is also an option to prevent any intersections between nearby polygons during the reduction process.
Within the Repair section are options to weld all vertices within a given tolerance. There is also an option to eliminate any T-junctions, which happens when three edges meet at a single vertex. This can cause rendering problems if allowed. These repair options are helpful by themselves even if you don't want to reduce the polygon count of a model.
The Decimation panel also includes options to preserve the existing texture, UV coordinates, and object boundaries. The panel includes a slider that you can dial in the fidelity of these features between Low and High.
The Normal Recalculation option lets you specify an angle beyond which normals are not averaged.
After selecting the optimization settings, you can process the loaded mesh by clicking on the large S button located under the panels. Once processed, the total triangle count, object diameter and estimated pixel diameter are listed under the S button. You can also manipulate the mesh with the split-screen option enabled to compare the resulting optimization with the original mesh.
Figure 2 shows a high resolution mannequin mesh that was reduced from 52, 000 polygons to just over 1000 polygons in just over 10 seconds.
Figure 2: Not only is the quality of the reduction very good, but Simplygon also works incredibly fast.
Remeshing Mode
The second optimization mode is found in the second panel to the right of the view window and allows remeshing. This mode uses the existing mesh to create an entirely new mesh object. The remeshing process is based on a final Onscreen Size value, which is the maximum diagonal pixel size of the final remeshed object.
Since the remeshing process is based on the screen size, the Simplygon program realizes dramatic reductions by eliminating interior objects, filling holes and re-texturing the model using normal casting algorithms. Within the Remeshing panel are options to specify the quality, size and sampling of the recalculated texture map. You can also include the path to normal and occlusion maps if the original model uses one.
I had trouble testing the remeshing capabilities in the stand-alone application because it kept crashing on me.
SDK
The Simplygon stand-alone program is an example of what is possible with the included SDK. It ships with full source code and doesn't necessarily include all the features available in the SDK. The SDK includes a robust C++ API for Windows XP, Vista and Linux slam64. It also includes full documentation, samples and tutorials.
3ds Max Plug-in
Simplygon ships with a plug-in to 3ds Max. The plug-in utility allows reduction of multiple selected objects and it even supports skinning information. The plug-in works in Max 9, 2008, 2009 and 2010 in both 32- and 64-bit versions, as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3: The 3ds Max plug-in lets you use the Simplygon technology directly in Max.
Summary
Simplygon is very good at what it does. It optimizes 3d mesh objects quickly and lets you see and manipulate the results in real-time, which is helpful if you want to check for problems before saving out the results. The stand-alone interface is simple, but gave me problems with regular crashes.
The 3ds max plug-in allows immediate benefit for existing workflows or you can use the SDK to integrate the technology into your pipeline if you use some other tool.
Simplygon version 2.8 is available for both 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows XP and Vista. It is also available for Linux slam64.
Kelly L. Murdock is the president of Tulip Multimedia, a design firm specializing in 3d graphics. He is the author of multiple computer books including the 3ds Max Bible and the Creative Suite Bible.
As for me, I use the technologies of the pseudo-3D, stitched from simple photos to a 3D rotating object. Yes, it could not be used for 3D graphics but it can be shown on your website or you can send the stitched object to your friends, as I do ;)
Introduction
Simplygon was developed and released in 2007 with one single purpose, to simplify and optimize complex 3d meshes. Whether used to create LOD models for games or to crunch a heavy model for transporting over the Web, the original program succeeded in this goal and now a couple of years later, the developers at Donya Labs have recently released version 2.8 of the software.
The new version includes a number of improvements including support for the Collada format, a plug-in for 3ds Max, and the release of an versatile SDK that can be used to integrate the Simplygon technology into your favorite software tools.
The Simplygon GUI
Once licensed, Simplygon ships with a stand-alone application that can be used in lieu of a plug-in. The Simplygon program is incredibly easy to use. The interface includes buttons for loading and saving models, several standard buttons for changing the render view including vertices, normals, wireframe, shaded, textures with a checkerboard pattern and textured. You can also switch between the standard viewpoints such as Top, Bottom, Left, Right, Front, Back and Perspective.
The Simplygon application can load in meshes saved in either the Wavefront (OBJ) and the Collada (DAE) formats. This is a limited set of formats, but the SDK allows you to build support for any format you'd like.
The model can be manipulated in the view window using the left (rotate), right (zoom) and middle (pan) mouse buttons allowing you to focus in on specific areas of the mesh. The interface also features a split-screen mode that lets you see in real-time the mesh before and after being optimized (Figure 1).
Figure 1: When split-screen mode is turned on, you can see the results of the optimization in real-time.Decimation Mode
To the right of the view window are two panels that hold all the various optimization settings. The first of these is Decimation mode. This mode is the standard reduction mode. It allows you to specify the mesh reduction based on the pixel size of the object (which is great for LOD work), the total number of triangles in the mesh, or within a given distance value. There is also an option to prevent any intersections between nearby polygons during the reduction process.
Within the Repair section are options to weld all vertices within a given tolerance. There is also an option to eliminate any T-junctions, which happens when three edges meet at a single vertex. This can cause rendering problems if allowed. These repair options are helpful by themselves even if you don't want to reduce the polygon count of a model.
The Decimation panel also includes options to preserve the existing texture, UV coordinates, and object boundaries. The panel includes a slider that you can dial in the fidelity of these features between Low and High.
The Normal Recalculation option lets you specify an angle beyond which normals are not averaged.
After selecting the optimization settings, you can process the loaded mesh by clicking on the large S button located under the panels. Once processed, the total triangle count, object diameter and estimated pixel diameter are listed under the S button. You can also manipulate the mesh with the split-screen option enabled to compare the resulting optimization with the original mesh.
Figure 2 shows a high resolution mannequin mesh that was reduced from 52, 000 polygons to just over 1000 polygons in just over 10 seconds.
Figure 2: Not only is the quality of the reduction very good, but Simplygon also works incredibly fast.
Remeshing Mode
The second optimization mode is found in the second panel to the right of the view window and allows remeshing. This mode uses the existing mesh to create an entirely new mesh object. The remeshing process is based on a final Onscreen Size value, which is the maximum diagonal pixel size of the final remeshed object.
Since the remeshing process is based on the screen size, the Simplygon program realizes dramatic reductions by eliminating interior objects, filling holes and re-texturing the model using normal casting algorithms. Within the Remeshing panel are options to specify the quality, size and sampling of the recalculated texture map. You can also include the path to normal and occlusion maps if the original model uses one.
I had trouble testing the remeshing capabilities in the stand-alone application because it kept crashing on me.
SDK
The Simplygon stand-alone program is an example of what is possible with the included SDK. It ships with full source code and doesn't necessarily include all the features available in the SDK. The SDK includes a robust C++ API for Windows XP, Vista and Linux slam64. It also includes full documentation, samples and tutorials.
3ds Max Plug-in
Simplygon ships with a plug-in to 3ds Max. The plug-in utility allows reduction of multiple selected objects and it even supports skinning information. The plug-in works in Max 9, 2008, 2009 and 2010 in both 32- and 64-bit versions, as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3: The 3ds Max plug-in lets you use the Simplygon technology directly in Max.
Summary
Simplygon is very good at what it does. It optimizes 3d mesh objects quickly and lets you see and manipulate the results in real-time, which is helpful if you want to check for problems before saving out the results. The stand-alone interface is simple, but gave me problems with regular crashes.
The 3ds max plug-in allows immediate benefit for existing workflows or you can use the SDK to integrate the technology into your pipeline if you use some other tool.
Simplygon version 2.8 is available for both 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows XP and Vista. It is also available for Linux slam64.
Kelly L. Murdock is the president of Tulip Multimedia, a design firm specializing in 3d graphics. He is the author of multiple computer books including the 3ds Max Bible and the Creative Suite Bible.
As for me, I use the technologies of the pseudo-3D, stitched from simple photos to a 3D rotating object. Yes, it could not be used for 3D graphics but it can be shown on your website or you can send the stitched object to your friends, as I do ;)
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