SplutterFish has just released Version 1.0 of Brazil r/s. The website will be updated with more info over the next few days, with an official press announcements on Tuesday. 1.0 can be purchased right now - visit the Splutterfish Products page for details.

Cycore supports Discreet in broadening Web 3D user base
UPPSALA , Sweden , August 29, 2002 - Cycore, the market leader in interactive 3D for e-business today announced the worldwide availability of the Cult3D Exporter for Discreet’s plasma software, making Web 3D content creation more affordable and accessible to a broadening user base. plasma, the professional Web 3D design tool from Discreet, enables artists and designers to develop riveting web content, including advanced web UI and navigation elements. The Cult3D Exporter for plasma allows users to easily export plasma models directly to Cult3D Designer where interactivity and functionality can be added for instant publication on the Web or electronic documentation.

ICARUS is a suite of software packages designed to enable the calibration of image and video sequences, and the reconstruction of geometric models of real scenes from those sequences. The best: its FREE (for not commercial purposes). Get it at: http://aig.cs.man.ac.uk/icarus/   [ more... ]

Montreal, Qc – August 30, 2002 – Today, Di-O-Matic announces the release of its latest installment in the Teach-O-Matic series. This new interactive training CD is called Teach-O-Matic : reactor.

As you may know, Discreet reactor is now bundled with every copy of 3ds max 5; reactor is a deep and complicated dynamic simulation tool. If you are tired of fighting with its manual, your solution is Teach-O-Matic : reactor

3DFestival.com has an interesting article on the challenges posed by the creation of digital characters for the film Stuart Little 2.

3DFestival.com interviews Francisco Cortina, who talks about photorealism and his work for "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within".

Unified Driver Architecture Delivers Innovative New Suite of Software Applications for all NVIDIA Products

SANTA CLARA, CA—AUGUST 29, 2002 — NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA), the worldwide leader in visual processing solutions, today announced the availability of the NVIDIA® Detonator™ 40 unified drivers for the Company’s award-winning suite of desktop, mobile and workstation Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). Detonator 40 delivers a robust suite of software applications designed to extend and enhance the visual computing experience, and gives users more control over their environment then ever before.

Users who find it difficult to control Terragen's surface layers can now get a concise document (PDF, 2.3MB) describing the various controls and paradigms, written by Jo Meder.

A new patch has been released for Photoshop, bringing the current version to v7.0.1. See more for the things that have been fixed. Here's the Windows version and the Mac version.   [ more... ]

Flashants announced the release of the SWF2Video for Adobe Premiere, a plugin that provides the ability to import Macromedia Flash files (*.swf) into Premiere. More information on the plugin and other .swf to video conversion tools at Flashants.com.

TurnTool is a realtime 3D graphics solution targeted at the growing market for interactive 3D on the internet.

There has been some confusion about the TurnTool Year License pricing. Mainly about how it affects the files once the License runs out. Additionally there has been a general reluctance in the market to accept the Year License method of licensing software. This is unfortunate because we really want people to use it, not to worry about prices and licenses. As a consequence of this we have decided to drop the annual license fee completely. The "Year License" becomes a "Full License" in the traditional sense, i.e. permanent. Pay once for the software and nothing else. Updates are still free and files exported are not limited in any way.   [ more... ]

3D Festival interviews Dana Batali of Pixar on the new RenderMan release 11.

3DVF.com is holding a new image competition. Prizes include 3ds max 5, RealFlow and Facial Studio. Check it out!

Stop Motion Pro is a software designed for traditional cel, claymation, cutout or experimental techniques of stop motion animation. Stop Motion Pro provides traditional animators with such features as onion skinning functions, time-lapse capturing, rotoscoping, the ability to use markers while animating, etc. Check out the animation gallery at Stopmotionpro.com.

Brings Enhanced 3D Integration to Visual Effects and Motion Graphics Artists

VANCOUVER, BC - August 26, 2002 - electricFX today announced the public beta availability of eFX Extract3D™, a new effects plug-in for Adobe After Effects. With the release of this plug-in, motion graphics and visual effects artists now have quick and easy access within After Effects to powerful "hidden" 3D image channels rendered by 3D animation applications like 3DS Max, Maya, Cinema 4D, Softimage and Electric Image.   [ more... ]

Digitalproducer.com has the article.

Seasoned editor Charlie White has written an interesting article with some tips for digital editors. Check out "Editing With The Right Side Of The Brain" at DigitalProducer.com!

German artist Daniel Holzwarth, student at the "Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg" in Ludwigsburg, has created an impressive short film titled 'Evolution Visitor'. The film was created using 3ds max 2.x and After Effects and tells the story of an organic human depending on an artificial world. (Warning: the images of the film are quite gloomy and may not be suitable to all viewers.)

NVidia released Beta 2 of the NVidia Cg Compiler and Cg Toolkit for Cg ("C for graphics"), a high-level programming language for content creation developers. The new version adds support for OpenGL Vertex Programs, delivers new shaders and conforms to Microsoft DirectX Syntax and Command Structure.
Read the whole PR.

Christopher Nichols reviews 3ds max 5 from a designer's perspective for CGarchitect.com. If you are considering upgrading or purchasing 3ds max 5, it's a good time to take a look at this review.

Exluna announced that they have merged with NVidia. Exluna's current products, Entropy and BMRT will no longer be available for purchase, but customers will continue to receive support for them. Exluna will work with the team at NVidia to "define and deliver the next generation of Look Development tools and technologies, bringing cinematic rendering to the GPU world". Best of luck to all the Exluna team. Read the whole PR at Exluna.com.

A presentation of the latest version of 3ds max organized by Discreet and Moovid will take place in the Belgium/Netherlands/Luxembourg area. Current dates are: 27-08-2002 in Rotterdam, 03-09-2002 in Brussels. Read on for more.   [ more... ]

Texturama is a seamless texture collection that offers professional quality photographs for use with your 3D models. The Mac/PC hybrid CD includes 1,000 blemish-free, naturally weathered and new surfaces for $99 US. All materials tile visually without the nasty "clone" look. The collection is a result of 2000 hours of work.

nPower Software announces the availability of Power Booleans for Discreet 3ds max 5.0.
Power Booleans empower Discreet 3ds max users with greater creativity by simplifying the process of Boolean operations, and generating higher quality meshes that are easier to work with.
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Frischluft has announced the release of Lenscare, a DOF post processing filter for After Effects plugin compatible software. Lenscare consists of two separate plugins. One is a fast version that simulates camera blurs with constant radii, the other creates more accurate depth of field effects. Lenscare is the result of more than 15 months of development.
More information at Frischluft.com.

Read the brief review at Creative-3D.net.

Fineart.sk has added many photographed head references (front/side) to its collection.

Massive Software have updated their site with more info on Massive, their crowd behavioral animation system. A single floating Massive license will cost $40,000 when the software's released.

Dimension DESIGN Animation Group have released version 1.01.16 of their Shag:Hair plugin for registered users.
Changes since 1.01.15 (fixes):
· MAX crashed when bitmaps with negative output were used to define hair parameters.
· ShagView conversion to cloth was broken in 1.01.15. · Fixed export to external applications (MaxMan).
· Since build 1.01.14 thickness could be incorrect for geometry hair.   [ more... ]

3D Festival interviews Mike Brown, the animator behind "Nyxies - Creatures of the Night", which was produced with 3ds max 4.2 + Combustion.

A marketing firm working for Acclaim UK is offering five people $800 to change their identity for a year into the name of a video game. According to CNN the idea came from the need to overcome the "daily white noise of advertising with something unique".
Read the news item at CNN.com.

Miramax Films and LEGO Media, the TV and film division of the LEGO company have announced a partnership for the development of a CG-animated motion picture for 2004 based on LEGO's Bionicle line of action figures. More information available at Animation Magazine and LEGO.com.

Adobe is shipping Premiere 6.5, the latest version of its editing software. New features include real-time previews, a title designer, and support for MPEG-2 export and DVD authoring. Digital Producer has a first look at Premiere 6.5.

Panasonic announced the availability of the AG-DVX100, a mini-DV 3-CCD camcorder with support for 480i/60 (NTSC), cinema-style 480p/24fps and 480p/30fps image capture. The AG-DVX100 will be available on October 10th at a suggested list price of $3,795.

Darkling Simulations' DarkTree 2.5 procedural shader creation software will be released this fall and will provide users the ability to program their own procedural components, access to the procedural engine library of the software, a much cheaper licensing scheme and additional features such as Renderman support. DarkTree 2.5 is scheduled to be released this fall and will be a free upgrade to all DarkTree 2.0 owners. More information on DarkTree 2.5 Open Initiative at Darksim.com.

Darkling Simulations is offering SimbiontMax 2.1, its great collection of plugin procedural shaders, 3D maps, and materials for 3ds max for free!! Download SimbiontMAX for R3, R4 or R5 from Darksim.com. Thanks to the Darkling Simulations team for this great set of plugins!
Current Simbiont 2.0 customers are offered a -big- discount for upgrading to DarkTree 2: $249 ($239 electronic), nearly 50% off the price of DarkTree. (Versions of Simbiont for other 3D programs have also been made available for free - though some have not been uploaded yet.)

MTI Micro is developing a methanol-based fuel cell that will provide an alternative power source for portable electronic devices including cell phones, laptops, PDAs, and other handheld electronic devices. The new cells are expected to last ten times longer than current batteries. Read the article at Digit Mag.

Read the article at News.com.

Di-O-Matic have released version 1.1 of Morph-O-Matic for 3ds max R3, R4 and R5. Download the Updater here .
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From the colleagues at Max3D comes news of Chaotic Dimension's Bake3d[download] plugin.

And from the usual trodding around, comes Discreet's Normal Map generator plugin, available from Discreet's Sparks pages.

3ds max is the world’s most widely-used 3D modeling, animation, and rendering software.
This summer, version 5 brings some great new features and highly optimised workflows to enable users to be highly competitive and get work done on time and within budget.
Come and see the latest features during our UK tour at the following IBM venues...   [ more... ]

McNeel Europe announced Penguin, a non-photorealistic renderer for Rhino. Rhino 2.0 users are invited to download a free beta version. Penguin brings freehand sketching, watercolor painting and cartoon-like rendering to Rhino. To see some examples, visit the Penguin gallery.

Film and 24p HD video compared: Digital Producer has the article.

Millimeter magazine has a great article on film titles and how technology has influenced their evolution.

Wondertouch have posted a sneak peek video showing off the new capabilities of the upcoming version of their ParticleIllusion particle effects software (previously known as Illusion). Check it out!

Zurich, Switzerland - Psychomechanics & Acting for Animation Seminar: "Bringing Virtual Figures to Life and Creating Convincing Animated Characters for Film and Television." An interactive intensive 2 day character development seminar taught by Jeffrey Hinze as part of the Psychomechanics European Training Tour. This seminar dynamically introduces participants to the pre-production and production processes which, in derivative applications, have been utilized by Pixar and DreamWorks for character development.   [ more... ]

InsideCG reviews Caligari Truespace 6.0: "...an above average 3D suite at an affordable price."
Ed Harriss reviews Softimage XSI 3.0: "With the new 'multi-directional' displacement mapping you can create these types of effects very easily. A displacement map that goes up, then left, then right, is very simple. You use a color displacement map. The colors control the direction of the displacement. RGB=XYZ."

New images posted at Discreet.com. Check 'em out!

The World Wide Web Consortium is working on standards that will allow for more intelligent structures and processes on the web. Read the article at Digit Mag.

Yes, here we go again. "Mine has caustics, yours doesn't." Some people just don't learn. :-) (Discussion)

"Digital Dimension has updated their gallery with stills and AVIs from their work on Reign of Fire and Hansel & Gretel.
Follow the links under the Aug 2 entry under 'Latest News' on the home page, or just browse to the gallery page."
The list of films with digital FX created using Max keeps growing, check out Kieron Helsdon's Max in Film page for the latest additions.

The latest version of MatchMover Professional, REALVIZ's camera tracking software is scheduled to ship in late September. New features in this version include: a matte drawing tool that lets users specify areas for exclusion from the tracking process, ability to work with color information thus improving results with low contrast or motion-blurred footage, refined filtering parameters (track count per frame, track minimum lifespan), new camera constraints (pan, dolly) to exploit known information about camera motion, etc. List price is $4,999.00 and a free upgrade to version 2.5 is available on all purchases of MatchMover Professional (from July 19th, 2002) until the software ships. A Linux version of MatchMover Professional is also slated for release in January 2003.

Ellipseanime is producing (along with Neuroplanet, Canal +, France 2 and R.A.I.) an animated feature film adaptation of Corto Maltese in Siberia, originally a comic-strip based story created by Italian artist Hugo Pratt. 3ds max 2.5 was used for 120 shots of the film with the aid of Afterburn and Illustrate plugins. The premiere of the film will take place in European cinemas in late Sept. Check out the trailer (click on "Les bandes annonces") at Cortolefilm.com!

Notes from SIGGRAPH 94, "Animation Tricks" by John Lasseter himself ! read it here .

Morph ToolKit reviewed by 3Dworld , verdict 9/10, read the review here.

Bakhter.com is having its August 2002 software give away; products this time are Xenon 3d, Carrara Studio 1, Millennium collection CD and Plugin Galaxy.

nPower Software announces Power Booleans Educational and Power Booleans for [Autodesk] 3ds viz.
Viz users can now enjoy the power of Power Booleans.
nPower Software is also bringing advanced modeling to students through the Power Booleans Educational version.
Power Booleans empower 3ds users with greater creativity by simplifying the process of Boolean operations, and generating meshes that are easier to work with.

Power Booleans offer the following advantages over standard 3ds Max Booleans:

·\tImproved reliability (Boolean operations that don't fail) ·\tHigher quality meshes (fewer skinny polygons, fewer small edges, no extra verticies, etc.) ·\tFewer polygons ·\tCleanup of edges on coplanar faces ·\tImproved usability (fewer mouse clicks) ·\tFaster load times ·\tIntegrated decimation ·\tWater tight tessellation using topological knowledge ·\tCookie Cutter Booleans ·\tImprinting Booleans

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“Over 40 minutes of on-line, full resolution demos of the new finalRender Stage 1 that you can stream in real time!”