Check out this impressive virtual TV presenter created by Alex Paiva, Julio Harada, Luiz Amaral, Marcio Bukowski and Thiago Pires from Brazil using Max 6. It's quite interesting to see how much of a culture shows through in a 3D render (and in art in general, of course). Always refreshing to see 3D art coming from Brazil. Read on for more and also follow the thread at CGTalk.com.   [ more... ]

Frantic Films has released some images and movies of its Flood fluid dynamics software for 3ds max (used in the movie Scooby Doo 2 for the Tar monster character). One of the videos shows Particle Flow integration. There is also a sign up email for possible beta testing when it's ready to go. Check it out!

"Fifteen months after its start, the Swedish forum for 3ds max is now 1000 members strong. What started as a simple FAQ-site has become a well frequented forum for 3ds max users. Apart from freezing, listening to Abba, driving boxy Volvo cars, eating meatballs, and mostly being blonde, one thousand Swedes who share the same passion for 3ds max have now found a place to hang out." Visit www.Animate.se.

Allan McKay’s Afterburn Masters series is now available as a boxed set. This series of DVDs goes into Afterburn in great depth and is a great resource for those learning this plugin or who simply want to improve their skills.

Good news for those who have been waiting for the release of RebelThink's shaders. RebelThink has announced that their Natural:shaders one.zero collection is finally available.   [ more... ]

David Avgikos, co-founder and current President of Digimation has been charged in a criminal indictment issued by the U.S. Department of Justice On 16th July, 2004. The indictment, filed in Louisiana, charges that Avgikos accessed without authorization the computer records of Turbo Squid, Inc. at the Whitney National Bank for the purpose of commercial advantage and private financial gain in May 2002.   [ more... ]

The latest version of Massive Software's crowd behavioral animation system provides the ability to create and collaborate on film-quality facial and full-body animation in the same way one might produce animation on the fly when playing a video game. In a LAN game-like scenario, animators can control hero or secondary digital extras and interact with each other across a network to create complex and intricate choreography, such as battle and chase scenes. Massive 2.0 is available for $18,000. Additional licenses can be leased as needed for $2,000 per license per month including support. Read the whole PR at CGW.com.

Discreet has posted a 5 part 3ds max tips and tricks video which was originally done live at GDC by discreets Kelcey Privett. Total video length is 1 hour.   [ more... ]

Nicktoons, Frederator Studios and Animation Magazine have joined forces to create The Nicktoons Film Festival. Deadline for submissions is September 10, 2004 and they are accepting 3D animated shorts. Read on for more.   [ more... ]

Industrial Light & Magic announced an update to OpenEXR, its open source extended dynamic range image file format. In a continuing effort to promote an open source industry standard for an extended dynamic range file format, ILM put considerable effort into this production-ready update. New features include: support for tiled images, Pxr24 compressor contributed by Pixar Animation Studios, support of high dynamic range YCA (luminance/chroma/alpha) images with subsampled chroma channels, etc. Visit ILM.com for more.

Autodesk Says It's Losing $367M in Potential Revenues Each Year Because of India Software Piracy

BANGALORE, India (AP) -- American design software developer Autodesk Inc. said Tuesday it is losing $367 million in potential revenues each year because of software piracy in India.
"For every two companies that buy our software here, there are eight who steal," said Andre Pravaz, vice president of Autodesk's Asia-Pacific operations.
Read more

Next Limit has posted a few animations showing some of the features from the upcoming version of RealFlow. Check 'em out!

VOCMAG has posted a great interview with renowned Spanish artist Juan Siquier. (French)

A new JSR-184 Exporter (Basic Version) will be a feature in Discreet’s 3ds max 7 software. The software makes 3D creation easy for cell phone application developers. An advanced version will ship in October. Read the whole PR at Discreet.com.

One more step towards tapeless recording. Digit Magazine has the article.

Softimage announced price cuts for the XSI family of 3D programs. XSI Foundation, the entry level version of XSI is now priced at $495 (the same price that a student/academic version of XSI Advanced used to have not long ago). As much as price reductions sound like great news in the short term, one cannot help but wonder if the descending prices of 3D programs are enough for funding active research that can fuel their continuous development. We saw the first hints of this in early 2002, when Alias (then Alias|Wavefront) reduced Maya Complete's price from $7,500 to $1,999, a move which affected all the major players in the 3D animation software market. We'll have to wait and see how the other 3D software makers react, it seems likely that they will have to respond in one way or another.

Frantic Films Software announced the official release of Deadline 2004. Deadline 2004 is Frantic Films production proven, modern, cost-effective render queue solution for Windows.   [ more... ]

Cebas announced the release of ThinkingParticles 2 and Pyrocluster 3. ThinkingParticles 2 includes features such as an enhanced UI, multiple dynamics engines, texture based breaking and shattering, etc. Pyrocluster 3 offers an enhanced and optimized workflow, an optimized 3D caching system to avoid redundant volume sampling, etc.

BusyRay is a physically based plug-in renderer for 3ds Max. Version 1.0 has just been released and is distributed for free. For downloads and more info visit www.busyray.com.   [ more... ]

Luxology announced the upcoming release of Modo. The new modeling software offers a real-time subdivision surface modeling engine with a customizable interface and includes hundreds of production-oriented tools. Modo will be available in early September for Windows and Mac OS X at an introductory price of $695.

Alliance Aims to Develop Brazil Rendering System Into Render-Tech Leader

San Francisco, CA, August 10, 2004 – SplutterFish, LLC, maker of the award-winning 3D rendering suite, Brazil r/s^™, today announced that it has formed a strategic partnership with The Orphanage, Inc, a leading San Francisco and Hollywood-based feature visual effects and animation company.   The partnership aims to further strengthen the efficiency of Brazil r/s as a large scale production tool in the most demanding pipelines, and to expand Brazil r/s' compatibility with a variety of 3D software packages, including Maya^® software from Alias^®.

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Brazil r/s to Empower Rhino With Advanced Image Quality, Control, and Rendering Speed

LOS ANGELES (August 10, 2004) – At the Siggraph 2004 convention, SplutterFish, LLC, a leading high-end 3D rendering software solutions provider today announced it has entered into a strategic licensing agreement with Robert McNeel & Associates, developers and publishers of software tools for product and industrial designers to integrate SplutterFish’s award-winning Brazil Rendering System^™ (Brazil r/s) 2.0 rendering engine into McNeel’s popular Rhinoceros^® (Rhino) design and modeling solution.  Brazil r/s’ industry-proven reputation in the broadcast and postproduction content creation environments is well known.  This agreement will leverage the expertise of two software leaders to extend the value of the powerful rendering solution to customers in design areas including industrial, marine, jewelry design, graphics, multimedia and CAD/CAM, broadening its operating system and platform reach.

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Robust New Server Offers Performance and Flexibility for Digital Content Creation

SIGGRAPH―LOS ANGELES, CA—AUGUST 10, 2004— NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA), the worldwide leader in visual processing solutions, in conjunction with BOXX Technologies, a leading developer of award-winning digital content creation systems, today introduced the first server-based solution for GPU-accelerated final-frame rendering with Gelato^™ graphics rendering software.

Press Release

According to a press release issued by Alias, Kaydara Motionbuilder and the FBX format will continue to support all current industry platforms and will be sold as standalone products under the Alias name. Read the whole PR.

More good news for Max users looking for intermediate/advanced level training. Chris Thomas has founded a new company dedicated to producing quality training material for 3ds max users. The CG Academy has a team of five instructors who are working on a series of DVDs that tackle each their own area of expertise. Current instructors are Chris Thomas (Particle Flow & Rendering/Lighting), Allan McKay (Film FX), Paule Neale (Rigging), Laszlo Sebo (Maxscript and SDK) and Damian Johnston (Character Animation). Visit CG-Academy.net for more.

Oleg Bayborodin, the main developer behind Particle Flow, will be showing a new Max plugin titled Particle Flow Tools: Box 1 during SIGGRAPH. Particle Flow Tools is a set of operators and other software tools to extend and improve Particle Flow capabilities.   [ more... ]

Leonard Teo interviews Michael Girard and Dan Prochazka on Discreet's recent acquisition of Unreal Pictures.

According to a recent post at Discreet's webboard by the Discreet Product Manager, plugins running in Max 6 will not need to be recompiled to work with release 7 (!).

Fusion 5 gains full 3D environment capabilities and OpenGL acceleration. Read the whole PR at Eyeonline.com.

Deconstructing the Elements with 3ds max 6 is a guide for those with Max experience who want to get more out of the base package. The book features tutorials on how to create realistic earth, air, fire and water effects with 3ds max. Definitely worth a look.   [ more... ]

As TV commercials readily advertise, there is more than one way to treat incipient baldness. The same applies to 3D objects. As previously reported, HairFX developers have been working hard on improving Shag:Hair and seem to have come up with a very effective cure. HairFX includes features such as expanded dynamics that interact with physics systems including Reactor 2 and ClothFX, motion blurring of animated hair through velocity channels, a new anti-aliasing engine, a hair material that allows for realistic anisotropic highlights and support for bucket-based rendering systems, among others. HairFX is available for 3ds max 5 and 6, and for a limited time it's being offered at $495 (normal price is $595). Visit Turbo Squid for more.

Brandon Davis, Adam Watkins and John Chalfants of Uncharted Territory and Dreamscape Imagery ,Inc. are featured in this in-depth roundtable discussion about their work with Brazil r/s and 3ds max on the recently released Twentieth Century Fox film, The Day After Tomorrow, and Uncharted's current production, Kingdom in Twilight.

Turbo Squid has announced the release of Mankua's advanced texture mapping plug-in Texture Layers 2 for 3ds max 4, 5 and 6.   [ more... ]

Tyler Reed reviews DreamScape 2.1 for 3DLuvr.com: "... user friendly, smooth, and best of all it achieves great results."

InsideCG has an interview with talented Israeli artist Meny Hilsenrad.

The latest version of Endorphin includes features such as the ability to import camera data and live action footage into the software, a 110% speed gain and improved biomechanics. Endorphin 1.6 will be available in September 2004 at a SRP of $12,795.

Character Animation Technologies have posted some information regarding a new muscle deformation system for Max that will be previewed at this year's SIGGRAPH. CATMuscle allows CG artists to achieve realistic movement, especially on shoulders and other difficult areas of physiology, with a minimum of setup. The muscle systems created with the application can be imported directly into a game engine. CATMuscle reduces the amount of envelope editing required, significantly lowering skin up times. CAT's website also hints at an upcoming version of Character Animation Toolkit.

Latest Version of Acclaimed 3D Modeling, Animation and Rendering Software Will Equip Customers to Meet the Evolving and Complex Production Demands of Growing Game Development, Character Animation, Film & Television Visual Effects, and Design Industries

MONTREAL, Aug. 2 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Discreet, a division of Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK) and a leader in digital content creation, management, and distribution tools, today announced 3ds max(R) 7 -- the newest version of its acclaimed 3D modeling, animation, and rendering software. Discreet's 3ds max 7 software will be shown for the first time publicly at the international SIGGRAPH Exhibition in Los Angeles, CA (August 10th - 12th). With over 280,000 registered users worldwide, and a 19% increase in sales revenues in the last year, 3ds max is clearly the most popular professional 3D modeling and animation application available today.   [ more... ]

Here is the latest roundup of what has been updated or released recently:

BusyRay is a new freeware renderer for 3ds max 5 and 6
nPower Software have released Power CatiaToMax for direct import of CATIA 4 files
Next Limit released an update for RealFlow
David Gohara updated his sciAnaComp plugin, making all Photoshop blending modes available in a max material
3D Aliens released another update for glu3D
Chaos Group unveiled a stand-alone version of their V-Ray renderer with support for max and Maya