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Sites I visit often (usually daily)
- Google
- Every knows about Google now but back when I first started this site in 2001 they didn't which is why this link is here.
- Slashdot
- 'nuff said
- Fark
- A great place to waste some time and be amused
Photography Related
- FredMiranda
- FredMiranda is a great site to learn more about any aspect of digital photography. Its a place where a lot of professionals and very knowledgeable amateurs hang out. I tend to read the Forums fairly frequently. The FM Buy & Sell forum is probably one of the best places to buy and sell gear online. It costs $25 / year but its easily worth the price.
- the-digital-picture
- An excellent site for quick to the point reviews of Canon gear. They also have ISO 12233 chart crops for most Canon lenses so you can compare the sharpness of various lenses. They recently also added a way to compare lens specifications and measurements. I find that if I'm looking for specifications of a Canon lens, this is the site I turn to as the data is available, reliable and neatly organized.
- Naturescapes
- This is an online resource for nature photographers, I know a lot of bird and wildlife photographers that hang out here. They also have a store where you can purcahse just about anything you need for nature photoraphy.
- BPN
- Run by reknowned bird photographer Art Morris, this is a newer site dedicated to bird photography.
- DPReview
- DPR is one of the original digital photography sites. Its extremely popular and Phil Askey (the site's founder) has a reputation for doing thorough reviews. I will occasionally read the Forums here.
- The Luminous Landscape
- Run by Michael Reichmann this site has a lot of 'hands on' reviews of gear as well as many interesting essays and columns. There's also a fairly active Forum.
- Photo.net
- A photography community including forums (including an active one on large format cameras) and galleries.
- Canon Digital Photography Forums (POTN)
- Forums dedicated to Canon digital photography. The marketplace is also a good place to buy and sell gear.
Really useful stuff
Graphics Related
Software Development related
- eclipse project
- A cross-platform, plugin oriented IDE (integrated development environment) pioneered by IBM
Academic
Graphics Groups at Universities
Researchers in Computer Graphics
LaTeX Related
Open Source Rendering Software
- Advanced Rendering Toolkit
- They haven't updated their work in quite some time
- Art of Illusion
- 3D modelling and rendering package written in Java
- Igneus
- A global illumination renderer
- PARC (Python Animation, Rendering and Compositing)
- Uses a Python based scene description language, the renderer is a REYES style micropolygon renderer, the shaders are written in Python.
- POV-Ray
- The Persistence of Vision Raytracer is one oldest pieces of open source ray tracing. I believe newer versions have implementations of Photon Mapping for GI.
- Radiance
- Probably the oldest and one of the most well known packages in the academic community
- RenderPark
- Test-bed software used by researchers in GI. Its free for download and comes with source. Its contains implementations of Photon Mapping, various radiosity techniques (finite element) as well as various stochastic ray tracing and path tracing (including bi-directional path tracing) techniques. It also has implementations of a variety of Tone Mapping methods
- Rayshade
- is an image synthesis program from the graphics department at Stanford
- Raytressi
- Not really GI software, but it is a ray tracer.
- Sunflow
- The Sunflow global illumination rendering system is an open source GI renderer written in Java.
- toxic
- A physically correct GI renderer.
- WinOSi
- Optical Simulation Rendering for Windows
Commercial Rendering Software
- Photorealistic Renderman
- developed by Pixar Animation Studios, Photorealistic Renderman is perhaps one of the most well known and popular renderers. Renderman uses a rendering architecture called REYES. The specifications for REYES as well as the Renderman interfaces have been published by Pixar.
- 3D Studio MAX
- 3D Studio MAX first developed by Kinetix, for DOS under the name of 3D Studio (up to R4), then bought by Autodesk and now developed by Discreet is one of the most well known rendering packages in the world. Though they are more popular with game developers, their latest release does have support for global illumination as well as raytraced effects such as reflection and refraction.
- Maya
- developed by Alias|Wavefront (which has since been acquired by Autodesk) is the gold standard modeler used by professionals everywhere. It can export RIB to PRman and also has one of the most impressive animation systems I've seen.
- Softimage|XSI
- is a modeller and renderer used for television, cinema and games. I think at one point Microsoft owned Softimage, but now is owned by Avid.
- Brazil r/s
- is a plugin renderer to 3D Studio MAX 4/5. Its a global illumination ray tracer with lots of nifty features like photon mapping, subsurface scattering, image based lighting, HDRI rendering, area lighting, motion blur, depth-of-field and adaptive sampling.
- finalRender Stage-2
- from cebas Computer GmbH is a plugin for 3D Studio MAX which gives it more advanted raytracing, caustics and global illumination abilities. It integrates with many of 3D studio's components. They also have a product called finalToon which is a NPR (non-photorealistic rendering) plugin for 3D Studio. From their features list it looks very impressive.
- Houdini
- Houdini, from Canadian company SideFX is a 3D modelling, animation and rendering tool
- Electric Image Animation System
- Modeller, GI renderer for Windows and Mac.
- Project Messiah's messiah:render
- is a really spiffy quasi monte carlo renderer formerly known as the Arnold renderer. One of the interesting things about the Arnold renderer was that at the time it was one of the first commercial renderers that actually used Quasi Monte Carlo methods for rendering (and managed to do this in a reasonable amount of time).
- Mental Ray
- from mental images is a plugin renderer for 3D Studio MAX, Alias/Wavefront Maya and SoftImage XSI. Mental Ray provides full support for caustics and global illumination by use of photon mapping. It also supports motion blur and depth of field effects.
- AIR
- Scanline renderer/ray tracer that does global illumination and such.
- Strata3D
- Modeller and renderer for Mac and Windows
Video Editing/Compositing/Production Software
- EDIUS
- from Canopus is a SD/DV/HD NLE for Windows and its realtime too
- Combustion
- from Discreet (now Autodesk) is a paint, animation and 3D compositing software
- Inferno
- from Discreet (now Autodesk) is a versatile media editor
- Flame
- from Discreet (now Autodesk) is a visual effects and compositing software
- Flint
- from Discreet (now Autodesk) is visual effects and post-production software for broadcast graphics
- Fire
- from Discreet (now Autodesk) is an NLE for digital cinema and HDTV
- Smoke
- from Discreet (now Autodesk) is an NLE and finishing software for HD and 601
- 844/x
- from Media 100 is a hardware / software turnkey system for real-time effects and compositing
- iQ
- from Quantel is a turnkey solution for high-end cinema post production and editing.
- eQ
- from Quantel is a turnkey solution for HD editing
- Vegas Video
- from Sonic Foundry (now Sony) is a consumer NLE
- Premiere
- from Adobe is probably the most ubiquitous consumer NLE on the market for the PC
- Final Cut
- from Apple is the most popular NLE for the Mac platform. There is also Final Cut Express which is the lower priced consumer option.
- Avid Media Composer
- Turnkey systems for film non-linear editing
- Avid Xpress
- Professional video editing, titling, and compositing
Astronomy / Astrophysics / Space Sciences Related
- Astronomy Picture of the Day
- Each day a different image or photograph is featured along with an explanation from an astronomer. They have been doing this since June of 1995.
- Environment Canada Weather Forecast for Astronomy
- They have great visibility maps for canada and most of the U.S.
- Clear Sky Clock
- A very useful site that uses the Environment Canada data to determine atmospheric conditions for astronomy. They also have an alarm clock which can email you when certain conditions are met in your area.
- Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)
- Interesting images, movies and data about the sun. The SOHO spacecraft sites exactly between the Earth and the Sun and transmits realtime scientific data continously.
- NASA's Clementine Project
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- Malin Space Science Systems
- Lots of great pictures of Mars. Some nifty pictures include:
- An Introduction To Modern Astrophysics
- A really cool textbook for people who want to learn more about astrophysics. It starts off nice and easy and does eventually get to explaining more complicated equations. There is also a book available with just the stellar astrophysics portion of this book
- Motion Mountain
- This is a free online physics textbook. Its quite entertaining to read and is definitely worth the download.
- Hubble Site
- Images from the famous telescope in orbit
- National Radio Astronomy Observatory
- They have a nice gallery of galaxies
- SkyMap
- is a great piece of software to help you figure out what you are seeing, what you want to see or what you've photographed. Having the software on a laptop while you are out can make the star hopping experience a lot more fun.
Misc
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