bits n bytes - volume 5

8/7/2019 Bits n Bytes - Volume 5

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Computer Society of India (C.S.I.) is a non-profit body comprising ofI.T. professionals, students, academicians, scientists and corporate andother institutions. This wide spectrum of members is committed to the ad-vancement of the theory and practice of Computer Engineering andTechnological Systems, Science and Engineering, Information Pro-cessing and other computer related fields.

CSI-NSIT students branch functions under the able guidance of Dr (Ms.)Ritu Sibal and Dr M.P.S. Bhatia (DSW, NSIT).

CSI-NSIT primarily works to bridge the gap between technology andthe academia by conducting various seminars, presentations and work-shops. It has also organized many competitions over the past years,encouraging a new thought process in the budding engineers of NSIT.

It is one of the few societies in the college to have its own Web-Portal locat-ed at http://societies.nsitonline.in/csi , Discussion Forums at http://societies.nsitonline.in/csi/forum and a very active Yahoo Group([email protected]). The Yahoo group proves as a very usefuplatform for communication between CSI members. It comprises of manymembers (and growing each day...) and undertakes in-depth discussionencompassing a wide range of topics.

About CSI

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Activities (ACADEMIC YEAR 2009-10)

Career in animation

ElEphants drEam an open

Source dream

Lord of the rings trilogy - A

Triumph of special effects

BuyErs guidE for assEmBling a

Desktop pc - part 3

Csi membership

The editorial team of CSI-NSIT Students Branch presents to you thfifth edition of its quarterly newsletter, Bits n Bytes. While the first tw

editions primarily focused on spreading awareness about Open Sourcand related tools, the third and the fourth focused on Web Development anDigital Security respectively. This edition, however, diversifies the focused aea as we delve into topics like Animation and Visual Effects. The articon Careers in Animation would hopefully be an interesting read. The artcle Lord of the Rings Trilogy - A Triumph of Special Effects introducesome of most powerful techniques of Visual Effects. Open Source doefeature in the form of Elephants DreamAn Open Source Dream, an upcoming medium of communication. Also included is part 3 of the serie

Buyers Guide to Assembling A Desktop PC. We hope that you have a finreading experience!!!

- Bits n Bytes Tea

Preface

Index

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Placement Seminar: The Placement Seminar was conductedby the triumphant final year students placed in companies

like Adobe, CISCO, Deloitte, DE Shaw, Amazon etc. It sawan attendance of more than 300 students. The successfullyplaced students shared some invaluable tips with those pre-sent in the form oftheir personal strategies, resources they utilized while prepar-ing. The seminar was very well received especially by the third year students.

Bits n Bytes: The fourth volume ofBits n Bytes saw a huge positive response. The online versionwas downloaded more than 500 times.

How to make the best use of your 4 years at NSIT: CSI-NSIT organized a Seminar on How toMake Effective Use of your Four Years at NSITwhere the Guest Speaker was Mr. Manusheel Gup-

ta, who is a prestigious alumnus of the 2008 batch of NSIT. Mr. Manusheel Gupta is currently work-ing as a Products Manager at Servigistics.The event was welcomed by all the first year and the se-cond year students of NSIT, registering a total participation of more than 400 students.

Windows 7 Drive: CSI NSIT in an attempt to equip its members with the best and latest technologyavailable in the industry, distributed original Windows 7 Professional edition operating system abso-lutely free of charge. This offer was also extended to non members at very minimal charges. Thedrive was a huge success amongst the students, with over 400 licenses being distributed amongstthe students.

OSScamp and Linux Workshop: An Introductory workshop on Linux

and Open Source Software was organized to familiarize the studentswith the benefits and the potential of Open Source Technology. Thiswas followed be the formation of a Special Interests Group in this re-gard.In its endeavor to promote Open Source Technology, the CSI or-ganized a large scale OSS Camp at NSIT. The campus was visited bya number of delegates who delivered lectures on the various aspectsof Open Source Technology. Many Open Source companies like Mozil-la also visited the NSIT campus.

C it for yourself: This workshop was aimed at the 2nd year students in COE and IT. The aim wasnot to teach them basic C coding but it was to hone and sharpen their C coding skills. Students were

provided with brain teasers bases on syntax and logic. Every attendee was given a handout contain-ing the questions. These questions were discussed in detail by the speakers. This workshop washeld in two parts, on consecutive Wednesdays. This workshop also received a very warm responsefrom the students as it helped them to further their C skills as well improve their understanding of Cfrom an academic standpoint.

Innovision 2010: The software and online events at Innovision 09-10, the annual techno-managerial fest of NSIT, were held under the supervision of CSI.

ActivitiesAcademic Year 2009-2010

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Career in Animation

THERE was this family which adopted a mouse astheir second son, and the mouse was good friendswith them all much to the consternation of the fam-ily cat... Remember the movie `Stuart Little',wherein the protagonist, a little mouse Stuart Little,enacts all the human qualities. Credit for all thisgoes to the animation team. Welcome to the worldof film animation - a world where reality meets im-agination, where dinosaurs walk across silverscreens. This is a world of special effects, unbe-lievable graphics and exotic technologies thatmesh and converge to create unbelievable real

and virtual experiences. It's a world that beckonscreative minds to unleash their power; and it's call-ing you!

Animation is the art of conceiving an action bydrawing inanimate objects or characters, which aremade suitable for filming. It has lately become sohigh paying a profession that it will soon be match-ing the pay packets of software professionals. Tel-evision channels are applying animation tech-niques as a relief from ho-hum viewing. Accordingto a study by Andersen Consulting, India's anima-tion industry (domestic and exports) will touchUSD 2 billion and create employment for aroundthree lakh professionals, including content devel-opers and animators, by 2008.

The Indian animation market, fairly "static" until afew years ago, is suddenly waking up to a host ofglobal opportunities that promise a lot of "action"for the country's leading design specialists. NorthAmerican film and television programme producers(that boast worldwide networks) are finding it via-

ble to sub- contract animation production activitito independent studios overseas. The demand fanimation production services from internationanimation studios is thus spurred in large part d

to India's lower costs of animation production antechnical manpower to meet 2-D and 3-D animtion requirements.

The requirement of the burgeoning Indian telesion segment for animation and special effects- rlated work is also giving a fillip to this segmeRecognising this potential, a number of Indian soware players have turned their attention to animtion. Animation studios now dot the country and thindustry is also witnessing the arrival of trainin

houses that are dedicated to building skilled mapower for this market. Indian cities such as Mumb(which houses India's movie industry), ChennBangalore, Hyderabad and Thiruvananthapurahouse some of the country's leading animatiohouses. Companies such as Crest Communictions, Films Division, Maya Entertainment, Silveton Studio, UTV Toons, Zee Institute of CreativArts (ZICA), 2NZ Studios, Prasad Studios, Acroptal, jadooWorks, Color Chips, Toonz AnimatioHeart Animation, etc. are just a few of the venturthat have dedicated themselves to the world of a

mation and special effects.

What then are the prerequisites to start a career film animation?

Firstly, you must have an incorrigible itch, to draIf you have completed higher secondary schoand are versatile in drawing, you can enrol in thVisual Communication and Design course. If yoare already a graduate in fine arts with an aptitudfor drawing, you would do well by joining prodution houses or studios as a trainee. There is course in Animation Film Design offered by the Ntional Institute of Design, Ahmedabad.

You must be familiar with the various modes drawing methods available in the software.

Recognising the significance of the multimedia idustry as an emerging career destination, NIIone of the premier computer education institutehas developed a special programme to help learers build the skills needed for this market. Calle

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Digital Web Authoring - A complete course onwebsite creation

Digital Film Animation - A programme for creating

professional animators

Digital Interactive Multimedia - A course to ac-quaint students with the new media

Diploma in Digital Visual Communication - Exposesto platforms such as print, the Web and interactivemultimedia

Advanced Diploma in Digital Visual Communicationand Animation - Prepares for careers in animation,

multimedia, special effects, games, CBT (computer-based tutorials) and WBT (Web-based tutorials)

For a successful career in the field, one needs tobe familiar with web authoring, digital illustrations,mage editing, page layout creation, multimedia au-thoring, web publishing, conventional animation,contemporary animation, animation for Web, videoediting and composing.

You can be absorbed at various levels dependingon your skill sets, as graphics designer, visual art-

st, supervisor, digital film animator, senior anima-tor, content writer, clean up artist, web designer orweb author. Salaries are competent and are on parwith the software industry.

Compiled by:

Aashish BansalIT 2nd Year

Source: The Hindu - www.hinduonnet.com

ElephantsDream: An

Open SourceDream

Open Source Software abbreviated as OSS is

term which is familiar to all of us and we all araware of the buzz that it has been generating the modern technological world. Open Source programs are released with licenses that allow distbution even with changes.Imagine the same concept being extended to Movie. Yes, it is fascinating and what you get is aOpen Movie. The film can be copied, changeand redistributed because the source materials aavailable to all. Even during the production phasthe core work group is open to external input. Sthe bottom-line is:Dont Like the Ending??? Change It!!!

Yes, you are free to do whatever you like.This concept was pioneered by ElephantDream, which was truly an Open Source dream. is the worlds first Open Movie, made entirely wiOpen Source graphics software such as Blendeand with all production files freely available to ushowever as you please, under a Creative Commons license.Elephants Dream is a story about communicatioand fiction, made purposefully open-ended as th


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worlds first 3D animated Open Movie. The filmitself is released under the Creative Commons li-cense, along with the entirety of the productionfiles used to make it (roughly 7 Gigabytes of data).The software used to make the movie is the free/open source animation suite Blenderalong withother open source software, thus allowing themovie to be remade, remixed and re-purposed

with only a computer and the data on the DVD ordownload.This 11 minute film was created by the Open Or-ange Movie Project studio in Amsterdam during2005/2006 which was a project initiated and coor-dinated by the Blender Foundation. Six peoplefrom the Blender user/development communitywere selected to come over to Amsterdam to worktogether on an animated short movie, utilizingOpen Source tools only. Whilst Project Orangesprime target is to create an outstanding movieshort, the secondary goal is to research efficientways to increase quality of Open Source projectsin general.You can download and watch the movie at http://www.elephantsdream.org/The film was released for download directly andvia BitTorrent on the Official Orange Project web-site on May 18, 2006, along with all productionfiles.Software and Tools UsedBlenderwas the main program used to create the3D animation of the film. The other programs were

used for pre and post-

production, file manage-ment, collaboration, and scripting. Ubuntu withKDE and GNOME desktop environments wasused on the workstations.

Blender > DrQueueInkscape > PythonSeashore > TwistedVerse > CinePaintGIMP > OpenEXRSubversion >Ubuntu

BlenderBlender is a 3D graphics application released as

free software under the GNU GenerPublic License.It can be used for modeling, UV uwrapping, texturing, rigging, water simlations, skinning, animating, renderin

particle and other simulations, non-linear editincompositing, and creating interactive 3D applictions, including games.

Blender is available for a number of operating sytems, including Linux, Mac OS X, and MicrosoWindows. Blender's features include advancesimulation tools such as rigid body, fluid, cloth asoftbody dynamics, modifier-based modeling toopowerful character animation tools, a node-basmaterial and compositing system and Python fembedded scripting.Comparison with other 3D SoftwareThe Blender installer is small compared to othfully-functional 3D graphic software. For exampthe Blender installer of 2.49 build for Windows 3

bits is 10.5 MB, requiring 36 MB after installatioand a lite build takes 2.2 MB; whereas software liAutoCAD requires around 2 GB. As such, Blendcan be easily downloaded (although some guidbooks still include Blender on a CD).Use in the Media IndustryBlender started out as an in-house tool for a Dutcommercial animation company, NeoGeo.Blender has been used for television commerciain several parts of the world like Sydney, Austraand Brazil.The first large professional project that used Blener was Spider-Man 2, where it was primarily useto create animatics and pre-visualizations for tstoryboard department.Friday or Another Day was the first 35 mm feture film to use Blender for all the special effectmade on GNU/Linux workstations. It won a prize the Locarno International Film Festival. The spcial effects were by Digital Graphics of Belgium.Blender has also been used for shows on the Htory Channel, alongside many other profession3D graphics programs.

Tomm Moores The Secret of Kells, which wpartly produced in Blender by the Belgian studDigital Graphics, has been nominated for an Oscin the category Best Animated Feature Film?Some More Open MoviesBig Buck Bunny (Project Reach)Yo Frankie! (Project Apricot)PlumiferosSintel (Project Durian)

Compiled by: Abhinav Arora (IT 2nd Year)
http://www.elephantsdream.org/http://www.elephantsdream.org/http://www.elephantsdream.org/http://www.elephantsdream.org/http://www.elephantsdream.org/


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One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to findthem

One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness

bind them.Remember these verses?Peter Jacksons three-part adaptation of the clas-sic, The Lord of the Rings, brought J.R.R Tolkiensfictional world of Middle-Earth to the silver screen.The films were widely applauded for their excellentdirection (which brought Jackson an Oscar for theBest Director), cinematography, and last but defi-nitely not the least, for their special effects. Usingthe very latest technology along with some surpris-ngly commonsense methods, the technical teammanaged to present the creatures of Tolkiens im-agination shorter-than-human hobbits, Ents astall as trees and snarling Orcs with a naturalnessthat enthralled audiences. Needless to say, eachof the three films The Fellowship of the Rings,The Two Towers and The Return of the King bagged the Academy Awards for Best Visual Ef-fects.

While the central character, Frodo, was supposedto be 3ft 6in in height, the actor playing him (Elijah

Wood) was 5ft 6in in real life. Therefore, thfilmmakers had to make use of forced perspectiv

the same method that is used when a photogrpher takes a picture of a tourist holding the top the Taj Mahal, for exampleto get around this. Ahough Dwarves are slightly taller than Hobbits the book, only two scales were used, one for thhuman characters and one for the hobbits. The a

tors cast in the roles of Dwarves were actually taer than the Hobbits, in accordance with the story.

Other creatures like the Trolls, the Balrog ( thslayer of Gandalf in The Fellowship of the Ringand the enormous treelike Ents were entirely computer generated. For several stunts, like those the Elf Legolas, extremely realistic digital doublewere created.

Although the character of Gollum was initially supposed to be entirely computer-generated, the dire

tor was so impressed by Andy Serkis (who wavoicing the character) that he was used on the sas well. For Gol-lums skin, whichhad to give the im-pression of a crea-ture that had spentlong hours in thedark and was un-used to sunlight, anew technique wasused. Known assubsurface scatter-ing shader, it took alonger time to ren-der than other con-temporary methods . Subsurface scattering takeinto account the fact that some materials are slighly transparent and light can enter the materiascatter and then exit the material at a differepoint. (For more information, refer to Jensens paper in the references section.) Gollums hair wainitially created using Maya Cloth, but in the lat

films this was replaced by the SyFlex cloth simultor. This system was also used to create cloth fothe digital doubles including those of Legolas, Frdo, Theoden and the Riders of Rohan. More tha600 shots in the last movie used SyFlex.

Some of the most impressive portions of the filtrilogy were undoubtedly the battle scenes involing a scale never seen before. These were largepossible due to the use of MASSIVE, a softwapackage developed by Stephen Regelous whicuses artificial intelligence to create agents

The Lord of theRings Film

Trilogy:A Triumph of

Special Effects


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autono-mouscharac-ters thathave aset ofactionsor reac-

tionspro-grammed by the animator or engineer. Thousandof agents that act as individuals and respond asindividuals to their surroundings can be created.This allowed the makers of LOTR to simulate hugebattles in an extremely realistic manner and on ascale rarely seen earlier.

Although most of the elaborately-designed sets,such as Minas Tirith and Isengard were actuallyphysical miniatures, digital versions were created

for some, like Dwarrowdelf, the Black Gate and theChamber of Mazarbul. Finally, the lava in theMount Doom sequence was simulated using theRealFlow software owned by Next Limit Technolo-gies. RealFlow can be used to simulate fluids. Ituses particle based simulation, and the Pythonscripting language has been included in its laterversions, so that users can boost the capabilitiesof the software by programming their own tools.

The special effects in the LOTR movies were de-veloped mainly by Weta Workshop, a New Zea-land based company. However, a single scenewas done with the help of the visual effects com-pany Digital Domain based in Los Angeles. AnAcademy Award, (Scientific or Technical), waswon by Christopher Hery, Ken McGaugh and JoeLetteri for their implementation of the BSSRDF( Bidirectional Surface Scattering Reflection Func-tion) technique used for Gollums skin. The effortsof the technical team were definitely a major factorbehind the popularity of the films, and the 11 Acad-emy Awards won by The Lord of the Rings: The

Return of the King.

Compiled by: Krittika Adhikary (IT 2nd Year)References:Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org SyFlex : The Cloth Simulator: http://www.syflex.biz/gallery_weta.htmlMASSIVE : Simulating Life : http://www.massivesoftware.com/ A Practical Model for Subsurface Light Transport:Jensen et al. http://graphics.ucsd.edu/~henrik/papers/bssrdf/

BUYERS GUIDEFOR ASSEMBLING

A DESKTOPCOMPUTERPART In previous edition we looked into display and sodevices. In this final edition, I am going to compthis series with storage and optical drives and asome other important peripherals. Lets start off wstorage devices.

Choosing the correct storage device (HDD):

By storage devices, I am

ferring to hard disk drihere unless mentioned. W

increase in availability

media, the space requ

ment of a user to store th

is also increasing. Gone

the days when the any s

ware was well below 1GB

size. Again before buying a storage device for y

computer, first you need to figure out for what p

pose you are using the PC. A decent 80/160

SATA Hard Disk will serve good for those who

want to use their PC for internet access, light of

work and small time gaming. For hardcore gam

and professionals I would suggest going for a 32

GB Hard Disk.

People who have a laptop and desktop PC, awant their documents (like movies and music) toavailable for both, can opt for an external Hard DThe economic way would be to have 80/160 Hard Disk (internal) on PC and an external H

Disk of 320/500 GB, so that all the documents arequired files can be kept and directly used from external HD. An advantage of this is that by chance if any of the systems crash, all your data be safe.Advances in field of HardDisk: Currently the SATAHard Disks are the me-chanical, magnetic disctype. But a new technologyhas just come in, alreadycatching up in foreign coun-
http://en.wikipedia.org/http://en.wikipedia.org/http://www.syflex.biz/gallery_weta.htmlhttp://www.syflex.biz/gallery_weta.htmlhttp://www.syflex.biz/gallery_weta.htmlhttp://www.massivesoftware.com/http://www.massivesoftware.com/http://www.massivesoftware.com/http://graphics.ucsd.edu/~henrik/papers/bssrdf/http://graphics.ucsd.edu/~henrik/papers/bssrdf/http://graphics.ucsd.edu/~henrik/papers/bssrdf/http://graphics.ucsd.edu/~henrik/papers/bssrdf/http://graphics.ucsd.edu/~henrik/papers/bssrdf/http://www.massivesoftware.com/http://www.massivesoftware.com/http://www.syflex.biz/gallery_weta.htmlhttp://www.syflex.biz/gallery_weta.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/


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Other devices that you may want to use

Now that the whole PC has beassembled, its time to get goiand start working on it. Some the following devices may intest you.

A complete headset with micphone: Voice chatting over intnet is catching up, especially if you hafriends and relative abroad. Also if you wato listen to music or watch a small video cwithout disturbing others in the room, ywould want a set of headphones with micphone. Solves both problems.

USB Web camera: Wouldntbe nice, if you could see tface of your friend and sho

yourself to the person whoyou are chatting with? webcam at your service. Nowdays a decent webcam doescost much also. Easy to conect and use.

USB Pen Drives: A pen drihas become an essential partyou nowadays. Since a CDVD can be used only (mostonce, a pen drive comes

handy by acting as a small hadisk. A 4/8 GB pen drive w

just be sufficient for everybod

Its the end of this exciting journey of assemblingdesktop computer. Hope this series has helped yin deciding and building your own desktop PC.

For more information you can contact me, or aother CSI-NSIT member at CSI-NSIT forums. Kewatching the CSI-NSIT blog for more interesti

and helpful article by me and my friends.

Compiled by:Dipankar Patro, CoE2ndYearSource:Internet

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tries. Named Solid State Drives (SSD), these areway faster than the present ones. But these arevery expensive.

Choosing the correct optical drive (DVD/CD):

DVDs have by far replaced CDs with their hugestorage capacity. Going for a DVD read-write drive

s normal nowadays and is very much affordable.People who arenot willing tospend money onarge Hard DiskDrives just be-cause they want tostore seldom usedfiles can opt forthis option of writ-ng those files intoDVDs and keeping them. DVDs are also easy me-

dium to share files in peers.

Upgrading Suggestion: With slow but powerfulnvasion of Blue Ray Disc and HD DVDs, whichhave a massive storage capacity of 30 -40 GB, thecoming years are to witness a major revolution inthe ultra light optical discs. My advice would be

those who want to up-grade their DVD drivesto Blue ray drives,please be patient. Waitfor some time, until theprice becomes nominal.

Choosing the correct

keyboard and mouse:

Keyboard and mouse

should be comfortable

for to use. Simple users can go for the ordinary

ones that are for general purpose. Those who

have a lot of typing work to do, should go for ergo-

nomic keyboard, which are specially designed toprovide extra comfort. Hardcore gamers can opt

for the gaming keyboard and mouse. A gaming

mouse has more buttons and has an amazing pre-

cision to help player get his enemy right on spot.

People can opt of wireless keyboard and mouse,

but they have to keep in mind about the cost of

batteries they would need!


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CSI-NSIT Membership is open to all NSIT students.

In order to become a CSI Member, follow these steps

Download the Membership form from http://societies.nsitonline.in/csi/membership/csi_form.pdf

Since you are an Undergraduate student, make a tick infront ofStudent.

For Item nos. 1-5, write in your complete details and postal address. This is the address where you wbe mailed the CSI Magazines, so do ensure it is foolproof.

In Item no. 6, write B.E. under the Degree field and leave others blank.

In Item no. 7, write Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology, Azad Hind Fauj Marg, Sector 3, DwarkCity: New Delhi. Pin: 110078

In Item no. 8, tick eitherInformation TechnologyorOthers or both.

In Item no. 9, check Others.

Leave Item nos. 10 and 12 blank.

Chapter: DELHI Student Branch: NSIT

If you want your name to be included in membership lists for commercial purposes, then tick Yes othwise No in Item no. 14.

Attach a photograph in the space provided and give another photograph along with the filled-

up forMembership Fee is Rs. 500 fortwo years membership. Forms are also available with the 2nd year Eecutive Board Members, CSI-NSIT.

Contact your class/branch CSI representative and hand over the form along with the membership fees aphotograph to him/her.

CSI NSIT MEMBERSHIP

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Faculty Members

Dr. MPS BhatiaPhD (Software Engineering)Assistant Professor,COE/IT Department

Dr. Ritu SibalPhD (Software Engineering)Lecturer, COE/IT Department

Student Board

Director- Bits n BytesAshish KapoorPavit Laul

Directore-OperationsPavit Laul

Director- MarketingNitin Garg

Director- Event Management

Swarandeep Singh

Newsletter Team

Student AdvisorsAbhinav AroraEkansh Preet Singh

Design

Raunak Oberoi

Sarvagya Mukhi

Editorial Board MembersDipankar PatroKrittika AdhikaryTapan Goyal

bits n bytes - volume 5

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