Here's a message posted at Discreet's 3ds max forum by Jon A. Bell, Discreet's Developer Relations Manager on the price reduction issue: "No one from Discreet has voiced his or her opinion yet because we've been monitoring closely what other people have been saying in the last 48 hours, and having plenty of internal discussions on the subject.
Regardless of the recent downturns in the economy and entertainment industry, Autodesk and Discreet's overall financial picture puts us in a position of being able to ride out turbulent market conditions better than, say, some other members of the high-tech community. And, we intend to still be around, and intact, in the coming years.
Is Discreet going to respond to this? You bet. Can I comment on that response? Not yet. :-)"

Andy Murdock has posted a new version of his amazing Lots of Robots animated short done with 3ds max. He has done all the modeling, animation, programming and music for the short film. This version of Lots of Robots includes the previous one. Check it out!
More information on the story behind the animated short can be found at LOR's website.

"To be honest, I wish this site would only allow posts from registered users, the amount of uninformed crap that is being spouted is unbelievable... It wouldn't be so objectionable if the posters weren't hiding under a mask of anonymity."

How about it?  Any thoughts?  What should be done?   [ more... ]

“Los Angeles, CA – Westside effects studio Max Ink Cafe recently completed the game cinematics for Dragon Rage, the newly released PlayStation2 game .. for The 3DO Company.”   [ more... ]

Alias|Wavefront have announced some impressive upcoming (April 4th) pricecuts on Maya Complete and Maya Unlimited.
The pricecuts are down to $1,999 and $6,999 repsectively.
Press Release

Check out these Brazil beta test images by Tomek Baginski.

Kelseus, developers of the cloth simulation plugin have posted a very nice animated short on their site (the one they used as a demo at last year's SIGGRAPH). Definitely worth a look!

Exluna announced today that Digimation will distribute Entropy 3.1, which includes an integrated interface for 3ds max. Digimation will be offering a promotional price of $1200 on Entropy (a savings of $550) through March 31, 2002. Read on for the whole PR.   [ more... ]

Newplugins have posted an announcement regarding their (his) development effort and the delay of Vehicle Simulator 1.5.

BioWare has posted a cinematic intro of their upcoming Neverwinter Nights game. The animation has been done using 3ds max, Character Studio and Combustion for compositing. Impressive work, check it out!
(Warning: the ending of the animation is a bit violent.)

Gabriele Protti has release a tutorial concerning hdri. He discusses HDRshop, and using HDRI images inside of max, mainly pertaining to Brazil, but a lot of the info is non software specific and can be found useful by all.

RE:Vision Effects has released SmoothKit, a set of plugins for compositing programs dedicated to smoothing imagery that combines user-directed controls and feature-sensitive methods. SmoothKit's emphasis is precise control of the filtering process. It has the ability, for example, to smooth out the skin in someone's face without eliminating the details of the hair that hangs in front of the face. In addition to "effects", the SmoothKit toolset can be used to reduce image defects (such as jagged edges, image noise or DV-compression artifacts) in a much more intelligent manner.
The set of plugins is being offered at an introductory price of $134.95 until April 5. Check out SmoothKit's gallery to see some impressive examples.   [ more... ]

The first of four ( o_O ) 4.2.9 patches for 3ds max 4.2 has been put available by Discreet on an 'as is' basis.
ftp://ftp1.discreet.com/web/support/3dstudio/3dsmax429patch1.htm   [ more... ]

A selection of papers from “The 2nd International Symposium on Non-Photorealistic Animation and Rendering (NPAR 2002)” are available for download from :
http://spin.s2c.ne.jp/npar2002.html

http://www.cgarchitect.com/news/article026.asp

"CGarchitect.com, the premiere resource site for architectural computer graphic artists, today announced its plans to launch an architectural computer graphics scholarship. The scholarship will be awarded to students who are working to further the art of computer generated architectural rendering, or who have demonstrated excellence in the field of CG architecture.

"Plans are already underway to launch the scholarship for the upcoming 2002-2003 school year...."   [ more... ]

InsideCG Reviews Pixologic ZBrush 1.23b

Gamasutra (login required) and the CGChannel (login required) have posted reports on this year's GDC. Check out also Digit Magazine for some information on Sony's next generation PlayStation (1000x CPU power, Linux-based).

“Website 3DBUZZ has started shipping its free video training CD's based on 3d MAX (Maya, also available and Softimage to follow)...remarkable quality and its...absolutely free!!!”   [ more... ]

NewTek has reduced the suggested list price of Lightwave 7 to $1595, a $900 price reduction. NewTek is also offering a promotion for current Lightwave users to purchase Video Toaster 2, their real-time, uncompressed, non-linear editing system for only $1995. "We're trying to bring some sanity to the way high end 3D tools are priced," said NewTek founder Tim Jenison. "The days of 3D software that costs thousands of dollars are over, and they aren't coming back (...) nobody today can say with a straight face that a higher price is somehow a magic shortcut to professional quality." Read the whole PR.

Digital Producer reviews Trapcode's Shine, 3D Stroke and Sound Keys AE-compatible (yep, they work with Combustion too) plugins: "Shine, 3D Stroke and Sound Keys are great plug-ins that produce very unique effects..."
Creative 3D reviews Rhinoceros 3D v2.0: "If Rhino is your first venture into NURBS modeling then you are in for a treat..."

Yes, finally! :-) Depth Lindemann & Co. have released VideoMAP 1.0 a new plugin for 3ds max that lets users take advantage of interlaced footage as 3ds max maps, making full use of field rendering. The plugin lets you choose field dominance on a per map basis and provides other features such as the ability to choose in and out points for footage inside Max, change the playback rate and Chroma/Luma keying functions. 30-day trial versions are available for Max R3 and R4 (they have to be activated through the developers' website). (Warning: the site has some heavy Flash content.)

“San Francisco, Calif.—March 20, 2002—This week at the Game Developer Conference 2002 (GDC) in San Jose, Discreet, a division of Autodesk, Inc. (Nasdaq: ADSK) is showcasing its top-selling and award-winning software: 3ds max , gmax, character studio and reactor.”
Press Release

A new version of Peter Jackson's adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's masterpiece will feature 30 more minutes of film. Read the article at Entertaiment Weekly. National Geographic has also put up a great webpage with some brief information on Tokien's sources and influences (the Kalevala, the epic Eddas, etc. where names such as Gandalf appear :-) while writing his books, and what makes The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien's works so unique. Check out also these pictures from the upcoming 'The Two Towers' movie.

Intrinsic Graphics, developers of the Intrinsic Alchemy game development platform, have released the Alchemy ArtistPack for 3ds max. This new release makes the artist tools available, separately from its full commercial toolkit, to evaluate and use at no charge. Alchemy ArtistPack for 3ds max software provides a flexible scene viewer that can be embedded directly within 3ds max viewports. It allows artists to immediately grasp, at modeling time, how content assets will perform on the hardware platform they are creating for. Exporting in the free version is limited to the PC.

“Artist Marco Spitoni used 3ds max extensively to create an award-winning short film in which he creates a visually stunning world covered by rain forests and giant lakes, where thousands of species live together in a wonderful and wild environment.
Check out the astonishing CG visuals and thrilling action sequences.”

The DVGarage has released The Reflection Toolkit, a collection of 39 seamless spherical reflections provided in TIFF format for use as environments in CG scenes. Price is $99 until March 26 ($129 afterwards).

Iloura have put up a 'making of' for their Monaro TV Commercial.
They used 3ds max extensively, as on other projects.
Check out the screenshots of a maxscript they wrote for their work. Yowz.

Splutterfish is in the process of assembling the next public test build, in the meantime they've re-released v.0.2.26, this new version will reinitialize the timelock.

François Mourlevat (also see earlier Vulcania 3.2 post) has recompiled a couple of plugins for 3ds max R4.
You'll have to browse around a little at : http://www.chez.commourl/   [ more... ]

Creative-3D reviews Painter 7.

François Mourlevat has posted at his site a new version of his Vulcania landscape generator compatible with Max 4.2.

Animation Magazine has some interesting interviews with the directors of the different animated short films nominated for this year's Oscars. Check 'em out!

Johan Thorngren has posted on his site some more images generated with a pre-release version of Brazil.

CGW has an article on the evolution of massively multiplayer games. It also has an article following its 25th Anniversary restrospective with gaming highlights of the last decade.

CGW reviews Filmbox 3.x, Kaydara's real-time 3D motion editing and character animation software.
CGChannel reviews After Effects 5.5 (login required).
CGW reviews Viz 4.

Yes, we kick-off with some interesting rumors. We've heard a while ago that particles would be one of the new improvements after release 4. Discreet seems to have been working on the issue for quite a while (a possible point release version was expected with the new features) and now new details have surfaced. According to messages posted at Discreet's forum, Oleg Bayborodin, the developer of the Particle Studio plugin has been involved in programming the new particle functions for the next release of Max. Enhanced event-driven particle system or procedural rule-based particles? Will they come combined with an enhanced dynamics system? Place your bets... :-)

- Chaos Group's VRay 1.0 has been released. Features include fast raytracing, reusable irradiance maps, true HDRI support, motion blur with analytic sampling, caustics, area lights, etc. Check out Vrayrender.com for more.
- Exluna's Entropy 3.1 is available. New features of this Renderman-compliant renderer include HDRI, Depth of Field, significant performance improvements, and direct support for 3ds max. A demo version can be found at Exluna's website. Let's leave the lawsuit comments aside, but if you're interested in reading about it, check out Highend3d.com's Rendering Theory List.
- Cebas have updated their Finalrender software to version 1.1 with some bug fixes and many improvements. New features include optimizations for using GI in animations, optimized area light types, enhanced color shadow map, additional sub surface scattering features, etc. Check out Finalrender.com for the complete feature list.
- Integra's InSight has been updated to version 2.31. The patch includes support for references to lights, IESNA Photometric Type A and B and it also fixes problems with LIGHT LISTER. Check out Integra.jp for more information.
- Splutterfish's Brazil has been going through many point releases, growing in features and speed. A development roadmap and project status page was posted by Splutterfish more than a month ago, and Brazil is now advancing in its feature-complete status. A final release date has yet to be announced.

2d3 announced the launch of of Boujou 2. This new version of the camera-tracking software includes feature acquisition algorithms that identify features in regions of the frame obscured by low lighting levels, poor contrast or other shooting conditions and allow the continued tracking of image features even when they are obscured by atmospheric effects, sudden changes in lighting levels, or temporary obstructions. 2d3 also announced Boujou VE, a low-cost version for smaller studios.

Blackfeet have rigorously updated their 3D Browser for version 5.0 - available for only €29 until April 1st, 2002.
In addition, version 4.2 is now available for free.

Macromedia has begun shipping Flash MX, the latest version of its multimedia authoring tool. One interesting feature which brings this new version closer to HTML usability is the capability to use named anchors, so elements of a Flash presentation can be accessed through the browser's forward and back controls.
Read the whole PR for more information.

Discreet has begun shipping Combustion 2, the latest version of its unified paint, animation and 3D compositing software. The new release has been getting excellent reviews. Find out more about Combustion 2 at these articles by Digital Producer, CGChannel (login required) and Digital Animators.

Evasion|3D have ported their X-Dof plugin to 3ds max. X-Dof specializes in high-level control of depth of field effects in 3ds max. Features include smooth, fast and accurate depth of field effect, custom lens diaphragms (producing bokeh effects), custom intensity features, support for motion blur and depth of field simulation at the same time, etc.. Check out the gallery for some impressive samples created with X-Dof.

After two months, one server change and a lot of work, we're more than happy to announce that the Max Underground is BACK!!! We would like to thank our readers for their patience and support, to those of you who have been asking for the status of MU during these past months, as well as the various 3D news websites and newsletters for their encouragement and support during our downtime. Thank you!!!