François Tarlier's Blog > CG Artist, Matchmover, VFX, Open Source topics, Computer Vision, and geek stuff !

Just a quick post to inform you I add the MobilePress plugin to my blog so it will be easier to so visual it on Iphone, and other mobile phone.

Feel free to drop a line, if you find bugs or if you have feedback about it.

Thx

I got lately interest in Lift/Gamma/Gain formula for some personal project, I thought I would share some of the informations I found.

What does Lift/Gamma/Gain ?

Lift/Gamma/Gain is actually is a really nice approach for color correction in my opinion. Lift/Gamma/Gain are actually controlling the Shadows/Mid-tones/High-tones of your picture with the ability to offset the colors.
This combine with saturation and exposure could give a powerful tool for color correction. This is the kind of tool you’ll find in plug-in such as Magic Bullet Colorista from Red Giant Software or professional hardware as Black Magic DaVinci


Stu Maschwitz from Prolost did a nice tutorial on how to use his Colorista plug-in

Red Giant TV Episode 22: Creating a Summer Blockbuster Film Look from Stu Maschwitz on Vimeo.

Mirror of http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/videos/redgianttv/item/23/

Lift/Gamma/Gain formula

outputColor = (gainColor*(inputColor+liftColor*(1-inputColor)))^(1/gammaColor)

This has to be done for each channel color for each pixels of your picture.

To make some test of this formula I did use Blender’s compositing and its “Math” node which was pretty useful . This operation is useless since it is terribly slow using nodes and it’s already implemented in the Sequencer (properties of the strip), but it’s just for the test !

Here is the blend file and a screenshot :

Lift/Gamma/Gain Formula done in Blender Compositing using "Math" node

Finally it was about time!!!! now I’m might get an iphone !

Adobe now makes it possible to create applications for the Apple iPhone using the Adobe Flash Platform. You heard right: We’re really excited to bring this new capability to Flash designers and developers—the ability to target the iPhone with ActionScript 3 projects. You will be able to test this functionality in the forthcoming beta release of Adobe Flash Professional CS5 on Adobe Labs.

via Developping for the Iphone with Adobe Flash

Flash Professional CS5 will enable you to build applications for iPhone and iPod touch using ActionScript 3. These applications can be delivered to iPhone and iPod touch users through the Apple App Store.*

• Demonstration Video
• Example Applications
• Additional Resources

via Adobe Labs – Adobe Flash Professional CS5: Applications for iPhone.

***
Sign Up for Beta here : https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=fpcs5_notify

What is vSwarm ?

vSwarm is an online free RenderFarm based on distributed calculation for 3d rendering (as today for Blender and LuxRender, but more to comes).

What is Distributed Calculation ?

The idea behind it is really simple : sharing the CPU & Memory power of your computer which you are not being used. Everything is based on the priority of task (normal, low, … ).

For instance, if you are using Photoshop which runs as “normal priority” and use 70% of your CPU, then there is still 30% unused which another software with “low priority” could take advantage of. Meaning the software running with “normal priority” will be able to request any amount of CPU power it needs at any time while the “low priority” software will only take what is left !

That’s why this kind of Distributed Calculation will not slow down your computer ever !

Understanding vSwarm :

vSwarm is separated on two parts “Sharing CPU” and “Submitting Jobs“. You can do just one of those or both or them. If you are only submitting jobs, of course there is a catch! By “Sharing CPU” you can get a better “vSwarm Priority” Level. The vSwarm Priority Level let your submitted jobs being doing faster or even before other people that has a higher Priority Level (the goal is to be in the first one).

So it is recommended to Share your CPU as much as you can. Plus think about it, more CPU are shared, faster the job gets done. And as I said earlier, it is not going ot slow down your computer so why not doing it ?

vSwarm Client :

vSwarm client running jobs

After you have register on vSwarm, you will be able to download the Client and install it.
Everything is pretty simple! For it’s first run vSwarm Client will ask for your login & password. You’ll also able to choose some setting as the priority (low or normal as mention above – I recommend low if you don’t want to slow down your computer), how many CPU it could use and how much memory.

All you have to do then is to click on “Start Working”. The client will download job from vSwarm server, process the job and then upload the result back to the server ! Voilà, nothing more.

By running the Client you will process job of others which as been submitted or even yours

.

vSwarm Web Control Center :

vSwarm web control center

On this webpage you will be able to :

• Create Jobs
• Manage Jobs
• Manage Files (file to render, render,…)
• Managing your computer which are sharing CPU
• Check your statistics (vSwarm Priority, # of rendering time, # of CPU used time, … )

To submit a job, you will first have to upload the files, for instance your .blend file if you are using blender.
You can upload files directly on the Control center or even by FTP

Conclusion :

At this time, vSwarm still in early stage of Alpha, and doesn’t support much renderer. So hopefuly many will come soon. But beside that it is really super simple to use, and I like the idea behind it “more you’ll give, more you’ll get in return”
For me the downside for now is that the Virtual Machine used by the client to render the scene are not encrypted yet, so rendering scene which are case to NDA could be an issue. But I think they are working on that as well.

Usually people like CG Artists, Video Game Players, Programmers, … have really powerful computer and most of the time this power is not even used at half of its potential which is somehow energy wasted (icore 7 only to check your e-mail online is pretty sick ). So this could be a great solution to use the power of your computer for good. Plus as I understand, the vSwarm team is thinking about a buisness model in future where people sharing CPU would get paid ! another good reason to do it ! GO FOR IT JOIN !!!

NB : Many other services online is working on the same principle oriented more for science and medical research. I’ll talk about it in another post

You can now find 3 new videos on blenderlabrat’s blog about his Blender 2.5 Tour.

There as been a lot of changes since his first tour of 2.5 and I think it’s worth taking a look at this new tour now because the new version of Blender is getting closer and closer to its final look and I think that’s a good starting point for people to have a real and nice sneak peak of what it’s going to be.

The 1rst part covers (user interface) :

• Context! what it is and how to understand it
• UI manipulation, split, join, rip, swap areas
• 3dview tools pane and repeat last operator
• threading, constant responsive UI
• new button types
• misc stuff, like quickly themes colors and such

http://blenderlabrat.blogspot.com/2009/10/25-tour-9-part-1.html

The 2nd part covers (animation) :

• Basic Keyframing
• Keying sets
• F-curve basics
• Modifiers
• Drivers ( didn’t want to work but i showed the procedure)
• Quat V Eulars
• Non-Linear Animation Editor

http://blenderlabrat.blogspot.com/2009/10/25-tour-9-part-2.html

The 3rd part covers (materials/shading) :

• Tour of new buttons layout and how to use it
• Multiple material
• Textures
• New bump mapping and colour managment
• Volumetrics
• Volumetric Textures

http://blenderlabrat.blogspot.com/2009/10/25-tour-9-part-3-materialsshading.html

The 4th part covers (particles & simulations) :

• where things are now
• new cache system
• effectors
• Smoke
• point density texture

http://blenderlabrat.blogspot.com/2009/10/25-tour-9-part-4-particles-and.html

The 5th part covers (Cache Editing) :

• how does simulations are cached on Harddrive for realtime playback

http://blenderlabrat.blogspot.com/2009/10/25-tour-9-part5-cache-editing.html