* * * Happy Holidays and a wonderful new year from the team at Max Underground! * * *

According to researchers at Stanford University, nanotechnology could help laptop batteries last for up to 20hs of continuous use before needing a recharge. And this is just the beginning. Read the news at Stanford.edu.

Brazilian website Três D1 are kindly hosting a repository with a growing number of freely downloadable 3D objects for 3DS Max. The descriptions are in Portuguese, so you may need a dictionary to find what you're looking for through the search engine.

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." Smaug will once again spread its wings over Middle Earth: according to a recent announcement, not one, but two films will be co-produced by Peter Jackson based on J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit". Pre-production is expected to start soon. Visit the official Movie Blog for more.

Read the news at Technology Review.

A humorous animated short on creationism and evolution, which seems to have been intended as a reflection on discourse rather than as a comparison between religion and the scientific method. The result is quite interesting. Check out the short at Duelity.net.

Another animated short with a subject related to religion: "Même les pigeons vont au paradis", directed by Samuel Tourneux, produced at Paris-based BUF Compagnie.

MadCar is a free plugin by Andrey Kozlov designed for creating 4-wheel vehicle animations in Max. Madcar supports key-driven animation and real-time driving. Sample videos available.

Pixila is a new site specifically developed to provide professional portfolio services to artists and agencies, all 100% free. Pixila offers highly personalized member galleries, unlimited album and image uploads, specialized portfolio management, professional gallery presentation, peer to peer tools, etc. Visit Pixila.com.   [ more... ]

No press release issued yet, but there is some information on NVidia's website. Interesting news, especially considering NVidia was already dedicating resources to developing Gelato.

IBM announced developments that could lead to CPUs capable of running up to 100 times faster. Find out more at Bit-Tech.net and Ars Technica.

Once again, the word "upgrade" is put to the test. The difference in performance according to Exo's benchmark is surprising, to say the least. Check out the results at the Exo Performance Network blog.

Antics Technologies have released version 3 of their pre-visualization software. New features include the ability to import .3ds and .fbx models, improved .bvh format support, enhanced camera controls and more. Antics v3 BasePack, an entry level version of the software, is now being offered for free. For those interested in filmmaking it's certainly worth a look. Sample videos, tutorials and complete list of features available at Antics.com.

Lumonix has released version 2 of their ShaderFX plugin, adding many new materials, shader nodes and workflow improvements for improved productivity. The free upgrade also adds more support for 3rd party engines. Read on for the full press release.   [ more... ]

Storage capacities for SSDs to grow significantly, prices expected to drop. Read the news at Digital Arts.

The Flash player now includes H.264 video codec support. Visit Adobe.com for more.

A thorough tutorial on normal maps by Waniek Rafal with some interesting tips. Available in English, French and Polish.

Google Apps soon to work offline on regular PCs via Google Gears. Read the details at TechCrunch.com.

This year's 3December event organized by Autodesk has kicked off with new tutorials being uploaded to the Area throughout the week, a new Fake or Foto, Interviews and more. A Mudbox contest has also been announced where you can get the software for free for two months and have a chance to win an HP computer or NVidia graphics cards. Live events will be held in the US and Canada, registration is required for attending.