3D Festival has the article.

“3D Browser 5.51 is a major release and offers you more than 40 new features or improvements in comparison to 3D Browser 5.1. You can find an extended list of improvements at What's new about 3D Browser 5.51.”   [ more... ]

“Since September 2002 our company changes its name: Blackfeet becomes Mootools.
You can find all our software on a new web site entirely dedicated to them: www.mootools.com
There is no consequence for all our registered users.”
Not to be mistaken with fooTools

Michael Hurwicz wrote up a (very) short review/tutorial on 3ds max / combustion 2 integration.

Users take advantage of world's most advanced workstation graphics boards with OpenGL®, DirectX® 9.0 and AGP 8X support in one graphics solution

Thursday, November 21, 2002 - ARKHAM, Ontario -- ATI Technologies Inc. (TSX:ATY, NASDAQ:ATYT) today announced that the FIRE GL™ X1-128MB workstation graphics board, and the brand new FIRE GL™ Z1, are now shipping and available in retail distribution channels. The FIRE GL™ X1- 128MB and Z1 are the first in the world to deliver a fully programmable floating point architecture which supports OpenGL® 2.0, Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 and AGP 8X.

“VisualMarker is a powerful and inexpensive ($37.95) optical motion capture application. VisualMarker can use up to four video streams for motion capture, and does not require special camera calibration or large specialized room placement. VisualMarker supports not only the industry standard BioVision BVH format but also 3DS and a native format for game development. Fully compatible with Poser, Character Studio and other character software.”

Robust Turnkey Offering Gives 3D Artists and Animators Powerful Tools for High-Performance Creativity

AUSTIN, TX - November 25, 2002 - BOXX Technologies, a leading developer of award-winning digital content creation systems for the design, entertainment and digital film industries, today announced a marketing and distribution agreement with NewTek to bundle and distribute NewTek's LightWave3D® graphics and animation software on BOXX's award-winning 3DBOXX workstation.

NewTek, long considered a leading developer of 3D graphics and animation software, recently unveiled version 7.5 of LightWave 3D, a complete and flexible software solution for 3D graphics and animation in film, television and games. The software includes powerful features for soft-body dynamics, particles, hair and fur and unlimited render nodes. >From now until December 15, 2002, BOXX is offering its 3DBOXX customers the opportunity to purchase LightWave 3D software for $995.   [ more... ]

November 25, 2002 (Santa Clara-Castro Valley, CA) - GHOST 3D, LLC (GHOST 3D) and XSense Technology Corp. (Xsense) announce strategic technology alliance and distribution deal to provide 3d scanner products to international markets.

The two companies have partnered to provide cost-effective 3D scanning solutions targeted for release in 2003. GHOST 3D leverages years in internal development of proprietary 3D digitizing and surfacing technologies to produce specialized commercial solutions for Xsense's upcoming 3D scanner product line. Xsense brings to the partnership years of research in 3D scanning software and an established electronics manufacturing expertise. Details on the product solutions, functioning and retail pricing will be announced at a future date.   [ more... ]

VENICE, Calif.--Nov. 25, 2002-- SplutterFish LLC, a high-end 3D rendering software solutions provider, today announced that its Brazil Rendering System™ has been honored by leading industry publication Animation Magazine, with its "Seal of Excellence Award."   [ more... ]

MAX Plugins.de together with greenworks organic software have today launched their first contest. A first prize worth over $650 and 2 runner-up prizes worth $199 are up for grabs. All you need to do is create a Christmas image using the demo version of XFrog and 3ds max.

You can find all the details about the competition on their contest page.

This bus is getting crowded. Read the article at Digit Mag.

Andy Murdock has released his "Lots of Robots" DVD which includes, in addition to the movie, an hour and a half worth of animation tutorials. Check it out!

Di-O-Matic is pleased to announce the arrival of our newest product: Teach-O-Matic : Free Samples, this free compilation have been pulled directly from our ever-growing library of instructional CD’s and show the layout, functionality, as well as some of the in-depth content from these remarkable training tools. And with its friendly user interface, our Teach-O-Matic browser will help you navigate through more than 30 minutes of FREE streaming interactive training.   [ more... ]

“Nashua, NH, November 6, 2002 -- The editors of Computer Graphics World are pleased to announce the winners of the magazine's 2002 Innovation Awards. The Innovation Awards, presented every year in December, recognize products released in the last year that represent true technological innovation. These products are chosen by a panel of industry experts, including the editorial staff of Computer Graphics World, from submissions received in a call-for-entries roundup.”
Among the winners is Character Studio 4 from discreet

In an interesting turn in RenderMan's tradition, the latest version of the renderer now includes ray tracing and global illumination capabilities. RenderMan 11 also introduces, among other features, significant performance gains and Deep Shadow technology, an advanced shadow map format which allows for semi-transparent, colored, and motion blurred shadow maps.
Read the whole PR.

Cubicspace and ArchVision have signed a licensing agreement to support the use of RPC (rich photo-realistic content) within rtre™ - the revolutionary real-time visualisation solution recently launched by Cubicspace. Users can add multiple RPC objects straight into rtre while running Autodesk VIZ 4 and 3ds max 4 and 5. The objects are then automatically incorporated into real-time rendered scenes, creating high quality output as still images, movies or stand-alone presentations, in moments.   [ more... ]

New Orleans, LA - November 20, 2002 - Digimation Inc. announced today the immediate availability of Head Designer 1.5 [applied-ideas.com]. Head Designer [digimation.com] 1.5 is a 3ds max plug-in designed to simplify the process of head generation for character modelers using Discreet's 3ds max.   [ more... ]

multi-player racing games utilises wireless LAN feature in new iPAQ

Superscape plc, the interactive 3D enabling software specialist, announces that its new Swerve technology has been utilised to develop a sophisticated multi-player motorbike racing game which will be included with every new HP iPAQ Pocket PC h5400, the latest model in HP’s range of PDAs (personal digital assistants). Superscape used its Swerve Client and Swerve Author tools to develop the content. A key feature of the new HP iPAQ Pocket PC h5400 is an integrated wireless LAN. The game developed by Superscape takes full advantage of this integrated wireless feature, allowing players to challenge each other across the wireless network.
Press Release   [ more... ]

The staff of the Forum3D website would like to invite everyone to participate in a new contest: "with only cubes as objects create a composition which will be visually attractive. No other objects, no cube deformations allowed." Visit Forum3D to see the complete contest rules & prizes.

Motion control, automated motion trackers and all the answers to what you never dared to ask. Read the article at Digitalproducer.com.

3DVF.com interviews Doug Chiang (Design Director for Episode I and II), Stephane Marty and Jérôme Desvignes on Robota, the teaser: "...The color palette and lighting for the teaser were deliberately pushed to be richer and deeper than what could be photographed. This merging of real 3D designs with painting aesthetics is very appealing to me." (English|French)

Digit Mag reviews Messiah:animate 3.0: "...a useful and flexible package for the character animator."
CGChannel reviews Shave: "...makes it quite easy to create realistic and dynamic hair and fur."
CG Focus reviews Frischluft Lenscare 1.0 DOF filter for After Effects: "...one of those nice little utilities that does what it says with a minimum amount of fuss and at a good rate of speed."

Digital Film Tools released a set of filters designed to simulate glass camera filters, specialized lenses and optical lab processes. 55MM includes: Black and White, Bleach Bypass, Color Grad, Defocus, Dual Tint, Faux Film, Fluorescent, Fog, Glow, Infra-Red, Low Contrast, Mist, ND Grad, Night Vision, Polarizer, Selective Soft Focus, Skin Smoother, Star, Tint and Warm/Cool plug-ins. 55MM provides the option of processing in 16 bit even if the host system is limited to 8 bit.
The set of plugins is available for Discreet Combustion, After Effects compatible programs, Final Cut Pro, Avid Editing Systems and Pinnacle Commotion. Price is $195.

“Today, Peter Mitev - Software manager at Chaos Group, announced the beginning of a new 3D SHORT project.

Together with Rapan LLC - a studio house specializing in 3D graphics for the entertainment industry - Chaos Group is starting a new fully computer-based project about an "extraordinarily" talented hero - Gogo.”

Also from the blurb :
“We remain eager to test VRay's version for MAYA version but I guess we would have to wait a bit.”

News @ ChaoticDimension.com

“The RTX file format is an advanced ASE file format that supports important issues missing in ASE, e.g. skinning. This means it is easy to understand, therefore easy to implement to your own software. For a detailed description of RTX features visit http://crow.riot.org”

Read the article at CGW.com.

Surprising news indeed. According to the PR, the Video Toaster 2 system provides a complete editing suite, uncompressed recording and broadcast preview for 3ds max animators. It complements 3ds max's toolset with compositing, video editing, video painting, video in and out, and digital disk recording (DDR) capabilities. Video Toaster 2 is available now at a SRP of $2995. Read the whole PR for more information.

The International CG Challenge is a set of ongoing contests with the aim of stimulating participants to learn the art of Computer Graphics and digital visual effects online. Check it out at CGChallenge.com.

Japanese studio Production I.G. used 3ds max, Character Studio and David Gould's Illustrate to create some 3D elements for the T.V. series 'Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex'. 3D Festival has the article.

3DVF interviews Riccardo Zanettini, Lighting T.D. at ILM. (English|French)

This DVD covers the update from Max 4 to Max 5. It contains 12 lessons with well over 2 hours of instruction on the new features. More information at Discreet.com.   [ more... ]

Plug-in Available Immediately for Download Free of Charge at developer.nvidia.com and www.cgshaders.org Web sites

SANTA CLARA, CA AND SAN FRANCISCO, CA—NOVEMBER 13, 2002 — NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA), the worldwide leader in visual processing solutions, and Discreet, a division of Autodesk, Inc. (Nasdaq: ADSK) today announced the availability of a CgFX plug-in for 3ds max™ 5, Discreet’s professional 3D animation and modeling software.
A provider of award-winning systems and software for digital media creation, management and delivery, Discreet developed the new 3ds max CgFX Plug-in with NVIDIA to allow artists to author and visualize content in 3ds max using advanced hardware rendering and the Cg (“C for graphics”) high level language.
Cg was developed in close collaboration with Microsoft Corporation and works with OpenGL®, DirectX®, Microsoft® HLSL (High-Level Shading Language) and assembly language.

Press Release

This texture plugin by Mark Williams draws a graph of its input over time across texture space. Can be used for polygraphs, seismographs, animated presentations, oscilloscopes, etc. Download from Maxplugins.de.

Dosch Design expands its Dosch 3D product line

The 3 new products: Cars, Transport and Engineered Structures are expanding the Dosch 3D-product line.

3D-designer, architects, engineers and animators can save tremendous time & cost by using Dosch Design 3D-objects, while assuring themselves flexibility and originality through the many customization options. Dosch 3D-models can be a „final product“ for immediate use, or a „starting point“ for ones own customization efforts. They are provided in the most common 3D-formats, and can therefore be used in just about any 3D-software.   [ more... ]

If You've always wanted to convert raster images to vector, You may wish to check out AutoTrace - a free (GPL license) open-source application that does exactly this.
Various links to similar projects are given on the same page as well.   [ more... ]

Slashdot are running the above question and dozens of people have already reacted.
Don't think "3ds max", though, as the question was specifically about the Apple Mac platform.
What may be interested to note, though, is the large popularity of Cinema 4D.

MindAvenue announced a new plugin that enables Max artists to easily publish interactive 3D content in QuickTime. Visit MindAvenue.com for more information.

According to a rumor posted at Max3D, Phillip Miller is no longer working as Animations Group Vice President at Autodesk.

The Z-3000 professional DSP camera records directly as computer files onto a DVD-RAM or DVD-R disc. SRP is $5,990, read the whole PR.

SANTA CLARA, CA and MONTREAL, QUEBEC—NOVEMBER 8, 2002—NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA), the worldwide leader in visual processing solutions, and Softimage Co, a subsidiary of Avid Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVID), today announced that the SOFTIMAGE®|XSI® v.3.0 software, the industry’s leading 3-D nonlinear production environment, is the market’s first digital content creation application to take advantage of Cg, a high-level programming language NVIDIA developed in close collaboration with Microsoft Corporation.
The SOFTIMAGE|XSI v.3.0 environment is now able to work seamlessly with the C-like language to provide users with a simplified process for authoring complex, highly realistic digital content.

Press Release@nVidia

Maxon Computer have released version 8 of their Cinema4D product suite.

It's that time again - GameArt competition #7 has started.
The goal : Create a Super Tank; A heavily armed and armored land vehicle.
Read up on the specifics at the CGchat forums.

Tom Greenway puts Max 5 new features to the test!
See the article at http://www.3dtotal.com/index14.htm

Vicon announced that it's shipping Vicon IQ, a new version of their MoCap software designed for streamlining the motion capture workflow and achieve better accuracy when tracking complex interaction between characters. "The system's intelligent detection and awareness of a capture subject over time help generate continuous trajectories, even with limited information and heavy occlusions, so users can quickly and easily solve common motion capture problems with little or no manual clean up."

The new drives offer enhanced performance with 8MBs of cache and storage capacities of 200, 180 and 120 GBs. The 200GB 7200RPM model w/8MBs of cache is priced at $499.99. All drives available exclusively through OWC at www.macsales.com.

Lost Pencil Animation Studios Inc. is pleased to present another Character Animation training CD.

Using 3ds max 5.0, the animator creates a basic walk from scratch and then modifies that walk four times in order to show how variations of a character walk can quickly be created.   [ more... ]

3DFestival.com has the article.

3D Festival to host Architectural Visualization Conference, 8-9 May 2003, Copenhagen. Read the whole PR for more information.

The much anticipated finalRender Stage-1 release has been delayed from 'fall 2002'/October to mid-December, so brings us Max3D.

Digimation have put up their latest newsletter - detailing three audio-related plugins for 3ds max, a short profile on Presto! Studios (which ceased its business), and news that Fractal Flow is going multiplatform - currently in beta.

GHOST 3D ships Power Modeler™ Pack and Power Digitizer™ Pack:
These packages offer total modeling and digitizing solutions, including Surf-iT and ResErect at a special price.

The products provide unprecedented Spline, Mesh and Patch modeling solutions that are similar to NURBS or solid modeling, but without the overhead of NURBS or solid modeling.

In addition to the fastest Patch and Mesh based surfacing of their kind, there are unique interactive tools, and customizable/sciptable tools to get the intricate fine tuning and detail work accomplished quickly.

The new UI systems make it easy to operate between different modifier modules, S-Object™ modules, and scripted operations that take advantage of the core technology.

Unlike other proprietary modeling systems, the Power Modeler Pack and Power Digitizer Pack are fully compatible with 3ds max™ object types, and offer input and output using just about any object type you can think of.

October 31, 2002 (Castro Valley, CA) -- GHOST 3D, LLC releases ResErect™ version 1.15, a flexible and unique 3D object conversion and import plug-in for Discreet's top-selling 3ds max™ and Autodesk VIZ® from Autodesk, Inc.  The new ResErect release also rounds out the updated Power Modeler Pack and Power Digitizer Pack packages from GHOST 3D.   [ more... ]

Softimage announced SOFTIMAGE|BEHAVIOR, a new crowd simulation software that provides users with the ability to create "intelligent" characters and choreograph 3-D animated crowds. "Behavior" includes a full-featured Integrated Development Environment (IDE), behavioral scripting, visual state-graph editing, debugging, and dynamic motion synthesis. The system's integrated character engine features real-time IK, animation blending and warping, dynamic path planning, and automatic obstacle avoidance. Behavior supports the dotXSI file format; price is $14,995.

nPower Software announces version 1.2 of Power Solids, with significant new functionality.  Customers asked for it, and nPower Software delivered.  The revolutionary Power Solids plug-in, which introduced the power of solids modeling to 3ds max has now greatly extended the power and flexibility of modeling by adding tools to create and edit both surfaces and open shells.

Power Solids 1.2 includes the following new advanced features:
· Merge / Sew surfaces into solids
· Extrude, Revolve, Skin, Sweep with open loops to create complex surfaces
· Deletion of Faces to enable Surface Trimming
· Automatically remove excess faces when combining surfaces with solids
· Extract Selected Faces into BrepObjects or NURBS
· Extract Selected Faces / Edges into Curves
· Flipping the normals of selected faces in a shell

Ruairí Robinson (Fifty Percent Gray) used medieval techniques to model, texture and light a CG garden gnome at Pluto, an award-winning Irish production studio that proves its leadership by offering clients services such as spending money, kicking up a fuss when their sandwiches aren't right and 16 years of experience with marmites. All the 3D elements of the commercial were rendered with Marcos Fajardo's Arnold GI renderer; Pluto's Hubert Montag animated the CG gnome. Great animation - check it out! (And don't miss the studio's amazing info pages!)

DMW reviews (Particle)Illusion 2: "...a powerful 2D particle generator that can be used for high-end production work."
DMW reviews Illuminatus Opus presentation software: "...a must have."