U.S. author and animator Michele Bousquet is coming to Adelaide and Melbourne, Australia in January 2003 to present a one-day class in each city in the essentials of low-poly modeling and animation. This class will focus on the tools you need to know to create and animate characters quickly and easily. Some models are easier to animate than others: this class will cover how to create models that are easy to skin and animate, avoiding difficulties with hips and shoulders that are so common with low-poly models. You'll also learn to model low-poly clothing, faces and hair with these same techniques.   [ more... ]

nVidia have released version 4.00.26 of their MAXtreme drivers.   [ more... ]

*                  *                        |¯|   |¯|    *                    *            | | * | |               •                 *    | |   | |  Wishes Everybody Happy Holidays     | `———´ |  •  And a Wonderful New Year!       ·| :————´                       ·               '—'                ·

Some very nice pictures and animations at CGChallenge.com, many of them created with Max. Check 'em out!

The teaser for Doug Chiang's Robota is finally available. Check it out! There's also an interview on the subject at CGChannel.com (the fine folks at 3DVF.com posted an interesting interview last month too).

“Right Hemisphere finally updated their connection between 3dsMax 5 and both DeepPaint and DeepUV. The updates also adds support for Maya 4.5.”

fR - stage1, announced for December* 2002, is delayed without a new release date.   [ more... ]

Markham, Ontario - ATI Technologies Inc. (TSX: ATY, NASDAQ: ATYT) is leading the industry's adoption of Microsoft^® DirectX^® 9.0 and Microsoft High Level Shader Language (HLSL) with special programs for the Independent Software Vendor (ISV) community and its RADEON™ 9700 and RADEON™ 9500 series boards. ISVs are quickly adopting Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 for their new game titles, and are now focusing time and resources on programming and creating powerful custom shaders for this new platform.

Cg Compiler Version 1.0 Now Available

SANTA CLARA, CA—DECEMBER 1920, 2002—NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA), the worldwide leader in visual processing solutions, today announced the availability of the NVIDIA Cg Compiler version 1.0. The NVIDIA^® Cg Compiler is designed to generate real-time shaders from the high level shading language syntax jointly developed by NVIDIA and Microsoft^®. The Cg Compiler version 1.0 is compatible with the Microsoft High Level Shading Language (HLSL) compiler released today by Microsoft with DirectX^® 9.0, released earlier today; shaders written for the HLSL compiler will compile and run without change on NVIDIA’s Cg Compiler version 1.0. NVIDIA’s Cg Compiler generates code for both DirectX and OpenGL^® platforms and is compatible with any graphics processing unit (GPU) that is OpenGL 1.4 (or higher) or DirectX 8.0 (or higher) compliant.

“3dsmaxSkins website has just open : the idea is to make an aera to share/download your best customed 3dsmax colored UIs.”

The Hollywood Reporter writes "The future of Centropolis Effects is cloudy now that Warner Bros. has pulled the company's visual effects shots on "The Matrix" sequels, reassigning the work to Sony Pictures Imageworks this week."

And CGchannel writes "We just received confirmation from several sources that Centropolis FX based in Los Angeles has just shut down its operations yesterday (Tuesday, December 17th 2002)."

“The new Dutch VRay reseller MacroCad has put a review of VRay 1.09 online, written by Metin Seven. Read it at 3DStudio.nl.”

ICARUS, the free (for non-commercial use) tracker/motion stabilizer/whatnot, was updated to version 2.07 this week.

New modular structure gives CAD application developers even greater flexibility!

SHEFFIELD, UK (17 December 2002) - LightWork Design, the world’s leading supplier of quality advanced computer graphics software for rendering, simulation and verification solutions, has today announced the release of LightWorks 7.0 – the world’s leading rendering engine.

WonderTouch have put particleIllusion SE available, a $129 ($99 introductory) valued 'light' version of particleIllusion

As reported by FXguide and CGchannel, Discreet has bought some assets from economical malaise stricken 5D

Robert McNeel & Associates announced the release of Rhino 3.0, the latest version of their NURBS modeling software. There are lots of new features in this release, including an enhanced user interface (dockable dialogs, pop-up layers dialog, discoverable command options, etc.), OpenGL hardware acceleration and anti-aliasing support, many new viewport modes (ghosted, flat, X-ray, curvature, draft angle, zebra, environment map, etc.), grouping objects into blocks, cooperative worksessions, etc. Upgrade from 1.x and 2.0 is $295 for a commercial license.

InsideCG takes a look at the Polish studio that helped produce "The Cathedral". Check it out!

Clay is a new stand-alone 3D modeler created for artists which follows the modeling paradigm inspired by Nendo. Its main focus is providing modelers with a creative and intuitive workflow. Jason Nairn started its development because he felt that "current tools were not expressive enough (...) every time you stop and have to hunt through tool sets I believe you lose your creative process". Take a look at the website's gallery. Clay is currently available only to a few private beta testers.
Also of note, Wings3D, another stand-alone modeling program has received a new update (0.98.04).

“Last week Autodesk announced that Lightscape will be discontinued as of January 31, 2003 and will no longer be available for sale after this date.
Autodesk will continue to support the product until July 31, 2003 and the Lightscape support website will remain active at least through this date.
Jeff Mottle, Lightscape user extraordinaire and the tireless unofficial moderator of this forum, has generously offered to take over the hosting of this forum on his website CGarchitect.com. We'll provide more details about this migration shortly but it should occur shortly after January 31.”   [ more... ]

Caligari Corp, of trueSpace fame, has just announced two business-level agreements :
Caligari Corp. and Curious Labs, Inc. Announce Strategic Relationship
Caligari Corp. Announces Technology Partnership with Primitive Itch

“Pixar Animation Studios announced that it will become a component of The NASDAQ-100 Index, effective at the beginning of trading on Monday, Dec. 23.”
Read more at PostIndustry or at MacWorld

Charlie White of Digital Media Net fame has compiled his Christmas wishlist.
The Underground Asks - What's on your Christmas wishlist?
An ATi Radeon 9700 Pro ? Holding a late Christmas, awaiting the nVidia NV30 ?
'Switch' to Maya ?
Or perhaps peace on Earth after all ?
Everything* goes in love, war, and the comments box.
* well.. almost everything ;)

Award-winning Image Based 3D Modeling Software Now Available For Mac^® OSX, With A Windows^® XP/2000 Version Slated For Release in Q1 2003.

Sophia Antipolis, France (December 16, 2002) - REALVIZ^®, a leader in image processing software development, is pleased to announce the availability of ImageModeler^® 3.5, available for the very first time on the Macintosh^® platform. Using photographs as a revolutionary approach to 3D content creation, REALVIZ ImageModeler 3.5, offers an innovative and intuitive approach to the often time-consuming and complex task of creating 3D models.   [ more... ]

Save 15% on Mr Furniture 3D Models.
The Offer is valid on all Individual 3D Models and Collections up to January 7th, 2003.

Read the article at Postmagazine.com.

An In-Depth Look at UVW Mapping an Object
Modeling a Manga Character (in-depth video tutorial - 12 segments)
F/X video tutorials at 3DLuvr: Procedural Displacement (I), Clouds with Afterburn, Procedural Modeling (I), Procedural Shaders
Lighting Techniques (Part I)

Creative-3D reviews Poser 5.
Creative-3D reviews Head Designer 1.5 plugin.

FlowTracer fluid shader is a volumetric plugin that creates realistic fluid surfaces with a metaball based engine. FlowTracer works with a RealFlow or RealWave particle binary sequence or any of Max's particle emitters. The plugin is not sold separately and it is included with any license of RealFlow or RealWave.

Disperse/Refract v1.0 by Mark Williams is a texture plugin for faking wavelength-dependent refraction without having to go through the effort of rendering your image in separate R/G/B passes and compositing.

Color Picker v1.0 is a new plugin by Lesha VH that replaces the standard Max color dialog with an improved version. It supports RGB, HSV and HLS colour models.

Check out this parody of Apple's "switch" ads, created with 3ds max.

High Dynamic Range Images - The lighting technology for truly realistic 3D-design.

Once again Dosch Design sets a new standard with its innovative and cutting-edge products for 3D-designers and animators. The 3D-community has waited for a long time to see the next major advance (new generation) in realistic lighting of 3D-scenes and 3D-models … And a quantum leap it is ! The wait is over with the arrival of the first 2 Dosch Design HDRI-products !
After months of developing these gems, Dosch Design now presents the first 2 titles of the newly created product line Dosch HDRI - Dosch HDRI: Nature and Dosch HDRI: Skies. Each product contains 56 HDR-images, which are packed on three CDs.
The realistic extra illumination information of a scene which is wrapped into the HDRI-surround image gives your radiosity-scenes a degree of realism so far reserved for Hollywood ...   [ more... ]

Yes, you read that right ! Kaydara has released an incredible deal for MOTIONBUILDER! For just $100, you can purchase a FULL PRODUCTION COPY (1 YEAR license) of the package, complete with full support from Kaydara! This is an exclusive offer to the members of 3D Buzz website ! Don't miss that one, MotionBuilder regular price is $3495 !

CG Veteran George Maestri reviews Brazil r/s in Computer Graphics World's Dec. Issue. Read the review here. "This renderer produces highly realistic images and would be excellent for anyone doing photoreal work."  "...Brazil is fast and productive."

It's time for another round of Realtime 3D GameArt - competition #8 is around, hosted by CGchat as always.
“The brief is to design, model and texture a Winter forest scene. However, the scene must also contain a single abode or dwelling of a evil witch. The visual style has to be Disney-esque.”

COOL 3D Studio from Ulead is a new 3D animation software with a price tag of less than 130$ !

PSD Manager is now available from Cebas. This new plugin for 3ds max offers full PSD support in max, from render elements to 'real' PSD importer. Check it out!

Texture Kiln is a utility plugin for 3ds max 5 from Mankua that lets you bake full scene information into a single image, or set of images, for texturing an object. This includes other objects, deep material trees, shadows, atmospherics and whatever else you can render with the MAX default renderer. Convert object details to mapping. It also comes with a Normals TextureMap that can be used in Bump for rendering...yeah !

Another liquids simulator enters the field. Glu3D is a plugin developed by 3DAliens that animates liquids using particles. Currently available for Maya.

December 8th 2002: bioVirtual announce the release of their Full Body Pack, providing a seamless pipeline from human head modeling and mapping in 3DMeNow Pro 2 to real-time whole figure modeling and animation in 3DSMax™. Head textures and geometries from 3DMeNow Professional 2 can be now be merged into a prerigged fullbody geometry, preset in whatever way you wish for modeling, animation or both.

“2002 is quickly coming to a close and we are determined to send the year out in style by offering you a major discount on Digimation Plugins.

>From now until December 31st 2002, buy any product from Digimation, and receive 50% off of one of these plugins*
http://www.digimation.com/specialoffers/digimationoffer.htm

To take advantage of this offer, contact us via email at sales@digimation.com or by calling 1-800-854-4496 (within the US) or 504-468-7898 and provide the code: MOREPLUGINS4ME

Wishing you a great New Year!

The staff at Digimation

*of equal or lesser value”

Anark Studio Now Offers Seamless, Reliable Importation of Complex 3D Models

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Anark^® Corporation today announced that it has released the new Anark Model Exchange format for 3D content integration into its award-winning multimedia authoring software, Anark Studio™. Export plug-ins are available with the Anark Studio 1.5.2 update for Discreet's 3ds max™ and Plasma™ with additional versions to be released on the Anark website ( http://www.anark.com/ ). Once installed, the plug-in allows 3D artists to easily export scenes into an Anark Model Exchange (AMX) file with full retention of complex 3D data, making for a more productive work environment and higher quality output. The launch of Anark's new file format and exporters ensures superior integration with 3D modeling tools, allowing content creators to further surpass the boundaries of traditional multimedia using Anark Studio.   [ more... ]

Demystifying continues at 3DFestival.com. More CG artists give suggestions and share their experiences on getting into the field. "It is however, sometimes difficult to remember how glamourous it is at 3 in the morning when your staring through bloodshot eyes at a scene that keeps crashing." - does that sound familiar? :-)
Read the article.

3dTotal have released the 2nd and 3rd sets of their Total Textures CD-ROM series.

REALVIZ^® Launches ReTimer^® SD, Offering Video Artists Working with Adobe^® After Effects^®, a One-Stop Solution, for Refined Frame Rate Manipulation Latest Product Release From Leading French Software Developer Now Shipping for Microsoft^® Windows, with a Mac OS X release slated for January 2003

Sophia Antipolis, France (December 9, 2002) - REALVIZ^®, a leader in image processing software development, is pleased to announce the availability of their very latest product innovation, REALVIZ ReTimer^® SD, which draws on the powerful engine central to the award-winning REALVIZ ReTimer.
ReTimer SD now offers video artists a 'one-stop' solution at an affordable price to smoothly slow down, or speed up the frame rate of any video, film, or image sequence, offering complete flexibility during post-production.
  [ more... ]

Although game development garners a lot of attention in the U.S., many of the top titles in the gaming world are increasingly originating from Europe. GDW 2003 is aimed primarily at the professional involved in game production, development and art. The conference will comprise of 36 sessions including lectures, panels and special sessions over a three day period (8-10 May). GDW is backed by the 3D Festival Expo.

Millimeter magazine has an interesting article on the use of Massive for the upcoming Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers film. The article also discusses the role of AI in animation and the future of keyframe vs. "proceduralized" characters.

Amorphium 3.0 contains "Tin", a set of Subdivision Surface modeling tools that can be easily combined with its other modeling and paint features. Other additions include an updated look, new material elements and controls, and the use of QuickTime movies for backgrounds.

WonderTouch have put up some preliminary info on v3.0 of particleIllusion

CGfocus have a small look at what the .5 changed in Adobe Premiere 6.5

I peek around the web from time to time - I thought I'd share some stuff with You when I do.

Awesome hair rendering/modeling/etc. research
An embedded boundary integral equation solver for the unsteady incompressible Navier-Stokes equations [PDF]
Fast Bilateral Filtering for the Display of High-Dynamic-Range Images (new flat HDRI images for grabs - note copyright)
Vision and Weather Gallery
Reeb Graph morphing [PDF]
An Energy-Driven Approach to Linkage Unfolding [PDF]
B-Splines for ... Physically-Based Rendering [PDF]
RayTracing News v15n1

As a Discreet Subscription member, you can benefit from unique software features. Released periodically, Discreet® Extensions are downloadable software modules that enhance your Discreet software, providing you with new specialized functionality immediately after it is developed. You benefit from leading-edge capabilities, convenient implementation without disruption to ongoing projects, a shorter learning curve, and lower training costs.

Discreet is pleased to release its first product extension, exclusively for 3ds max™ subscription customers.

Read what this is all about

5D, best known for their post-production setups such as 5D Colossus, 5D Cyborg, 5D Commander, etc., may have been bought - according to CGchannel

Eyeon Software, Inc. have put the demo version of Digital Fusion 4 online.

Free open source motion picture retouching tool ported to OS X

BERKELEY, California - December 5, 2002 - Film Gimp, the most popular open source tool in feature motion picture work, has released its first Macintosh version. Film Gimp is now available for Mac OS X, Linux, and SGI Irix.

3DLuVr are running their next contest, "The Country Life", up to January 5th, with many great prizes to win.

ItooSoft have updated their Forest Pack plugin suite.

Di-O-Matic are running a holiday special, pricing their Teach-O-Matic CDs at $119 instead of the usual $149 (~20% savings).
And Chaotic Dimension are running a 20% savings on V-Ray (Advanced) as well ($639 instead of $799).
Both specials run through to the end of the year.

New Release Of Popular Modeling And Rendering Package Includes 3D Clouds, Rain, Snow, Improved Waterfalls, RPF Support, And Levels Of Detail

OAKLAND, CA (December 5th, 2002) - Digital Element, an Oakland-based software development firm specializing in 3D nature, announced today the release of WorldBuilder 3.5, the latest update to the premier package for modeling and rendering high-definition, animating landscapes. WorldBuilder 3.5's feature set once again sets WorldBuilder apart from other landscape software packages - this time by adding rain, snow, and 3D clouds.   [ more... ]

Noted as one of the largest purchases in animation software history, Discreet is pleased to announce an expanded partnership with The Art Institutes, which has purchased 2,500 copies of 3ds max 5 for use in its design and art schools throughout North America. "Students want to walk away knowing what they learned in school will be applicable to the real world" says Assistant VP of Classroom Technologies at The Art Institutes. According to a Discreet PR, Max was used in the top eight best-selling games of 2002.

GameSpy.com interviews Peter Molyneux, creator of games such as Populous and Black & White, on the future of PC gaming. Not to be missed! "The temptation is to think that AI has to do with human minds, and it's not. It is everything from game balance and how tough the game is to what the story and narrative is..."

Plug-in features RAViX™ III vector renderer with SmartLayer™ Technology and textured output to Macromedia® Flash™ (SWF) file format

Boulder, CO – December 3, 2002 – Today Electric Rain, Inc.^® announced the release of Swift 3D MAX Version 2.0, the next generation plug-in allowing Discreet 3ds max™ and Autodesk^® Viz™ users to render scenes to the SWF file format as both vector and raster output. Swift 3D MAX enables 3D content developers working with 3ds max to create Web-optimized output in the SWF file format, as well as AI, EPS, SVG and Toon Boom’s PNT format.

Press Release

A team of scientists manages to store and retrieve information from a liquid crystal molecule. Read the article at News.com.

Read the article at 3DVF.com.

If that is your favorite question then you are in luck. The fine folks at 3D Festival have published the first in a series of articles where accomplished CG artists from different companies (such as Weta Digital, Framestore CFC and Blizzard) give suggestions and share their experiences on getting into the field.

CGArchitect has a comparative review of three camera tracking programs: Boujou, MatchMover Pro and SceneGenie: "If you have a big project with a very big budget, Boujou may be the tool for you."