Discreet

Bionatics introduces natFX for Max, a unique plugin that enables you to rapidly generate procedural and botanically coherent 3D plants and trees with ease. Driven by AMAP, a technology developed by France's largest agronomic research center, the CIRAD, natFX plants come richly textured and can be correctly aged and set in any of the four seasons. The plugin is geared towards the gaming and architectural industry. Read on for more information.   [ more... ]

Thomas Suurland has just published his latest project, a "New Beetle" with lots of images, an animation and a thorough "making of" section. Check it out!

Great news, the first collection of Lume Tools plugins is available for 3ds max 4! This set of plugins includes ocean, water, wet, submerge, and landscape shaders. The Landscape shader gives users detailed control over how their land masses are rendered from a material standpoint. Lume Tools also contains a Stain shader, which lets you use the intersection between a stain object and another object to define a new material on the non-stain object. This enables you to create wet and dry areas on a single object with ease. The plugin set is being offered for a sale price of $195.
Visit the original Lume Tools pages as well as Lightwave's implementation to see what may be in store for the next collection(s).

Rainbow Studio brings cartoon style to 'Donner' with Morph-O-Matic, read the success story here.

Keith Lango has written a nice article on the principles of lip-sync animation.

“Is Edit^* Dead ?”
That's the question Charlie White of DMN asks and just a little bit answers in a new article.   [ more... ]

The director of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius talks about the production of the film.

Discreet is looking for outstanding work created with Max, Character Studio or gMax for their Game Developers Conference 2002 show reel. Deadline for submissions is February 25th, 2002. Visit Discreet.com for more Info.

Di-O-Matic team up with Third Wish Software to bring powerful lipsync workflow to 3ds max, in the next release of Morph-O-Matic, read the press release here.

Two-time Emmy Award-winning CGI Studio house helps deliver the Opening sequence of one the largest sports event in the world.   [ more... ]

Spanish artist/programmer Juan Antonio Amblés is working on a freeware liquid simulator plugin for 3ds max. The plugin is in early alpha stages and not yet available for download but some AVIs from results generated with the new plugin can be found at Mr. Amblés' website. Check 'em out and send him your suggestions!

3D-worXX.de reviews Swift3D v2: "[Recommended for] everyone who wants to create vector graphics for the Flash player".
Digit Magazine Online reviews After Effects 5.5: "...an impressive update".

eZedia announced the release of eZediaMX 3.0, a cross-platform multimedia authoring software, for $239 USD.  Features include drag-and-drop enviroment, Quicktime support, and nondestructive movie editing.     Press Release

Maya Personal Learning Edition will give anyone the opportunity to use Maya Complete for non-commercial use for free. Users will have access to all of Maya Complete's features, though rendered images will be watermarked, and commercial plug-ins will not be compatible. Full Press Release

Couresy of Ace's Hardware, they now follow up their (budget) workstation reviews with this set of reviews of 'professional'-level graphics cards.

McNeel's Flamingo 1.0, the raytrace and radiosity renderer for Rhino3D is shipping. Features include diffusion, translucency, transparency, color bleeding, shadows (hard and soft), DOF, depth attenuation, ClearFinish, procedural clouds, fractal-generated 3-D plants and progressive-refinement for quick preview. Flamingo is being offered at an introductory price of $295 until 15-Mar (price will be $495 afterwards). Visit Flamingo3d.com for more information and take a look also at the site's image gallery.

Production designer and "world-builder" Richard Vander Wende worked with Rand and Robyn Miller on Cyan's gaming masterpiece. Read the interview.

CGChannel and the DvGarage are hosting an event on desktop Post-Production which will take place on January 7 in San Francisco.

Another article by digital video editing expert Charlie White. A very informative article if you're about to purchase a NLE system (it covers programs such as Discreet edit* 6.5, Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro 3, etc.).

Disney is offering a 20th anniversary collector's edition DVD of the movie TRON. This DVD version has many interesting extras including an in-depth "Making Of TRON" documentary.

Another update in time for the new year. New incorporations include the talented traditional/CG artist Irfan Celik.

Brazilian 3D animator Marcelo Souza is maintaining a great resource for Portuguese-speaking 3D users. His 3DOnline website has around 1000 registered users, a mailing list, tutorials (some available in English), interviews, etc. Most of the site is in Portuguese but some sections already have English translations (just click on the little flag). Check it out!

Michael Bailey has written an Interblinn shader for Max that allows users to vary between Blinn shading and Faceted shading, and also enables users to make each face 'bump' inwards or outwards. It introduces two new controls, Bias and Tension. At the moment the bumping doesn't affect the reflection, but the author is working on this. The free plugin is available for download for R4 and R3.

The deans from six film schools will gather to discuss the future of filmmaking during the 2002 Sundance Film Festival, on January 15. The festival itself will take place January 10-20, 2002 in Park City, Utah. Read the whole PR for more information.