Thumb-bangers : exploring the cultural bond between video games and heavy metal

« Heavy Metal Generations » is the fourth volume in the series of papers drawn from the 2012 Music, Metal and Politics international conference (http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/product/heavy-metal-generations/).Heavy metal and video games share an almost simultaneous birth, with Black Sabbath’s debut album in 1970 and Nolan Bushnell’s Computer Space in 1971. From Judas Priest’s ‘Freewheel Burning’ music video in 1984 to Tim Schafer’s Brütal Legend in 2009, the exchanges between these two subcultures have been both reciprocal and exponential. This chapter will present a historical survey of the bond between video games and heavy metal cultures through its highest-profile examples. There are two underlying reasons for this symbiosis: 1) the historical development and popular dissemination of the video game came at an opportune time, first with the video game arcades in the 1970s and early 1980s, and then with the Nintendo Entertainment System, whose technical sound-channel limitations happened to fall in line with the typical structures of heavy metal; 2) heavy metal and video games, along with their creators and consumers, have faced similar sociocultural paths and challenges, notably through the policies set in place by the PMRC and the ESRB, and a flurry of lawsuits and attacks, especially from United States congressmen, that resulted in an overlapping of their respective spaces outside dominant culture. These reasons explain the natural bond between these cultural practices, and the more recent developments like Last Chance to Reason’s Level 2 let us foresee a future where new hybrid creations could emerge

Simple, Rasterization-based Liquids

International audienceRasterization pipelines are ubiquitous today. They can be found in most of our personal computers as well as in smaller, hand-held devices--like smart phones--with lower-end hardware. However, simulating particle-based liquids requires sorting the particles which is cumbersome when using a rasterization pipeline. In this chapter, we describe a method to simulate liquids without having to sort the particles. Our method was specifically designed for these architectures and low shader model specifications (starting from shader model 3 for 3D liquids). Instead of sorting the particles, we splat them onto a grid (i.e. a 3D or 2D texture) and solve the inter-particle dynamics directly on the grid. Splatting is simple to perform in a rasterization pipeline, but can also be costly. Thanks to the simplified pass on the grid, we only need to splat the particles once. The grid also provides additional benefits: we can easily add artificial obstacles for the particles to interact with, we can ray cast the grid directly to render the liquid surface, and we can even gain a speed up over sort-based liquid solvers--such as the optimized solver found in the DirectX 11 SDK

Are U.S. CEOs Paid More than U.K. CEOs? Inferences from Risk- Adjusted Pay (CRI 2009-003)

We compute and compare risk-adjusted pay for US and UK CEOs, where the adjustment is based on estimated risk premiums stemming from the equity incentives borne by CEOs. Controlling for firm and industry characteristics, we find that US CEOs have higher pay, but also bear much higher stock and option incentives than UK CEOs. Using reasonable estimates of risk premiums, we find that risk-adjusted US CEO pay does not appear large compared to that of UK CEOs. We also examine differences in pay and equity incentives between a sample of non-UK European CEOs and a matched sample of US CEOs, and find that risk-adjusting pay may explain about half of the apparent higher pay for US CEOs

Canada

Résumé du livre « Video games around the world » sur le site de MIT Press : https://mitpress.mit.edu/index.php?q=node/249697

A nonparametric learning framework for nonlinear robust output regulation

This paper proposes a nonparametric learning solution framework for a generic internal model design of nonlinear robust output regulation. The global robust output regulation problem for a class of nonlinear systems with output feedback subject to a nonlinear exosystem can be tackled by constructing a linear generic internal model, provided that a continuous nonlinear mapping exists. An explicit continuous nonlinear mapping was constructed recently in [1] under the assumption that the steady-state generator is linear in the exogenous signal. We further relax such an assumption to a relaxed assumption that the steady-state generator is polynomial in the exogenous signal. A nonparametric learning framework is proposed to solve a linear time-varying equation to make the nonlinear continuous mapping always exist. With the help of the proposed framework, the nonlinear robust output regulation problem can be converted into a robust non-adaptive stabilization problem for the augmented system with integral Input-to-State Stable (iISS) inverse dynamics. Moreover, a dynamic gain approach can adaptively raise the gain to a sufficiently large constant to achieve stabilization without requiring any a priori knowledge of the uncertainties appearing in the dynamics of the exosystem and the system. We further apply the nonparametric learning framework to globally reconstruct and estimate multiple sinusoidal signals with unknown frequencies without using adaptive techniques. An explicit nonlinear mapping can directly provide the estimated parameters, which will exponentially converge to the unknown frequencies. As a result, a feedforward control design is proposed to solve the output regulation using our nonparametric learning framework.Comment: 15 pages; Nonlinear control; iISS stability; output regulation; parameter estimation; Non-adaptive contro

The Line of Action: an Intuitive Interface for Expressive Character Posing

International audienceThe line of action is a conceptual tool often used by cartoonists and illustrators to help make their figures more consistent and more dramatic. We often see the expression of characters--may it be the dynamism of a super hero, or the elegance of a fashion model--well captured and amplified by a single aesthetic line. Usually this line is laid down in early stages of the drawing and used to describe the body's principal shape. By focusing on this simple abstraction, the person drawing can quickly adjust and refine the overall pose of his or her character from a given viewpoint. In this paper, we propose a mathematical definition of the line of action (LOA), which allows us to automatically align a 3D virtual character to a user specified LOA by solving an optimization problem. We generalize this framework to other types of lines found in the drawing literature, such as secondary lines used to place arms. Finally, we show a wide range of poses and animations that were rapidly created using our system

Animation de personnages 3D par le sketching 2D

Free-form animation allows for exaggerated and artistic styles of motions such as stretching character limbs and animating imaginary creatures such as dragons. Creating these animations requires tools flexible enough to shape characters into arbitrary poses, and control motion at any instant in time. The current approach to free-form animation is keyframing: a manual task in which animators deform characters at individual instants in time by clicking-and-dragging individual body parts one at a time. While this approach is flexible, it is challenging to create quality animations that follow high-level artistic principles---as keyframing tools only provide localized control both spatially and temporally. When drawing poses and motions, artists rely on different sketch-based abstractions that help fulfill high-level aesthetic and artistic principles. For instance, animators will draw textit{lines of action} to create more readable and textit{expressive} poses. To coordinate movements, animators will sketch textit{motion abstractions} such as semi-circles and loops to coordinate a bouncing and rolling motions. Unfortunately, these drawing tools are not part of the free-form animation tool set today. The fact that we cannot use the same artistic tools for drawing when animating 3D characters has an important consequence: 3D animation tools are not involved in the creative process. Instead, animators create by first drawing on paper, and only later are 3D animation tools used to fulfill the pose or animation. The reason we do not have these artistic tools (the line of action, and motion abstractions) in the current animation tool set is because we lack a formal understanding relating the character's shape---possible over time---to the drawn abstraction's shape. Hence the main contribution of this thesis is a formal understanding of pose and motion abstractions (line of action and motion abstractions) together with a set of algorithms that allow using these tools in a free-form setting. As a result, the techniques described in this thesis allow exaggerated poses and movements that may include squash and stretch, and can be used with various character morphologies. These pose and animation drafting tools can be extended. For instance, an animator can sketch and compose different layers of motion on top of one another, add twist around strokes, or turning the strokes into elastic ribbons. The main contributions of this thesis are summarized as follows: -The line of action facilitating expressive posing by directly sketching the overall flow of the character's pose. -The space-time curve allowing to draft full coordinated movements with a single stroke---applicable to arbitrary characters. -A fast and robust skeletal line matching algorithm that supports squash-and-stretch. -Elastic lines of action with dynamically constrained bones for driving the motion of a multi-legged character with a single moving 2D line.L'animation expressive permet des styles de mouvements exagerés et artistiques comme l'étirement de parties du corps ou encore l'animation de créatures imaginaires comme un dragon. Créer ce genre d'animation nécessite des outils assez flexible afin de déformer les personnages en des poses quelconques, ainsi que de pouvoir contrôler l'animation à tout moment dans le temps. L'approche acutelle pour l'animation expressive est le keyframing: une approche manuelle avec laquelle les animateurs déforment leur personnage un moment spécifique dans le temps en cliquand et glissant la souris sur une partis spécifique du corps---un à la fois. Malgré le fait que cette approche soit flexible, il est difficile de créer des animations de qualité qui suivent les principes artistiques, puisque le keyframing permet seulement qu'un contrôle local spatiallement et temporellement. Lorsqu'ils dessinent des poses ou des mouvements, les artistes s'appuient sur différentes abstractions sous forme de croquis qui facillitent la réalisation de certain principes artistiques. Par example, certains animateurs dessinent des lignes d'action afin de créer une pose plus lisible et expressive. Afin de coordonner un mouvement, les animateurs vont souvent dessiner des abstractions de mouvement comme des demi-cercles pour des sauts, ou des boucles pour des pirouettes---leur permettant de pratiquer la coordination du mouvement. Malheureusement, ces outils artistiques ne font pas partis de l'ensemble d'outils de keyframing actuelle. Le fait que l'on ne puisse pas employer les même outils artistiques pour animater des personnages 3D a une forte conséquence: les outils d'animation 3D ne sont pas employés dans le processus créatif. Aujourd'hui, les animateurs créent sur du papier et utilisent le keyframing seulement à la fin pour réaliser leur animation. La raison pour laquelle nous n'avons pas ces outils artistiques (ligne d'action, abstractions de mouvement) en animation 3D, est parce qu'il manque une compréhension formelle de ceux-ci qui nous permettrais d'exprimer la forme du personnage---potentiellement au cours du temps---en fonction de la forme de ces croquis. Ainsi la contribution principale de cette thèse est une compréhension formelle et mathématique des abstractions de forme et de mouvement courrament employées par des artistes, ainsi qu'un ensemble d'algorithme qui permet l'utilisation de ces outils artistiques pour créer des animations expressives. C'est-à-dire que les outils développés dans cette thèse permettent d'étirer des parties du corps ainsi que d'animer des personnages de différentes morphologies. J'introduis aussi plusieurs extentions à ces outils. Par example, j'explore l'idée de sculpter du mouvement en permettant à l'artiste de dessigner plusieurs couches de mouvement une par dessus l'autre, de twister en 3D les croquis, ou encore d'animer un croquis ligne comme un élastique. Les contributions principales de cette thèse, aussi résumé ci-dessous: -La ligne d'action facilitant la création de poses expressives en dessinant directement le flow complet du personnage. -La courbe spatio-temporelle qui permet de spécifier un mouvement coordoné complet avec un seul geste (en dessinant une seule courbe), applicable à n'importe quel personnage 3D. -Un algorithme de matching rapide et robuste qui permet du ``squash and stretch''. -La ligne d'action élastique avec des attachements dynamiques à la ligne permettant d'animer un personnages à plusieurs jambes (bras) avec une seule ligne 2D animée