Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/14320
July 2010 • Volume 33 • Number 7 I n n o v a t i o n s i n v i s u a l c o m p u t i n g f o r D C C p r o f e s s i o n a l s 12 37 26 58 Departments Editor’s Note Pixel Perfect 2What’s in store for SIGGRAPH 2010? Plenty, according to Terrence 4 Mason, conference chair, who shares his plans in a Q&A with CGW. Spotlight Products Motion Analysis’ Raptor Series. Boxx’s RenderPro. HP’s ZR30w display. News PC gaming hardware forecast. PC graphics shipments. User Focus Making dreams come true. Viewpoint 10 ILM’s Olivier Maury details the new fi re solver/renderer built around Portfolio Nvidia’s CUDA for work on The Last Airbender. x 72 SIGGRAPH 2010 Computer Animation Festival. x Review 77 Autodesk’s Maya 2011. x Back Products 79 Recent software and hardware releases. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx x We have enhanced our magazine content with related stories and videos online at www.cgw.com. Just click on the issue cover (found on the left side of the Web page), and you will fi nd links to these online extras. 68 Features More Toys Than Ever Before COVER STORY 12 The toys are back, rebuilt for Toy Story 3. By Barbara Robertson Plugging into Mixed Reality 20 Designers mix the real and virtual to test new models. Well Bent By Kenneth Wong 26 ILM creates elemental effects for The Last Airbender. Putting Science to Work By Barbara Robertson By Barbara Robertson 32 Employing a virtual human that uses predictive dynamics. Star Power for planetariums. By Karen Moltenbrey Sue Goes Virtual 54 58 62 68 37 High-performance computing, simulation, and visualization shining stars 50 Digitizing a T. rex in the hope of answering questions of the past. Also: By Art Andersen, Ralph E. Chapman, Linda T Let’s Talk Business Ambitious Goal Taken for a Ride Bursting the Cloud SEE IT IN • M. Night Shyamalan on The Last Airbender. • Keys to shooting greenscreen. • Bringing animated content to life with audio. • How VFX houses make the most of their storage options. ON THE COVER Artists and animators at Disney/Pixar think outside the box—quite literally—when crafting the toys of summer by creating new models and rigs for the returning characters in Toy Story 3, shown in stereo 3D. See pg. 12. July 2010 1 . Deck