Video Game Event, Anime, and Game Industry not to miss May 22-25

Hi everyone...

Jason at NVGA (headquartered here in New Mexico) has taken on an enormous task, trying to bring New Mexico to new prominence in the Video Game playing and making world --our own Rio Grande chapter of the International Game Developers Association will be on hand too.  If you're interested in checking out the reality of video games today --  and how the NVGA is building mentorship and responsible game playing into the mix, please check it out.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jason Montoya <jason_montoya@hotmail.com>

            The NVGA Super Con is just one month away! This is a must attend event! This is a must see. This is one of those events that if you are not here then you are no where. As if you're a fan of video games, anime, or looking to break into the industry then check off Memorial weekend May 22-25 at the Albuquerque Convention Center. Did we mention over $10,000 to in cash and prizes to be given away at the event?

            Gamers, Anime fans, and people interested game design should best pay attention to this e-mail as the NVGA Super Con will have it all!

People from around the nation will be attending the NVGA Super Con, they will be here to meet new friends, socialize, get some games for casual fun or participate in a tournament.

Want to participate in a Game Design Workshop and Challenge? Be at the Super Con and try out that challenge and grow in your ability to be involved in the video game industry!

            Think you have played the best in HALO? Guitar Hero? Rock Band? Call of Duty? Tekken? Street Fighter? Those are just to name a few of the games to be at the event. Play for fun and just get some games in casually or test you might in one of the many tournaments.

            This is not just some tournament. This is an event.

This is not just some general movie watching, this is heart thumping Anime with the hottest movies and cosplay.

This is not wishing you could figure out a way to build your skills to one day work in the game industry. This is your solution to take another step in that journey.

            All this is the NVGA Super Con in less then one month away! Make your plans get your friends together because we will see you all at the event!

 

            For times, early registration, list of games, and more information you can visit:

http://www.nvgaonline.com/SuperCon/

---

ON SCREEN III @ ARTS Lab Tomorrow

ARTS Lab is pleased to host the third somewhat annual performance reading of scripts from UNM's screenwriting classes.

Under the direction of screenwriter Matt McDuffie and as part of this year's Words Afire, local actors will perform selections from several short scripts.

WHEN:  7PM, Wednesday, April 23rd

WHERE:  UNM ARTS Lab, 131 Pine St., NW (one block west of University; half a block north of Central)

WHAT:  Screenplay readings

HOW MUCH:  Free

FADE IN: 
INT. ARTS LAB - NIGHT 
A crowd gathers around a semi-circle of actors. 

DEATH AFTER DEATH 
By Paul Porter. 
Death and treason in the deserts of Iraq and New Mexico. 
LOVE BETRAYED 
By Kate Padilla. 
A family tragedy of intimate proportions. 
THE THING INSIDE 
By Mike Smith. 
A mysterious and frightening tale of possession. 
A FISTFUL OF BRAINS 
By Brooks Rudolph. 
The undead invade the Wild West. 
YOU HAD ME AT THUMP 
By Claire Schmeltzer. 
A story of love and traffic. 
LA VIDA CANDI 
By Rick Raab-Faber. 
A true-to-life slice of Nuevo Mexico, as seen on Jay Leno. 
AENEAS IN CARTHAGE 
By Adam Walsh. 
A modern retelling of the doomed affair between passionate lovers. 

Film Diversity Forum this Tuesday (@ NM Office of African American Affairs)

This Tuesday, April 22^nd at 3:15pm The New Mexico Office of African American Affairs will have its 2nd Film Diversity Forum. The Forum will be held at the New Mexico Office of African American Affairs Office (1015 Tijeras NW, Suite 102, Albuquerque 87102). Our guest speaker will be Coral Inza from the Local 480 chapter of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE). (http://www.iatselocal480.com/)
 At our 1^st Film Diversity Forum we had over 40 people who were interested in the making sure Black filmmakers above and below the line in New Mexico had the opportunity and tools to get involved in New Mexico's fastest growing industry. At the 1^st forum we were at capacity, so please register NOW. The event is free and limited seating will be available.

 Please confirm your attendance with Hakim Bellamy via phone (505-222-9442) or e-mail (edwardh.bellamy@state.nm.us) by the end of business on Monday, April 21^st.

 PLEASE BE ON TIME AS SEATING IS LIMITED!!!

 PLEASE COME PREPARED TO NETWORK & BRAINSTORM!!!

 Thank you and please tell one at least one person you think should be interested in the film industry, this is not just for actors and actresses, this is for cast, crew, production assistants and caterers.

Google (Street) Map Location Here

(the Street View doesn't extend to this address on Tijeras... but here's the parking lot!)

--
For more information about NM Media-related Events, visit: http://nm-media.blogspot.com/
--

GFX Cafe Seminar Friday April 18: Gradient Diffusion Fields

The cross-pollination between the aviation and media industries in the use of 3D modeling, simulation and advanced graphics work is a big plus for us here in New Mexico.  If you're interested in these topics, GFX Cafe is always good to check out...

GFX Café Seminar Friday April 18, 2008
12noon, ECE 118

Food will be served

TITLE:
Accelerating active contour algorithms with the Gradient Diffusion Field
by Chris Kiser, Advanced Graphics Lab


ABSTRACT:

Active contours were proposed by Kass et al. as a way to represent the
contours of an image.  Although the method is simple, one of its
shortcomings is its inability to converge into concave structures.  The
Gradient Vector Flow (GVF) algorithm was put forth by Xu and Prince to
succesfully address the concave structure problem.  Although there has
been much research into GVF, little has been done to reduce its
computation time, which makes it unsuitable for applications requiring
real-time processing of images. In this paper, we propose a method fora
computing an approximation of the GVF, called the Gradient Diffusion Field
(GDF), which exhibits the same useful properties of the GVF but converges
faster and requires less resources for implementation. Our proposed method
is also more amenable for real-time hardware and we outline a method for
implementing an active contour algorithm in FPGA hardware using the GDF.


BIO:
Chris Kiser received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the
University of Nevada Las Vegas in 1990, and the M.S. degree in Electrical
Engineering from the University of New Mexico in 1998. He is currently a
Ph.D. candidate in Electrical Engineering at the University of New Mexico.

Chris Kiser has 14 years experience in the field of embedded signal and
image processing systems and currently is employed at Boeing-SVS in
Albuquerque, NM where he develops image processing and tracking algorithms
for use in high energy laser systems.

[Gfx-cafe] GFX Cafe Seminar Friday April 18, 2008

GFX Café Seminar Friday April 18, 2008
12noon, ECE 118

Food will be served

TITLE:
Accelerating active contour algorithms with the Gradient Diffusion Field
by Chris Kiser, Advanced Graphics Lab

ABSTRACT:

Active contours were proposed by Kass et al. as a way to represent the
contours of an image. Although the method is simple, one of its
shortcomings is its inability to converge into concave structures. The
Gradient Vector Flow (GVF) algorithm was put forth by Xu and Prince to
succesfully address the concave structure problem. Although there has
been much research into GVF, little has been done to reduce its
computation time, which makes it unsuitable for applications requiring
real-time processing of images. In this paper, we propose a method fora
computing an approximation of the GVF, called the Gradient Diffusion Field
(GDF), which exhibits the same useful properties of the GVF but converges
faster and requires less resources for implementation. Our proposed method
is also more amenable for real-time hardware and we outline a method for
implementing an active contour algorithm in FPGA hardware using the GDF.

BIO:
Chris Kiser received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the
University of Nevada Las Vegas in 1990, and the M.S. degree in Electrical
Engineering from the University of New Mexico in 1998. He is currently a
Ph.D. candidate in Electrical Engineering at the University of New Mexico.

Chris Kiser has 14 years experience in the field of embedded signal and
image processing systems and currently is employed at Boeing-SVS in
Albuquerque, NM where he develops image processing and tracking algorithms
for use in high energy laser systems.

--
Pradeep Sen
Assistant Professor
Advanced Graphics Lab
Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering
University of New Mexico

_______________________________________________
gfx-cafe mailing list
gfx-cafe@lists.eece.unm.edu
http://lists.eece.unm.edu/mailman/listinfo/gfx-cafe

Google ALERT: I/O dates next month -- a few free passes available!

I'm a big fan of Google... or at least learning how they do things.  More info at the Programmable Web Website -- including possible free passes!

Hardly a week goes by these days without an API or other developer-related announcement from Google. And given that they now have over 35 different APIs as well as whole platforms like Android, Google will be hosting their first multi-day developer event next month in San Francisco: Google I/O, May 28-29. Last year they had a successful, one day global Developer Day, and this year's event looks to be a whole lot bigger and broader with 70 sessions covering:

• AJAX & JavaScript: AJAX and JavaScript continue to capture the imagination of web developers. These sessions focus on tools and techniques of client-side code, and how to use them to make serious applications quickly and easily.
• APIs & Tools: Development tools for the web are evolving. Product APIs allow integration and extension of web applications. Tools like the Google Web Toolkit™ provide a whole new way to improve performance and compatibility.
• Social: The web is an inherently social place. A new wave of APIs and frameworks, including OpenSocial, are opening up interesting ways to interact with people through applications.
• Mobile: Mobile devices are blurring the lines between handset developers and web developers, opening up interesting opportunities for applications that span multiple platforms. We'll take a look at how developers can use technologies such as Android™ and Mobile Gears to build applications on the mobile web.
• Maps & Geo: Since the introduction of the Google Maps™ API in 2005, geo and map applications have been one of the most interesting phenomena on the web. These sessions focus on the many aspects of geo applications, from KML to the Google Maps API and more.

More info at: http://blog.programmableweb.com/2008/04/17/google-io-coming-soon-free-passes-now/#comment-146705

Friends of Film, Video and Arts: This Sunday @ Harwood

Jim's energy and commitment have been instrumental in building awareness of energy issues in New Mexico. This looks like a particularly good session of Friends of Film -- this Sunday at the Harwood Arts Center.
...

 Sunday, April 20 at 3pm

Friends of Film, Video and Arts 

will be hosting a meeting  (see below for details) for members who want to get involved

in developing the upcoming "Distribution" and " Administration Snafus" episodes of 

Director's Cut New Mexico.

Member Jim Cochran will be leading the charge, as our executive producer.

Jim has over 30 years of video and television experience, writing/directing and producing award winning programs. 

Jim has lined up experienced FoFVA mentors to help with directing, camera, and producing roles. 

This is FoFVA's annual educational production program, a great reason to join us.  Director's Cut NM production is full of learning, doing, fun and a valuable, quality product as an outcome.

Come and Join FoFVA. 

April/May is membership renewal months for a mere $45. TONS of benefits     

visit www.filmvideoarts.org for benefits and member forms 

And you are welcome as a guest, and experience a pre-production meeting. 

 

Anne Stirling

member/filmmaker

Friends of Film, Video and Arts 

Upcoming Event 

* Sunday April 20  at Harwood Art Center, 1114 Seventh St NW, Albuquerque, NM    505-897-2101   

3pm Social and tour of FoFVA Filmmakers Resource Studio at Harwood

3:30-5:30 program

Director's Cut NM Development Meeting for next episode, led by Jim Cochran

Free for members/ $5-10 donations welcome at the door

stirling@filmvideoarts.org

www.filmvideoarts.org  

Friends of Film, Video and Arts is a non-profit, peer- driven organization 

of independent filmmakers and film lovers working together to make quality films, provide educational opportunities and experience, develop trade relationships, and support a healthy film industry in New Mexico.

Jonson Gallery This Friday: Joseph Mougel and Robert Rainey Opening

We're really excited that we'll be having some of Joseph Mougel and Robert Rainey's work here at ARTS Lab in May (more info to come), but perhaps even more exciting is their full show this Friday at UNM's Jonson Gallery.  More info below...

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jonson Gallery <jonsong@unm.edu>
Date: Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 4:04 PM
Subject: April Events
To: CFA_ADMIN-L@list.unm.edu


Please join us at the Jonson Gallery for the opening reception for Joseph Mougel's In Character and Robert Rainey's His*Story on Friday April 18th from 4 - 6 pm.
 
Joseph Mougel's recent video installation, In Character, incorporates elements of pop culture, communication, and identity.The piece features multiple video monitors, each playing a five to fifteen minute loop of a single character. Each figure epitomizes a unique persona through gestures, clothing, and motion. In filming subjects for the piece, Mougel directs their every emotion, establishing a sense of artificial intent. The isolation of the figures produces a dysjunctured social field that encourages viewers to read a narrative where one does not exist and calls into question the sincerity of human interaction.

In his series His*story, Robert Rainey borrows from the formal vernacular of great historical works of art. Photographing himself along with various male partners, Rainey reenacts famous figurative paintings and sculpture. Initially, upon viewing the series there is an awkward artificiality about the actors' poses. And yet, taken as a whole, the images feel strangely familiar. They are evocative of events taking place in our culture right now. Each seems to draw from the contemporary world of art, politics, entertainment, and specific events, such as the war, and asks the question: are there depictions of human interaction from the history of Western civilization which are in fact timeless?

Attached images are:

-Robert Rainey: Les Demoiselles D'Avignon, Picasso, 2007,

-Joseph Mougel, gesture, 2008, video still from In Character

These shows will run from April 11- May 9, 2008.


The Jonson Gallery is located on the main campus of UNM at 1909 Las Lomas NE, Albuquerque. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. and by appointment. It is free and open to the public. Please call 277-4967, email us at jonsong@unm.edu, or visit our website at www.unm.edu/~jonsong for more details. We hope to see you at the Jonson Gallery!

[Gfx-cafe] GFX Cafe Seminar Friday March 11, 2008

GFX Café Seminar Friday April 11, 2008
12noon, ARTS Lab Black Box Theatre ** Note change of venue **

Food will be served

TITLE:
Computational Audiovisual Composition and the Allosphere
by Wesley Smith, UC Santa Barbara

ABSTRACT:

The Allosphere -- a 3 story spherical projection surface located in a
near-anechoic chamber -- is a unique space for interactive and
immersive audiovisual environments. This talk will describe recent
research in audiovisual software for composing works and environments
in the Allosphere. The subject of the software, which we term
Computational Audiovisual Composition, maintains a philosophical
concern with both computational aesthetics and the nature of
audiovisual composition on the computer, addressing the Allosphere's
status as a hybrid scientific and artistic instrument.

Relevant Links:
http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/allosphere/
http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/
http://www.cycling74.com/

BIO:
Wesley Smith is a PhD candidate at UC Santa Barabra's Media Arts and
Technology program where he is a researcher in audiovisual composition
and interactive immersive environments on the Allosphere project. In
addition, Wesley is one of the lead programmer's on Cycling '74's
Jitter software where he works on real-time video and 3D graphics
systems.

This talk is co-organized by the Electronic Arts Advanced Topics course
within the Department of Art & Art History.

--
Pradeep Sen
Assistant Professor
Advanced Graphics Lab
Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering
University of New Mexico

_______________________________________________
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Fwd: April 4th - Animation Gathering (@ the Art Center)

From our friend Teri Farley at the Art Center Design College...

Hello Art Center Animators!

Curious as to what The Little Mermaid, The Simpsons, Sesame Street, Beauty and the Beast, Kellog's, General Mills, Toy Story and The Prince of Egypt have in common?

The Answer… Dan Haskett!

Dan Haskett has dedicated the past 30 plus years of his life to working on the animations we have all grown up with. He is an Emmy award winning animator and character designer who has created many consumer products and character style guides for Warner Bros., Disney and NBC Universal, among others.

Friday, April 4th, Dan Haskett will be here in room 220 from 3pm to 5pm to talk about his experiences in the animation industry. This should be a lecture to remember and one you'll not want to miss. Feel free to invite friends and family members. The more the merrier!

When: Friday, April 4th, 3pm to 5pm
Where: Room 220 on the Art Center campus
Who: Dan Haskett
Why: Lots to learn from an experienced professional

I hope to see you all at this Animation Gathering!

Teri

Teresa Farley
Animation Department Chair
The Art Center Design College
www.theartcenter.edu
5000 Marble Ave. NE
Albuquerque, NM 87110
(505) 254-7575
tfarley@theartcenter.edu

[Gfx-cafe] GFX Cafe Seminar Friday April 4, 2008

GFX Café Seminar Friday April 4, 2008
12noon, ARTS Lab Black Box Theatre ** Note change of venue **

Food will be served

TITLE:
Using Visualization for Relevancy Feedback Tuning
of Text Analysis Algorithms
by Patricia Crossno, Sandia National Laboratories

ABSTRACT:
The volume of data contained in textual form is enormous. Automated and
scalable methods are needed to evaluate the contents of document
collections without reading them. The ParaText project at Sandia National
Laboratories is creating a scalable text analysis engine that uses
statistical methods, such as Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA), to evaluate
the concepts found within a large corpus of documents. Using LSA to
extract concepts and relationships between documents, the corpus can be
interactively explored through a visual application where documents are
grouped by concept within a landscape metaphor.

As we are developing ParaText, we are using visualization to assess
the impact of various algorithmic choices on the relevancy of documents
returned by queries to the engine (i.e. we are assessing how the document-
concept relationships change with changing parameter values). We have
created a visual analytics tool, LSAView, for presenting statistical
information and correlations. LSAView uses multiple-linked views of
document-similarity graphs and the difference matrices between them to
enable exploration of various configurations. LSAView is a work in
progress, so we are just starting to use it to evaluate questions about
how altering the statistical bias of our matrices impacts selection
retrieval.

BIO:
Patricia Crossno is a Senior Member of Technical Staff at Sandia National
Laboratories*. She received her B.S. degree in Computer Science at UNM
in 1982. For the next nine years, she worked for Digital Equipment
Corporation as a software engineer working on projects in image
processing, color compression, and graphics. In 1991, she completed her
M.S. degree in Computer Science at UNM. After finishing her doctorate in
Computer Science at UNM in 1998, she joined the Data Analysis and
Visualization department at Sandia. Her work has included isosurface
generation using particle systems, parallel marching cubes, visual
debugging, tensor visualization, GPU-accelerated volume rendering, and
visualizing temporal attributes using abstract metaphors. Currently she
is working on scalable text analysis and visualization of electrical
circuit simulation results.

*Sandia is a multi-program laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a
Lockheed Martin Company, for the United States Department of Energy under
contract DE-AC04-94AL85000.

--
Pradeep Sen
Assistant Professor
Advanced Graphics Lab
Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering
University of New Mexico

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gfx-cafe@lists.eece.unm.edu
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"Hire Education" AIGA Design Reviews April 25

This... looks like a great event from the people at AIGA and the Art Center Design College. An excellent opportunity to get real professional feedback and tips on Design work with an eye toward getting student designers into professional design careers. 
___


Portfolio Reviews & Breakout Sessions with the Pros
Friday, April 25, 2008 from 9 am to 4 pm
Sponsored by AIGA New Mexico & The Art Center
5000 Marble Ave NE, Albuquerque


Finding the right design position is a tough job. AIGA New Mexico is making it easier for graphic design students throughout the state. We invite you to gather for a tip-filled day specifically addressing the agony and the ecstasy of entering the job market. Our ad hoc faculty of local, professional designers will review your portfolios, providing valuable suggestions to enliven your presentation and identifying your strengths and areas for improvement. In breakout sessions students will discuss specific aspects of the post-graduation job search with professional designers.

Hire Education is open to students majoring in graphic design at colleges throughout New Mexico. We will accept juniors, seniors, and recent graduates with prepared portfolios first. If there is room, we will also welcome students without portfolios who would like to observe the reviews and participate in the breakout sessions.

Our faculty of professional designers represents a wide range of expertise, years in the field, and types of experience in the industry. Some are owners of graphic design firms; some work as junior and senior designers; some are freelancers. They know what they're talking about.

Don't miss out on this opportunity to jumpstart your career. Sign up for Hire Education today.

Cost for the day, including lunch:
Student and faculty AIGA members: $15
Student and faculty non-members: $25

Registration:
Faculty members can register groups of students by emailing students' names and contact information to Karen at karen@baddogdesign.biz
Individual students should register by sending their name and contact information to Karen.
Call Peggy Pfeiffer at 505.986.6146 if you have questions about Hire Education.

AniMotion NM Next Tuesday @ ARTS Lab

AniMotion NM is back at ARTS Lab next Tuesday night with our own Hue Walker talking up fulldome animation. 

As you may have seen over on the MISP List (http://groups.google.com/group/nm-media-industries/browse_thread/thread/ee870079acd5d10), this will be a big year for dome 'stuff'.  Domefest will be happening July 3rd this year in Chicago during the International Planetarium Society's biannual meeting -- which means more people will be seeing Domefest this year than ever before, and we're trying to make sure there will be plenty of work from New Mexico artists for everyone to see. 

(Don't worry, we'll be having a show in New Mexico too.)

Creating work for dome theaters will be the topic of next Tuesday's meeting -- but it might also be a good chance to talk before the Governor's Cup Competition in Animation.

More info to come...

AniMotion NM 

WHEN: Tuesday April 7, from 7pm-8:30pm

WHERE: ARTS Lab, 131 Pine Street NE, Albuquerque, NM 87106, just north of Central and one block west of University

DESCRIPTION: Join us for the second meeting of AniMotion NM. AniMotion NM serves as a community for New Mexico animators, motion graphic artists, VFX artists, sound designers, and broadcast designers. Meetings will serve to educate and as a means to network.

More info to come!

Film and Industry Night at Mother Road Theatre Company

Hey everyone...

I haven't posted too much about theater events recently (at least not here), but I wanted to make a special mention of what the Mother Road Theatre Company is doing -- especially since they've got a special Film and Theatre Industry night.  

Mother Road is the group that produced a special event with Alan Arkin last month, and their cast includes several stars who'll be familiar to fans of local film and theater alike.  Hope to see you there this Thursday.

e


Film & Theatre Industry Night!

Mother Road Theatre Company introduces special Half-Price Thursdays!
 
This Thursday, April 3, come see The Odyssey, by David Farr,  8pm
 
Tickets $10 for all people connected to the Film and Theatre community.
Calling all film and theatre actors (union & non-union), directors, above-the-line, below-the-line, designers, technicians, crew, writers, producers, house managers, board members, etc. Bring resume, union card, photo, program, reel, pay stub, clapboard, production photo or some other proof of your connection to the community.

Where:  The Filling Station, 1024 4th St. SW
Reservations:  505-873-4831 or tom@motherroad.org

Mother Road Theatre Company, Albuquerque's dynamic, new professional theatre company located at The Filling Station on historic pre-1937 Route 66 hits "The Open Road" with the launch of its first season and its debut production, The Odyssey, by David Farr directed by Artistic Director, Julia Thudium.

The Odyssey is a modern look the classical epic by Homer:
Wayward Odysseus washes up on a modern foreign shore.  Rather than receiving a hero's welcome he is locked up in a detention center as an illegal immigrant. Trying to convince the officials of his identity while hiding it from the Trojans he displaced after sacking their sacred city, he recounts his adventures and ten-year long attempt to return to his home in Ithaca – from his encounter with the Cyclops through his journey to the Land of the Dead.
This retelling of Homer's Odyssey by British playwright David Farr is both classical and topical. The show will feature live original music composed specifically for this production by Ernest Sturdevant. The cast features leaders in the Albuquerque theatre scene: Jean Effron, William Sterchi, Steve Corona, Kristín de la O, Chris Gonzales, Ray Orley, Bridget Kelly, K'Lynn Childress and Vic Browder as Odysseus.
Additional Dates & Prices:
When:  March 28, 29, 30, April 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20.
Curtain: Thursday, Friday & Saturday 8:00pm, Sunday 2:00pm
Where: The Filling Station, 1024 4th St. SW, located on historic, pre-1937 Route 66.
Tickets:  $20 General, $15 Seniors/Students.
Reservations & Information: 505-873-4831, tom@motherroad.org

 
 http://www.motherroad.org <http://www.motherroad.org/>     http://www.fillingstationabq.com <http://www.fillingstationabq.com/>

Now Visible in Street View: Albuquerque & Santa Fe

It may be somewhat geeky (really geeky?), but I'm really glad to see New Mexico added to the growing library of what's available in Google's Street View. Here at UNM's ARTS Lab, we sometimes worry that people can't find us (especially when some folks list us at the corner of Central and University -- which is about a block away).  We have our location on Google Maps, and a link at our site, but... we still worry.

Street View probably won't change all of that, but now we can point people here: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&ie=UTF8&om=1&layer=c&ll=35.100389,-106.623602&spn=0.037639,0.118275&z=14&cbll=35.081468,-106.627426&cbp=2,333.96874437572427,,0,1.4481514654278567

And being pretty recent, they're also fairly thorough. They don't actually have Pine St. where we're located, but they do come reasonably close to Albuquerque Studios
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&ie=UTF8&om=1&layer=c&ll=35.029856,-106.623344&spn=0.075343,0.236549&z=13&cbll=34.993362,-106.621931&cbp=1,121.32136814257272,,2,0.6134096975904818

Or, for another example, you might want to check out the NM Film Office.  Now you can, with a nice shot right here:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&ie=UTF8&om=1&layer=c&ll=35.687409,-105.946687&spn=0.004671,0.014784&t=h&z=17&cbll=35.685142,-105.946434&cbp=1,205.90894578071405,,1,4.737764898206241

Do they hit all of New Mexico?  Well, as usual, they tend to concentrate on the center of the state, reaching south of Belen and Los Lunas, and a little bit east and west of Albuquerque.  From what our Department of Transportation tells me, we've got a lot of road to cover here, so we may have to wait for a while.

Oh yeah... to give proper credit, I learned about this not from the invaluable Google Blog, but from the Duke City Fix.

--

For more information about NM Media-related Events, visit: http://nm-media.blogspot.com/
--

Eric Renz-Whitmore, Program Coordinator
ARTS Lab
MSC04 2570
1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131
505-277-2253
http://artslab.unm.edu

[Gfx-cafe] GFX Cafe Seminar Friday March 28, 2008

GFX Café Seminar Friday March 28, 2008
12noon, ARTS Lab Black Box Theatre ** Note change of venue **

Food will be served

TITLE:
Virtual Windows: A framework for spatially-aware, ad-hoc visualization
by Mark Waligora, Advanced Graphics Lab

ABSTRACT:
Spatially-aware systems have been used successfully in the past for the
visualization of complex data sets because they allow the user to
establish spatial relationships in the presented data. However, such
systems have been limited to a single user or to specific display media
and therefore do not offer the flexibility to handle a wide range of
visualization applications. For this reason, they are not often used in
the visualization community.

In this talk, we present a novel system that allows multiple users to
interact with data in an ad-hoc fashion and is capable of handling
different kinds of display surfaces and modes of interaction. Our ad-hoc
Virtual Window Framework provides multiple users with displays that can be
manipulated and combined in physical space to view different portions of
complex data sets in a corresponding virtual space. The displays function
as "windows" which the user can look through to see into a virtual world,
much like looking through a window of a house to see outside. We designed
the system with flexibility in mind; we demonstrate this by using
different kinds of display devices simultaneously for a wide variety of
applications. Our system also works with augmented reality devices,
one of which we have built at UNM, allowing us to use our windows to
visualize data superimposed on real-world objects. We demonstrate the
efficacy of our system by using it to visualize several complex, real-
world data sets in a hands-on demonstration.

This is joint work with Pradeep Sen and Joe Kniss.

BIO:
Mark Waligora got his BS from New Mexico Tech. He is currently an MS
student in Computer Science at UNM, working with Prof. Pradeep Sen.

--
Pradeep Sen
Assistant Professor
Advanced Graphics Lab
Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering
University of New Mexico

Friday Post-Conference Mixer @ the Hyatt

Hey everyone...

There really are a lot of good events this week and weekend (please feel free to pass them along).

I think there'll be a little more info to come, but Lance Maurer's Cinnafilm and DFI (which produces the Duke City Shootout) have organized a mixer for Conference Attendees from 5-7PM this Friday night.  It'll be in the Hyatt atrium, so it'll be tough to miss, but we invite you to come by, and bring your brochures and business cards. 

Looking forward to seeing many of you there in a couple of days!

Eric Renz-Whitmore

This Week in Media Events: NMFO, NMAUG, IGDA

Hey everyone...

The big event this week is the NM Filmmakers Conference and First Vision Forum running Thursday through Saturday at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Albuquerque (I'm also including info on an Adobe Users Group event and one for NM game developers below).  Combining the already successful Filmmakers Conference and First Vision forum events, this year's looks to be their best yet. 

For more information on the conference visit:  http://www.nmfilm.com/locals/nm-filmmakers/film-nm-conference.php
Conference Schedule is available here:  http://www.nmfilm.com/locals/downloads/filmmakers-conference.pdf

Nearly all the spaces are full for this free event, so if you've registered and your plans have changed, please let the NM Film Office know which sessions you can't attend -- so someone else will have a chance to attend.

More updates as they come!
___

NM Adobe Users Group: Flash and After Effects Together

WHEN: Wednesday, March 26, from noon-1:15pm

WHERE: UNM Continuing Education in the South Building, Room 220

PRESENTER: Elaine Montoya

DESCRIPTION: Learn how Flash and After Effects can be used together to create in ways that would be complex with either tool alone. In this session we will take a look at creating 'Hollywood style' text animation effects, and then bring them into your Flash project for use on the web. Then we will flip-it. Learn how to add 'post' effects to your Flash animations in After Effects to add richness, and a broadcast quality finish to your project.

This session takes place, Wednesday, March 26, from noon-1:15pm at UNM Continuing Education, Room 220 in the South Building. It will be taught by AdobeQuerque Community Expert, Elaine Montoya.

COST: NMAUG members can attend all of the AdobeQuerque Expert Series brown-bag sessions for FREE. The cost is $19 per session for non-members.

RSVP / Register:
members >> click here
non members >> click here
___

RIO GRANDE International Game Developers Association: GDC Recap

WHEN: Wednesday, March 26, from 6-8:30 pm

WHERE: UNM ARTS Lab, 131 Pine St., NE (1 block west of University Blvd, 1/2 block north of Central)

TOPIC: Game Developers Conference Recap

DESCRIPTION: Several members of the local Game Development Community participated in this year's GDC.  Hear highlights and responses from them, as well as updates from the community on new and ongoing projects

COST: International Game Developers Association Rio Grande Chapter events are FREE unless otherwise noted.

Game Developers Conference Recap - Next @ IGDA

The 2008 Game Developers Conference may have seen more involvement from New Mexico's game development community than ever before.  The Game Industry's premier event included summits on Serious Games, Games in Education, and Mobile Games (among others) in addition to the conference itself.  With attendees from Game Production Services, Sandia National Labs, and UNM (among others) -- and a nice chunk of the Expo floor taken up by Novint, our next Rio Grande Game Developers meeting will focus on our thoughts, experiences and lessons learned from GDC. 

Additionally, we'll be checking in with each other on current and ongoing projects -- and talk a bit about what we can do to build the game development community and opportunities for budding game developers here in New Mexico.

To better accommodate younger people -- and not conflict with the NM Filmmakers Conference  we've changed the usual location and night.  Please look at the details below.

WHAT:     International Game Developers Association (IGDA) Rio Grande Chapter Meeting
WHEN:     Wednesday, March 26th 6:00 - 8:30 PM
WHERE:  UNM ARTS Lab, 131 Pine St., NW (one block west of University, half a block north of Central Ave.)
WHO:       Working professionals in the game industry and related fields -- and people interested in getting more involved (no membership needed to attend)
HOW MUCH:  Free

We hope to see you there -- please contact me directly at ewhitmore@gmail.com for additional information.

Decoding Design Party Reminder!

Maggie is getting good notices (and lots of speaking engagements including the annual HOW conference) for her new book "Decoding Design" -- really both an artistically and intellectually engaging piece of work.  Join her and the folks from AIGA this Thursday at the One Up Club (formerly the Carom Club) at the NW corner of Central and 3rd Ave. in downtown Albuquerque.  More details below.

AIGA New Mexico and Maggie Macnab present (please join us!): Decoding Design Book Launch Party Design with the power of natural law. "Decoding Design: Understanding and Using Symbols in Visual Communication," written by longtime local designer Maggie Macnab, is a design theory book that explores the significance of symbols, numbers and shapes we encounter in everyday life. A handful of simple patterns shape our understanding and relationship with a complex world, and design that references this symbolic information creates an immediate and intuitive relationship with the viewer. This is increasingly crucial for designers and businesses to understand in a globally branded world.   By integrating interdisciplinary genres of philosophy, math and physics presented in lay terms, Maggie crosses and connects "specialized" boundaries to provide the designer with a powerful and eclectic approach to process. Books will be available at the party and Maggie will be signing copies. Decoding Design is also available on Amazon.com and at most retail booksellers. For more information on the book please visit: www.decodingdesign.com.
	Thursday, March 20, 2008 5:30-7pm   The One Up Club (formerly The Carom Club) 301 Central Ave NW, downtown Albuquerque Free AIGA event for members and special guests Please RSVP to events@santafe.aiga.org

GFX Cafe Seminar Friday March 14: Dome Interactivity

GFX Café Seminar Friday March 14, 2008
12noon, ARTS Lab Dome Theatre  ** Note change of venue **

Food will be served

TITLE:
Real-Time Rendering and Interactivity in 'Fulldome' Immersive Digital
Dome Theater: An Introduction, Demonstration and Discussion of
UNM Research Projects and Goals
by David Beining, UNM ARTS Lab


ABSTRACT:

Large-format, immersive digital dome theater--fulldome--is a young
powerful medium with a high rate of diffusion in planetariums and
other venues.  It's also a medium in which UNM is an internationally
recognized center for research, production and education.

Based in tiled projectors and PC clusters, fulldome theaters allow
for very high-resolution, immersive digital video presentation --
pre-rendered for linear cinematic experiences as well as real-time
interactive presentations based on 3D models, data tables, and adapted
game engines and shaders used in proprietary, open-architecture fulldome
software.

The medium's origins in planetariums has largely limited tools, data
and stories to astronomy, but fulldome has enormous potential for
visualizing other sciences for research and education, serving the arts
as new creative and performance space, and entertainment as immersive
gaming and experiential venue.

The author will demonstrate the medium's tools and current uses as well
as UNM-based early research.   New UNM research agendas and possibilities
for future work will also be discussed.


BIO:
David Beining serves as director of immersive medium at the University
of New Mexico's ARTS Lab and is the founder and executive producer of
"DomeFest," a global festival for the fulldome medium.  Beining founded
and directed UNM's LodeStar Astronomy Center, one of the world's first
fulldome theaters, from 2000-2007.

[Gfx-cafe] GFX Cafe Seminar Friday March 14, 2008

GFX Café Seminar Friday March 14, 2008
12noon, ARTS Lab Dome Theatre ** Note change of venue **

Food will be served

TITLE:
Real-Time Rendering and Interactivity in 'Fulldome' Immersive Digital
Dome Theater: An Introduction, Demonstration and Discussion of
UNM Research Projects and Goals
by David Beining, UNM ARTS Lab

ABSTRACT:

Large-format, immersive digital dome theater--fulldome--is a young
powerful medium with a high rate of diffusion in planetariums and
other venues. It's also a medium in which UNM is an internationally
recognized center for research, production and education.

Based in tiled projectors and PC clusters, fulldome theaters allow
for very high-resolution, immersive digital video presentation --
pre-rendered for linear cinematic experiences as well as real-time
interactive presentations based on 3D models, data tables, and adapted
game engines and shaders used in proprietary, open-architecture fulldome
software.

The medium's origins in planetariums has largely limited tools, data
and stories to astronomy, but fulldome has enormous potential for
visualizing other sciences for research and education, serving the arts
as new creative and performance space, and entertainment as immersive
gaming and experiential venue.

The author will demonstrate the medium's tools and current uses as well
as UNM-based early research. New UNM research agendas and possibilities
for future work will also be discussed.

BIO:
David Beining serves as director of immersive medium at the University
of New Mexico's ARTS Lab and is the founder and executive producer of
"DomeFest," a global festival for the fulldome medium. Beining founded
and directed UNM's LodeStar Astronomy Center, one of the world's first
fulldome theaters, from 2000-2007.

--
Pradeep Sen
Assistant Professor
Advanced Graphics Lab
Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering
University of New Mexico
_______________________________________________
gfx-cafe mailing list
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http://lists.eece.unm.edu/mailman/listinfo/gfx-cafe

[Gfx-cafe] GFX Cafe Seminar Friday March 7, 2008

GFX Café Seminar Friday March 7, 2008
12noon, ARTS Lab Black Box Theatre ** Note change of venue **

Food will be served

TITLE:
Adapting compositing software from motion picture production
to analysis of live macrophage cells
by Carl Diegert, Sandia National Laboratories

ABSTRACT:
Technology for producing motion pictures by combining visual elements
from separate sources has enabled new creativity in storytelling. Amazing
advances in this technology have arguably directly contributed to
profitability of films that innovate in use of advances in this
technology. A byproduct of this market pull is a robust and capable
breed of commercial software products for node-based, digital compositing.

A difficult analysis of fluorescent microscopy images of dynamic response
of live macrophage cells to a pathogen was on my plate last month, and
will be the basis for the case study I will present in this talk. The
approach I will review was to adapt Fusion, a node-based, compositing
product from Eyeon Software, Inc., to the qualitative and quantitative
analysis of these cells. While video products are helpful in presenting
and discussing our scientific results, I will report that the power of
interaction with the scientific imaging in Fusion has motivated us to
build a rich Internet application (RIA) to make some of this interaction
available to everyone with a web browser and an interest in our cell
observations.

For the hands-on case study, we will:

1. Watch live macrophage cell behavior results presented as video products
that integrate motion-graphics and motion-imaging. Show interaction
using multiple instances of typical personal-computer, video-viewer
software.

2. Discuss and demonstrate motion tracking, optical flow estimation, and
rotoscoping using commercial products Fusion and PF Track. After an
example with a conventional, perspective-camera capture, apply the
techniques to the imaging from Sandia's compound microscope, a
telecentric system.

3. Show my code that adapts the Fusion product to doing the quantitative
cell analysis task.

4. Return to a more critical analysis of (1), and point out that viewing
with typical video playback software is less than helpful in guiding
the analysis.

5. Show a powerful A/B Wipe interaction with the live-cell video results
that I have found powerful in doing the analysis.

6. Demonstrate an RIA that makes the helpful A/B Wipe interaction from
Fusion available to collaborators equipped with only mundane personal
computers.

Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a
Lockheed Martin Company, for the United States Department of Energy's
National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-AC04-94AL85000.

BIO:
Carl Diegert is a scientist at Sandia National Labs.

--
Pradeep Sen
Assistant Professor
Advanced Graphics Lab
Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering
University of New Mexico
_______________________________________________
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Animation Group Meeting, March 11th

Hey everyone...

We're really excited about AniMotion NM, and the work Becky Padilla, Elaine Montoya and Teri Farley have been doing to help move New Mexico's animation community to the next level. If you're a professional or aspiring animator -- or have plans to work with animators and motion graphics specialists, please check this out.

For more information, visit the NM Adobe Users Group site

AniMotion NM: Real World Production

Where: ARTS Lab
When: Mar 11, 2008 07:00 PM –08:30 PM

Join us for the launch of AniMotion NM March 11th! The concept has been in the works for a while, but it all came together at the MISP conference this past January. It's time for the launch of AniMotion NM! AniMotion NM will serve as a community for New Mexico's animators, motion graphic artists, VFX artists, sound designers, and broadcast designers. Meetings will serve to educate and as a means to network.

The launch event takes place, Tuesday, March 11, from 7:00pm-8:30pm at the ARTS Lab, 131 Pine NE. The topic for the event will be Animation: Real World Production. Join animator Jeff LaFlamme as he takes us through the process of creating an animated spot. From concept to delivery, discover the process, what was involved in working with the agency and client, to final delivery of the VOZ Online Commercial - his 3D animated Telly award-winning spot.

Looking for a job? Wanna show your work? Bring your reel! At the close of each meeting, we will play any reel up to 5 minutes in length. Reels must be on DVD.

Thanks to all involved in making AniMotion NM happen! Special thanks to Teri Farley, Eric Whitmore, Hue Walker, Becky Padilla and Elaine Montoya.

Animation: Real World Production
Presenter: Jeff LaFlamme

To Register, visit the NM Adobe Users Group site

--
"Death is a primitive concept; I prefer to think of it as battling evil - in another dimension!" -- Grig

For more information about NM Media-related Events, visit: http://nm-media.blogspot.com/
--

Eric Renz-Whitmore, Program Coordinator
ARTS Lab
MSC04 2570
1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131
505-277-2253
http://artslab.unm.edu

Ruby on Rails at InfoByte this Tuesday

Hey... we've heard and seen a lot of good work done with Ruby on Rails.
What is that exactly? Visit the InfoByte series at UNM's Continuing
Education this Tuesday to find out.
___
Hello, World:

I was asked to forward this to a list on campus and thought that some
of you might be interested.

InfoByte - Ruby on Rails
Presented by Mariano Paglayan
IT Pro Instructor

12:00 pm - 1:15 pm
Tuesday, March 4
UNM Continuing Education
1634 University NE

This open source web framework is optimized for programmer happiness and
sustainable productivity, and **lets you write beautiful code** by
favoring convention over configuration.

Everyone from startups to non-profits to enterprise organizations is
using **Rails** — be it software for collaboration, community,
e-commerce, content management, statistics, management, you name it.

Come learn more about how **Ruby programming can work for you.**

Please RSVP to cewebster@lxdce.unm.edu.

This Friday @ UNM

Four different events of interest this Friday @ UNM:

1. GFX Cafe continues its SIGGRAPH series (Major presentations from
SIGGRAPH with talk and discussion in the room), this time from Valve
-- which produced some of the hottest games of 2007.
(more info below)

2. When DomeFest 2008 hits the road, it will be the best opportunity
yet for animators and visual artists creating 'fulldome content' to
have their work seen by more people than ever before. Not sure what
fulldome content is? Come visit the ARTS Lab Garage (131 Pine Street
NE @ the Wooden Steps) from 2-4PM when we'll discuss creating artistic
content for planetariums, and help find ways to get more New Mexicans
into the show. More info at: http://artslab.unm.edu

3. Interested in Time Travel?
HOW TO BUILD A TIME MACHINE, a free public talk by internationally
recognized scientist, author and speaker Dr. Paul Davies, will be held
Friday, Feb. 29 at 7 p.m. in Regener Hall 103 on UNM's main campus.
Davies will examine time travel from the physicist's perspective. The
talk is sponsored by the UNM Dept. of Physics and Astronomy and the
College of Arts and Sciences. For more information call 277-2616.

4. NM PROFESSIONAL FILMMAKERS SHOWCASE
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 29TH 6 to 9 pm
Contact: Anne Stirling www.filmvideoarts.org or 505-277-0077 Ext. 1
UNM Continuing Education 1634 University Blvd. NE Albuquerque Tickets
$19 at the door
Premieres and showings of 8 short works by local filmmakers. Film
listings and details below.
___

GFX Café Seminar Friday Feb 29, 2008
12noon, ECE118

Food will be served

TITLE: SIGGRAPH @ UNM
Advanced real-time rendering at Valve
by Chris Green and Jason Mitchell, Valve

ABSTRACT:
We celebrate the leap year by bringing you three talks by Valve, first
presented at SIGGRAPH 2007. First, Chris Green will talk about using
surface detail maps to create soft self-shadowing effects, which are
important to give games the photorealism more often seen in feature
film. Next, he will talk about a problem we have also been working on
here at UNM, that of magnifying vector textures for first-person shooters
using fast shading algorithms. Finally, Jason Mitchell discusses
cartoon shading for real-time illustrative effects in the new game
release Team Fortress 2.
___

NM PROFESSIONAL FILMMAKERS SHOWCASE FRIDAY FEBRUARY 29TH 6 to 9 pm
Contact: Anne Stirling www.filmvideoarts.org or 505-277-0077 Ext. 1
UNM Continuing Education 1634 University Blvd. NE Albuquerque Tickets
$19 at the door

Presented by Friends of Film Video and Arts, an international group of
independent filmmakers. Theater
seating, refreshments, and a chance to meet some of the most creative
and talented filmmakers in New
Mexico. Seven Filmmakers discuss their work and answer your questions
in this timely and provocative
kaleidoscope of films! Introduced by Anne Stirling, independent
filmmaker and director of FoFVA.

The Art of Storytelling, Director's Cut New Mexico (Documentary, US.,
2007, 26:44 m, video)
What makes a story a good story? Successful documentary filmmakers
Beverly Singer, Arcie Chapa, KNME's
Executive Producer Michael Kamins, Chris Schueler, and Dale Kruzic
discuss their passion for storytelling.
Produced by Rebecca Dakota and FoFVA. Dakota's work includes "Pie
Crust 101", a Pies for Peace Project.

Klebanoff (Biography, US., 2007 6:21m, video)
In this stylish and beautiful bio on international artist Susan
Klebanoff, talented UNM graduate Anton
Kozikowski shows off his award-winning expertise in cinematography.

Black Eagle, Flying Free (Music Video, US., 4:00m, video)
Music video of the Grammy Award winning drum group Black Eagle from
Jemez Pueblo, beautifully shot and
edited by award-winning writer, director, editor, and teacher Brad Stoddard.

Cycling (Sports Documentary, US., 2008 8m, video)
Focusing on a young man who used cycling to lose 300 pounds, this
video is an exciting look at the growing
sport of international cycling in New Mexico. Kenneth Segura Knoll is
a native New Mexican who has over 30
years experience in film, television, and the internet streaming business.

The Truth By Walden Matussey (Humor, US., 2006 7:39m video)
In this humorous short, a man battles for his voice to be heard and to
expose the government for the obvious
liars that they are. Tim Boughn's second feature length script, The
Truth By Walden Matussey, has been
optioned by Adams House Productions.

Climate Change, What It Means for New Mexico (Documentary, US., 2007
24:44m video)
Also by producer, director, and composer Anton Kozikowski, this
cutting edge environmental documentary was
commissioned by the state of New Mexico, featuring NASA satellite
tracking and the country's top scientists.

Teardrop (Love Story US., 2007 7m, video)
In this charming love story, a young girl, delightfully played by
Elise Eberle, thinks she's found the answer for
two lonely people. Produced for the 48 Hour Film Festival, the film
also stars Betsy Burke and Wayne
Wilkinson. This is Fritz Eberle's first narrative work, which he also
filmed and co-directed. Betsy Burke cowrote
(with Ric Eberle) and co-directed Teardrop.

SPECIAL PREMIER of "Time Assassins" (Humorous Satire, U.S., 2008, 5m, HD)
In this very funny satire, Lee Harvey Oswald and John Wilkes Booth are
sent back in time to stop a maniacal
priest who plans to sign a Pro Gay Marriage Proclamation allowing
homosexuals to corrupt the wholesome
fabric of the USA. Can they stop this insidious plan? Director Reuben
Finkelstein is a graduate of the CNM
film program. His short, "Time Cougars", just won the National 48 Hour
Film Competition. Executive producer
and DP David Garcia trained at the Academy of Art College in San
Francisco and at Boston University School
for the Arts. He is co-owner of the local production company halflife* digital.

[Gfx-cafe] GFX Cafe Seminar Friday Jan 29, 2008

GFX Café Seminar Friday Feb 29, 2008
12noon, ECE118

Food will be served

TITLE:
SIGGRAPH @ UNM
Advanced real-time rendering at Valve
by Chris Green and Jason Mitchell, Valve

ABSTRACT:
We celebrate the leap year by bringing you three talks by Valve, first
presented at SIGGRAPH 2007. First, Chris Green will talk about using
surface detail maps to create soft self-shadowing effects, which are
important to give games the photorealism more often seen in feature
film. Next, he will talk about a problem we have also been working on
here at UNM, that of magnifying vector textures for first-person shooters
using fast shading algorithms. Finally, Jason Mitchell discusses
cartoon shading for real-time illustrative effects in the new game
release Team Fortress 2.

BIO:
Jason Mitchell is a Software Engineer at Valve, where he works on real-time
3D graphics techniques across all of Valve's projects. Prior to joining
Valve, Jason was the lead of the 3D Application Research Group at ATI
Research for eight years.

Chris Green is a software engineer at Valve and has worked on titles
such as Half Life 2: Episode 2, Portal, Zoo Tycoon, and MechAssault.

--
Pradeep Sen
Assistant Professor
Advanced Graphics Lab
Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering
University of New Mexico
_______________________________________________
gfx-cafe mailing list
gfx-cafe@lists.eece.unm.edu
http://lists.eece.unm.edu/mailman/listinfo/gfx-cafe

[Gfx-cafe] GFX Cafe Seminar Friday Feb 22, 2008

GFX Café Seminar Friday Feb 22, 2008
12noon, ECE118

Food will be served

TITLE:
Autostereoscopic displays for a simple 3D experience
by Hao He, Advanced Graphics Lab

ABSTRACT:
Most display devices show images in 2D, which loses infomation for
humans to recognize 3D structures. Researchers have been working on 3D
display technology for many years, and many approaches have been
proposed. However, each method has its own constraints.

Autostereoscopy is a type of method that displays 3D images that can be
viewed without the use of special headgear or glasses. These methods
produce depth perception in the viewer even though the image is produced
by a flat device. Several different classes of basic autostereoscopic
technologies will be introduced. We will also illustrate ideas in
implementing a simple autostereoscopic display system which we are
currently investigating at the Advanced Graphics Lab at UNM.

BIO:
Hao He is a first-year graduate student in Advanced Graphics Lab with
interests in 3D modeling, light field and 3D display. He got his
Bachelor's Degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China in 2007.

--
Pradeep Sen
Assistant Professor
Advanced Graphics Lab
Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering
University of New Mexico
_______________________________________________
gfx-cafe mailing list
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UNM Game Projects Getting out in the World

UNM Game Projects Getting out in the World

ECE/CS 433 students who presented their newly created video games during the fall course's daylong gaming extravaganza on December 6 caught the camera's eye at KRQE Channel 13, as did some of the students who came by to have a little fun and test-play the games. The TV station aired a two-minute report that evening.

To watch the newscast, here is a 7.5 MB .wmv clip: KRQE news clip.

The story, reported by KRQE's Mike Paluska, aired later the same evening on affiliate KASA Channel 2.

A 2:30-minute videotaped report about the event was also produced by UNM Communications & Marketing for YouTube and can be seen on UNM's site here or on YouTube.

For more information about the event, go here.

Archimedes Palimpsest Project today and tomorrow at UNM

An interesting exploration of history, science and the nature of 'text' is going on here at UNM today and tomorrow with the Archimedes Revealed event at Woodward Hall...

UNM's Institute for Medieval Studies Hosts Colloquium on Acclaimed Archimedes Project

Leading team members from the famous Archimedes Palimpsest Project—which has hit the headlines in news outlets across the United States and in Europe—will gather in Albuquerque Friday and Saturday, Feb. 15–16, for "Archimedes Revealed," a public colloquium hosted by the University of New Mexico Institute for Medieval Studies.

The event, which takes place in rm. 101 of Woodward Hall on UNM's main campus, will include five illustrated presentations covering the key aspects of this most remarkable project. All sessions are free and open to the public.

For a complete list of the lectures visit: Archimedes Revealed.

The colloquium will focus on the Archimedes Palimpsest, a 10th century manuscript that includes the only surviving copies of three key works by Archimedes, the greatest scientist of the ancient world. These works reveal that Archimedes was familiar with the concept of infinity—previously thought to have been unknown to the Greeks—that he anticipated the discovery of the calculus by almost 2,000 years, and that his contributions to science foreshadowed those of Galileo and Newton, the founders of modern scientific method.
So why have these texts by Archimedes remained unknown until now? A "palimpsest" is a book in which the original text has been erased from the parchment leaves and new text substituted in its place. In the 13th century, Greek-speaking monks erased the Archimedes texts from the manuscript and substituted for them a collection of monastic prayers. Early in the 20th century, the Danish scholar Johan Heiberg was able to read parts of the erased text, but he had to leave significant portions unread—including those that reveal most about Archimedes' mind and methods.

The manuscript went missing for much of the 20th century. It resurfaced in 1998, when purchased at auction by an anonymous buyer who deposited it at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore so that conservation work could be carried out on its leaves and scientists could attempt to make the text legible again.

The story of those scientists' efforts is an epic of modern technological achievement. Advanced digital imaging techniques developed at the Rochester Institute of Technology—one of the leading centers in the United States for this kind of work—recaptured significant portions of text that was previously illegible. Yet not even those techniques could penetrate the secrets of certain pages that, in an unscrupulous and misguided effort to give the book greater value, had been painted over in the mid-20th century with forged pictures in medieval Byzantine style.

Reading these pages required taking the manuscript to Stanford University, where scientists at Stanford's Linear Accelerator Center—which specializes in accelerating atomic particles to nearly the speed of light—developed a special, purpose-built scanner that submitted the pages to x-ray fluorescence that succeeded in penetrating the paint and reading faint traces of original letters beneath. As a result, about 85 percent of the original text may now be read—and progress continues to be made, with hopes of rendering the entire text legible.

The Archimedes Palimpsest Project is an epic that brings together ancient science, a medieval manuscript, and some of the brightest achievements of modern technology. It is not surprising that it has attracted huge public interest.

The project has been the subject of a PBS Nova documentary, a BBC documentary, and major articles in the Smithsonian and the Economist; it has been written up in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, in England's Daily Telegraph and Independent and in Spain's El País; it has been featured on NPR, on Fox News, on ABC News and on BBC News.

The New Mexico public has an extraordinary opportunity to hear leading members of the project present on key aspects. The event should appeal to a broad spectrum of the public: those interested in the ancient and medieval past just as much as those interested in the possibilities opened up by modern technology developed in some of the country's leading scientific centers.

[Gfx-cafe] GFX Cafe Seminar Friday Feb 15, 2008

GFX Café Seminar Friday Feb 15, 2008
12noon, ECE118

Food will be served

TITLE:
Virtual Environments: a multi-disciplinary research tool
by Betty Mohler, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics

ABSTRACT:
Virtual environments (VEs) are computer-simulations of real or fictional
environments with which users can interact. Potential applications of VEs
include training, visualization, entertainment, design, rehabilitation,
education, and research. The ultimate goal of VEs is to provide the full
sensory experience of being in a simulated world. VEs are a very powerful
tool to answer scientific research questions from many disciplines. In
this talk, four specific projects will be described which use virtual
environments to investigate human behavior and also provide suggestions
to improve upon the current technology used for VEs.

First, an empirical study of space perception within immersive VEs will
be presented. Second, results which demonstrate the visual influence on
human locomotor behavior will be discussed. Third, a project that analyzes
the illusion of self-motion within a large-screen projection VE will be
presented. Finally, the implementation of fully articulated full-body
avatars within a VE in real time will be described. My research
vision is to use virtual environments as a multi-disciplinary tool to
provide scientists from various research backgrounds with a rich
collection of data on human behavior and interaction. My goal as a
scientist has always been to simultaneously investigate human perception
while gaining insight from the user in order to improve virtual
environments hardware and applications.

BIO:
Betty Mohler received her PhD in computer science from the University of
Utah in 2007. She is now in her second year of a post-doctoral research
position at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in
Tübingen, Germany. Her main research interest is in understanding the
human observer towards the aim of improving virtual environment
applications. Her approach has always been a multi-disciplinary one and,
therefore, she currently collaborates with engineers, neuroscientists
and psychologists.

--
Pradeep Sen
Assistant Professor
Advanced Graphics Lab
Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering
University of New Mexico
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[Gfx-cafe] GFX Cafe Seminar Friday Feb 8, 2008

GFX Café Seminar Friday Feb 8, 2008
12noon, ECE118

Food will be served

TITLE:
Sensitivity Analysis for Classification
by Joe Kniss, Advanced Graphics Lab

ABSTRACT:
The principal goal of visualization is to create a visual representation
of complex information and large datasets in order to gain insight and
understanding. Our current research focuses on methods for handling
uncertainty stemming from data acquisition and algorithmic sources. Most
visualization methods, especially those applied to 3D data, implicitly
use some form of classification or segmentation to eliminate unimportant
regions and illuminate those of interest. The process of classification
is inherently uncertain; in many cases the source data contains error and
noise, data transformations such as filtering can further introduce and
magnify the uncertainty. More advanced classification methods rely on
some sort of model or statistical method to determine what is and is not
a feature of interest. While these classification methods can model
uncertainty or fuzzy probabilistic memberships, they typically only
provide discrete, maximum a-posteriori memberships. It is vital that
visualization methods provide the user access to uncertainty in
classification or image generation if the results of the visualization
are to be trusted.

In this talk, I'll cover some basic definitions of visualization and
highlight some of our on going work here at UNM. Specifically, I'll
discuss a new approach for assessing uncertainty stemming from algorithmic
or computational sources called sensitivity analysis. I'll also take a
few detours to cover topics volume rendering, the method we use to make
pictures of 3D datasets.

BIO:
Joe is an Assistant Professor in Computer Science an member of the Advanced
Graphics Lab at UNM. His research focuses on interactive visualization of
large datasets, light transport, and computer graphics. His current
research investigates methods for capturing and displaying uncertainty
introduced by the data processing pipeline, and frameworks for representing
non-linear features in band-limited raster image data.

--
Pradeep Sen
Assistant Professor
Advanced Graphics Lab
Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering
University of New Mexico
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[Gfx-cafe] GFX Cafe Seminar Friday Feb 1, 2008

GFX Café Seminar Friday Feb 1, 2008
12noon, ARTS Lab Black Box Theater ** Note change of venue **

Food will be served

TITLE:
SIGGRAPH @ UNM
A Poor Man's Palace, Special Effects in the Real World
by Ramesh Raskar, Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs (MERL)

ABSTRACT:
In our second of our SIGGRAPH @ UNM series, we present Ramesh Raskar's
talk on spatial augmented-reality displays presented at SIGGRAPH 2007.

Novel approaches have taken augmented reality beyond traditional eye-worn
or hand-held displays - enabling additional application areas. New
display paradigms exploit large spatially aligned optical elements, such
as mirror beam-splitters, transparent screens or holograms, as well as
video-projectors. Thus, we call this technological variation "Spatial
Augmented Reality (SAR)".

In many situations, SAR displays are able to overcome technological and
ergonomic limitations of conventional AR systems. Due to the fall in cost
and availability of projection technology, personal computers and graphics
hardware, there has been a considerable interest in exploiting SAR systems
in universities, research laboratories, museums, industry and in the art
community.

Parallels to the development of virtual environments from head-attached
displays to spatial projection screens can be clearly drawn. We believe
that an analog evolution of augmented reality has the potential to yield a
similar successful factor in many application domains. Thereby, SAR and
body-attached AR are not competitive, but complementary.

BIO:

Ramesh Raskar joined MERL as a Research Scientist in 2000 after his
doctoral research at U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he
developed a framework for projector based displays. His work spans
a range of topics in computer vision and graphics including projective
geometry, non-photorealistic rendering and intelligent user interfaces.
He has developed algorithms for image projection on planar, non-planar
and quadric curved surfaces that simplify constraints on conventional
displays and has proposed Shader Lamps, a new approach for projector-based
augmented reality. Current projects include composite RFID (RFIG),
multi-flash non-photorealistic camera for depth edge detection,
locale-aware mobile projectors, high dynamic range video, image fusion
for context enhancement and quadric transfer methods for
multi-projector curved screen displays.

Dr. Raskar received the Mitsubishi Electric Information Technology
R&D Award 2003, Global Indus Technovator Award 2003, instituted at
MIT to recognize the top 20 Indian technology innovators on the
globe, Mitsubishi Electric Valuable Invention Award 2004 and
TR100 Award, Technology Review's 100 Top Young Innovators
Under 35, 2004. His papers have appeared in SIGGRAPH, Eurographics,
IEEE Visualization, CVPR and many other graphics and vision conferences.
He has taught courses and has served as a member of international
program committees at major conferences. He is a member of the ACM
and IEEE.

--
Pradeep Sen
Assistant Professor
Advanced Graphics Lab
Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering
University of New Mexico
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AIGA NM "Business of Design" This Saturday @ UNM DCE

Hey everyone...

Incorporating Design Principles into media and other business has always seemed like a good idea, but the way designers do business -- often small firms and freelancers -- has a lot of value to share with our small media companies as well. If you're interested in design, business, and the local chapter of AIGA, please check this out...

The Business of Design
Workshops for Creative Professionals

Saturday, February 2, 2008

AIGA New Mexico presents two workshops on
the business of design with guest speakers
Shel Perkins and Linda Joy Kattwinkel, Esq.

10 to 11:30 am
Intellectual Property Basics: A Designer's Guide to Copyrights, Trademarks and Patents

12 to 1:30 pm
An Introduction to the New AIGA Standard Form of Agreement for Design Services


WHERE
Continuing Education Conference Center at UNM Room G,
North Building, 1634 University Blvd NE, Albuquerque

COST
AIGA members: $15 for one workshop or $25 for both
Non-members: $25 for one workshop or $45 for both
Students: $10 for one workshop or $20 for both

RSVP
Space for these workshops is limited. Reserve now by emailing events@santafe.aiga.org or by calling Mandy Otter at 505.822.5516.
Visit the http://santafe.aiga.org web site for workshop descriptions and for more information about our guest speakers.