We are pleased to announce we are showing select gigapixel prints at the G2 Gallery in Venice CA as the current Nature LA exhibit, running from April 19, 2011 through June 19. We hosted a reception on Friday May 6, and a talk on our work on Friday May 13 entitled “Technology in Service of Conservation”.
Here is the press release:
Venice, CA, March 22, 2010—On Tuesday, April 26, 2011, The G2 Gallery will present Nature LA: xRez Studio, an exhibition of large scale, high definition, panoramic landscapes. xRez Studios is a Santa Monica based collaboration between photographer Greg Downing and visual effects designer Eric Hanson. An opening reception for Nature LA: xRez Studio will be held on Friday, May 6, from 6:30–9:00. The G2 Gallery will donate 100% of the proceeds from photography sales to environmental causes.
xRez Studio are pioneers in the field of extreme resolution gigapixel photography. Panoramic digital photography has long relied on creating panoramic images by stitching relatively few multiple images together. xRez has tapped into recent advances in software, hardware, and digital camera capabilities to create panoramas with resolutions into the range of several gigapixels per single image, thousands of times greater than a standard 10 megapixel still image. The resulting gigapixel image is one that contains a tremendous range of detail, allowing unsurpassed viewing and exploration.
For their exhibition at The G2 Gallery, xRez will present three giclée panoramas ranging in length from 9 feet to 27 feet. The centerpiece of the exhibit is Orthographic Yosemite Valley, part of a 2008 project to establish a baseline image of the Yosemite Valley’s granite walls, where rock falls are a frequent but difficult occurrence to document. By shooting 10,000 images concurrently over sixteen miles of valley walls, 20 separate photographic teams led by xRez created an unprecedented documentation of the valley wall, now used in before and after comparisons to track rock falls and prevent human injury. The massive panorama will be hung in such a way that the viewer is forced to move along the length of the image, and come in close to observe the minute detail captured by the gigapixel technology.
Nature LA is The G2 Gallery’s ongoing series of fine art photography that expresses themes dealing with our environment and identifies the emerging trends in the cutting edge of a new and visually alluring form of nature photography. The series is curated by G2 Gallery director Jolene Hanson.
LOCATION: The G2 Gallery (www.theg2gallery.com)
1503 Abbot Kinney Blvd, Venice, CA 90291-3742
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Tel. 310.452.2842, E-mail info@theg2gallery.com
Director Mike Patterson and Eric Hanson of xRez Studio acted as co-organizer of a visual music event at the USC School of Cinematic Arts complex in April of 2011. Several student animation projects were projected onto the building in various forms, from realtime stereoscopic interventions to aligned architectural projections. Headlining the evening was leading UK visual collective D-Fuse and local LA 3D artist Scott Pagano, performing live with graphics projected onto scrims and screens. Thanks to many involved, notably producer Thenmozhi Soundararagan.
Press release:
Experience a live visual music sensation on April 22nd, 2011 at the University of Southern California: The School of Cinematic Arts Complex will be taken over and transformed by Rhythms and Visions: Expanded and Live!, a spectacular outdoor live-cinema event merging animation and visual media with live acoustic and electronic music.
Exciting and innovative UK audio-visual collective D-Fuse and Los Angeles artist Scott Pagano will perform with live acoustic and electronic music performed by notable musicians Brian King, Trifonic, Brian LeBarton and MB Gordy. Original compositions by Justin Bell, Vidjay Beerepoot, Andrew Prahlow and Brian Trifon. These cutting-edge performances will span animation, experimental documentary and abstract visual music.
The new SCA cinema complex will come alive with large animation and 3-D stereoscopic architectural projections by faculty and students. 3-D glasses will be provided.
Presented by Visions and Voices: The USC Arts and Humanities Initiative. Organized by Mike Patterson (Animation), Candace Reckinger (Animation), xRez Studio’s Eric Hanson (Animation), Brian King (Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television) and Perry Hoberman (Cinematic Arts).
For more information, please contact us at visionsandvoices@usc.edu or (213) 740-0483.
www.usc.edu/visionsandvoices or www.tinyurl.com/eyemusic
xRez Studio was given a unique opportunity to spherically shoot and document the largest engineering project in the US, the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore Labs in Northern California. One of the least publicly known efforts in the search for future energy sources, but most monumental in terms of ramifications, NIF has entered a crucial testing phase after 20 years of design and construction, hoping to achieve a historic benchmark this year. Enormous in it’s implications for relatively clean, safe, and controllable inertial fusion energy, it is the world’s largest optical device, consisting of 192 of the world’s most powerful lasers, all concentrated on a central target chamber, which in effect create a microcosm of the surface of the sun.
The spherical panoramas were captured at a high 35k resolution and then formatted in Autodesk Maya for an immersive fulldome presentation at the impressive Morrison Planetarium in the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, where NIF chief Ed Moses presented the images to a TEDxSF event audience. Special thanks go out to John Densberger at LLNL.
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BBC/Brian Cox Tours NIF:
Ed Moses TEDx Talk:
We are pleased to announce a joint agreement with SpaceCam Systems, the leader in high-end aerial cinematography. We are currently developing some very exciting technology together and hope to offer innovative solutions for new means of aerial capture in the very near future.
The press release is as follows:
Los Angeles, April 4, 2011: SpaceCam Systems, Inc. and xRez Studio today announced conclusion of an exclusive, long term agreement relating to the hi resolution capture and processing of still and moving images based on new technology developed by both parties.
SpaceCam was established in 1989 and is the foremost aerial imaging company in the motion picture industry offering the widest range of film format and high-end HD stabilized equipment in the industry. Through constant evolution, SpaceCam has captured industry standards for performance, flexibility and reliability. This, coupled with unrivaled customer and logistical support make SpaceCam the clear choice for the majority of serious film, TV, Commercial, Large Format and HD productions.
Their roster encompasses the world’s top aerial cameramen. Spacecam has acquired over its 22 year history, unique abilities in the aviation sector, including advanced mechanical and electronic design as well as software development. Spacecam has received the Academy award for science and engineering.
xRez Studio has a long history of successful production in feature film visual effects and gigapixel photography, with particular skills in the application of emerging computational photography and advanced computer graphics. Examples of xRez still photography productions can be viewed in prestigious museums including the American Museum of Natural History, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Cincinnati Art Museum, and Ars Electronica in Austria.
Further announcements regarding this new technology will be forthcoming.
For further information, please contact Sandra Crawford at Spacecam at 818.889.6060.
xRez Studio and BlackboxFX collaborator Ethan Summers have just completed a number of visual effects shots for a film produced by Aperture Films depicting the British war of 1812 at Fort McHenry on the eastern seaboard, where the Star-Spangled Banner was written by Francis Scott Key in reaction to the bombardment of the fort.
The film is presented in a custom 3456 x 1080 projection at the new re-designed visitor center at Fort McHenry National Historic Park in Baltmore, MD. The work ranged from bringing historic paintings to life, to augmenting live-action RED footage, to entire CG recreations of the fort battles. The rendering was performed in Next Limit’s Maxwell, which handled the high polygon counts with ease while rendering complex environmental lighting.
An additional animated sequence was created which traces the physical changes of the fort from present day back to 1814, which is projected in the visitor center onto a custom horizontal circular display.
We at xRez have always had a keen interest in the latest implentations of NUI’s (Natural User Interfaces). Here are a few video examples of xRez imagery being explored with a Gesture Based Interface with the Kinect as part of “Open Exhibits” and a large Multitouch screen at CES.
Kinect Gigapixel Navigation
Above you will see the one of our Yosemite Images being explored using the MT-Kinect module, a part of the Open Exhibits made by the good folks at Ideum, you can find out more info in their excellent blog post about the project. Open Exhibits is a gesture multitouch and multiuser interactive exhibit design platform that is free for students muesums and educational organizations. If your interest is commercial you can license Gesture Works or try it for free to create these interactions.
Multi-touch Navigation
We also recently licensed the same image for use at CES 2011 for a large touch display. You can see it in action below.
The presentation xRez Studio made for the “Fine International Conference on Gigapixel Imaging for Science” 2010 at Carnegie Mellon is now on-line.Greg Downing of xRez Studio talks at the first Fine International Conference on Gigapixel Imaging for Science, November 11-13 2010 at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA.
This workshop covers visual and spatial data acquisition for real-life locations destined for research or visual reconstruction. The focus was on photographic techniques, such as HDRI capture, gigapixel panoramic background photography, photogrammetry for set reconstruction, and polynomial texture mapping for cultural heritage artifacts. Site survey techniques and the recording of lens information and distortion will be demonstrated as well as a new technique for 3d point cloud data capture based on Microsoft Photosynth software. Objectives: To acquaint the participant with the common techniques used in the feature film visual effects field to acquire information from real-life locations that will later be the basis of 3d reconstructions for visual communication or study. Introductions to field work as well as current software applications will be covered.
More talks from the conference can be found on youtube, or downloaded from iTunes U.
While doing work on the National Geographic special “Sunken Treasures of the Nile” a significant archaeological find was made. Philippe Martinez discovered what we have been calling “Stela M” that contains the first description ever found of how the 1000 ton obelisks were moved. Philippe needed gigapixel detail documentation of the surface so that he could have a good record of the surface for later study. Unfortunately the Stela had fallen over from it’s original position and was facing the ground making a “head-on” photo impossible.
Due to the tilt of the Stela there was only a few feet of working space in front of the stela, it was impossible to get far enough away to shoot a traditional gigapixel image. To make matters worse thieves had stolen the images of Ramses and rolled boulders under the Stela making it even more difficult to access. Our solution was to take a 50 mm lens and take 100s of close up macro photos of the surface of the Stela, photogrammetrically calibrate them into a laser scan taken by Carlos Velazquez of Epic Scan and then re-project them onto the surface as a texture. This required getting the exact camera positions and rotations relative to the geometry and was achieved through some custom software written by xRez pal Simeon Basset and xRez Studio’s Greg Downing. The images were then blended together to create a gigapixel image that would be impossible to capture by other means.
View the following animation (full screen to see the details) to see how this texturing process was achieved. On the left side of the image you will see the camera position when the photograph was taken, in the middle you will see the resulting 21 megapixel photo, and on the right you will see the photo rendered as a projected texture.
This is a diagram showing the area of high resolution
This is the final interactive view. Use the “outline” button to turn the Egyptologists drawings on and off.
