Well, that’s certainly unnerving. Here I thought Heavy Rain was pretty realistic, but this is in an entirely different league.

Here’s how they did it:

This animated character is being rendered in real-time on current video card hardware, using standard bone animation. The rendering techniques, as well as the animation pipeline are being presented at GDC 2013, “Next Generation Character Rendering” on March 27. The original high resolution data was acquired from Light Stage Facial Scanning and Performance Capture by USC Institute for Creative Technologies, then converted to a 70 bones rig, while preserving the high frequency detail in diffuse, normal and displacement composite maps. It is being rendered in a DirectX11 environment, using advanced techniques to faithfully represent the character’s skin and eyes.

For another example, here’s a screenshot of another face created using the same tech:

For more examples and information on how Activision achieved this, check out their blog.

So why would a SOPA-supporting entity like NBC outright steal their graphics from Apple? Is that in the spirit of what SOPA promotes? Of course not, but that didn’t stop them from doing so. TheNextWeb has the details, and it has to do with the graphics ABC used for their upcoming Home Transformers offering.

To put it plainly, NBC stole their graphic from Apple’s Xcode app development application. Visual evidence, again, courtesy of TNW. First, NBC’s graphic:

In other words, it’s apparently fine for NBC to take whatever graphics they see fit–SOPA supporter or not–but when someone downloads the latest episode of Grimm, the proverbial poo hits the fan, causing NBC to claim billions of dollars are being lost and threatening their job market. That sounds logical. In fact, it sounds like the exact opposite of hypocrisy.

Or not.

TNW has an additional take on NBC’s apparent “do as we say, not as we do” attitude:

The hubris is made even worse in that its not some artist’s logo off of Deviant Art, this is a graphic used by the biggest company in the world by market cap. If they don’t care about Apple, how much less to companies like NBC care about the rights of individual copyright holders, the same people that they profess to be out to protect.

That, folks, is a very good question. It’s clear NBC’s attitude is one of we’ll support SOPA as long as it protects our property, but we’ll completely ignore these principals when it comes to graphics we like.

And yet, these companies wonder why the public backlash against them, and these anti-piracy bills is so severe.

Google announced that the latest release of Chrome Google+Chrome+Blog%29″>enables faster drawing performance and graphics. If you want to take advantage of this, you will need the proper hardware. It’s not super taxing, but your PC from 2007 or PowerPC Mac isn’t going to have a super fun time with it. They haven’t left out older computers though as they will at least see fancier graphics on their browsers.

I said earlier today that WebGL and HTML5 are going to be powering less graphic intensive games, while the new Flash Player 11.2 takes care of the heavy lifting. I still hold on to that conviction, but Google has been making waves lately in their implementation of WebGL. Check out this screen of a 3D face model in Chrome:

Here’s a few more examples of WebGL rendering 3D objects in real time. Pay particular attention to the water. H20 is one of the hardest things to render in any engine and WebGL handles it like a boss.

The future of in-browser graphic rendering has so much potential. I can’t wait till we begin seeing stuff like this as commonplace on Web sites. If you want to try out that Iceberg demo for yourself to see if your browser can handle 3D rendering, check out the demo here.

Today, Google launched a new beta version, with some graphical enhancements, which we can expect in a future stable release – specifically, improvements to 2D Canvas and a software rasterizer. Engineers John Bauman and Brian Salomon explain on the Chromium Blog:

For most Windows and Mac users, we’ve enabled GPU-accelerated rendering of 2D Canvas content, so that canvas-based games and animations run faster and feel smoother. You can go to chrome://gpu to see which features are being accelerated. This is a tricky area to optimize, due to the wide variety of hardware and operating system configurations found in the wild. We’ve made a series of small improvements to the way this acceleration works in the latest release, and we’re seeking feedback on it from our Beta users. If you notice performance problems with 2D Canvas graphics content, particularly if you’re a web developer using 2D Canvas on your site, please file a bug.

SwiftShader automatically kicks in for those users who cannot run content on the GPU. If you want to take a peek at what the performance is like with SwiftShader, you can use the –blacklist-accelerated-compositing and –blacklist-webgl flags, wait a few minutes for the automatic download to complete, and then load the relevant web page.

It’s been a pretty big week for Chrome. Earlier in the week the beta version of Chrome for Android launched as well. This could very well be an early step towards the convergence of Google’s two operating systems.

Keeping with the look and feel of the original Android logo, while incorporating a theme that matches the Honeycomb name, the new logo is a mix between the current green guy and a blue-and-black bee, giving us this:

Image courtesy

As you can see, the results are pretty impressive, provided going wild for new logos and graphics is important to you. Over at the Android Developers page, they have some details about the newest update, including some information about being the first Android OS to be developed with tablet PCs in mind.

While the new logo is a neat combination, and considering it was developed for the Honeycomb update, what happens if the update is a failure?  Wouldn’t Google have to consider changing the name from “Honeycomb” to “Beeswax?”

That way, they can keep using the new logo even if the updated OS doesn’t impress Android users.  However, considering the open source nature of Android, users can just fool around with the source code until they’re satisfied with what they have.

1. How graphics can act as barriers to website user navigation.
2. How graphics can coax users towards essential website information.
3. If multimedia on a website creates a “wow” factor or a trap.

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Google Ready To Bid For Wireless, Maybe

If Google bids for the 700MHz spectrum, they could do so with someone else putting up cash alongside the substantial pile of currency the search ad company has accumulated.

The Wall Street Journal summarized several steps Google has taken with regards to becoming a mobile business player. They left out a couple, namely Google’s acquisitions of Grand Central and portable graphics engine maker Skia earlier this year.

When Google does take that big step by grabbing some of the valuable 700MHz spectrum, they are as likely to do so with another deep-pocketed bidder alongside them as they are to go solo to the auction. That’s speculation by the Journal, citing the usual ‘people familiar with the matter’, but it makes sense for Google to arrive with a partner.

Serving the public with a GoogleNet wireless network should benefit the mobile-using public with less expensive service and broader availability. But serving the public involves customer service, and no one will ever confuse Eric Schmidt with Bruce Nordstrom in that discussion, as Google prefers to shunt its users to newsgroups rather than take questions by email, much less by phone, about its non-revenue generating products.

If Google chose to do so, it could provide world-class customer service. Financially it makes more sense for them to foist that dirty work onto someone else, which makes a partner scenario more likely once the bidding begins.

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But there are some cases, when using graphics is the right thing to do.

When to use graphics

As mentioned in the earlier article, graphics should only be used, when it is absolutely necessary, such as:

• when the image is absolutely related to the website
• when the pictures makes understanding of the text easier (a graph for a table, for example)

As seen from the list, graphics should only be used, when absolutely needed, and its use has to be thoroughly considered, as graphics impose some limits on website performance.

What kind of media to use

The most obvious case of using pictures on your site is when you sell something that people need to see before buying, such as clothes, vehicles, furniture, etc. What is more is that you’d rather use large, high quality images (at about 1/4-1/2 of the screen, the other part being occupied by the description), so that people could look closer at what they are buying.

If you discuss complex schemes, structures and so forth, a graphical explanation would be nice. Not to mention that using simpler language may help, if appropriate.

How to use the graphical content

When creating graphical content, there are a couple of things to remember:

• everything that is on the image should be available in text (both for the humans and the search engines)
• the images should have proper alt tags
• the image size and quality should depend on the product

For example, if you are selling shoes, it’d make sense to be able to rotate them, as, mostly, it is important to look not only at the sides, but also at the sole.

If you are selling clothes, it is usually more helpful to showcase them on real people, not on some background or dolls.

When selling an apartment, you may want to use a video, showing the interior, possibly with your comments. You can host the video on Google Video or YouTube – make sure to leave your coordinates, though.

Another moment to remember is that a 3D box helps selling digital products, even when there is no real box available.

What about the graphical design?

Normally, I’d argue that anything that does not serve the goal of informing the visitor of anything shouldn’t belong to a website. And that anything may be extra graphical design, extra images or unwanted sound/video.

In his post about text and graphics balance on a website, Steve points out that a website has milliseconds to impress a visitor.

Some believe that impressing the visitor means absolutely shocking the visitor by something astounding and magnificent, such as a large image of something completely unrelated to a website. As seen from the studies, such banners don’t work.

On the other hand, "impressing" means just making an impression, whether positive, negative or neutral. A site, made of text, such as this one, may very well make a quite distinct impression. Hopefully, it has the right audience not to scare it off, though.

So, in the end, it only matters who your target audience is and how you can find the right balance between the use of images and text on a website. You can learn more about the balance of function and graphics in the Sphere of Design and see more examples of good designs here.

Rounding up

While some may want to use graphics just to impress their visitors, it’d rather be used only to help the visitors to get more information and understand what the site talks about.

Finding the right balance between information and visual presentation just for your target audience will prove much more efficient than deciding on your own.

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Hear that noise? That’s the sound of smoke pouring out of the ears of millions of graphic designers.

As webmasters, many of us feel a certain pressure to ensure that our sites match up to the latest standards. They need to be attractive *and* useful, to draw visitors *and* keep them.

Function and Form are two different entities; I have seen some well designed sites with very low circa-1996 graphics. I’ve seen *many* websites created in the Web 2.0 look, with flashy graphics and appealing layouts, which were absolutely useless.

When you visit a site, try to look past whatever visual shortcomings you may see. You may be walking away from some of the most useful tools or services you will ever encounter. In short, don’t judge a book (website or service) by it’s cover (graphics, layout etc.)

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