For manually-captured bracketed images, there's AHDRIC (disclaimer: I wrote this). As long as the EXIF info is intact and the only thing that changes between shots is the shutterspeed, this should do the trick. A related tool (AHDRIA) lets you capture HDRs automatically by controlling a digicam via USB (Canon digicams only, sorry). This process can take 20-120 seconds, depending on the quality required.
Canon deserves some credit--like I've mentioned before, while not giving low-level access to the guts of the operating system, their SDK is head and shoulders above what I've heard is available for other cameras. And, in theory, it's under active development--some features seem to exist in the SDK's header files that aren't (yet?) fully implemented, which will make it interesting to keep an eye on.
I'm also a fan of Canon's cameras (I own an A75). They rate highly for the nerd factor if only because Canon provides to interested developers a really slick and very thorough SDK. (In the U.S. this SDK is easy to obtain, but in other countries the rules differ.) The SDK is available for Macs and PCs and lets you control just about every feature through the USB port that you can access by pushing the buttons on the back of the camera (zoom, focus, aperture, shutter speed, image quality, white balance, etc, etc).
I've designed a remote capture tool for HDR imaging while others have made replacements/supplements for Canon's own remote capture tool (Cam4You) that support features like time-lapse photography and turning your digicam into a webcam.
Now if I wanted to upgrade my camera, I'm not sure I could get used to one that I couldn't control through my computer.:)
I saw this when I was at CVPR--the resolution does appear to be rather impressive. This seems an interesting extension to the practice of using metallic spheres (garden gazing balls, Christmas ornaments, ball bearings, etc.) for gathering photographic and high dynamic range environments for high-accuracy CG compositing.
I'll have to agree with you whole-heartedly. A Google search for "mesh compression" turns up just a few of the resources available on this kind of research. To me, this is like reading a Slashdot article about a new improvement to Windows BMP files called "JPEG compression."
The ROAM algorithm, for example, is one of a set of similar algorithms. It's specifically for terrain-type models and turns up in games now and then. (AFAIR, TreadMarks was the first big game to use it.)
All I know is, the new colors are awful even using my old color scheme. Everything's muddier. I guess they had to make it "different" so people would notice more than the extra 0 on their storage space count.
Yahoo Calendar has also become pretty unreadable; on my 1280x1024 monitor, the lines between days are about, ohhh, 1 pixel wide. And light gray. On a white background. All your events just kinda "float" there if you look at it from a distance--like reading time on a watch with no numbers. (Although, I hear some people prefer this.) I believe this look used to be reserved for their Printable View so the lines would turn up nice and sharp on a printer.
Moray's an excellent modeller for POV-Ray. The author does a great job of keeping up with the latest capabilities of POV, even when major features are added. You can use photons, radiosity, etc., all without hand-editing the resulting POV-code. But for those who do enjoy writing POV-code by hand, Moray's convenient for those situations where you wonder what command you need to do X, and where exactly it goes in the code...
ml-POV, a patched version of POV-Ray, allows you to use high dynamic range images (HDRI) for lighting--that's about as close as you'll get to real-world lighting in POV-Ray right now. I also wrote a pseudo-solution for the standard POV-Ray.
It's about time high dynamic-resolution imaging was supported in hardware. It's not only simple to use, but makes many many things easier--no more worrying about hitting the 8-bit limit, picking colors to avoid saturation/overlighting, or struggling with realistic compositing. For compositing alone it's priceless. Debevec even has a light stage for compositing real-life objects into computer-generated scenes (instead of vice versa).
I've been working for a while now on HDRI solutions for things like POV-Ray--even if it is a pseudo-solution. (Or you can get the ml-POV patch for more native HDRI support.)
Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 20th century? Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams! Only on TV and radio. And in magazines. And movies. And at ball games, on buses, and milk cartons, and t-shirts, and bananas, and written on the sky. But not in dreams! No sirree.
Slashdot Mirror
Using dcraw and the Radiance (HDR) file format, it should be trivial to convert any digicam or SLR's raw image to an HDR.
For manually-captured bracketed images, there's AHDRIC (disclaimer: I wrote this). As long as the EXIF info is intact and the only thing that changes between shots is the shutterspeed, this should do the trick. A related tool (AHDRIA) lets you capture HDRs automatically by controlling a digicam via USB (Canon digicams only, sorry). This process can take 20-120 seconds, depending on the quality required.
A while back, I made a surface-plot generator for POV-Ray. A bit of overkill, perhaps, but effective.
Canon deserves some credit--like I've mentioned before, while not giving low-level access to the guts of the operating system, their SDK is head and shoulders above what I've heard is available for other cameras. And, in theory, it's under active development--some features seem to exist in the SDK's header files that aren't (yet?) fully implemented, which will make it interesting to keep an eye on.
I'm also a fan of Canon's cameras (I own an A75). They rate highly for the nerd factor if only because Canon provides to interested developers a really slick and very thorough SDK. (In the U.S. this SDK is easy to obtain, but in other countries the rules differ.) The SDK is available for Macs and PCs and lets you control just about every feature through the USB port that you can access by pushing the buttons on the back of the camera (zoom, focus, aperture, shutter speed, image quality, white balance, etc, etc).
:)
I've designed a remote capture tool for HDR imaging while others have made replacements/supplements for Canon's own remote capture tool (Cam4You) that support features like time-lapse photography and turning your digicam into a webcam.
Now if I wanted to upgrade my camera, I'm not sure I could get used to one that I couldn't control through my computer.
Here's the associated paper (PDF).
Some advertising folks have already gotten in trouble for making the comparison...
I saw this when I was at CVPR--the resolution does appear to be rather impressive. This seems an interesting extension to the practice of using metallic spheres (garden gazing balls, Christmas ornaments, ball bearings, etc.) for gathering photographic and high dynamic range environments for high-accuracy CG compositing.
...of what scientists believe the life may look like down there.
DUH!
:-p
I'll have to agree with you whole-heartedly. A Google search for "mesh compression" turns up just a few of the resources available on this kind of research. To me, this is like reading a Slashdot article about a new improvement to Windows BMP files called "JPEG compression."
The ROAM algorithm, for example, is one of a set of similar algorithms. It's specifically for terrain-type models and turns up in games now and then. (AFAIR, TreadMarks was the first big game to use it.)
All I know is, the new colors are awful even using my old color scheme. Everything's muddier. I guess they had to make it "different" so people would notice more than the extra 0 on their storage space count.
Yahoo Calendar has also become pretty unreadable; on my 1280x1024 monitor, the lines between days are about, ohhh, 1 pixel wide. And light gray. On a white background. All your events just kinda "float" there if you look at it from a distance--like reading time on a watch with no numbers. (Although, I hear some people prefer this.) I believe this look used to be reserved for their Printable View so the lines would turn up nice and sharp on a printer.
<sigh>
There's Engines of Our Ingenuity, unless that's the "NPR database" you're referring to. (And as you can see from my URL, I am shilling somewhat. :)
Moray's an excellent modeller for POV-Ray. The author does a great job of keeping up with the latest capabilities of POV, even when major features are added. You can use photons, radiosity, etc., all without hand-editing the resulting POV-code. But for those who do enjoy writing POV-code by hand, Moray's convenient for those situations where you wonder what command you need to do X, and where exactly it goes in the code...
ml-POV, a patched version of POV-Ray, allows you to use high dynamic range images (HDRI) for lighting--that's about as close as you'll get to real-world lighting in POV-Ray right now. I also wrote a pseudo-solution for the standard POV-Ray.
There are some other good soundclips on the Sounds of Jupiter site as well; e.g., Jupiter's lightning and the "bow shock."
Here's the original Earthlink case.
- Camera Vans to Photograph 50 Million Buildings
- When 8 Megapixels Just Isn't Enough
- Missing Matter... Still Missing
Hmmm...This is available in PDF here. Interesting read!
It's about time high dynamic-resolution imaging was supported in hardware. It's not only simple to use, but makes many many things easier--no more worrying about hitting the 8-bit limit, picking colors to avoid saturation/overlighting, or struggling with realistic compositing. For compositing alone it's priceless. Debevec even has a light stage for compositing real-life objects into computer-generated scenes (instead of vice versa).
I've been working for a while now on HDRI solutions for things like POV-Ray--even if it is a pseudo-solution. (Or you can get the ml-POV patch for more native HDRI support.)
Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?
Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams! Only on TV and radio. And in magazines. And movies. And at ball games, on buses, and milk cartons, and t-shirts, and bananas, and written on the sky. But not in dreams! No sirree.
Al Gore decided not to have his name on this...?