CodeAcademy

Among many thing that interest me are (technology & eduction) & the explosion of NYC as the new Silicon Valley aka "Silicon Alley". I found some interesting things today. The rush of capital & Major Universities to NYC & another new startup CodeAcademy. I Just emailed my son this:

Jeff

http://www.codecademy.com/#!/exercise/1
They just raised 2.5 Million for this new site. Great Idea !

Codecademy, a Web site that teaches people how to program for free, just got a lift for its lesson plan: $2.5 million in venture financing.

On Thursday, the start-up announced that it raised a Series A round of cash from a bevy of noted venture capital firms, including Union Square Ventures, O’Reilly Ventures, SV Angel and CrunchFund and from a number of angel investors, including Joshua Schachter, founder of Delicious and Jig.

“Our main goal is to hire people to help manage content and add new features,” said Zach Sims, who co-founded Codecademy with Ryan Bubinski, a developer and former classmate at Columbia University. “Right now, there are still only two of us working on the company.”

Codecademy was introduced over the summer and has attracted a flurry of interest since then. More than half a million people have used the site and close to 1,000 developers submitted sample lessons to help others learn how to program. The new venture financing will help the company sustain that early traction, Mr. Sims said.

“We’re starting to build a community around our lessons,” he said. In addition, the company said it would use the money to establish its headquarters, which Mr. Sims said would most likely be in New York.

Dad

via: The NewYorkTimes

State of The Art - CG Human Face & A Scene

Here are two examples of the state of the art & the incredible talent of CG Artists today. found at 3dtotal.com.



The base mesh was done in Maya and the details are sculpted in Zbrush. The Artist used Maya HairSystem and fur for the hairs. The shading, lighting and fur was finally rendered on Mental Ray.



Via: http://www.jinoppa.com

Now place this person in the scene also a 3D rendering:

Chinese takeaway3dsmax, octane render, photoshop

Image via: http://www.3dtotal.com

State of The Art - Rendering Synthetic Objects into Legacy Photographs

from http://kevinkarsch.com/publications/sa11.html

Kevin Karsch is a Computer Science PhD Student at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign researching computer graphics and computer vision. My advisor is David Forsyth, and I also work closely with Derek Hoiem and John Hart.

His research interests lie at the intersection of computer graphics and computer vision. Currently, I am most interested in inferring high level attributes from a single image, especially lightness and surface properties.

I received undergraduate degrees in computer science and mathematics from the University of Missouri. There, I worked with Ye Duan researching computer graphics and computer vision with a focus on graphics and vision applications in bioinformatics.

Hat tip to avi - Reality Prime - This is magic Posted on October 23rd, 2011. For those that don't know Avi:

Avi Bar-Zeev has 20 years professional experience in 3D entertainment, visual simulation and internet scale applications. He co-founded Keyhole, Inc. in 1999, (which later became known as “Google Earth”), created the predecessor to KML and even apparently invented the “Placemark.”

He was an early employee or consultant to startups like Intrinsic Graphics (games), F5 Networks (dot-com), and more, developing core technologies for Second Life, including their procedural 3D object system. ,,, He currently works at Microsoft as a Principal Architect, having helped pitch, design and prototype new products and experiences for Bing, Microsoft’s Startup Business Graoup, and XBox.

State of The Art - CG Human Faces

I must say I am stunned

The Blue Project by Dan aka droarty



Dan'sPost Comment:

Hey everyone! I'm brand new to the forums and I wanted to show a piece I've just recently completed.. It's an attempt at a realistic portrait.. It's modeled in Maya anhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifd sculpted and painted in Mudbox.. rendered in Vray with a dome light. Hair and face fuzz was done in Shave and rendered separately with Mentalhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif Ray.. which was a huge learning curve.. I really wanted to tackle hair as major part of this image and learn from it.. (converted eyelashes and eyebrows to geo.. and added a scar on right side of brow.). and comped/layer adjustments together in PS. Thanks for looking everyone.. and I hope to keep posting in here!

via: http://www.evermotion.org

IBM is still Doing Virtual Meetings

Last Month I posted about IBM leaving SL but not 3D and avatars. Again we see another example.

Watch live streaming video from newintelligence at livestream.com

Analyst Virtual Briefing | IBM Chief Marketing Officer Study

To introduce analysts to IBM’s first-ever CMO Study — “From Stretched to Strengthened” — IBM Global Business Services (GBS) Analyst Relations team held another first: a briefing of the study’s findings via the GBS Virtual Center, a 3D, voice-enabled and web-based collaboration complex, which you are welcome to visit and experience first hand.

If you like Architecture & Animations

parigot-animated short film from liok on Vimeo.

Short graduation film, made in 2010 at george Melies school.

directors:
Axel digoix, Geoffrey lerus, Mehdi alavi, Alexandre wolfromm, Loïc bramoullé.

tasks:
axel digoix: chara-modeling, hightdef-props-modeling, animation, pidgeon-particle-fx.
xlbook.blogspot.com/​

geoffrey lerus: rigs-animation.

mehdi alavi: crowd-system-creation, animation, hight-def-props-modeling, cloth.
mehdialavi.blogspot.com/​

alexandre wolfromm: skin, character-FX, cloth, VFX, animation.

loïc bramoullé: environment design and creation, texturing lighting rendering compositing, matte paintings.
[my next short production blog: liok.over-blog.com/​]


Original music by Arash Safaian
/index.php?id=15/safaian.com/​

State of The Art - Paul Nicholls

Paul Nicholls - factoryfifteen.com
Trained in Architecture. Work in film, animation and visual design. Co-Founder of FACTORY FIFTEEN, a London based film studio.

GOLDEN AGE - SOMEWHERE from Paul Nicholls on Vimeo.

** Best Viewed Fullscreen

"THE VILLA" Flythrough test from Paul Nicholls on Vimeo.

** Best Viewed Fullscreen

Architecture - Steve Job's Last Speech

On June 7, the day after his final Worldwide Developers Conference keynote, Steve Jobs made a surprise appearance before the Cupertino City Council. He was seeking permission to build a new corporate headquarters for Apple (AAPL).

"We have a shot," Jobs told the council, "at building the best office building in the world."

121 days later, he was dead.

Steve Jobs - The Crazy Ones

What are your core values? Design your life around them. RIP Steve Jobs 1955-2011

State of The Art - Architectural Rendering

I follow Ronen Bekerman's Blog and am always impressed by the quality of the work he showcases. here is just another example. The modeler/artist is Rosso and in his words he says :"The Wassily model is from Bertrand. All the books are modeled and placed one by one manually - But it was very fun to see my bookcase getting full with many books"