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Archives
Posts from Steve Pitzel (Intel) 
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My first job at Intel was as a Digital Content Creation Technology Evangelist (that's a mouthful), and I'd have to say I'm still doing that in a lot of ways. Before Intel, I worked for Mattel as a Senior Artist creating 3D animation for the internet, and was a 3D animation tools (Softimage, Poweranimator, Maya) instructor for the feature animation studios, RFX, and a Lead Animator for Pacific Title|Mirage. I'm one of the few Intel Software Network Community Managers with both a SAG and an AFTRA card. I was a session singer in LA (my most noteworthy work - if you can call it that- was as the voice of doom for Baywatch, several national commercials, and as the singer of the main characters' theme for the Soap, Santa Barbara). I'm also the author of a horror novel, Wizrd, under my pen name, Steve Zell,(St. Martin's Press in the US, Hodder|Headline in the UK) about a Northern Arizona boomtown that would much rather be a ghosttown... |
Welcoming Will.i.am !!! I gotta feeling that this year is gonna be a good year!
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on January 26, 2011 at 10:29 am
Comments (0)
Unless you're living under a rock you've heard by now that Will.i.am is our new Director of Creative Innovation. I've always said that it's not the technology alone, it's about what creative people do with that technology that makes it rock - and now we have the perfect ambassador and evangelist not only to drive [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation
Tags: Pitzel, will.i.am; intel; artistanimator;
Media SDK at the Intel Developer Forum
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on September 13, 2010 at 4:54 pm
Comments (0)
With Sandy Bridge as a highlight of Paul and Dadi's IDF addresses today, the movement of video between platforms was also a focus - making it even more important for attendees to stop by the Media SDK kiosk (120) in the Visual Computing section of the Technology Showcase and check it out. The 2.0 Beta [...]
Category: Graphics & Media
Tags: idf, media acceleration, media sdk 2.0, transcode acceleration, video acceleration
Digital Arts 06 - Reallusion and John Martin II, 3D for the Masses
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on July 22, 2010 at 8:03 am
Comments (1)
Let's face it - 3D is tough! ...or is it? Join Reallusion VP, John Martin II for a discussion on how Reallusion software like Crazy Talk and Intel Core i technology gets regular folk past the humdrum often tedious parts of character creation and setup straight into the fun of animating. Will I-Clone drive the [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Tags: artistanimator, digital arts, DigitalArts, John Martin II, John Martin interview, real time 3D animation, Reallusion
Digital Arts 05 - The Many Facets of Shawn Clement
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on July 9, 2010 at 6:32 am
Comments (2)
Reality TV, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Open Season, the NASA-sponsored Quantum Quest - what could all of these wildly different productions possibly have in common? Composer Shawn Clement. Shawn's not only creative, he's brave as heck - using today's technology, mixing in yesterday's (he used a hybrid guitar/violin and a Theremin on Quantum Quest) - [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Tags: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, digital arts, DigitalArts, Intel Superstars Competition, music creation, Quantum Quest, Shawn Clement, theremin
Digital Arts 04 - Niko Makela on Low Polygon Modeling and Animation
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on July 6, 2010 at 7:45 am
Comments (1)
A lot of the concepts we cover on Digital Arts involve feature film and AAA video games - but with the massive development of internet gaming and low-power handheld devices, a good grasp of low-polygon techniques that can still pack an animation wallop for gamers is a great thing to have, maybe even a necessity [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Tags: Animation, DigitalArts, low-poly modeling, niko makela, ultima 6 project
Cakewalk & Intel - Creating Music Superstars
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on July 1, 2010 at 2:27 pm
Comments (7)
What I like best about technology is what creative people do with it. And now - Cakewalk and Intel have teamed up to give everyone with a PC and access to the internet (and musical talent) the opportunity to be a star. Songwriters - click the picture or jump on Intel's Facebook site, and you'll [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation
Tags: cakewalk song contest, idol, intel song contest, intel superstar, superstar
With Flash 10.1, "create once - distribute anywhere" is tantalizingly close!
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on June 21, 2010 at 6:59 am
Comments (4)
Today’s release of an optimized Adobe Flash 10.1 (see the full announcement at http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/201006/06222010FlashPlayerAvailability.html), ushers in a new platform of choice flexibility for the enjoyment of rich internet content on Intel Architecture. Users of new Atom-based devices such as netbooks, and soon smart phones, TV set top boxes, tablets, and other mobile platforms on the [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media, Intel® AppUp Developer Program
Tags: Adobe Flash, Flash 10.1, Media, smart phone
Digital Artists - Where Do You Go for Reference?
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on April 20, 2010 at 7:58 am
Comments (4)
I mentioned in a comment on an earlier post how important great reference material is for artists. I'll pose that question here - where do you go? I've gotten some great feedback from other artists - and my home library is pretty full - but there are certain reference materials I seem to go back [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Digital Arts Has a HOME!!!
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on April 16, 2010 at 3:42 pm
Comments (0)
Attention Animators (even recovering ones) and Digital Artists and Musicians of all ilks! The ISNTV Digital Arts show - the video brother to the Artist/Animator Community (as opposed to Viewport, the Facebook sister of the Artist/Animator Community) now has it's own repository! Check in there for digital art tutorials and interviews - and, of course, [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Digital Arts 03 - Muscle Morphs - Morphing Your Way on demand next week
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on April 13, 2010 at 3:03 pm
Comments (2)
I saw Beowulf this weekend (at least the animated film version). I'm not sure why I missed it when it first came out - but I'm glad it finally NetFlicked it's way to my house. Okay, just so you don't think I'm completely remiss on my CG filmwatching - I did see Watchmen not too long after that came [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Tags: animating muscles, Animation, blend shapes, digital arts, DigitalArts, muscle morph, Steve Pitzel
Digital Arts 02 - Eyelash Animation - How Do You Do It?
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on April 8, 2010 at 5:51 am
Comments (2)
Have eyelash animation woes? Don't we all? Click on the video below to find out how to keep those pesky eyelashes in place while your character, blinks, smirks, sneezes, or ...whatever. You can pull down the high-resolution eyelash tutorial here. And...if you'd rather have a pdf to work from - check out my tutorial, Seeing [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Tags: 3d animation, artistanimator, blend shapes, digital arts, DigitalArts, eyelash animation, eyelash tutorial, how to, modeling, morph targets, Steve Pitzel
Creating Textures for Characters by Ryan Bird
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on April 8, 2010 at 5:34 am
Comments (0)
Fewer things in digital content creation are more mysterious, magical, and, quite frankly, odd as how a gray, often faceted chunk of virtual geometry becomes a character through the clever painting and mapping of textures. It's an art, it's a science - yeah, there's a whole mathematical thing to it too - but more than [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Tags: Animation, artistanimator, modeling, Ryan Bird, Steve Pitzel, texture mapping, textures
Color and Light by Audri Phillips
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on April 8, 2010 at 4:40 am
Comments (0)
Audri Phillips has developed visuals for some of the top animation/film production houses in LA. She's not only an expert in the digital arts field - she paints! Why is that important? Well, it's one thing to depict the relationships of objects in a 3D space by coloring and lighting 3D geometry - quite another [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Tags: Animation, artistanimator, Audri Phillips, color and light, DCC, digital lighting, rendering
Digital Arts Interviews with Justin Lassen and Carmen Rizzo
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on March 29, 2010 at 4:29 pm
Comments (0)
Creation is a scary thing. If you're an artist creation is not only something you love doing - it's a compulsion. Pursuit of your artistic dreams can be all-consuming. Today, digital artists can create more faster than ever - new highly threaded software like Cakewalk* Sonar 8.5 and Autodesk* Softimage, Maya, and Luxology's MODO take [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Tags: artistanimator, carmen rizzo, DigitalArts, Game Audio, justin lassen, Pitzel, Steve Pitzel
Digital Arts at GDC 02 - Interview with Carmen Rizzo, The World IS Music
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on March 10, 2010 at 2:52 pm
Comments (0)
The World is Carmen Rizzo's Personal Recording Studio Carmen Rizzo can take accoustic music from the far corners of the earth mix it with a sound whose DNA comes from the most inner reaches of computer technology, and turn it into music that takes you into an entirely new world. Whether this two-time Grammy Nominee is producing a [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Tags: artistanimator, carmen rizzo, digital music, DigitalArts, Game Audio
Digital Arts at GDC 01 - Interview with Justin Lassen, The Musical Side of Darkness
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on March 10, 2010 at 1:02 pm
Comments (2)
Click the video thumbnail below to find out how Justin Lassen deals with time and composition in the Digital world. For the high-resolution version, click here. How much time do you have left to create? Hearing sound, seeing color - composer, musician, artist, Justin Lassen epitomizes the essence of synaesthesia, and his work of the [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Tags: artistanimator, Cakewalk Sonar, digital arts, DigitalArts, GDC Intel, justin lassen, Steve Pitzel, Synaesthesia
"If you want to be creative, get out there and do it. It's not a waste of time."
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on March 9, 2010 at 8:15 am
Comments (4)
I have to admit, I've gotten a wee bit jaded over time. I've seen a lot of Academy Award-winners give lots of speeches. I don't fault the folks for the "me" moment it usually becomes - sooo much work goes into every aspect of film-making, and so much of it requires a commitment so far [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Tags: artistanimator, blocks to creativity, digital arts, game audio composers, GDC 2010 Intel, justin lassen, michael giacchino
Digital Arts 01 - Drawing A Weapon or How To Use Constraints in a Knife Fight!
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on February 25, 2010 at 1:56 pm
Comments (0)
Okay - that big ugly monster standing in the shadows just picked up a rusty chunk of steel to swing at your head. What do you do? Well, you may just want to draw your sword. But heck, you're a digital character...how do you do it? Getting a digital character to draw a weapon from [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Tags: animation tutorial, constraint tutorial, constraints in animation, digital animation instruction, digital art, DigitalArts, draw sword, draw weapon, hierarchy of transformations, using constraints to draw a sword, using constraints to draw a weapon
The Blind Giant from Project Offset
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on February 16, 2010 at 3:15 pm
Comments (2)
The Blind Giant from Project Offset is a frighteningly great example of what can be accomplished not only through technology, but through real vision and artistry. Yes, I work for Intel - I love the technology - and even if I didn't work for Intel, I'd love what you can do with a powerful computer [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Tags: Animation, artistanimator, HDR lighting, Project Offset, rendering
I See the Light(ing) - but Which Light Do I Use?
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on February 16, 2010 at 7:55 am
Comments (0)
This week on the Artist/Animator site, Lucy Burton continues her series on using lights, 3D Lighting in Softimage. No matter what software package you use, her tutorial will get you up to speed on the where and why of many of the light options in your toolbox. Yeah, we want to build a great model, [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Tags: digital lighting, game rendering, lighting, lighting for feature film, lighting for games, rendering, Softimage
Where's My Light?
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on February 1, 2010 at 8:29 am
Comments (0)
Just how much do lighting and rendering techniques affect your work? Well - quite a bit. As Lucy Burton states in her tutorial, Simulating Real-world Film Lighting Techniques in 3D , "Good lighting and rendering can make even a simple 3D model look extraordinary, and poor lighting can make even the best model look bland." [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Tags: 3D lighting, lighting, lighting for games, lighting techniques, render, render for games
Cakewalk - Adding Technology to the Mix
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on January 13, 2010 at 9:14 pm
Comments (0)
If you can't see it...is it really there? Yep, in fact, without great audio to give us a cue (and a clue) a lot of great graphics would go unnoticed - or at least, unannounced. The truth is that sound enhances just about everything we look at - and certainly a first-person shooter without audio would [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Tags: audio, cakewalk, CES, Gina Garda, Music Creator
Uber-Modeler, Son Kim
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on November 24, 2009 at 9:55 am
Comments (0)
I had the pleasure of interviewing Son Kim, an extremely talented modeler and the winner of Project Offset's first user created content contest. Using concept art created by the wizards of Offset, Son Kim made the Bugback Toad come to life. MODO is Son's modeling weapon of choice - and, if you weren't online Nov [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Tags: digital art, polygonal modeling, Project Offset, Son Kim, subdivision surfaces, texture mapping, UV unwrap
Video Games Live
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on November 16, 2009 at 9:47 am
Comments (0)
Talk about making a dream come true! Game audio composers Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall have taken game audio and turned it into a very serious - and very seriously fun - fine art. Complete with it's own Grammy Category, network of game audio composers (the Game Audio Network Guild, or GANG), and, of course, [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation
Tags: artistanimator, Game Audio, GANG, George Sanger, Jack Wall, Tommy Tallarico, VGL, Video Games Live
New Beta for Media SDK
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on November 4, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Comments (1)
The Intel® Media SDK 1.5 Beta is now available as a free download from the Media Development site! The major features of this beta release include: Support for Windows 7 (32 and 64bit) Media Foundation samples Plugins: source code MFTs (Decode: H.264, MPEG-2, and VC-1) Encode: H.264 Application (transcode/playback) Enchanced Video Pre-Processing Hardware accelerated re-sizing (scaling) and [...]
Category: Graphics & Media
Tags: Media, Media Development, Media SDK, optimizing video, video acceleration, video decoding, video encoding
Are You Animated Enough for Viewport???
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on October 29, 2009 at 6:22 am
Comments (0)
Artists & Animators - got a beef? Want to sound off? Or - do you just have a cool pic of your work you'd like to share? We've set up a new support group on Facebook for all recovering, aspiring and pro digital artists. It's eleven steps short of a 12 step program, but it [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Tags: 3D artist, 3D tutorials, artistanimator, character modeling, character rig, digital artist, Facebook, free 3D model, inverse kinematics, polygonal modeling
Cooking Up a Little Meatloaf to Build a Torso
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on October 26, 2009 at 7:26 am
Comments (2)
Okay, it sounds a little odd - but the latest tutorial I've posted on the Artist/Animator resource site (www.intel.com/software/artist) will show you how this works. Check out Modeling a Torso One Meatloaf at a Time (http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/modeling-a-torso-one-meatloaf-at-a-time/). And you get a free model along with the free tutorial - talk about a bargain! The method I [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Tags: 3D modeling, Animation, artistanimator, DCC, free model, free torso model, game modeling, model downloads, modeling for animation, modeling techniques, Pitzel, polygonal model, tutorial
Featured Artist: Offset Lead Designer, Yeong-hao Han
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on October 14, 2009 at 7:33 am
Comments (3)
Thank you John Tilton for providing another great interview from the talented team at Project Offset (http://www.projectoffset.com/)! Whether you've already worked in animation - either in film, broadcast or games - or you're aspiring to do it - the guys at Project Offset provide amazing insight into the process, and what it takes to get [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Tags: artistanimator, DCC, digital art, digital content creation, game artist, level editor, Pitz, Pitzel, Project Offset
Using Meatloaf (loaves) to Model a Polygonal Arm
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on September 28, 2009 at 5:31 am
Comments (0)
Okay folks, I started out with an arm...and then got carried away and built a torso using the same method. So check out Modeling a Torso One Meatloaf at a Time... Check in later this week for a companion tutorial to the upcoming "Animation and Muscle Morphs" guide. One of the biggest challenges of character [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Tags: Animation, animator, artist, blend shape, character modeling, dealing with muscles, digital artist, modeling a polygonal arm, modeling techniques, morph target, muscle morph, Pitz, Pitzel, polygonal modeling
Animation and Muscle Morphs - Using Blend Shapes for Muscle Animation
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on September 28, 2009 at 5:03 am
Comments (0)
Be on the lookout for two new modeling and animation tutorials this week that go, well hand-in-hand (except that hands won't be a part of either tutorial...) One "Animation and Muscle Morphs - Using Blend Shapes for Muscle Animation" deals with using morphing techniques or blend shapes to handle some of the nasty creasing, bulging, [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Tags: animating muscles, blend shape, blendshape, character animation, morph target, muscle morph, polygonal modeling
Attention Digital Artists and Animators: Animate This! Entering Your "How To's."
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on August 30, 2009 at 8:45 am
Comments (1)
To show how involved (or simple) entries can be - I've posted a couple sample "How To's" on the Animate This! Tutorial Challenge site (http://software.intel.com/en-us/contests/animatethis/contests.php). Have a look at the entries by Joe3D and Bob3Dguy on using constraints to focus eyes. These 3D "How To's" are pretty simple - one graphic to show what's being [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Tags: aim constraint, artistanimator, character animation, character rig, constraints, orient constraint
Dreamworks and Intel at SIGGRAPH
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on August 2, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Comments (3)
There's something magic about SIGGRAPH in New Orleans. This is my third New Orleans SIGGRAPH, and the first since Katrina. It's great to see New Orleans back - and to see SIGGRAPH back in New Orleans! I'll be in the booth manning our Concept Art kiosk much of the time (Intel is booth #2217) stop by [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Tags: animator, artist, artistanimator, dreamworks, siggraph, VC, Visual Computing
Featured Artists - Project Offset's Khang Le
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on July 21, 2009 at 10:56 am
Comments (4)
Okay, Adobe's Photoshop has always been one of those necessary "utilities" for me - a tool I used because I had to create textures for my characters and it's always been an incredible texture tool. I have to admit, I never really thought of it as an "art" package. I've officially changed my mind. I [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Tags: animator, artist, artistanimator, Khang Le, photoshop, Project Offset
Animator, Artist - Are You Nuts? Probably - but There is Help!
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on June 29, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Comments (2)
I was talking to Carl Jacobson from Cakewalk a while back about the challenges artists face in this world. Okay, I know, Cakewalk creates audio software, not what you'd normally call "visual computing" software but stick with me on this for a minute. Audio and visual are pretty much intertwined - especially for animators. We agreed [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Tags: animator, artist, artistanimator, Cakewalk Sonar, Carl Jacobson, digital art, living as an artist, musician, Visual Computing
Throw Mom from the Train (figuratively...) - a must for artists...
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on June 29, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Comments (0)
Mom loves you. She absolutely adores everything you do. That's why, if you want to excel as an artist, you must throw Mom from the train - in a figurative sense anyway. Why? Because mom loves the early stages of your art - the messed up line drawings, the noodles and doodles - exactly the [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Tags: animator, artist, artistanimator, ArtRage, digital art, photoshop, Pitz, Sketchbook Pro, Ugly Stage, Visual Computing
Name Your Digital Poison
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on June 29, 2009 at 4:41 pm
Comments (0)
Okay - what's your worst production nightmare? Intersections? Texture seams? Weighting vertices? Creating soft shadows? Do you hate it when physics and IK collide? What is it that either keeps you up at night - or just gives you headaches during the day? Are there any headaches you've cured recently? Give a shout out here [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Tags: Animation, artistanimator, digital art, inverse kinematics, modeling, Project Offset, texture seams, weighting vertices
Introducing Artist/Animator Resources on ISN
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on May 27, 2009 at 6:53 am
Comments (1)
Digital Content Creation is tough work. It takes stamina, it takes discipline - and it takes the guts to throw stamina and discipline completely out the window, blow things up, walk away, and come back with a fresh perspective. It also takes compute power - lots of it - and...it takes time. I was an [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Graphics & Media
Tags: Animation, animator, artist, DCC, digital art, game animation, inverse kinematics, learn animation techniques, siggraph, Visual Computing
The Intel Visual Computing Institute Opens in Saarbrucken!
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on May 12, 2009 at 5:41 am
Comments (0)
This is a landmark day for the virtual world. Intel has essentially made a 12 million dollar investment to make sure that world "looks, acts, and feels" real with the opening of the Intel VCI this morning. According to the reports, we'll be plugging in some of Europe's (and beyond) greatest minds into the Tera-scale research program - making [...]
Category: Graphics & Media
Tags: acts real, feels real, graphics, immersive environment, Intel VCI, IVCI, lifelike environment, looks real, Saarbrucken, VC, Visual Computing, Visual Computing Institute
GDC 2008 What's Intel Doing this year?
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on February 17, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Comments (1)
The Game Developers Conference is just about upon us. Very pleased to have Havok onboard this year. Check the Intel and Havok session link for class dates and times. I'll also have class materials posted on that site as soon as it's available. For more info on our speakers, click on this speaker link, and [...]
Category: Art, Music, & Animation, Events, Graphics & Media
Tags: COLLADA, Game developer conference, Gaming, GDC, Visual Computing
What? A Graphics Software Developer Community at Intel?
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on September 13, 2007 at 10:18 am
Comments (28)
Intel Software Network Graphics Developer Community I come from the land of beefy workstations. When I first began animating and training cel animators to use digital tools, workstations cost about the same as animators and trainers. It's a different, thankfully cheaper, world these days. I can now proudly say I am worth more than the [...]
Category: Graphics & Media, Site News & Announcements
I've Got Multiple Cores - and NOW I'm Going to Use Them!
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on June 14, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Comments (5)
Just a note to all that I'm heading out of here for an 8 week sabbatical Monday, June 18, and the Multi-Core Developers Community will be in the very capable hands of Aaron Tersteeg while I'm gone. I intend to spend as much time as possible using threaded apps like Cakewalk's Sonar and Softimage|XSI to [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Site News & Announcements
Intel Showcases 80-cores by Arian Kulp
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on June 13, 2007 at 11:44 am
Comments (3)
The talk about high core CPU's is heating up. Intel announced a 80-core processor with less power consumption than a current Core 2 Duo (article link). That's cool stuff for research, though it's not ready for mass marketing yet. For one thing, at 275 mm squared vs 143 for the Core 2 Duo, the chip is [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Blogging from Second Life - ISN Launch
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on May 29, 2007 at 8:40 am
Comments (3)
Great job by Elliot Garbus introducing ISN on Second Life. Good turnout - and it's great to get his support on this. Elliot just took a question about ISN moving completely over to Second Life...hmmm... Not yet, of course...but who knows what the future might bring? Also like the fact that he mentioned Intel is the [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Site News & Announcements
Intel, Game Development. Is Intel Playing the Wrong Game?
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on May 15, 2007 at 6:07 am
Comments (1)
One Game Developers Conference not long ago, an animator manning a Softimage|XSI demo at the Intel booth told me something interesting. He said he usually didn't stop by the Intel booth at GDC because, as he put it, he was "kind of young." Wow. It wasn't difficult to see his point. Walk by the nVidia [...]
Category: Game Development, Parallel Programming, Site News & Announcements
Tags: Game developer conference, GDC, Softimage, XSI
The Multi-Core Dilemma - By Patrick Leonard
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on March 14, 2007 at 8:27 pm
Comments (11)
Guest Blogger Bio: Patrick Leonard Hardware Evolution Throughout the history of modern computing, enterprise application developers have been able to rely on new hardware to deliver significant performance improvements while actually reducing costs at the same time. Unfortunately, increasing difficulty with heat and power consumption along with the limits imposed by quantum physics has made [...]
Category: Parallel Programming
Multi-processing programming too hard? Why not abstract it? - by Michael Cassens
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on February 22, 2007 at 5:40 am
Comments (0)
I read an article today published in the Technology Review at MIT that focused on the multi-core processors and the hurdles that developers face when writing software to take advantage of multi-core processing. Researchers at MIT are developing a framework that abstracts some of the details of parallel programming. They want to help mainstream developers [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Site News & Announcements
Multicore, Virtualization, and the MacBook Pro - by Michael Jeronimo
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on February 22, 2007 at 5:37 am
Comments (3)
When I was a kid in the San Francisco Bay Area, my friends and I loved to play baseball and follow our local pro teams. In our group you were either a San Francisco Giants fan or an Oakland A's fan; there was no middle ground. We would often talk about how cool it would [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Site News & Announcements
Every App is a Parallel App - by Michael Jeronimo
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on February 22, 2007 at 5:31 am
Comments (0)
Many years ago, at the beginning of the Internet boom in the mid 90s, Andy Grove said that every company is an Internet company. I believe he meant that a company couldn't just ignore the changes brought by the Internet, but would have to understand the implications for the business and adapt. Or, failing to [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Site News & Announcements
We Need Better Tools...by Michael Cassens
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on February 22, 2007 at 5:28 am
Comments (0)
I read an article today published in the Technology Review at MIT that focused on the multi-core processors and the hurdles that developers face when writing software to take advantage of multi-core processing. A survey in the article also correlated the lack of developer productivity because of this software deficiency. Better software development environments result [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Site News & Announcements
Multi-core and multi-threading wtih Softimage|XSI
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on December 8, 2006 at 10:38 pm
Comments (1)
Okay - I'm a recovering animator - so I'm going to start things off with the character animation application, Softimage|XSI. If you're a game developer you know all about this package - if you're a hardcore gamer interested in building your own mods and characters and DON'T know about Softimage|XSI - definitely have a look! [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Site News & Announcements
What me worry?
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on September 22, 2006 at 3:02 pm
Comments (25)
Look. There are a couple cores on my chip. The way things seem to be going, there may be a whole bunch of them someday. Who knows, one day the stupid thing might be so lousy with them it looks like a fly's eyeball. Do I care? Should I? What sort of software application even [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Site News & Announcements
64-bit...who cares?
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on September 20, 2006 at 9:01 pm
Comments (3)
Okay, I care. When I came onboard at Intel seven years ago there was this cool 64-bit processor called Itanium. Man, I thought, that could be a killer workstation! Unfortunately...the Itanium was abducted by the server aliens before I even had a chance to hang my Softimage and Alias posters up in my cube (okay, [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Site News & Announcements
64-bit and Intel
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on September 20, 2006 at 7:06 pm
Comments (159)
A few days ago an OEM asked whether or not Intel had 64-bit... It was kind of funny, kind of sad - and, of course, the OEM should know we do...but, then again, I have to admit we've done a pretty lousy job to date of letting folks know about our 64-bit offerings - while [...]
Category: Parallel Programming, Site News & Announcements
What the heck am I doing at Intel?
By Steve Pitzel (Intel) (54 posts) on September 11, 2006 at 3:21 pm
Comments (2)
I'm a recovering animator. No, I take that back - you never really recover from animating - you just have less time to do it. For six years I had the pleasure of training animators, modelers, layout artists and other digital animation and FX artists from Disney Feature Animation, Sony Digital Imageworks, Rhythm&Hues and many [...]