The shareplay foundation has granted 500.000 DKK to the project "Elements - Environmental visual effects through result-oriented design". The project will try to tackle some of the challenges faced by the danish creative industry by making them more competetive. The project group consists of Sunday Studio - an Aarhus-based visual effects company - The Alexandra Institutte and the game company Javira.
We would like to invite you to participate in our first open workshop with the purpose of qualifying the project direction and to anchor the project in more Danish companies.
The workshop is on the 13th march 2013 at 1PM - 4PM at the Alexandra Institutte in meeting room Ada-333.
Sign up: http://www.doodle.com/7hqft2934eqswdn3
The main focus of the project is to build a software platform on which new techniques are able to facilitate quality improvements and faster production in the danish creative industry. By using result-oriented 3D-software we enable the artists to work directly on the final visual result and by doing so we allow the artists to be more creative.
We are going to give an introduction to what it could mean to be working using result-oriented 3D-software. Afterwards we would like the participating companies to join in – and tell us about the challenges you see in 3D software today.
We hope you will participate in our workshop and by doing so help us target the challenges faced by your company.
More information about the project can be seen here:
http://www.alexandra.dk/dk/lige_nu/nyheder/nyheder-2013/jan-mar/Sider/Aarhusianere-vil-udvikle-smarte-skyer-og-flammer-til-film.aspx
http://jyllands-posten.dk/aarhus/erhverv/article5202950.ece
Archive for category Events
VFX Christmas highlights
Nov 27
The Computer Graphics Lab at the Alexandra Institute invites you to give yourself the Christmas present of attending this afternoon of VFX niceness. See exiting new technical possibilities from people in the heart of the digital content creation industry. Hope to see you there!
Venue
19 December 2012 • 13:00 – 16:00
”Lille Auditorium”, INCUBA Science Park, Åbogade 15, 8200 Aarhus N
Registration to jesper.mosegaard {at} alexandra(.)dk
Plan
13:00 – 13:15 Introduction by Jesper Mosegaard, CG Lab, the Alexandra Institute
13:15 – 14:00 There and back again - a journey into VFX, Michael Bang, Aarhus University
14:00 – 15:00 OpenVDB, A Free Volumetric Toolkit For Visual Effects, Ken Museth, R&D FX Supervisor and Principle Engineer, Dreamworks Animation
15:00 - 15:15 Coffee and cake
15:15 – 16:00 Mystery guest, TBA
MICHAEL BANG
After completing a postdoc at Aarhus University in 2010-11, I was a research contractor in the research group at Weta Digital – the main visual effects vendor behind movies such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Avatar. I will describe some of the research challenges we were faced with during production on the movie Adventures of Tintin – Secret of the Unicorn. Solutions to the challenges were later published at some of the leading conferences and journals in computer graphics and include cutting edge results in rendering and simulation. In this talk I will provide an overview but focus on the results achieved in fluid simulation. I will also share some of my personal experience from working in the VFX industry and learning from the VFX wizards of middle earth. I have now returned to an assistant professor position at Aarhus University, and please note that since I am not a representative of Weta Digital, this talk will only cover material already in the public domain.
KEN MUSETH
Following the recent open sourcing of DreamWorks Animation’s sparse volume toolkit, OpenVDB and SideFX’s subsequent announcement to integrate it in its next major release of Houdini, this presentation is targeting early adopters that wish to experiment with the new technology. Fans of OpenVDB use the phrase “batteries included” to describe the fact that the library ships with a rich toolset of high-level volumetric processing and conversion tools that can be applied directly in VFX pipelines. The presentation will focus on three aspects of Ken Museth's OpenVDB: 1) a description of its underlying data structures and its accompanying toolset, 2) its integration into Houdini as a first-class citizen, and 3) a tour of the existing Houdini nodes that are included in the open
source distribution.
Do you know the real value of your data?
– Visualise your data and learn the true meaning and value of your data for you, your organisation and your partners.
At the exclusive hands-on workshop on Big Data Visualisation we show you how your data can be transformed from a big list of symbols to visualisations that can be understood, interpreted and fed into decision processes. 4 keynote speakers will guide us through a day of hands-on work-stations covering:
- Creating value from data through business models;
- Mapping the interactions between data and use;
- Creating beautiful and useful mock-ups of big data.
Each hands-on workstation will be manned by experts in the area, guiding the participants thorough a number of steps to develop a (1) Business Model Canvas, (2) Story Board about User Interactions and (3) Visualisation Mock-Up, based on your data and ideas.
Agenda
1000-1030 Welcome by Jesper Mosegaard and Mirko Presser
1030-1100 Marcelo Soria Rodriguez, BBVA “Financial Data Visualisation”
1100-1200 Workstations Round 1
1200-1300 Lunch
1300-1330 Børge Obel, ICOA, "Organizations and Big Data"
1330-1430 Workstations Round 2
1430-1500 The City of Aarhus (TBA)
1500-1600 Workstations Round 3
1600-1630 Andreas Lykke-Olesen, Kollision, "Designing Interactive Communication"
The workshop will be held in Danish with some of the presentations in English. The attendance is limited to 30 persons with a first come first serve basis.
Sign-up
No later than the 23th of November 2012 on
http://cg.alexandra.dk/registration-for-big-data-visualization-workshop/
Venue
Wednesday 5th of December 2012
’Smedien’, Centralværkstedet
Værkmestergade 9
8000 Aarhus C
This video demonstrates our real-time molecular visualization application written using OpenGL and GLSL. The video features three distinct visualizations: Stick-and-ball, Connolly surface and density plot. The application renders the molecule using image-based lighting combined with depth-of-field. Ambient occlusion and fog is further used to enhance the perception of depth. The Connolly surface can be dynamically recreated when changing the orbital or probe radius. When recreating the Connolly surface the ambient occlusion is dynamically updated. The density plot, which features five separate density fields, is composited onto the rasterized geometry using raymarching.
The application is part of a presentation which will be given at Symposium on Scientific Visualization held on September 25th - 26th, 2012 at The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters in Copenhagen.
Five of us are going to SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles next week. We are very excited and look forward to a week of interesting papers, presentations and discussions. If you want to meet up with us, send an e-mail to 
Better Innovation
Apr 19
(In danish)
Er du i et firma indenfor IT, visuel indholdsproduktion, computergrafik eller smartphones ? Vi har brug for dine kommentarer på vores forslag til at opbygge ny viden og serviceydelser til gavn for danske virksomheder indenfor disse områder. Dit indlæg kan være ligefra "det støtter vi" til uddybende forklaring og kritik - og din mening er vigtig i forhold til at sikre en finansiering af vores aktivitetsforslag. På forhånd tak 
It værktøj til effektiv og højkvalitets visuel indholdsproduktion
Softwareudvikling til fremtidens heterogene processor
Næste generations smartphone apps til professionelle anvendelser
Welcome to a day with talks on Accelerating Computations.
On 15 December 2011 the Computer Graphics Lab at the Alexandra Institute in Aarhus will host a conference on the core aspects of accelerating computations. This research conference will be divided into a technical part called Technical Talks in the morning and a business-oriented part called Applications Talks in the afternoon.
The conference is free and you can participate either in the Technical Talks, the Applications Talks or both. Keynote speaker will be David McAllister from NVIDIA.
The Computer Graphics Lab at the Alexandra Institute is working on realising efficient computations on massive data sets by using modern many-core processors and massive data algorithms. Subsequently
interactive information visualisation is crucial to analyse and understand massive data sets.
PROGRAMME
10:00- 10:15 Introduction
10:15 – 14:45 Technical Talks
10:15 – 11:00 How OptiX Makes the GPU Shine – a look inside NVIDIA’s Ray Tracing Engine, David McAllister, NVIDIA
11:00 – 11:45 MR reconstruction on GPU, Thomas Sangild, Computer Science, Aarhus University
11:45 – 12:30 Lunch
12:30- 13:15 Parthenon Renderer Revealed, Toshiya Hachisuka, Computer Science, Aarhus University
13:15- 13:45 Subsurface Light Propagation Volumes, Thomas Kim Kjeldsen, Computer Graphics Lab, Alexandra Institute
13:45 – 14:00 Coffee break
14:00 – 14:45 Accelerating Dense Linear Algebra on the GPU, Hans Henrik Brandenborg Sørensen, DTU Informatics
14:45 – 16:45 Applications Talks
14:45 – 15:15 Massive acceleration, Jesper Mosegaard, Computer Graphics Lab, Alexandra Institute
15:15 - 15:30 Coffee break
15:30 – 16:15 Dozens of Uses for Billions of Rays – a survey of ray tracing applications, David McAllister, NVIDIA
16:15 – 16:45 Scalable GPU computing service architecture: LEGO 3DServices, Henrik Høj Madsen, LEGO, Michael Schøler, Hinnerup.net.
16:45 – Networking and sandwiches
Venue: Alexandra Institute, Peter Bøgh Andersen Auditorium, building 5335, Finlandsgade 21-23, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark
Registration: Online at http://cg.alexandra.dk/signup/
no later than 12 December
Abstracts
How OptiX Makes the GPU Shine – a look inside NVIDIA’s Ray Tracing Engine
David McAllister, Optix Manager, NVIDIA
I will briefly describe the OptiX programming model, then dive into the internals of how we exposed the
GPU’s computational power for ray tracing in an application programmable way.
MR reconstruction on GPU
Thomas Sangild Sørensen, Associate Professor, Computer Science, Aarhus University
A barrier to the adoption of non-Cartesian parallel magnetic resonance imaging for real-time applications has been the times required for the image reconstructions. These times have exceeded the underlying acquisition time thus preventing real-time display of the acquired images. We present a reconstruction algorithm for commodity graphics hardware (GPUs) to enable real time reconstruction of sensitivity encoded radial imaging (radial SENSE).
Parthenon Renderer Revealed
Toshiya Hachisuka, Assistant Professor, Computer Science, Aarhus University
Parthenon Renderer, initially released back in 2002, is one of the earliest publicly available rendering software that utilise graphics hardware for accelerating computation of high-quality offline rendering. I will talk about the inside of Parthenon Renderer in order to give you some examples of engineering choices and algorithm design that make (and made) sense for an offline rendering system using graphics hardware.
Subsurface Light Propagation Volumes
Thomas Kim Kjeldsen, Research and Innovation Scientist, Computer Graphics Lab, Alexandra Institute
We present the Subsurface Light Propagation Volume (SSLPV) method for real-time approximation of
subsurface scattering effects in dynamic scenes with changing mesh topology and lighting. SSLPV extends
the Light Propagation Volume (LPV) technique for indirect illumination in video games. We introduce a
new consistent method for injecting flux from point light sources into an LPV grid, a new rendering method
which consistently converts light intensity stored in an LPV grid into incident radiance, as well as a model for
light scattering and absorption inside heterogeneous materials. Our scheme does not require any precomputation
and handles arbitrarily deforming meshes. We show that SSLPV provides visually pleasing results
in real-time at the expense of a few milliseconds of added rendering time.
Accelerating Dense Linear Algebra on the GPU
Hans Henrik Brandenborg Sørensen, Post. Doc., GPU Lab, DTU Informatics
GPUs have already become an integral part of high performance scientific computing, since they offer
dedicated parallel hardware that can potentially accelerate the execution of many scientific applications.
In this talk, I will consider the automatic performance acceleration of dense vector and matrix-vector operations
on GPUs. Such operations form the backbone of level 1 and level 2 routines in the Basic Linear Algebra
Subroutines (BLAS) library and are therefore of great importance in many scientific applications. The target
hardware is the most recent NVIDIA Tesla 20-series (Fermi architecture). Most of the techniques I discuss
for accelerating dense linear algebra are applicable to memory-bound GPU algorithms in general.
Massive Acceleration at the Alexandra CG Lab
Jesper Bjerg Mosegaard, Head of Research and Innovation, Computer Graphics Lab, Alexandra Institute
The Computer Graphics Lab at the Alexandra Institute does research and development within the topic of
fast and accurate simulation and visualisation in high quality. This talk describes the role of the Alexandra
Institute in transferring research to application in Danish Industry as well as specific opportunities for
companies to benefit from the latest knowledge and technology.
Dozens of Uses for Billions of Rays – a survey of ray tracing applications
David McAllister, Optix Manager, NVIDIA
Since introducing OptiX in 2009, NVIDIA has been approached by engineers from industries as diverse as
geothermal exploration, cell phone antenna design, and automotive headlamp design that have one thing
in common – the need to intersect rays, usually billions of them, against a database of geometry. I will
survey many applications of ray tracing, within and beyond computer graphics, and show how accelerating
ray tracing using GPUs addresses many challenges in industry.
Scalable GPU computing service architecture: LEGO 3DServices
Michael Schøler, Hinnerup.net og Henrik Høj Madsen, Solution Architect, Lego
As LEGO is moving into the virtual playspace, a platform technology has been developed in-house primarily
based on NVIDIA technologies, featuring:
• CUDA, OptiX, OpenGL and general shaders
• 17 Quadro Plex in multiple environments, multiple datacentres
• Advanced shading techniques for approaching high-quality results in real-time
• On-demand asset generation
• CDN assets distribution
• A generic service-oriented interface
• A distributed rendering architecture
• Architectural patterns for distributed computing
• A plugin architecture supporting existing and future LEGO experiences
• A mentality shift from traditional ways of doing things on CPU vs GPU.
• General experiences from developing on NVIDIA tech in a large-scale Enterprise setup
The LEGO 3DServices system is designed to support diverse computational needs such as on-demand rendering, mesh optimisation, a Massive Multiplayer Online Game (MMO), product visualisations, 3D modeling and other current and future demanding computational tasks. Our aim with this session is to share our learnings and present LEGO’s vision of the future of distributed GPU accelerated computation as a business-driven platform technology.
We are leaving for HPG and SIGGRAPH on Thursday. If you want to meet up with us, throw an e-mail at
LEGO Universe is live
Oct 12
We would like to congratulate LEGO on the launch of the MMO game LEGO Universe for preorder customers. We look forward to seeing our work used by thousands of people.
For retail DVD customers the official launch date is October 22nd (Europe) and October 26th (US) respectively. Check the game out. Its good fun!
Friday the 1st of October 2010 at 9-11:30 the Alexandra Institute opens the new Computer Graphics Lab. Come and get inspired !
See the poster (in Danish) at http://cg.alexandra.dk/files/Aabning_CG-lab.pdf
From the 1st of Otcober five experts in computer graphics are let loose in Denmarks first Computer Graphics Lab in the GTS-System (Approved Technological Service). The Lab will work with photorealistic rendering, medical computing, visualisation of large datasets, accelerating computation on modern graphics cards, and physically based animation.
You can get a look into the lab and meet the computer graphics experts of the Alexandra Institute, who are open for discussion concerning needs and opportunities. You can also experience interesting lectures from some of our customers and collaborators.
The opening is located in room Ada 333, Åbogade 34, 8200 Århus N.
Program
| 09:00 | Welcome Ole Lehrmann Madsen, Director of Alexandra Institute |
| 09:10 | What are we going to work with in the Computer Graphics Lab ? Jesper Mosegaard, Head of Computer Graphics Lab at the Alexandra Institute |
| 09:30 | 3D-technology and innovation at LEGO Claus Toftegaard Matthiesen, Technology Manager, 3D Applications, LEGO |
| 10:15 | Coffee break |
| 10:45 | Next generation productvisualization with KeyShot Henrik Wann Jensen, Chief Scientist, Luxion |
Claus Toftegaard Matthiesen, LEGO
LEGO is working on a number of project with interactive 3D-visualization. within the next years LEGO will develop software products, where innovative interaction and visualization create new experiences with digital versions of LEGO bricks. In his lecture Claus Toftegaard Matthiesen will talk about how new knowledge arises in this field, and how a company like LEGO can take advantage such new knowledge - amongst this, how the Alexandra Institute has been used and which chains of value such consultancy is a part of.
Henrik Wann Jensen, Luxion
Luxion is a danish company that develops advanced technology for photorealistic product visualization. The core product of Luxion, KeyShot, is used to visualize design and product marketing material for companies such as Chrysler, Dell, HP, Ideo, Lamborghini, frog design, Microsoft, Nokia, Porsche Design, Samsung, Smart Design og Tiffany. Luxion has recently opened a development office in Aarhus, Denmark and started a collaboration with the Computer Graphics Lab at the Alexandra Institute on the next generation product visualization.In his lecture, Henrik Wann Jensen, will give an overview of the technology of Luxion, as well as some future innovative technology currently under development
