Archives for category: Projects
« More Entries
Previous Entries »

OpenFX

September 21, 10 //

OpenFX is an open standard for visual effects plug-ins. It allows plug-ins written to the standard to work on any application that supports the standard. This avoids the current per application fragmentation of plug-in development and support, which causes much heartache to everyone, plug-in developers, application developers and end users alike

The core aims of OpenFX were established early on, these are…

  • to develop a standard for writing visual effects plug-ins,
  • to develop that standard with a broad consensus within the industry,
  • have that standard be vendor and operating system neutral,
  • have that standard be sufficiently flexible that it supports a wide range of visual effects systems, from editors to compositors.

Subsidiary aims are,

  • have the standard be expandable to other areas in the future, for example sound plug-ins or image i/o plug-ins,
  • have any expansion of the standard be done in such a manner so that hosts can easily support plug-ins using differerent versions of the API,
  • have plug-ins written to the standard be tunable to the host system they are running on,
  • allow hosts to provide extra custom functionality to plugins that wish to use it.

Home Page: http://openfx.sourceforge.net/
Project Page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/openfx/
Language: c++
Platform: Linux, OS X, Windows
License: BSD
Sponsor: The Foundry, Autodesk, Gen-Arts, FilmLight, Assimilate, Re-Vision Effects

JupiterFileCache

March 4, 10 //

JupiterFileCache (JFC) is a general purpose, multi location, multi process, thread safe file read & write cache library.

This is a C++ library that allows caching files in remote (network) locations onto the local client to speed up future accesses to these files. This reduces network traffic, but also, more importantly disk access, on the server. Modern network infrastructures are rarely the problem, but a server’s disks often don’t cope well when hundreds of clients read large files, often repeatedly, by querying small pieces of data, all at the same time.

It comes with a SWIG interface to be easily accessible through scripting languages (e.g Python) without the need to use a C++ compiler.

RSL shadeop implementation, modeled after the automatic network cache in DNA research’s 3Delight. It allows caching files like textures, point clouds or other heavy data, on a render farm client, automatically, by simply specifying the cache location with an environment variable, or in the RIB (with an option). In your shaders you can use the cacheFile() shadeop. It should work with any renderer that has an RSL shadeop API but was tested & used in production with Pixar’s PhotoRealistic RenderMan.

Project Page: http://code.google.com/p/jupiterfilecache
Language: C++ Python
Platform: Linux, OS X, Windows
License: Creative Commons 3.0 BY-SA
Sponsor: Jupiter Jazz

rmanPtc SOP

February 9, 10 //

The RmanPtcSop project is a Houdini geometry operator (SOP) for loading and displaying RenderMan point clouds. It is based on the open source dnPtcViewerNode project from Double Negative Visual Effects.

Features of the rmanPtc SOP include:

  • Independent control for limiting the number of points loaded and displayed.
  • Geometry output for all point attributes in the cloud.
  • OpenGL display preview for attributes as point or disk primitives.
  • Ability to cull points based on a reference bounding box.

Home Page: http://danbethell.github.com/rmanptcsop/
Language: C++
Platform: Linux, Windows, OS X
License: New BSD License

Wavelet Turbulence for Fluid Simulation

February 9, 10 //

We present a novel wavelet method for the simulation of fluids at high spatial resolution. The algorithm enables large- and small-scale detail to be edited separately, allowing high-resolution detail to be added as a post-processing step. Instead of solving the Navier-Stokes equations over a highly refined mesh, we use the wavelet decomposition of a low-resolution simulation to determine the location and energy characteristics of missing high-frequency components. We then synthesize these missing components using a novel incompressible turbulence function, and provide a method to maintain the temporal coherence of the resulting structures. There is no linear system to solve, so the method parallelizes trivially and requires only a few auxiliary arrays. The method guarantees that the new frequencies will not interfere with existing frequencies, allowing animators to set up a low resolution simulation quickly and later add details without changing the overall fluid motion.

This code is a reference implementation of our paper Wavelet Turbulence for Fluid Simulation. The code is intended as a pedagogical example, so clarity has been given preference over performance. Optimizations that inhibit readability have been removed, so the running times experienced will be longer than those reported in the paper.

Home Page: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~tedkim/WTURB
Project Page: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~tedkim/WTURB/source.html
Language: C++
Platform: Linux, Windows, OS X
License: GNU Public License
Sponsor: Cornell University

pfstools

January 24, 10 //

pfstools package is a set of command line programs for reading, writing and manipulating high-dynamic range (HDR) images and video frames. It includes also Qt and OpenGL HDR image viewers. pfstools can be integrated with GNU Octave or matlab, so that it can serve as a toolbox for reading and writing HDR images. (more…)

Home Page: http://pfstools.sourceforge.net/
Project Page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pfstools/
Language: C++
Platform: Linux, OS X, Windows
License: GNU Library or Lesser General Public License (LGPL)

« More Entries
Previous Entries »