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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (May 31, 2000)
Wednesday, Ma Page 2 scienc TECHNO P m DLOGY Wednesday, MayJI THE BATTALION Lights, camera, CGI A&M y s visual science graduate program offers balance of art and scient Stuart Hutson T/je Battalion Who put the snap in jar Jar Binks' tongue? Who tinkered with the toys in Toy Story II? Chances are, if there is a com puter-animated effect on the silver screen, an Aggie had a role in putting it there. The reason behind the modern- day prevalence of Aggies among Hollywood's cast of computer gen erating characters is the success of the exclusive A&M visual sci ences graduate program. Accepting only 15 new ap plicants each year, the program has already delivered more than 80 high-level computer-generated image (CGI) professionals to companies such as Industrial Light and Magic and Disney since its inception in 1989. "The secret to this program's success lies in our empha sis on the basic knowledge of both art and physics," said Don House, professor of visual sciences. "While some schools focus mostly on art or mostly on science, our pro gram allows students to have the knowledge to make things work right and the eye to make them look great, no matter what job they are handed." A clear understanding of both art and the sciences is crucial to the creation of a realistic effect, whether it is a he licopter landing, an explosion or a wasp buzzing in the air, said Gary Bruins, a recent recipient of a fellowship fund ed by Industrial Light and Magic and a visual science graduate student. "It is the collection of all the small and accu rate details that no one just watching an effect will notice that makes that effect believable or not," Bruins said. "You have to do your research of every little aspect of the image or every thing will fall apart." Bruins said a CGI project al ways begins with count less hours of research on how an image's structure, functioning and overall appear ance should exist in a computer format so that it is believable to an outside observer. "1 wanted to know how the red paint on this he licopter I was animating would look in the sun, so I went and took pictures of the paint on my truck," he said. "I wanted to know how it would fly, so I watched movies and studied at the library ... but at the same time, you have to know when to artistically fudge things so that the real ism you are adding doesn't make the whole thing look odd or fake." Bruins said the next step is to create a gray-scale model of the object (such as a wasp) that shows its form and func tion. Properties of the object's surface can then be assigned, making the object appear to have any consistency (such as glass, plastic, or cloth). The designer then enters other infor mation about the object, including where light sources are located. The object is then rendered by the computer, resulting in a full three-dimensional image. Textures and colors are designed on a paintshop program and then applied to the rendered object, which is then composited with a real-life or computer-generated environment. "We have pro grams that can recre ate any picture of real life we want to show, but to put them to gether and animate them in such a way as to make it be lievable takes real knowledge of the world on our parts," Bruins said. • Bruins said that one minute of CGI footage mayte to a semester for a student artist to create. "In the professional world, video clips don't!) long to make because everyone specializes in a step process. One person may model while anotherpt takes that model and colors it. Then yet anotherpf would take thal composite it« photograph by someone Bruins said. "Hei do everything our — but we learn even of the process." The three wasps show the stages development of CGI character cts by Gary Bruins: (bottom) wire fe beginning mo* (middle) rende- gray-scale mod; and (top) text; and colored in Photo shows no Mars ‘face 5 Stuart Hutson The Battalion The Sphinx and the Martian landscape have noth ing in common, according to a recent photograph tak en by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor. The spacecraft, which has been mapping the surface of the red planet for over two years, has rephotographed the Martian landscape heralded as the "face on Mars," revealing the face to be no more than an unusual arrange ment of valleys and hills, said Don Carona, program di rector for the Texas A&M University Observatory. Carona said that since the original photograph was taken by Viking 1 Orbiter in 1976, many groups have claimed that the face is comparable to that of the Sphinx and other ancient Egyptian sculptures. "A lot of people tried to take the photo and tried to convince the world that aliens influenced the ancient Egyptian culture. They even went as far as cleaning up the blurry picture to make it more convincing," he said. "But it is kind of the same as saying that the mother ship is just on the other side of the comet — and the likeli hood is about the same." Carona said the original picture shows an optical il lusion derived from odd lighting and the poor resolu tion of the orbiter's camera. "There is an impression on the side of the mesa that when hit from just the right angle looks like a pair of eyes. Combine that with a peak underneath the im pression that looks like a nose and the blurry photo graph, and you have a face," he said. "It's nothing more than trick photography." Entangled relationships Physicists explore quantum phenomenon that seems to defy common stM Patrice Pages The Battalion In 1935, physicist Albert Einstein scoffed at an idea that seemed to deny common sense. Now, 65 years later, Texas A&M physicists are gearing up for an experiment that will hopefully yield new results on the concept physicists call "entanglement." To understand the concept of entangle ment, imagine a box containing two parti cles. Upon opening the box, the particles es cape, each going its own way. But if you manipulate one of the particles, the second also reacts. Though this action-at-a-distance proper ty may not seem to make sense for the big objects of our everyday world, it is a prop erty of the tiny particles of the atomic and subatomic size world. Physicists discovered this strange prop erty in the beginning of the 20th century when they started developing a new branch of physics — called quantum physics — to describe the properties of atoms. In particular, in 1935, Einstein and two of his colleagues, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, wrote an article in Physics Review where they discussed the entanglement phenomenon which is now named after them — the EPR paradox. Since the 1960s, many experiments have been set up to test this paradox, all using photons, or particles of light. They all pro vided results in agreement with quantum physics. However, detectors used in the ex periments have an average detection effi ciency of 25 percent — meaning results are based on only a small fraction of the pho tons actually used in the experiment be cause 75 percent of the photons can not be detected. As a result, all experiments to this point have been considered incomplete. A&M professor of physics Edward Fry and his team are trying to solve this prob lem by using atoms, which can be more readily detected. To produce an entangled state of two atoms, a molecule of mercury is split into two mercury atoms, which are further sep arated and detected. "You start with a molecule made of two mercury atoms. Then you use a laser to break the bonding between them," said Thomas Walther, a team member and assis tant physics professor. "Two more lasers are used to investigate the correlations between the two resulting atoms." After four years of preparation and in tensive testing, the Fry experiment should be operational in about one year. It has a de tection efficiency of 99 percent, thus solving the efficiency loophole of photon-based ex periments. In recent years, the action-at-a-distance property of quantum physics has led to new developments such as quantum teleporta tion and quantum computation. As described by physicist Anton Zeilinger in the April 2000 issue of Scientif ic American, quantum teleportation begins when a device scans a particle to extract in formation. This information is then trans mitted to another device by means of quan tum entanglement, which creates a copy of the original particle. Teleportation of photons was first achieved in 1997 independently by physi cists Zeilinger in Vienna and Francesco De Marini in Rome. Quantum computing is another appeal ing application of quantum physics which can benefit from entanglement. A quantum computer is based on bits, called "qubits" — quantum bits — that can exist simultaneously as 0 and 1. Such a corm puter can thus work on many input states at once, which would make this computer much faster than conventional ones. i Hg T Hg * 1 eltrtrw ’Hg i » * 1 electres Hg § Step 1: ^ A laserexcij I the two# 5 , E of a mere “ molecule u CO Step 2: A second li separates two exciti atoms Step 3: A third lase ionizes eai atom so be detect# Step 4: Each ion i alyzed ton direction o' travel useleoroe So tie Sexcts ct&xt* entei Did you know M •* THE MAJORITY OF ACCIEf DRINK ? OR FEWER fUMNIft PER week m&Exr lFE i froni Jurw, 1998 CORE survey <m a random sample of 861 students THE —* Beverly Mireles, Editor in Chief Jeff Kempf, Managing Editor Jason Bennyhoff, Aggielife/Radiot, Beth Ahlquist, Copy Chief Jennifer Bales, Night News Editor April Young, City Editor Jeanette Simpson, Asst. City Edit® Eric Dickens, Opinion Editor Reece Flood, Sports Editor Stuart Hutson, Sci/Tech Editor JP Beato, Photo Editor Ruben Deluna, Graphics Editor Brandon Payton, Web Master The Battalion (ISSN #1055-4726) is published iA through Friday during the fall and spring semester ' through Thursday during the summer session (eKceitf''- idays and exam periods) at Texas A&M UnM):- Postage Paid at College Station, TO 77840. POSIIP address changes to The Batta/fon l TexasA&MUniveB| 1 l 1 f College $0000,1X 77843-1111. News: The Battalion news department is managed tystnF- A&M University in the Division of Student Media,if Department of Journalism. 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