Tag: Cgi

Two of the best all-time Nintendo games are Super Mario Bros. and Mega Man. So I can think of no better Nintendo hero than one who combines Mario and Mega Man himself. This fun mashup comes courtesy of CG artist Yago De Amorim, who says the inspiration came from a 2D illustration by artist Jake Parker.

This winter get yourself a real snowmobile. Something with real power and style. Something like this Lamborghini Huracán snowmobile designed by Rain Prisk Designs. You’ll wish you had snow year round if you owned a snowmobile like this one.

Last October, we checked out a tracking and animation system that creates a realistic computer animated face based on one person’s face and another person’s facial movements. Most of the researchers continued to work on that system, taking it to its logical conclusion.

Last October we checked out a fascinating animation technique that transfers facial movements from one person to another in real-time. Disney Research’s FaceDirector on the other hand blends two different takes of an actor’s face into one customizable performance.

In the near future, you may be able to make yourself speak in any language, or have video proof of your friend saying he loves to eat poop. It’s all thanks to a new tracking and animation system that can transfer the facial movements of one person into a photorealistic CGI rendering of another person’s face, all in real time.

Over the last few decades, computer graphics have become a more and more essential part of industrial design – especially in the automotive industry. The ability to visualize designs digitally has given designers and engineers the freedom to test and refine concepts and functionality prior to expending time and money on physical prototypes.

This video is sort of snapshot of a typical day for our Italian plumber friend Mario. On this day, he has to make his way through Tokyo, otherwise he will be late for a very important event.

If you’ve been reading Technabob for any length of time, you probably know that we’re huge fans of LEGO and LEGO paraphernalia. Now, it turns out that Hollywood is jumping onto the LEGO bandwagon with the upcoming release of The LEGO Movie.

I always thought the Gundam already knew how to walk, but apparently the giant mech never really knew how to do it properly. So leave it to some enterprising Japanese geek to come up with a way to get Gundam to learn how to walk using a CGI physics engine.

I’ve always wanted to try and build that Ultimate LEGO Millennium Falcon kit, but just never had the time or patience to do it. Never mind the fact that the kit is so collectible, that it sells for over $2,000 these days.

…no not so much the samaritan part – the UNREAL ENGINE part. Honest to god, the graphics in this newly released real-time demo footage running on Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 3 is the best looking bit of game engine footage I’ve ever laid eyes on.

Artist Pawel Hynek‘s striking image isn’t all that recent, but it’s thought-provoking to say the least. The image features an almost derelict robot begging for power in exchange for processing data. It’s funny, but uncomfortable at the same time, since many people will lose or have lost their jobs due to automation.

I just stumbled onto this short film starring a robot and a boombox, and it really made me smile. The little red guy looks like one of those wind-up toys you might get over at General Robots, and the boom box is one of those classic Lasonics numbers that you might find in a 1980s rap video.

Suraj from Machoarts put together this roundup of great digital robot illustrations. Most of these can be downloaded as wallpapers for your computer. Here are a few that tickled my fancy.

Our Senseless But Awesome Video of the Day is brought to us by YouTube user retletter. Do you love butterflies? Well they love you too. Very much:

Space Foosball is a modern-day spin on the old foosball table does away with those mechanical men and ping pong balls and replaces them with pixels and a physics engine. The cool thing about the virtual foosball players and ball is that they’re still controlled by the same sort of spinny axle controllers that traditional foosball machines use.