Cornell Univ: Powerful Image Morph Technique (SIGGRAPH 2017)

// Visual Attribute Transfer through Deep Image Analogy

Jing Liao, Yuan Yao, Lu Yuan, Gang Hua, Sing Bing Kang

'We propose a new technique for visual attribute transfer across images that may have very different appearance but have perceptually similar semantic structure. By visual attribute transfer, we mean transfer of visual information (such as color, tone, texture, and style) from one image to another. For example, one image could be that of a painting or a sketch while the other is a photo of a real scene, and both depict the same type of scene. Our technique finds semantically-meaningful dense correspondences between two input images. To accomplish this, it adapts the notion of "image analogy" with features extracted from a Deep Convolutional Neutral Network for matching; we call our technique Deep Image Analogy. A coarse-to-fine strategy is used to compute the nearest-neighbor field for generating the results. We validate the effectiveness of our proposed method in a variety of cases, including style/texture transfer, color/style swap, sketch/painting to photo, and time lapse.'

'Alchemy' Free Sketch And Visual Development Software

Just found out about this software from a fellow coworker (Max Adams). It seems to be a quick and dirty way to churn out interesting shapes and silhouettes. I especially like the zbrush demo below. Also the software is free! Rock! Check out the link to the website below.

// Alchemy 

alchemy |’alkemē

Figurative: a process by which paradoxical results are achieved or incompatible elements combined with no obvious rational explanation

Alchemy is a free software / open drawing project aimed at exploring how we can sketch, draw, and create on computers in new ways. Alchemy isn’t software for creating finished artwork, but rather a sketching environment that focuses on the absolute initial stage of the creation process. Experimental in nature, Alchemy lets you brainstorm visually to explore an expanded range of ideas and possibilities in a serendipitous way.

Maya 2014 New Features: Grease Pencil

Maya has integrated Grease Pencil!! It's been a longtime coming! Can't wait to try it out!



// Complete MAYA 2014 Release Notes

Autodesk: Pixar Animation Studios, The OpenSubdiv Project

Join special guests, Bill Polson, Dirk Van Gelder, Manuel Kraemer, Takahito Tejima, David G. Yu and Dale Ruffolo, from Pixar Animation Studios' GPU team, as they show how real time display of subdivision surfaces helps artists be more productive, and how this code is open source and engineered for ease of integration.

OpenSubdiv is a set of open source libraries that implement high-performance subdivision surface (subdiv) evaluation on massively parallel CPU and GPU architectures. The code embodies decades of research and experience by Pixar.

Join us for this informative webinar and see how Autodesk and Pixar are working together to build technology with stunning real-time results.