OpenGL Headline News
FinalTouch 2K and HD use the OpenGL API for real-time digital color correction of movies
Category: Applications •
Jun 30, 2005
FinalTouch 2k and FinalTouch HD are real-time tools for professional colorists to color-correct and fine-tune movies using OpenGL API-based 32-bit per channel imaging. Using ATI 850 xt cards or similar high-end graphics cards which support OpenGL API shaders, include large amounts of onboard memory and can perform accelerated, advanced 2D imaging functions, allows for very fast and often realtime operation during primary color and tone manipulation. The HD version recently won the DV magazine Excellence Award. Runs on Mac OS X.
Google Earth lets you “fly” to aerial views of many locations on the planet using the OpenGL API
Category: Applications •
Jun 30, 2005
Google Earth is an integration of Google Maps with 3D (an enhanced version of Keyhole’s 3D satellite imagery product). It uses the OpenGL API and hardware acceleration to let you fly around a 3D globe to many locations on the planet using overhead satellite photos, tilted 45-degree photos, 3D rendered buildings, and overlays that display local area search, map directions, terrain, and everything from roads to hotels to bike routes. A $20/year subscription offer higher res and GPS support. It requires an OpenGL API hardware accelerator. Currently available only for Windows. But Mac and Linux (and possibly handhelds through OpenGL ES) on the way.
Write Portable Code: An Introduction to Developing Software for Multiple Platforms
Category: Developers •
Jun 30, 2005
The development of cross-platform software has been a long-standing challenge for programmers because each system has its own requirements and peculiarities. However without portable code the programmer can’t expand the availability of their software to a broader market. (Windows, Mac, Linux, Mobile Phones, Handhelds, or across processors) Programmers often pick up the idioms, tricks and methodologies for developing cross-platform software through sheer trial and error, as they encounter the same mistakes and patterns of code over time. If you’re an intermediate-to advanced-level programmer who’d rather cut to the chase, “Write Portable Code” contains the lessons, patterns and knowledge you’ll need for developing cross-platform software. Written by Brian Hook of id software (Doom and Quake) fame.
Cluster Edition of Open Inventor for large volume 3D visualization
Category: Developers •
Jun 29, 2005
Mercury Cluster Edition for Open Inventor enables scalability of OpenGL API-based Open Inventor and VolumeViz LDM (large data management) for increased resolution, quality, and performance in applications that display large volumes of data. Based on a distributed scene graph, Open Inventor Cluster Edition allows an application to run unchanged on a master computer, with its scene graph optimally distributed to slave cluster nodes. It supports OpenGL 1.5 and programmable OpenGL Shading Language shaders.
Kaze, Ghost Warrior 3D film using OpenGL API-based TAFA facial animation software
Category: Applications •
Jun 29, 2005
CGW has a story on the making of the low budget, high-quality Kaze, Ghost Warrior 3D film. Facial animation was paramount to the story, so the filmmaker developed TAFA using the OpenGL API to display real-time sub-patching of UV textured models at interaction rates of over 100 frames per second. Dragging and dropping phonetic morphs from the OpenGL API-based Morph File onto an exposure sheet and scrubbing achieved the synchronization between the audio and the animation.
