Retroreflective caustic

Here's a nice retroreflective caustic on the roof of my car:

Placing my phone camera there immediately reveals the culprit:

This is an example of retroreflection.   The wikipedia on corner reflectors (this type of retroreflector) article is excellent.

A small image IO library: stb_image.h

I did my first test of one of the several libraries y'all suggested (thanks again!): stb_image

That is one of the "all in one file" kinds of libraries with all documentation in that header.   As a KISS kind of person that still thinks terminals are cool, I have to admit the simplicity of the thing almost brought tears to my eyes.   It's mainly by Sean Barrett and it is very nicely documented (in comments!).  I decided to try it first because Christopher Kulla said pbrt uses it and I like the taste shown in pbrt.

For input you use stb_image.h but output is the compatible stb_image_write.h.   The take the image and shove it into a 3 bytes per pixel array (for 24 bit images).   I haven't tested hdr (Ward's rgbe for this library) yet but so far I am very very pleased with this code.

Here's my test of just the io (in another program I verified their simple internal representation).  Included as an image so it doesn't mess up formatting and I am too lazy for HTML.   Sean Barrett, whomever you are, the beer is definitely on me if we ever cross paths!  (edit-- Sean is a real person and has a twitter @nothings).

What image library/format should I use?

I am doing a new batch renderer and need to do image I/O including HDR (with viewer if possible).  Last time I did this it was all image magic and Greg Ward's rgbe code.   What are the cool kids using these days?

Some amazing new skin work.

One step closer to leaving the uncanny valley!   From researchers at USC and ICL.  Watch the video here.

My Rocket Golf Galaxy is better than yours.

I'm continuing to play Morgan McGuire's casual iOS game Project Rocket Golfing.    The game is fun but from a graphics nerd perspective the coolest thing is that it has unbounded levels.   After the first few Galaxies, you can pick any name and the Galaxy corresponding to that name is next.  For example, I have tried tons of them and the best I have found so far is (really no kidding) "Peter". 

Name a new Galaxy.

There is a crafting system for various power-ups and different Galaxies (each a set of four solar systems) have various resources form none to a lot.  These are indicated by the symbols in the "log" column.  The "Peter" galaxy has four such resource types which is the most I have found in any Galaxy so far.  (Yes I know. I parred only one of four of my own systems so far!)

The Peter Galaxy is resource-rich

 As I said, I have tried a lot of names of people I know (and many variations of my own name like Petey Boy).  I still have not found any mother-load Galaxies.  If you do, please say the name in the comment section (the same name will be the same Galaxy on all versions of the game).

HDR is the new new thing

For the past several years I have been helping goHDR man their booth in the futures park of NAB, the siggraph of the broadcast TV tech nerd industry (it fills up the Vegas convention center).  goHDR was the first to my knowledge to have a full HDR pipeline from camera to compressed transmission to display, and that is what got me interested in the company in the first place.  The goHDR booth setup from this year is in this video.

In previous years the industry was obsessed with 4K (what I call 2160p) and the HDR demo got little attention, and my impression was the broadcasters didn't know what HDR stood for.  This year was entirely different as the industry is looking for some new reason to ever buy a TV again.  In my opinion, HDR is more impressive subjectively than was digital, HD, or especially 2160p (I want that for coding, but do not find the entertainment demos compelling).  Only the transition from B/W to color was subjectively more impressive to me than HDR is (yes, sadly I am old enough to remember that).  Scott Wilkinson wrote a nice little piece on HDR at NAB this year and notes that HDR is finally on the horizon.

Some light art at the Albany airport

Waiting for a plane and checked out the art gallery.  It was not only impressive, it appears there are people who like caustics even more than rendering nerds!   The LIT show is detailed on a link here.  Some highlights below.

A moving caustic by Yael Erel

Another moving caustic by Yael Erel

The reflector causing the caustic

A shadow of a tangle of wires by Larry Kagan

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Some wild shadows by Victoria Palermo