Catchup: Graphics Links Post

Again, a set of interesting links from the last few weeks:

• Simple and Fast Multimedia Library, a SDL replacement with a few more modern concepts. (eg: shaders!)
  
• The OpenCL debugger, gDEBugger CL is in public beta for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
  
• ATI Stream Software Development Kit (SDK) v2.01 now supports DirectX / OpenCL interoperability, plus debugging with GDB! A giant leap forward for OpenCL by AMD!
  
• Sander Van Rossen has put together a set of interesting posts on implementing a constructive solid geometry (CSG) system.
  
• OpenRL (raytracing language) has gone beta. I've not had positive experiences with Caustic so far. Wait and see I guess.
  
• Apparently, someone managed a 20x speedup for SQL select queries with the GPU. I guess I need to eat my words. I'm still not convinced that this is really a CPU-intensive issue. (Maybe for scheduling and retrieving flight prices - a dijkstra-like issue)
  
• An interesting article on the history of photoshop, never realised how humble the beginnings were, and how much influence one mans decision to allow optional extras (ie: plug-ins) played on the future of the product.
  
• I never realised this, butAutodesk has a massive price reduction for students, this includes 3ds Max, Maya, and AutoCAD. Wow!
  

And, as per usual, I'll finish off the catchup post with some neat videos. First, one that I think does a great job of explaining the animation process, and then a neat video showing just how far CG has come in film. (I recall speaking to Paul Debevec about Spiderman, and he said the director decided to redo all the actors in all scenes in CG since they looked better and they had more control over facial expressions,etc.)
Cirkus Animation ABC: Stargate studios reel: