What do you get when you put 11 lenses on a camera, plug that into a realtime blending box, and combine it with some serious video streaming equipment? That's right - panoramic video! And if you'd want to take it to the next level, you'd craft your very own Flash Player to display immersive video on the web.

Well, a company called Immersive Media did just that, and boy - it's the coolest thing I have seen in a while! Might not be high dynamic range, but certainly related cutting edge panorama technology. And I can already think of a billion applications in the visual effects industry...

Play the movie below and drag your mouse for a full surround view!

They have plenty of great demos on the Immersive Media site.
Or check out the special surfer coverage on the Red Bull site!

Autodesk was on a shopping tour again, and they announced today that they aquired Realviz and all their software products.

This means what was formerly known as Realviz Stitcher, is called Autodesk Stitcher from now on. If you head over to www.realviz.com, it looks like Stitcher has always been a genuine Autodesk product.

In the past, Autodesk always tried to ensure a smooth transition with a newly snatched product line. This time - not so much. There are no more student versions available, and VTour, Retimer and Matchmover are no longer available. Actually, for the next week none of the former Realviz programs is available at all, because the online store is closed.

Ohhhh, Retimer plugin for Fusion - I miss you already (in fact, just used it today). And VTour was one of those promising programs, that I haven't had a chance to write about yet...

More info in the the official press release.

I hate deadlines, but I wouldn't get anything done without them either.

This time it was ACM SIGGRAPH, asking for all the material for this upcoming SIGGRAPH Class. And because Smart IBL should definitely be on there, the entire sIBL team was working really hard on updating all the sIBL Loader scripts. GO TEAM!

So, what's new?

• sIBL-Edit is now available as Linux version, in 32 and glorious 64 bit.
• Lightwave sIBL loader has a new thumbnail view and works on Mac and PC, v9.3 and up.
• Maya sIBL loader supports mental ray production shaders and rayswitch in Maya2008.
• 3dsMAX sIBL loader works with mental ray, fixed VRay (again).
• a brand new loader for modo is about to join the ranks, stay tuned...

As usual, here is also a new sIBL set of the month ready for you to download, and the race for the hottest HDR on Flickr has started over again...

Happy May!

Wow, what a crazy episode!

It was almost intimidating to do my first podcast appearance among all these internet celebrities for, but definitely fun. Alex Lindsay asked me lots of questions about my book, and it seems the TWiP folks really liked it. They also have a Flickr challenge going where you can win the HDRI Handbook, as well as minor giveaways like Aperture and Lightroom. :) This show was really about some big announcements;

Alex announced DVGarage's dive deep into the new Aperture 2.1 SDK. First plugin is already out: dpMatte for greenscreen keys, coming up is Conduit (sweet nodal compositing), and also HDRToner - yes - for tonemapping right inside of Aperture. Lots of good stuff. Listen to the episode yourself!

The second big announcement came from me:

SIGGRAPH 2008 Class: HDRI for Artists

A nice little gang of presenters is coming together to teach about HDRI at Siggraph:
my friend Kirt Witte from the Savannah College of Art and Design, Hilmar Koch from ILM, Zap Andersson from mental images, Gary M. Davis from Autodesk, and of course, yours truly.
If you happen to be in LA for Siggraph, don't miss the show!

Paul Debevec doesn't need much of an introduction - he is one of the founding fathers of HDRI. His latest research is so way out there, yet he has the incredible talent to explain everything so it makes perfect sense.

Watch this and prepare to be amazed:

If you want to see more detailed information about Paul's projects, visit www.debevec.org. Check out his upcoming events calender, he will be touring Germany next month.

Oh, and by the way - the Lightstage shown in this video is in fact out of the lab already. If you just want to rent one for your own production, you can do so. Without any R&D and handcrafting on your end, just a simple plug-and-play product from Aguru Images.