The historical Science Museum of London will be hosting an exhibition about Pixar this (northern hemisphere) spring, from 1st April to 10th June, 2006. According to the museum website, visitors can see hundreds of artworks, models and digital paintings from Pixar studios and two audio visual experiences that are unique to the exhibition. You can find more information on the museum website and in this interview.

RenderNode reviews Endorphin 2.5: "... Natural Motion are doing a great job in bringing Endorphin to its full potential."

3dsMax 8 Service Pack 2 [autodesk.com] is now available. For details on this Service Pack, please read the readme.rtf [autodesk.com] file.

Read the article at Audioholics.com.

According to a post at Ephere's forums Ornatrix is "being maintained in form of bug fixing" and "Hairtrix should come out shortly."

Visit Wondertouch.com.

New images created with Matt Fairclough's upcoming Terragen 2 have been posted by Luc Bianco, Olivier Cousinou and Kees Veenenbos. Check 'em out!

Great news for those looking forward to polishing their 3D animation skills in a Spanish-speaking environment. Talented animator Daniel Martínez Lara (Pepeland.com) will be opening a new animation school in Barcelona in September. The school will focus on two course options: Modeling/3D Animation and Short Film Production. All courses will be taught in Spanish. Further details will be made available in the coming months.

AWF Tools is a collection of generic 3ds max macroscripts containing 11 macroscript tools, the highlights being SymBase, Morpher UberGUI(max8 only) and Modifier Tool. For descriptions, screenshots and files go to http://www.adamwalkerfilm.com/AWFtools.htm.   [ more... ]

The fine folks from 3D y Animación have posted an article on "Planet One", an upcoming animated feature being produced in Spain by Ilion Animation Studios. According to the article, "Planet One" is a large-scale project and the platform of choice for the production of the film is 3DS Max. Ilion are still looking for talented artists, so those interested in joining and spending some time in Madrid should take a look at their job listing page. (Note: 3DA article is in Spanish only)

New additions to the 3D Artists gallery. Check 'em out!

Crowd IT is a free crowd choreography tool for 3ds Max which allows the user to quickly and effectively manage and render crowd scenes. The website also has a few example animations and a video tutorial.
Update: due to the amount of traffic over the past few days, the site has been moved to here: http://www.ifsua.de/crowdit/.   [ more... ]

BrightSide has developed HDR technology that enhances the dynamic range of conventional LCD, LCOS and DLP projection systems. The HDR projection enhancement is easily implemented with minimal changes to existing designs and it provides the capability to achieve ANSI checkerboard contrast ratios in excess of 50,000:1.   [ more... ]

Darkling Simulations are developing Tactile Ink, a new software that merges painting, procedural textures, and real-time shading. Tactile Ink features 16-bit normal and texture map output, seamless procedural tiling and real-time shaded texture painting. Visit Darkling Simulations for more.

Spiral Graphics have released Genetica 2.5, the latest version of their node-based seamless texture editor. New features include normal map generation, new noise types and numerous speed and memory optimizations.

In this DVD, Paul Neale looks at two different ways to facial rigging, covering topics such as eye rigs, setting up a facial UI, new rigging features in Max 7 & 8, etc. Visit the CG Academy for more.

Next engine's Desktop 3D Scanner is a compact 3D capture system for modeling and measuring physical objects. Scanner is about size of a cereal box, connects to USB port and costs about $2500. See website for more details.

Check out this great short by French Supinfocom Valenciennes students François Roisin, Jules Janaud and Raphaël Martinez-Bachel. Urban images delineated with basic shapes and flickering lights populate the abstract landscapes of this experimental short film. The soundtrack adds a lot of texture to the images, too. "90 Degrees" was created using 3DS Max, RealFlow and After Effects. Watch the film and visit the official website for more.

Tension is a modifier that compares the current deformation of a mesh with a reference pose, and generates relative compression and expansion data of the edges in the mesh. Also does edge based concavity/convexity. Read on for more.   [ more... ]