David's Blog

The playable demo of The Force Unleashed is coming out Thursday on Xbox 360 and PS3...check it out!

Technorati Tags: The Force Unleashed, Star Wars

Posted on August 19, 2008 1:29 AM | Permalink| Comments (0)

I'm always curious about the attendance and exhibitor numbers for SIGGRAPH as a barometer for computer graphics.

Here is what I could find from this year's SIGGRAPH dating back to 1996...

I got these numbers from financial reports or the home page for that year's SIGGRAPH (here is SIGGRAPH 99). For 2008, I took the attendance from the final presentation of SIGGRAPH and I counted the number of exhibitors in the show floor guide booklet.

Here are a couple of charts to look at these numbers graphically...

SIGGRAPH had its largest attendance ever in 1997. Then there was a downward spiral until 2003. Since then, SIGGRAPH has been fairly stable.

My prediction for SIGGRAPH 2009 in New Orleans:

• 20,000 attendees
• 230 exhibitors

Technorati Tags: SIGGRAPH attendance, SIGGRAPH

Posted on August 18, 2008 8:38 PM | Permalink| Comments (1)

My last post before I do my SIGGRAPH brain dump.

Thanks to Spaghetti for the hook-up.

Technorati Tags: Startup Sound

Posted on August 17, 2008 4:07 PM | Permalink| Comments (0)

What do you think? Is it this one (The Ghost)...

... or this one (Star Trek)...

...or our third contender (Gymkata)...

Vote early and vote often!

Technorati Tags: Fight Scenes

Posted on August 8, 2008 7:18 AM | Permalink| Comments (1)

It is tough to know how you are paid in relation to others around you because salary information is normally kept private.

...except for people working in America via H-1B visas.

Check out this website with salary information for people working via H-1B.

The actual data is available (and is huge). It's much quicker to skip past that to the the interactive web query version.

For example, here is what I got when I asked for Pixar in California...

Big ups to Neil for the hookup.

Technorati Tags: H-1B, Salary

Posted on August 8, 2008 6:59 AM | Permalink| Comments (2)

Here is a video of the coolest thing I've ever seen at SIGGRAPH. It looks like liquid that is "alive"...you have to see it to believe it.  People sat and watched in amazement seeing liquid do things your brain says it can't do.

Technorati Tags: SIGGRAPH

Posted on August 7, 2008 12:34 AM | Permalink| Comments (1)

It's time to get my learn on!

SIGGRAPH is less than a week away.

I'm looking forward to hearing about DirectX 11 and Intel's new Larrabee graphics card. Both should have presentations at SIGGRAPH.

There is always way more stuff to see/do than you have time for, but that means there is never a dull moment.

Who's going? Let me know and we can meet up.

I plan on posting to twitter while I'm at SIGGRAPH. If you are going, you should get a twitter account and do the same. It's easy and you can read/write updates via your mobile phone. Let me know what your account name is and I'll track your updates.

I'm taking my new laptop with me and plan on posting blog updates at night.

Technorati Tags: SIGGRAPH 2008

Posted on August 6, 2008 12:16 AM | Permalink| Comments (3)

This is pretty interesting...an ad campaign by Microsoft to combat the uninformed opinion that Vista is crap.

It basically echoes what I run into constantly: the people that have the strongest opinions against Vista have never used it.

Click this link to watch the "Mojave Experiment."

The fact page is worth checking out, too.

Don't be an iSheep...use your brain.

Technorati Tags: Vista, Mojave Experiment

Posted on July 29, 2008 9:13 AM | Permalink| Comments (20)

The Resource Monitor is a new tool for Vista that helps track down performance issues.

To start the Resource Monitor...

1. Right click on an empty part of the taskbar and select "Task Manager" (or press Ctrl-Shift-Esc)
2. Select the "Performance" tab
3. Click the "Resource Monitor..." button at the bottom right

Resource Monitor tracks your CPU and memory like Task Manger does. But, it also tracks disk and network activity.

If any of the charts are pegged, click on it to get more detailed information.

I sort by the following columns to see who is responsible for the resource use:

• CPU: CPU column
• Disk: Either the Read or Write column
• Network: Total column
• Memory: Hard Faults

I found this tool *very* helpful...I will be using it more in the future.

Technorati Tags: Vista, Resource Monitor

Posted on July 29, 2008 1:01 AM | Permalink| Comments (3)

After I saw the new TR2N trailer this weekend, I thought it might be a fun project to see if I could clean up the video (and learn how to use Adobe After Effects CS3).

The first step was getting the bootleg video. I wasn't able to get the source from the link above. I followed the advice from this Yahoo! Answers and used the trial version of Moyea SWF Kits to extract a youtube.com version of the video (which is no longer up). The extracted source video is here (24 MB).

I used After Effects to do the rest.

Look at the source video and you will see lots of problems. The video...

• is small
• is not centered
• is rotated
• changes size as the camera is zoomed
• has a youtube time-slider and youtube logo
• has erratic motion from handheld video recording
• is missing parts of the trailer

I didn't worry about fixing the last one...too much work.

The first issue I fixed was the erratic motion, which made the other issues *much* easier to fix. I used this page for directions on how to do video stabilization.

In the source video, you will notice a couple of lights above the movie screen. I told After Effects to track the lights. It did a really good job. I only had to help with the tracking at around 0:43 because of the zooming. The rest of the tracking was done automagically.

After the motion tracking was finished, the video was very steady. I had to rotate the image several times to keep it aligned correctly. I also scaled the video to make it fit the full frame width. I translated the video to put it in the center of the frame.

Then I added masks to give the video a 2.39:1 aspect ratio, which is what I'm guessing the teaser was filmed in. I also added a mask to cover the youtube time-slider and the youtube logo.

The final video is here (5 MB).

I'm *very* impressed with how easy it is to do motion tracking and how steady the final version is compared to the original.

Technorati Tags: After Effects, Motion Tracking, Video Stabilization

Posted on July 29, 2008 12:19 AM | Permalink| Comments (3)

Disney unveiled a teaser for TR2N, the sequel to TRON, at Comic-Con

on Thursday.

Above is a poor quality bootleg video...but it gets the idea across.

For a play-by-play description of what we are seeing, check this out.

I *really* want to see this.

Technorati Tags: TR2N

Posted on July 26, 2008 8:57 AM | Permalink| Comments (2)

Here is a nice write-up by Kotaku on the E3 demo of The Force Unleashed.

I like this quote...

I walked away feeling confident that this could not only be one of the most exciting Star Wars video games of all time, it could very well provide moments more epic than anything we saw in the three prequel films.

Technorati Tags: The Force Unleashed, Star Wars

Posted on July 22, 2008 12:03 AM | Permalink| Comments (1)

I saw "King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters" tonight.

This is one of the best documentaries I've seen! Two thumbs *way* up!

The premise will scare most people away: it follows two men fighting for the Guinness word record high score on Donkey Kong.

What an amazing film! I won't spoil it...but I will say it is hard to not get emotionally involved.

Highly recommended...even if you don't like video games.

The screening tonight had the director, Seth Gordon, and one of the contestants, Steve Wiebe on hand to do a Q&A session afterwards.

Even the Q&A session was amazing! Somebody in the audience was obviously a Billy Mitchell (the other contestant) supporter and tried to take over the Q&A session with pro-Billy propaganda! The director had to stop the man from asking questions and move on to other people that didn't have an agenda! It was tense!

Afterwards, I met Steve Wiebe and took a picture with him. He's hard not to like after watching this film.

Seth Gordon announced he is working on a new film with Vince Vaughn (Steve Wiebe also has a role) called Four Christmases coming out November 26, 2008.

King of Kong is available on DVD. It can be rented at Blockbuster or Netflix. Check it out!

Technorati Tags: The King of Kong

Posted on July 21, 2008 11:37 PM | Permalink| Comments (0)

This almost makes me want...to watch Star Wars again.

Technorati Tags: Star Wars

Posted on July 21, 2008 12:54 PM | Permalink| Comments (0)

I met up with some friends yesterday for dinner at a place called "Memphis Minnie's."

A barbeque place in SF? No way!

It's a small place that is overflowing with character and good/unique food.

I ended up having a little of everything:

• BBQ Seasoned Fries (*really good*)
• BBQ Pork Rolls
• Fried Cheese Grit Sticks
• Corn Bread Muffin
• Pecan Pie

Everything was yummy...definitely will have to go back to this place.

Here is the Yelp page with more info.

Big ups to Yung for the hookup. And ladies...he's single.

Technorati Tags: Memphis Minnie's

Posted on July 19, 2008 3:32 PM | Permalink| Comments (0)

My current hobby project (I always have some project that I'm working on that I never finish) is using Visual C# 2008 (free download) and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) to make an application with a slick, non-traditional User Interface (UI).

I'm using this project to learn about technology I think will have future importance.

So far I'm *very* impressed with C#. I've been doing C++ work since 1991 (Borland C++ 3.0). C# is a refreshing change, yet maintains enough similarities that it is easy for a C++ programmer to pick up with very little training.

WPF is the new UI API for Windows. It replaces the Win32 API, MFC, and Window Forms.

One of the features of WPF is that the fonts look perfect, no matter how much you magnify them. You can see this for yourself by using the magnifier tool (Start->Search->Magnifier).

To demonstrate, I created a sample WPF app in C# that displays some text...

Here is what my sample app looks like hovering near the task bar...

Here is what the same area looks like when I use 16x zoom with the magnifier (you'll have to click on the image to see it really zoomed in...it's too big to fit here):

Notice how sharp the WPF text is compared to the pixelated task bar. Very cool! This means apps can scale to any size monitor and still look perfect.

Using the magnifier, I've only found one application that uses WPF: Visual Studio 2008. And it only uses WPF in one place: the properties window for WPF elements. This is fairly new stuff...I expect it won't be long before you start seeing WPF-based apps.

Today I learned about another feature in WPF that I look forward to using: 2D on 3D. Basically, you can create standard 2D UI (buttons, scroll bars, sliders, etc.), but they can be mapped onto a 3D surface...and they still work!

It hard to explain, but this video really shows it off.

Daniel Lehenbauer and Kurt Berglund: Interactive 2D controls on WPF 3D Surfaces

I've downloaded the sample code from here. I plan on incorporating this into my project somehow.

This is fun stuff. When I have something worth showing, I'll post it.

Technorati Tags: WPF, C#, 3D

Posted on July 15, 2008 1:03 AM | Permalink| Comments (3)

Tonight I watched a screening of the documentary Cinematographer Style hosted by director/cinematographer Jon Fauer.

The film covers 110 cinematographers talking about their craft.

After watching this film, I have a better understanding of the role of  cinematographers and the issues they face.

Anybody interested in how films are made will appreciate this.

Should be available on DVD soon.

Technorati Tags: Cinematographer Style, Jon Fauer

Posted on July 9, 2008 11:16 PM | Permalink| Comments (0)

Should drop tomorrow...and it is *awesome*!

Look for it on Entertainment Weekly.

*Update* Here it is!

Technorati Tags: Star Wars, The Force Unleashed

Posted on July 8, 2008 9:36 PM | Permalink| Comments (1)

IGN has a nice article about playing some of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

They also have several videos from the game (look for videos added July 1st).

These are my favorites...

Technorati Tags: Star Wars, The Force Unleashed

Posted on July 3, 2008 9:25 PM | Permalink| Comments (2)

Technorati Tags: Star Wars, Boba Fett, Dancing

Posted on July 3, 2008 8:52 PM | Permalink| Comments (0)