Modeling

From the New Scientist website : "The clatter of a dropped trash can and the crash of a cymbal – both easily recognisable sounds.

That's why computer games or CGI movies that feature such noises use samples recorded from life, not generated by software as the graphics have been. It would take weeks of intense computing to synthesise the sound of a single cymbal clash.

New methods developed at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, change that and could make objects in games and movies sound more like those in real life. Thin shells

From this ScienceDaily article : "For the past two years, a team of UCLA Egyptologists, digital modelers, web designers, staff and students has been building a three-dimensional virtual-reality model of the ancient Egyptian religious site known as Karnak, one of the largest temple complexes ever constructed.

The result is Digital Karnak, a high-tech model that runs in real time and allows users to navigate 2,000 years of history at the popular ancient Egyptian tourist site near modern-day Luxor, where generations of pharaohs constructed temples, chapels, obelisks, sphinxes, shrines and other sacred structures beginning in the 20th century B.C.

This Dentistry.co.uk article takes a look at the 'dental Wii': a 3D touch-enabled modelling system, by SensAble Technologies, to design partial sets of false teeth. From the article: "A new invention is using the concept of a virtual reality game console to create perfect dentures.

The Wii – the video game from Nintendo that allows players to control the game action by moving their arms in front of a motion-sensor – made its global debut in 2006.

The ‘dental Wii' is the creation of US company SensAble Technologies, whose 3-D touch-enabled modelling systems can be used to design partial sets of false teeth.

SensAble showed off their system at Chicago Dental Society Midwinter Show last week.

This Engineer Online article reports the 3D reconstruction of a face from a single 2D image could be made faster and more accurate with new software being developed by scientists at York University. From the article: "Dr William Smith, a lecturer in computer vision at York, aims to combine the advantages of two face-recognition techniques to challenge the most advanced method for recovering 3D shapes when there is only one image to work from, such as an image from a CCTV camera. One of the techniques, which is also the most sophisticated, uses a morphable statistical model of facial appearance, while the approach that Smith has been working on uses classical shape-from-shading techniques.

The statistical approach works by taking a model and adjusting parameters to try to fit the model to an image.

This globeandmail.com article reports Calgary academics made a 3-D virtual-reality replica of a traditional hut, offering elders a new way to pass on their fading heritage. From the article: "CALGARY — Donald Uluadluak ducks as the life-size images of ancient Inuit huts and a whale skeleton, which was once used as building material in the North, seem to float around him.

The 75-year-old artist and elder adviser from Nunavut says he wants to reach out and touch the lifelike three-dimensional objects as he sits wearing special glasses in this darkened virtual-reality room at the University of Calgary.

"It feels like we're shamans or magicians," Mr. Uluadluak, speaking in Inuktitut, said yesterday. "It brought us back to who we were."

This Ohio University's Outlook article reports Ohio University's School of Telecommunications and Game Research and Immersive Design (GRID) Lab have won a two-year, $702,000 grant to create interactive digital environments in 30 high-profile Columbus buildings or sites that could be most susceptible to terrorist attacks, hostage situations or other critical incidents. From the article: "The funding comes from the Urban Area Security Initiative Terrorism Early Warning Group, a unit of the Columbus, Ohio, Division of Police.

This CNet News article reports a company called EveryScape launched a 3D local search site that lets people "drive" down streets and even "walk" into buildings. From the article: "If you thought Google's Street View was cool, wait until you see how you can ski down the slopes in Aspen, Colorado, or whiz over taxicabs and pedestrians through the streets of New York, Boston, and Miami. The inside views of buildings are only available in Miami and Aspen right now.

The visuals are stunning as you fly through the front doors of hotels, bars, and other buildings and turn around for a 360-degree view. It reminds me of a video game or a virtual reality environment, only everything here is real.

This c-ville article reports ancient Rome has been revitalized via virtual reality by Prof. Bernard Frische. From the article: "Bernard Frischer spends most of his life living in—to borrow a line from Stevie Wonder—a pastime paradise. As I sit across from him at the foot of a 20' projection screen, I can't help but think that he's a spittin' image of the Motown recording artist, wearing dark virtual reality glasses, bathed in colored lights and smiling with glee.

This NewScientistTech article reports virtual characters that meet your gaze just like a human have been developed by speech and cognition scientists in France. From the article: "New software lets them to look at scenes and people the way humans do. The goal is to make virtual humans and perhaps humanoid robots easier to relate to. A video (see right) shows one of their characters playing a game that involves looking at cards and a researcher.

We all know how uncomfortable it feels when we talk to someone who doesn't hold eye contact with us, or holds it too much. Virtual characters and robots are even worse – leading to stilted encounters.

Inv3rsion, LLC is pleased to announce the release of Conjurer, an immersive VRML 1 & 2 viewer based on Coin3D and VR Juggler. Conjurer is highly scalable across visualization clusters, and it supports VRML features such as time-based animation, stored viewpoints and VRMLScript nodes. It is available now as a free demo download for i386 and x86_64 Linux, and a Windows version will soon follow.