CNN Hologram - Behind the Scenes video

Just in case you haven’t seen it yet on, I imagine, zillions of other blogs, here’s how CNN used “holograms” to “beam in” remote correspondents on Election Night. The short answer: green screens and a whole bunch of computer-controlled cameras, for some real-time “Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope” action. It continues CNN’s apparent campaign to be the TV network most like sci fi movies. (Hello, Minority Report-style gestural screens!)

Of course, it’s notable for some other reasons – somewhat silly reasons:

• It’s probably the only time someone intentionally added blue fringing to a chroma key effect. Yep, that’s right: the blue halo around the participants had to be added intentionally to emphasize what they were doing, even though fringing is usually what you try to avoid.
• It’s mixing sci fi metaphors like no tomorrow. Princess Leia? Beam me up? Holograms? What? “Cap’n, Scott here! I cannu keep the Death Star from blowing up! These damn Cylons!”
• It’s probably the most inaccurate use of the word “hologram” ever. It’s a chroma key effect. The whole point is, it’s the first 3D key effect I’ve seen in real-time on TV – as far as I know – but keying sure isn’t that exciting if you’ve been watching the weather in the last half century. So they add the word “hologram.” They might as well have called it the “Holodeck” or “transporters” or just “magic.”

Technologically, though, it is very impressive. The real irony here isn’t that CNN used silly magical terminology and played terrifying drum sounds. (During the course of the evening, they had other sound effects that sounded like Nintendo platformer power-ups and massive explosions, as though Obama had just attacked North Carolina with an alien invasion.)

No, the real irony is that this impressive, expressive technology winds up becoming yet another way of doing boring talking heads. I can’t wait to see what happens when someone comes up with a more interesting use for this stuff. Stay tuned.

Create Digital Emotion, perhaps?

Beam me up, Wolf! CNN debuts election-night ‘hologram’

It’s a big leap from generations of visual software developed for non-real-time rendering to tools that can make visuals as expressive as musical instruments. As is always the case with development, the devil’s in the details. We’ve heard that overwhelmingly from all the developers to whom we’ve spoken.

But just as a musician might obsess over the nuances of a pickup on a guitar, there’s plenty to love as visual tools evolve. VDMX’s beta 7 isn’t the kind of thing you’d put on a glossy magazine cover, but then something like improved rendering engine or (bizarrely) loading live webpages into layers might just make you salivate. And having just seen CDMo contributor vade working with outpt with VDMX (and Processing and Max/MSP/Jitter and Quartz Composer and a network connection and who knows what else), I can’t wait to see what some of you will do with this.

2008 has indeed proven to be a year of new live visualist software, but development is going slowly in virtually all camps. I think it’s proof that visual apps in general, by stretching the computing capabilities of modern platforms and creating entirely new workflows from scratch, expose some of the challenges really rich media pose even on the latest OSes and developer tools. VDMX is the “perpetually in beta” favorite Mac-only visualist app. Despite the beta label, it’s really quite capable, increasingly-stable software. The Vidvox developers continue hacking away at it, and dedicated users follow each update the way some people follow sports.

Vidvox’s David Lublin gives CDM an exclusive look at the under-the-hood improvements happening in VDMX, as seen through the developers’ eyes. It’s a good glimpse into the mechanics of what’s going on.

Here’s David on some of what’s new, in the first part of our look at VDMX’s latest build:

The biggest changes to VDMX in beta 7 are under the hood, and should be immediately noticeable as soon as you start playing with it. The entire rendering engine has been re-written from scratch, making everything a lot faster and more stable. In particular, layers may be rendered directly to OpenGL- while OpenGL blend modes only offer a fraction of the flexibility of CoreImage, alpha channels work quite nicely and this is a good way to render a number of layers in one pass. We also wrote a dedicated still image handler and moved away from letting QuickTime handle still image playback. Since the images are going directly to the GPU, triggering stills is a lot faster and more stable. The interfaces for a number of plugins- particularly the preview windows- have been significantly optimized, and are much more efficient. Overall, we’re now sitting on a much faster and more robust foundation, which means it’ll be easier to improve and extend VDMX as the beta progresses (we’re about 70% complete- hence b7.0.0).

The making of: Nokia Friends, generative characters from postspectacular on Vimeo.

Karsten Schmidt sends us a behind-the-scenes mini-movie that reveals how he created pudgy, bouncy animated characters using generative code in Processing. It’s fun to watch these cute creatures evolve through a process of iteration, from bare-bone physics to the finished product. The results are now in flagship Nokia stores worldwide as well as in a big installation at England’s Heathrow Airport in Terminal 5.

The tour with Bobby Flynn is hotting up now. Over the weekend we had two shows: In Brisbane and the Gold Coast, which meant that I spent about 8 hours of my weekend setting up and tearing down my rig, aligning projectors and screens, running cables, and running around. The tour map currently displays 16 gigs down Australia’s east coast, and we will have another 35 or so joining them over the next week or so as dates are finalized. The cardboard box protecting my V4 during transport has already torn, and I’m sick of plugging and unplugging cables. So I need to get this stuff cased up, for the protection of my hardware and my sainity.

The current list (left to right, top to bottom):

• Wii - for pre-show warmups and after hours fun. Need to organize a wireless sensor bar.
• Behringer BCD2000 - Ghetto, but functional.
• Behringer BCR2000 - less ghetto than the BCD2000, and more functional.
• Numark AVM02 - Reviewed here.
• Samsung 940n 19″ LCD Monitor
• Lacie 200GB External Drive - Several years old, so should probably be replaced
• Macbook - Main Laptop. Running VDMX, Max/MSP/Jitter, Ableton Live etc.
• Thinkpad - Backup laptop. Running Ableton Live, Max/MSP/Jitter, Processing etc.
• Korg Kaoss Pad Entrancer - Video/Audio effects unit.
• Edirol V4
• Small Form Factor PC
• Voxson portable DVD player/monitor

I haven’t seen the World of Warcraft South Park yet, but I did manage to catch the recent stopmotion/claymation episode of My Name is Earl before I left Australia.

DV.com has an interview with the production leads for the segment, containing plenty of background, logistical information on how a special episode like this takes place, as well as some After Effects workflow tips, and information on flicker removal techniques for time-lapse or stop-motion photography:

Matlosz handed 1920 x 1080, 24p digital still image sequences off to Buck, who took them into After Effects.

Buck: I use a plug-in from The Foundry’s TinderBox collection called Deflicker. It has six or seven different ways to remove flicker from the stills. You can perform multiple passes with each different setting. One of the hardest things to do is keep the frame-by-frame lighting consistent.

Matlosz: Digital cameras aren’t designed to be frame accurate with luminance, chrominance, gamma, anything. Those things don’t stay consistent frame by frame. They just don’t match. That’s the one issue you have shooting digital time-lapse or digital stop-motion.

Buck: What really kills the stills is any kind of camera moves and rack focuses, so the Deflicker filter was a lifesaver. But there are times when even Deflicker falls short. Times when a light is bumped or a bulb goes out and needs to be replaced. For those kinds of problems, we adjust the levels manually to ensure frame-to-frame consistency.

I’ve dealt with some of these issues before, but even with everything locked off on a manual lens there is often some flicker remaining. Deflicker seems like the obvious answer.

It’s not hard to imagine a world in which customized game tools become simple 3D environments for producing truly original visuals — work that looks unrelated to the game engines that power it. The fact that 3D engines are designed for real-time operation makes them even more appealing for live visuals and VJ work. Artists like Julian Oliver have produced whole music and visual performance pieces, as we’ve seen on Create Digital Music.

So, could the fact South Park did an episode this season with World of Warcraft mean full productions are close at hand? Absolutely, and thanks to the good folks of machinima.com, we’ve learned all you’ll need is:

1. The production, animation, and technology team of South Park
2. Maya
3. Access to original 3D models from Maya from a company like Blizzard
4. 12 PCs and one MacPro
5. Folding tables (no details on what kind here … you may need a nearby IKEA)
6. A budget (admittedly bare-bones) from Comedy Central — this part you can probably muster
7. 28 members of the staff at Blizzard to help you out
8. Lots of time

Be sure to read the whole interview; it’s fantastic. Ultimately, to get more expression out of the characters without programming, Maya filled in for the character shots. In the true ghetto-fabulous tradition of South Park, though, the team used my favorite Mac video capture tool, Ambrosia’s inexpensive Snapz Pro, to grab in-game footage from the actual World of Warcraft. (And if you haven’t seen the episode, by all means, please do!)

“Make Love, Not Warcraft” [Behind-the-scenes interview on machinima.com]

Okay, granted, not the most practical approach here. I still think game engines could make for interesting custom visuals, though, and the fact that some of the footage really did come from the game should raise a few eyebrows. Now go hack those textures so it’s not recognizable, and send the results.

[tags]television, machinima, 3D, behind-the-scenes, oddities[/tags]