'Kay, If Porn Really DOES Drive Technology, Then This Gizmo's Perfect for It

[Tuckerfan]

Uber-camera.

“It’s like having a lot of cameras on a single chip,” said Keith Fife, a graduate student working with El Gamal and another electrical engineering professor, H.-S. Philip Wong. In fact, if their prototype 3-megapixel chip had all its micro lenses in place, they would add up to 12,616 “cameras.”

Point such a camera at someone’s face, and it would, in addition to taking a photo, precisely record the distances to the subject’s eyes, nose, ears, chin, etc. One obvious potential use of the technology: facial recognition for security purposes.

But there are a number of other possibilities for a depth-information camera: biological imaging, 3-D printing, creation of 3-D objects or people to inhabit virtual worlds, or 3-D modeling of buildings.

At the very least, it’d come in handy for the guys who make the “Real Dolls.”

[Sunrazor]

Stanford electronics researchers, **lead ** by electrical engineering Professor Abbas El Gamal, are developing such a camera … (emphasis added)

It’s led, goddamnit! This kind of grammatical error in a science magazine drives me nutz!

[GuanoLad]

In the arena of visual effects, one of the challenges is having to use a greenscreen as almost the only reliable method to isolate a foreground live character which you can then composite against a digital background.

But having a camera that can digitally record imagery that also has accurate depth information would provide a lot more possibility in how to utilise dimensions as layers.

[Ale]

@GuanoLad

In the arena of visual effects, one of the challenges is having to use a greenscreen as almost the only reliable method to isolate a foreground live character which you can then composite against a digital background.

But having a camera that can digitally record imagery that also has accurate depth information would provide a lot more possibility in how to utilise dimensions as layers.

You don´t say, I can visualize the rotoscoping department guys drooling over this.

[mmouse9799]

neat technology.

[GuanoLad]

@Ale

You don´t say, I can visualize the rotoscoping department guys drooling over this.

Oh yeah, rotoscoping too! Things going behind and in front of the right objects just by using an animated depth map recorded live! In fact, I’m going to send this link to a friend of mine who is a compositor at Weta Digital.