A new test of an improved version of my codec, with some details: http://vimeo.com/34404212

Sometimes I think about video compression algorithms. Some ideas seem very cool but you can't really figure out how they work until you try to implement them.

Today I wrote a few lines of code to test one of these ideas (see video below).

You may ask what's the point in writing a new codec today. My response is... NO FUCKING REASON! :)
Well, I'm thinking about a uber-lossy codec, where the glitches themselves are someway artistic. I may even synch the music with video artifacts, for example.

Another goal is to write a video format that can be easily played back on the GPU through WebGL.

This weekend I implemented a tecnique called Raymarching with Distance Fields (also known as Sphere tracing) in WebGL.
My experiments were based on the awesome work of Iñigo Quilez.

This is a very interesting alternative to raytracing and I plan to explore it further in the future.
In this experiment you can see some solids blended together, soft shadows and object space ambient occlusion on the GPU.

As usual, if your browser supports WebGL and you have a recent video cart you can watch this HTML5 experiment in your browser.

Otherwise you can watch the video conversion below.

About 10 years ago I wrote a very simple realtime raytracer in C++. It was very slow, I remember I could get decent speeds only when running on very low resolutions (like 320x240).

Last year I was curious to see how a current CPU can handle the same workload. I modified my old code in order to enable multithreading, this way I was able to put in use all the logical cores of my Core i7.
It ran a lot better, but it was still quite slow when running at high resolutions.

My latest HTML5 experiment is inspired by this old raytracer. I'ts not exactly the same code, as I had to rewrite it as a GLSL shader, but it's very close. The result is realtime raytracing running on the GPU, inside a browser.
This version is finally fast enough also at the highest resolutions, on my ATI 5770 I get 60 frames per second with a GPU load of about 35%.

If you have a recent browser and video card you can watch in your browser this experiment featuring realtime raytracing (on the GPU) of 6 spheres and 4 point-lights with shadows.

Here you can also see a video conversion of the same experiment:

I've been working again on my HTML5 demosystem.
This time I added support for keyframe-based animations.
Keyframe data is based on precalculated audio analysis and was retrieved from Echo Nest API.

If you have Chrome or Firefox and a recent video card you can see the WebGL experiment in your browser.

Otherwise you can watch the video conversion:

Recently I've been playing a bit with HTML5, especally with WebGL.
I think this technology has a lot of potential, because clicking on a link is so much easier, faster and more secure than installing random software on different OSes.
I started with a simple demo-effect and I got carried away... I'm now building a full demo-system.

If you have a decent browser (Chrome 12 or later or Firefox 4 or later) and a recent video card, you can watch one of my WebGL experiments

Otherwise you can watch the same experiment exported to the video below

I found an interesting interview with Ed Catmull exploring how art, craft, science and engineering are all interconnected.
Note: He is head of Pixar and is the same Catmull who invented Catmull-Rom splines!

I often share links on Google Reader, you can get them here.