A Lightscape interface for Max, courtesy of Pavel Roder.

Rendernode magazine has posted Max 6 and Luxology's Modo videos from IBC.

Newplugins.com has posted new sample movies showing off the capabilities of their upcoming Vehicle Simulator 1.5 plugin for Max.

New images at 3D Artists gallery.

Visit the official Matrix site to download a new trailer for the film.

CGNetworks has posted an interview with concept artist Feng Zhu about his work, and his new set of Gnomon DVDs. Read the whole article here.

Bay Raitt comments on the modeling and facial animation techniques used for Gollum.

Read the article at Digit Magazine.

Discreet has announced that after the release of 3ds max 6, version 2.x customers will not be able to upgrade but will need to purchase a full seat of 3ds max (the cost of the accumulated upgrades would amount to almost the same price). Users of Max 2.x who'd like to use another version of Max in the future may want to take advantage of the offer to upgrade from 2.x to 5.x with subscription, which expires when 3ds max 6 starts shipping (October).

Here are the locations and dates for the European leg of the "Evolve Tour".

News from Reyes-Infográfica: the Reyes family of plugins has been recompiled for the latest version of Max.

Creative-3D reviews FinalRender Stage-1: "...a well-designed, powerful piece of software that has something to offer just about any user of 3ds max who renders."

Anthony Gibbs interviews Liam Kemp, creator of "This Wonderful Life" - an animated short produced with Max and screened at SIGGRAPH 2003.

Read the PR at Digitalproducer.com.

3D wizard Neil Blevins has updated the gallery at his website with many new images. Check 'em out!

RenderNode has just published an article on their coverage of IBC 2003, held in Amsterdam. They will soon be posting videos on upcoming software releases, including 3ds max 6 and its new features. Check it out!

Discreet announced a worldwide “Evolve Tour” to showcase 3ds max 6 software. Each city will have industry-specific sessions dedicated to professionals in games, film, and design visualization. 3ds max 6 game development demonstrations will also illustrate Criterion Software’s RenderWare game middleware workflow as part of a strategic partnership announced by Discreet and NxN early this year. Check out the dates and locations for the North American leg of the tour at Discreet.com.

A look at the movie, and the artist behind the movie: MU interviews Tomek Baginski on "The Cathedral".

From a Ph. D. in Economics to 3D mechanized mosquitoes: RenderNode interviews talented Russian artist Oleg Karassev.

ArtFutura announces its next edition from October 9-12 in six cities of Spain. Festival activities include panels and special presentations, screenings, workshops and exhibitions that will be taking place simultaneously on five museums and cultural centres. Artists from various disciplines get together for four days to speculate about the present and future relationship between creation and technology. Invited speakers this year include CG studio ESC (Matrix Reloaded) and U.S. artist Sam Chen (Eternal Gaze). Visit ArtFutura.org for more (English|Spanish).

Dosch Design has released the newest title in its Dosch 3D line. The Dosch 3D: Hires Cars collection contains 15 detailed, high-resolution 3D models of cars.   [ more... ]

The creators of the animated short "Respire" are back with an amazing new videoclip! Based on Thomas Fersen's "Deux Pieds" song, this new video was created by a small team of animators (3 people working for less than 1 month, and Jérôme Combe for 2 months) using Max, CartoonReyes and Combustion. To download the movie, check out the following thread at CGTalk.com and look for links to mirror sites to download from (there are currently two mirror sites available). Enjoy!

"Capacities continue to double each year, while access times are improving at 10 percent per year. So, we have a vastly larger storage pool, with a relatively narrow pipeline into it." Read the article at ACMQueue.org.

CNN.com has the article.

Naturalmotion's Endorphin is a very interesting advance in the procedural generation of motion data. Promoted as the "first Virtual Motion Capture Studio", Endorphin uses technology based on Oxford University's research on the control of human and animal body motions.   [ more... ]

Read the PR at Digitalproducer.com.

According to an article published in the latest issue of CGW, Industrial Light and Magic has recently integrated Max along with Splutterfish's Brazil renderer into its matte painting division's pipeline. It looks like we're going to see a lot more effects created with Max in the movies!

from Aug 25: Interim FIX available for 3ds max and Autodesk VIZ (.max) file corruption caused by recent Microsoft Windows Updates.

Previously, access to the patch required a phonecall and registration with Microsoft. Microsoft is now providing temporary direct access to the patch via the URL's in the discreet faq

The Los Angeles Chapter of ACM SIGGRAPH will be screening “The Electronic Theater 2003”, first screened at the SIGGRAPH 2003 Conference. This one-night-only screening will take place on Tuesday, September 16. Detailed information (includes where to find that precious parking space) available at www.la.siggraph.org.

As we reported earlier, BioGraphic Technologies is developing AI.implant for Animation, a software that enables 3ds max users to create and simulate a wide variety of intelligent and autonomous animated characters: from flocks of birds and schools of fish to fully interactive battle scenes involving hundreds of soldiers. AI.implant for Animation can be used for gross motion control or close-up animation, where it can drive character-to-character interactions. The Max flavor of AI.implant for Animation is tightly integrated with 3ds max and offers full support for MaxScript. The software is currently in beta testing: for more information check out the features and sample animations pages at AI-Implant.com or request an evaluation version.

Some images of the new dynamic raycaster coming in VRay 1.1. According to a post by Vladimir Koylazov the original idea was to "render large scenes with many millions of polygons, cached to disk or generated on the fly."

Read the whole PR at Digitalproducer.com. More information at Discreet's website and at FXGuide.com.

Professor Mark Trinklein has posted online a video production course which offers useful information on subjects such as editing, camera lens, lighting, etc.

In what almost seems to be a commentary on the convergence of games and films, Peter Molyneux is developing the first complete movie-making game experience. "The Movies" is the latest in a series of innovative game titles conceived by Mr. Molyneux, which is once again bound to challenge game-genre categorizations. This one though, while breaking the mold, takes advantage of established movie-genre definitions and their set of rules to deliver as one of gameplay's results something unexpected: a movie.   [ more... ]

3D artist Johannes Schlörb has kindly posted a great collection of high resolution sky renders created with Sitni Sati's DreamScape 2.0 for use as spherical environments in your renders. Not only that, he's added instructions on how to better integrate them with your scenes.

RenderNode (theologically) reviews Digimation GroundCrew: "...I find GroundCrew to be a real revelation (...) We can only pray for other plug-ins to be so friendly."

Discreet's Combustion 3 adds non-linear editing capabilities (implemented as an operator), DV capture and output and Javascript expressions, among other features. Read the article at VFXPro.

Vue 4 Professional provides features such as object/scene export to major 3D applications, a full featured plant editor with animation support for simulating wind effects, camera and light synchronization with 3D applications, full support of G-Buffer channels, RLA and RPF file format support, OpenGL-based pre-rendering engine for quick previewing, etc. Vue 4 Professional will be available soon for a special introductory price of $499. More information and a movie trailer of Vue 4 Professional effects is available at http://www.e-onsoftware.com.

A sign of things to come? Read the whole PR at Digitalproducer.com.

Andy Murdock, the artist behind the animated short "Lots of Robots", has posted his latest demo reel online. Check it out!

RenderNode reviews VRay: "...I feel inclined to recommend it (...) for it's speed and quality and that fact that it requires surprisingly little hardware to perform as well as it does."
RenderNode reviews SpeedTreeMAX 2: "...a really good and fast plugin, especially when it comes to creating whole forests. Also it's very good for creating hi-poly trees."

The developers of the upcoming Character Animation Toolkit (CAT) 3ds max plugin have been nominated for an Emmy award for their work on a show for Animal Planet, “The Most Extreme – Jumpers”. Read the whole PR (.pdf file) at Charanitech.com; Discreet also has a PR on the subject.

Jon Stuart has just completed his new short film, "Egor and the Bird!", created in Max and rendered in Brazil. View at www.jonatronix.u-net.com. Enjoy.

3D Actual is a new magazine that covers all aspects of CG animation for the Spanish-speaking community. This publication intends to provide its readers with in-depth articles written by professionals working in the field of computer graphics.   [ more... ]

Two great CG sites, CGNetworks and 3DVF, are entering a content partnership. According to the agreement CGNetworks content will be translated by 3DVF for the French-speaking CG community. 3DVF will also assist CGNetworks in promoting its EXPOSÉ book and future Ballistic Publishing book titles. To our friends at CGNetworks and 3DVF, our best wishes as always from MU!

An article that surveys how Linux has evolved in the Hollywood community of special effects and animation artists.

Two new impressive images by Italian artist Alessandro Baldasseroni, check 'em out!

RenderNode reviews Silo: "...a really solid tool."

Di-O-Matic just released a new version of Cluster-O-Matic. A new limited-trial version is available as well as the free upgrade for existing customers: www.di-o-matic.com/download.

Yes, it's 3DLuVr's 5th year anniversary! Congrats and thanks to 3DLuVr's webmasters, contributors and especially to Pedja Ljubomirovic, who has generously given so much of his time and energy in order to help CG artists and Art itself flourish. Happy Birthday 3DLuVr!!!

Michael Spaw has released a plugin that allows you to comp any two maps together like you would in Photoshop (!!!) with modes for Screen, Multiply, Hard Light, Color, Saturation, Add, etc. It's available from his site at: www.morphographic.com. Also check out the Composite Mode page for some handy formulas relating to what those layer modes are actually doing.

In this case "Software Dominance" refers to RenderMan and its PRMan implementation, of course. Pixar fights, but as we all know there are good contenders in the arena. Read the article at TRB.com.

Games and films are converging, not only in narrative, looks and themes, but also in production methods and costs. Budgets for game development are resembling more and more those of filmmaking and the introduction of next generation consoles has the potential of raising those costs even more. Peter Molyneux (of Populous, Dungeon Keeper and Black & White fame) is warning about the impact this may have on originality and innovation and is calling for the British government to support small game development companies with financial aid (as is currently done with British filmmakers) so that they can grow and become a significant revenue source. To see what changes may lie ahead read the article at BBC.co.uk and also take a look at Mr. Molyneux's comments on the issue.

Sitni Sati's Afterburn updated to v3.1. The new version includes Particle Flow support added via a PFlow-ABurn operator. Registered users may download the update from Afterworks.com.

VRay renderer updated to v1.09.03j. Changes include fixing MaxScript parameters of the VRay material and a scene converter that transforms Standard and FinalRender Stage-1 materials into VRay materials. Update available from VRayrender.com.