Silicon Valley Design Firm to Hold 24 Hour Design Marathon to Benefit Bay Area Foster Kids

On August 18th Rebekah Children's Services (http://www.rcskids.org/) becomes the fourth nonprofit to take the ZURBwired (http://www.zurbwired.com/) challenge. Organizations everywhere get stuck and lose site of the value they can create for people. ZURB, a close-knit Campbell design firm, will offer Rebekah Children's Services a chance to break through organizational paralysis for just one day and teach them how to get stuff done for a lifetime. ZURB’s design techniques will provide Rebekah's Children's Services tools to visualize a strategy and goal-oriented teamwork to accomplish the unthinkable, fast. It just happens that ZURB and Rebekah’s will create and launch a new website together from scratch that day--from every word, line of code, or pixel on the screen.

Quotes from the team

"Our website is the biggest source of information about our programs and the primary means by which we acquire new donors, supporters and potential adoptive/foster parents, unfortunately it is woefully inadequate and we don't have the resources to fix it," said Community Relations Manager of Rebekah’s Children Services. "We are very fortunate and excited to be chosen by ZURB, not only because we're going to get a great new website, but because we're going to be part of the process of building it and learning skills we'll need to maintain it moving forward."

"ZURB is stoked to work with Rebekah’s Children Services this year,” said ZURB partner Jeremy Britton. “Their team has an amazing energy that is vital to pull off a crazy 24-hour design hackathon. By working in close quarters with Rebekah’s Children Services, we want their organization to reach more foster kids who can benefit from their services and more supporters to expand on and improve their quality. We want to launch a new website and brochure in 24 hours, but also to teach the design methods and goal-oriented teamwork that will carry them throughout the rest of the year!”

Accomplishments from past ZURBwired Events

The total donation of our time and effort, as well as that of our partners and volunteers exceed $30,000 each time we run this. We have helped our nonprofits participants raise over $100,000 across our first three events, something we're incredibly proud to say!

Event Details

The ZURBwired event, beginning on August 18th, 2011 at 8:00 am and ending on August 19th, 2011 at 8:00am, will be held at ZURB’s headquarters at 55 North Third Street, Suite 100a, Campbell, CA 95008.

About ZURB

ZURB (http://www.zurb.com) is a close-knit team of interaction designers and strategists that help companies design better products & services through consulting, products, education, books, training and events. Since 1998 ZURB has helped over 150+ clients including: Netflix, Facebook, Yahoo, eBay, Logitech, Reuters, McAfee, NYSE, among others. ZURBwired 2011 is ZURB’s fourth annual event of its kind, which allows the company to give back to its local community.

Media Contact

Dmitry Dragilev
Marketing Lead
ZURB, Inc.
(408)–341-0600 x613
dmitry@zurb.com
http://www.zurbwired.com

ZURB (http://www.zurb.com) is a close-knit team of interaction designers and strategists that help companies design better products & services through consulting, products, education, books, training and events. Since 1998 ZURB has helped over 150+ clients including: Netflix, Facebook, Yahoo, eBay, Logitech, Reuters, McAfee, NYSE, among others.

View the original article here

Super-detailed CGI human skin could finally cross the uncanny valley, bring realistic faces to games and movies

Computer technology has grown ever more advanced in recent decades, but we reached an impasse a while back where technology collided with biology in an unexpected way. Trying to create digital versions of human faces usually resulted in something bizarre or downright disturbing. The phenomenon, known as the uncanny valley, is still vexing for the movie and game industries. However, a team led by Abhijeet Ghosh and Paul Debevec of the University of Southern California (USC) has developed a method to make artificial faces even more real, perhaps crossing the uncanny valley. It turns out the answers were only skin-deep.

The human brain is precisely tuned to understand what a face is supposed to look like. These subtle cues are deeply ingrained and when we find them missing, the response is often viscerally negative. It can be as simple as muscles around the eyes contracting oddly, or the way lips part during speech. Science is getting closer to nailing down the mechanical processes, but the USC team is tackling the most challenging aspect — skin.

It turns out modeling the reflection of light on skin is extremely complicated because skin itself is extremely complicated. It’s a patchwork of bumps, pores, blemishes, and tiny wrinkles that creep in as you approach middle age. When these details are missing, digital skin doesn’t look real and we venture into uncanny valley territory no matter how accurate the movements are. The technique being developed at USC more accurately simulates skin in a few ways, the first has to do with the lighting.

Each simulated light source is split into four rays — one that bounces off the epidermis, and three others that penetrate the skin to different depths before being scattered. The result is a more natural sheen with realistic shadows.

To make this technology really work, the team also cranked up the level of detail for CGI skin. Using a special scanner, Ghosh and Debevec took extremely high resolution images of human skin from volunteers’ cheeks, chins, and foreheads. Each pixel in the images contained an area only 10 micrometers across (that’s 0.00001 meters, by the way). At this level of detail, a single skin cell is only three pixels wide on average.

The scans were used to generate incredibly detailed 3D renders of skin. When combined with the new simulated lighting, the results are incredibly impressive. The CGI network of pores and bumps make the faces look almost real as the artificial light plays across them.

There has been intense interest from game developers and Hollywood as this project has proceeded. The CGI blockbuster Avatar used a rudimentary version of the USC technology to make the film’s blue-skinned aliens more realistic. Activision and Nvidia have been collaborating with USC in hopes of developing a software package that can generate photorealistic faces on consumer hardware like game consoles and PCs. The day might be fast approaching that your in-game avatar looks completely real in every way that matters.

View the original article here

Super-detailed CGI human skin could finally cross the uncanny valley, bring realistic faces to games and movies

Computer technology has grown ever more advanced in recent decades, but we reached an impasse a while back where technology collided with biology in an unexpected way. Trying to create digital versions of human faces usually resulted in something bizarre or downright disturbing. The phenomenon, known as the uncanny valley, is still vexing for the movie and game industries. However, a team led by Abhijeet Ghosh and Paul Debevec of the University of Southern California (USC) has developed a method to make artificial faces even more real, perhaps crossing the uncanny valley. It turns out the answers were only skin-deep.

The human brain is precisely tuned to understand what a face is supposed to look like. These subtle cues are deeply ingrained and when we find them missing, the response is often viscerally negative. It can be as simple as muscles around the eyes contracting oddly, or the way lips part during speech. Science is getting closer to nailing down the mechanical processes, but the USC team is tackling the most challenging aspect — skin.

It turns out modeling the reflection of light on skin is extremely complicated because skin itself is extremely complicated. It’s a patchwork of bumps, pores, blemishes, and tiny wrinkles that creep in as you approach middle age. When these details are missing, digital skin doesn’t look real and we venture into uncanny valley territory no matter how accurate the movements are. The technique being developed at USC more accurately simulates skin in a few ways, the first has to do with the lighting.

Each simulated light source is split into four rays — one that bounces off the epidermis, and three others that penetrate the skin to different depths before being scattered. The result is a more natural sheen with realistic shadows.

To make this technology really work, the team also cranked up the level of detail for CGI skin. Using a special scanner, Ghosh and Debevec took extremely high resolution images of human skin from volunteers’ cheeks, chins, and foreheads. Each pixel in the images contained an area only 10 micrometers across (that’s 0.00001 meters, by the way). At this level of detail, a single skin cell is only three pixels wide on average.

The scans were used to generate incredibly detailed 3D renders of skin. When combined with the new simulated lighting, the results are incredibly impressive. The CGI network of pores and bumps make the faces look almost real as the artificial light plays across them.

There has been intense interest from game developers and Hollywood as this project has proceeded. The CGI blockbuster Avatar used a rudimentary version of the USC technology to make the film’s blue-skinned aliens more realistic. Activision and Nvidia have been collaborating with USC in hopes of developing a software package that can generate photorealistic faces on consumer hardware like game consoles and PCs. The day might be fast approaching that your in-game avatar looks completely real in every way that matters.

View the original article here

Silicon Valley Design Firm to Hold 24 Hour Design Marathon to Benefit Bay Area Foster Kids

On August 18th Rebekah Children's Services becomes the fourth nonprofit to take the ZURBwired challenge. Organizations everywhere get stuck and lose site of the value they can create for people. ZURB, a close-knit Campbell design firm, will offer Rebekah Children's Services a chance to break through organizational paralysis for just one day and teach them how to get stuff done for a lifetime. ZURB’s design techniques will provide Rebekah's Children's Services tools to visualize a strategy and goal-oriented teamwork to accomplish the unthinkable, fast. It just happens that ZURB and Rebekah’s will create and launch a new website together from scratch that day--from every word, line of code, or pixel on the screen.

Quotes from the team

"Our website is the biggest source of information about our programs and the primary means by which we acquire new donors, supporters and potential adoptive/foster parents, unfortunately it is woefully inadequate and we don't have the resources to fix it," said Community Relations Manager of Rebekah’s Children Services. "We are very fortunate and excited to be chosen by ZURB, not only because we're going to get a great new website, but because we're going to be part of the process of building it and learning skills we'll need to maintain it moving forward."

"ZURB is stoked to work with Rebekah’s Children Services this year,” said ZURB partner Jeremy Britton. “Their team has an amazing energy that is vital to pull off a crazy 24-hour design hackathon. By working in close quarters with Rebekah’s Children Services, we want their organization to reach more foster kids who can benefit from their services and more supporters to expand on and improve their quality. We want to launch a new website and brochure in 24 hours, but also to teach the design methods and goal-oriented teamwork that will carry them throughout the rest of the year!”

Accomplishments from past ZURBwired Events

The total donation of our time and effort, as well as that of our partners and volunteers exceed $30,000 each time we run this. We have helped our nonprofits participants raise over $100,000 across our first three events, something we're incredibly proud to say!

Event Details

The ZURBwired event, beginning on August 18th, 2011 at 8:00 am and ending on August 19th, 2011 at 8:00am, will be held at ZURB’s headquarters at 55 North Third Street, Suite 100a, Campbell, CA 95008.

About ZURB

ZURB (http://www.zurb.com) is a close-knit team of interaction designers and strategists that help companies design better products & services through consulting, products, education, books, training and events. Since 1998 ZURB has helped over 150+ clients including: Netflix, Facebook, Yahoo, eBay, Logitech, Reuters, McAfee, NYSE, among others. ZURBwired 2011 is ZURB’s fourth annual event of its kind, which allows the company to give back to its local community.

Media Contact

Dmitry Dragilev
Marketing Lead
ZURB, Inc.
(408)–341-0600 x613

View the original article here