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The Microsoft Kinect10/01/11

Microsoft Kinect: is it merely a game controller or is it much more than that? In the simplest form the Kinect is a camera but unlike normal cameras, which only record a flat grid of pixels, it records both a pixel’s position in the grid as well as its distance from the sensor.

These processes are handled by a number of different devices but mostly it’s a simple RGB camera and a depth camera (the depth camera works with a laser and micromirror array to create a ‘structured light’ depth pattern). This allows for all kinds of fun with video games, controller-less play and body mapping.

Oliver Kreylos has gone a little further than this and written software that allows his computer to read data from the Kinect. This enables him to manipulate the feeds and merge them together. The results are astounding and has really interesting potential for the future; we’ll be monitoring his progress closely. In the meantime, check out these videos and hold on to your pixels!

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Polaroids for Christmas!17/12/10

We love Polaroids at Taylor James, its never long at a birthday or a party before our old camera is pulled out of the cupboard! Thats why this year we’ve enlisted the help of BuyPola to capture all our employees in their full glory! We will be using a beautiful old passport camera to grab some truly unique portraits for our reception and website.

Check back soon to see us in all our instant glory!

Until then why not check out BuyPola on facebook or online or even better visit their market stall this sunday in the Brick Lane Upmarket (Christmas section) for some truly unique Christmas presents.

www.buypola.co.uk
http://www.facebook.com/pages/BuyPola/177777675569927

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Kalbitor triumphs at the RX Club Show Awards and the CLIO Healthcare Awards! image

Kalbitor triumphs at the RX Club Show Awards and the CLIO Healthcare Awards!19/11/10

The stunning campaign for Dyax Corp, through GSW Worldwide, has struck Gold at the infamous annual RX Club Show in New York for best overall campaign. The Awards honour the creativity of pharmaceutical product advertising and promotion and is judged by industry experts solely on creative concept and execution.

The campaign also won Silver in the Direct to Professional category at the infamous CLIO Healthcare awards. The CLIO’s is an extension of The CLIO Awards, one of the world’s most recognized awards competitions for advertising, design and communications. Glen Taylor, MD and founder of Taylor James, was at the annual awards party in New York where the winners of the 2010 CLIO Healthcare Awards were announced on 12 November.

Creating this campaign has been a wonderful achievement for TJ, and it wasn’t an easy feat (go behind the scenes and find out more about how we created these stunning images) but the hard-work has certainly paid off at the Creativity International Awards (Platinum), Medical Marketing and Media (MM&M) Awards (Gold) and Clio Healthcare Awards (Silver and Bronze).

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TJ LOVES: ONEDOTZERO ADVENTURES IN MOTION image

TJ LOVES: ONEDOTZERO ADVENTURES IN MOTION13/10/10

We are excited for this year’s onedotzero_adventures in motion festival, on the 10 – 14 November! The internationally renowned event will see BFI Southbank and BFI IMAX join forces to present a scintillating array of audiovisual and cinematic experiences forecasting the future of moving image.

Onedotzero is an international moving image and digital arts organisation which commissions, showcases and promotes innovation across all aspects of moving image, digital and interactive arts. Presenting the most progressive new short films, creative talent and moving image work from around the world, including exclusive previews, feature films, playful interactive installations, audiovisual performances, talks, workshops and director Q&As. This year the festival features a variety of sensory experiences including multi-screen installation by Quayola, 2001 inspired intimate cinema Pods from Ovei, AntiVJ’s latest incarnation of their audiovisual volcano mapping project” Eyjafjallajokullʼ and ʻFeedbackʼ, Hellicar& Lewisʼ interactive animated ʻmagicmirrorʼ.

Music also features prominently, with very special live events by DJ Yoda at the BFI IMAX, a 20th anniversary screening and bar event for Ninja Tune as part of BUG and a special edition of the BFI’s regular AV extravaganza, Dark Fibre, working with Holotronica (Stuart Warren Hill/ Hexstatic), AV artists D-Fuse, VJ/illustrator Shantell Martin and electronic DJ/Producer 10SUI.

Find out more, along with full programme listings on their site, just click here.

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Why has Real-time 3D Never Looked as Good as Pre-rendered CGI? image

Why has Real-time 3D Never Looked as Good as Pre-rendered CGI?23/09/10

At TJ, we try to push the boundaries of technology and the limits of the hardware powering them. This also ensures that the standard of our work is extremely high with a great deal of care and attention going into every print piece and every frame of animation that we do. As a consequence it’s almost impossible to then replicate this with a real-time engine. This is what we like to call the final 20%. Real-time engines can get to the 80% mark, but it’s the last 20% that make things look real.

There is a massive difference between a project for real-time 3D and a project that will be rendered and composited. Even a dedicated machine for real-time rendering will have at best 3 GHz of power. Our Render farm that produces our images and animations has over 3 Terahertz (3000gigahertz) of power with 1 Terabyte of RAM. Even with our raw power, images can still take hours to be processed. You only need look at the standard of computer games from 10 years ago to the games of today to see the improvements in real-time graphics. But even these graphics are at the maximum of the hardware capabilities, and often dedicated programmers spend months getting the optimum level of graphics v performance for the game. As a result of this, a home user who wants to view some real-time 3D content will need to have the latest technology to be able to maximise their experience.

Some real-time engines are now incorporating post-effects.In first person shooter computer games you can now see Depth of Field when you look down the barrel of a gun, and some are doing very basic colour and glow effects on top of that. We generate multiple passes per animation, these are then composited together. A 30 second animation, the final sequence of 900 frames could have been made up of around 90,000 individual images. All of which have to be painstakingly checked for errors, and carefully combined to deliver the final result.

Splitting our images out into passes allows us to have an unparalleled level of control over the final image. We can adjust the colour of individual parts, add specular highlights and glow effects and even control things that in real-life are burned into the image from the camera such as Depth of Field and Motion Blur. The control over these allows a greater level of artistic input and consistency between print and animation. TJs reputation as industry leaders is in large due to the extremely high level of finishing in our print work. This standard applies to our animations too; this is why a real-time engine will never be able to match the quality of the final 20%.

One of the solutions we offer clients who want a high-level of realism to an interactive experience for their users is to use pre-rendered images. ObjectVR allows us to take a sequence of images of objects taken from many angles, allowing you to rotate a highly realistic model in real-time. We have also developed a system for car configurators, offering a set of pre-rendered images for flash websites that allows users to change the colour of the car whilst keeping the results true to the real-life image.

There’s a lot of good things coming from real-time engines; augmented reality is allowing designers to come up with even more impressive ways to use real-time content, combining these with the hardware and software that is becoming common for the users, iPhone, iPad, Android Phones, Flash and there is a fast developing platform for real-time content to become available- however, to achieve the last and crucial 20%, it’s always going to need the care and attention that only comes from pre-rendered composited images…..well, at least for now.

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Zbrush Makes a Comeback!23/09/10

Pixologic Zbrush is a package geared for real artists. It allows the artist to forget technical limitations and use a wacom pen to sculpt to their hearts content. The latest Zbrush has even more creative tools than the last and allowed our artists to quickly make new objects and sculpt even better models.

In the latest Westfield ‘Fashion Lives’ campaign, we utilised the software’s latest offering to sculpt the realistic shells that the models have broken out of. The schedule for this job was tight however; our established pipeline for working between 3dsmax and Zbrush allowed our artists to work on highly detailed meshes with ease. The new software allows artists to use different brushes to define different types of surfaces and substance and for this project we were able to carefully define the broken edges of the model.

Once the team had captured photographs of the models in a T pose, we then carefully modelled a base mesh in Zbrush using zSpheres using the photography for reference whilst sculpting the features of the models in and then carefully crafted in all the fine details in the final pose giving the shells their life like quality.

We love the innovations in every new version of Zbrush; it’s always exciting to see new ideas and fresh ways of creating content.

Read more about the Westfield project click here or watch the video of Zbrush in action behind the scenes on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne51hn7Fo2U

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TJ LOVES: FRACTAL ART21/07/10

This eye-catching work by Ian Clemmer, a German 3D Animation artist for his final year thesis, was found by one of our CGI artists. The composition blends together in perfect harmony to the musical score and we certainly thought it worth a mention. The work also shows the capabilities of software such as 3D Studio Max and how far we can push it with our CG work.

Ian said, “Inspired by the ongoing search of John Whitney to find harmony in visual art, Ian Clemmer continues his quest by introducing new perspectives to this exciting and forgotten field.”

In his thesis, Ian introduces his discovery “Superflow”, a new formula “Polarflow”, and the foundation for the visual equivalent of music, “Viusic”. He concludes, “Combining these in a digital environment allow us to create digital harmony, a topic first discussed by John Whitney. If, there is harmony in music- why not in visual art?”

“Super flow System” used Particle Box3 3D Studio Max Plugin Extension. Developed by Ian Clemmer and Martin Stebbing & programmed by Oleg Bayborodin and Ian Clemmer.

http://www.mindflow.de> // http://www.ianclemmer.com //

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TJ LOVES: PIXARAMIC BY THE WILSON BROTHERS image

TJ LOVES: PIXARAMIC BY THE WILSON BROTHERS29/06/10

2D/3D designers, Ben, Oscar and Luke, the latter working with music, work across a whole scope of work from mass produced products to one-off commissions. Their latest work for the Nike 1948 ‘Pop-up’ store in Shoreditch has expanded on the original fit-out completed in February and features their latest PIXARAMIC endeavour.

The eye-catching work is a large scale visual-based, wall cladding system which has been installed in the counter area at the store. The PIXARAMIC layer comprises 6,000 manually positioned pixel cubes, each acrylic cube with 6 different coloured faces in red, green, yellow, and blue, black and white.

For their latest work please go to www.wilsonbrothers.com or www.benwilsondesign.co.uk

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STEREO 3D: NOT JUST FOR HOLLYWOOD? image

STEREO 3D: NOT JUST FOR HOLLYWOOD?27/05/10

With films such as Avatar, UP and Alice in Wonderland using the polarised glasses, gone are the days of dodgy 1950s style Red/Blue spectacles, now we are entering an era of full 3D content- that’s what the experts will have us believe anyway. Stereo 3D, full name- Stereoscopic 3D, is clearly having a moment. So, what bearing will this have on the advertising industry and is it all just part of the latest fad?…

As guest-speakers at the FMX 2010 conference in Stuttgart, Germany in May it was difficult for us to avoid the 3D ‘effect’. The first 3D TV channel is due to be launched at the end of the year by Sky, and with it comes the exciting prospect of 3D advertising. During 3D film previews, 3D ads have already started appearing and with Sony, Toshiba, Panasonic and JVC all racing ahead trying to push their technologies to produce the best 3D TV and keep up with demands for the latest technological craze, it is only a matter of time before there is a higher demand for agencies and studios to offer a capable 3D service.

The technologies distribution network is also growing. 3D production and 3D post-production techniques has become better established and further distribution of the iconic glasses have been rolled out to most of the cinemas in the USA and Europe. Moreover, Blu-Ray discs allow full 3D movies to be distributed and viewed at home with the latest 3D TV technology and game makers are expecting to see 3D computer monitors dominating the sector in the next 24 months. This range of avenues will undoubtedly shape the way in which clients approach advertising and the promotional alternatives available to them- making it more crucial for agencies and production houses to contemplate.

So, what are the benefits? Stereo 3D is engaging; it’s an opportunity for clients to show off their brand and product in a whole new dimension. Like CGI and various forms of animation, 3D will eventually be more relevant to advertisers and not just something for the movies. Additionally, the cost of producing 3D ads has dropped over the last year. Head of DreamWorks, Jeffrey Katzenberg, said:

“There have been three revolutionary movements in the film world- the introduction of sound, colour and now 3D.”

The history of advertising runs in a similar vein- and has evolved from print to broadcast and now digital making 3D all the more important to consider.

There are two ways to realistically approach this at the moment for the advertising sector, either full live action shot with two video cameras, which is still a fairly complex operation to produce good results, and can limit the options in post-production. The second- producing an advert in full Stereo 3D CGI which allows for greater flexibility and control than when filming. It allows you to explore multiple stereo techniques, be sure that we have the desired results instantly and because everything is 3D, it enables you to create anything you want.

From a production stand point, mixing Stereo live-action and Stereo CGI is still a very complex and expensive thing to do and took James Cameron and his team of hundreds of staff almost 10 years to perfect. Even now it’s a very difficult thing to do well, but creating a completely CGI based Stereo project is now a viable option.

At TJ we are currently testing Stereo 3D on some of our current jobs and re-visiting some of our older jobs, hoping to eventually create a Stereo 3D showreel with the photo-realistic quality we are accustomed to. It’s maybe a bit too early to tell, but we think that 3D Stereo could be here to stay.

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