An Inkling of Genius

Wacom strikes again.

For a while, they have been showing a cryptic countdown on their website; building momentum towards the release of some mysterious new product.
Today they have unveiled Inkling. And if the actual product experience holds true to the demo videos they have released, sketching on a surface (any ball-pen-friendly surface) has taken a new leap into the digital age.

With Inkling, Wacom ditches the electrostatic tablet surface and focuses the technology into the pen. With an attached receiver, the pen's movements and tip pressure are stored, digitizing whatever you are sketching.

True, digitizing pens have been around for a while, storing actual writing gestures into text. sort of a "reverse OCR" type of thing. But I am curious to see how Wacom has finessed the approach to store sketches. I am also curious to see the system's fidelity.

You can take a peek at inkling.wacom.com

OpenColorIO

OpenColorIO (OCIO) is a new open source project from Sony Pictures Imageworks (SPI), which they hope will soon be widely adopted across the Industry.

Based on development started in 2003, OCIO enables color transforms and image display to be handled in a consistent manner across multiple graphics applications. Unlike other color management solutions, OCIO is geared towards motion-picture post production, with an emphasis on visual effects and animation color pipelines. Today there was a small but powerful group of colour science experts such as Charles Poynton, and expert users, as well as manufacturers such as the Foundry all gathered to discuss and listen to the latest advances in the 0.8 project from lead developer and advocate Jeremy Selan, Imaging Supervisor from Sony Imageworks.

For more info: OpenColorIO.org

Alembic

Alembic 1.0 is released and is in production at Industrial Light and Magic/LucasFilm (ILM) and Sony Pictures Imageworks (SPI), on such productions as The Avengers, Men in Black 3 and The Amazing Spiderman.

The file format allows for much greater standardization for production, reduced files size, non-linear access and a universal baked geometry format that is both flexible and production tested.

Developed to be open source, by a joint initiative from both ILM and SPI, and is in the great tradition of OpenEXR. It is production ready, able to be used commercially but hopefully widely supported allowing for greater collaboration between facilities.

 You can get more details and read the press release at the Alembic site: http://alembic.io/

Siggraph Diary

Siggraph Vancouver is now over.
According to the conference's organization, it was a success, and we should look forward to the show coming back to Vancouver in the future.
CGSociety posted a day-by-day diary of the event for those who couldn't make it to Canada.
You can check it out HERE.