Andrew Kramer announced his new plug-in Optical Flares. He is still very much in development but his brought to you a small taste of what to expect. Optical Flares is a next-generation plug-in for creating realistic lens flares and reinvent the look of digital lens flares beyond perfect geometric shapes to natural organic light.
This plug-in already has over 50,000 lines of code but you can see small feature.
Watch bigger Preview Video
it's not released yet but it will be sometime after October, possibly November. The price will be under $150.00 but you will know about that when he show you all of the amazing features!
Related links:
videocopilot.net
Twilight Render TM* is a fully integrated rendering solution for Google SketchUp**.
With Twilight, it's now possible to render photo-realistic images inside Google SketchUp! Render with biased and unbiased methods on an unlimited number of processors. And while Twilight is rendering in the background, continue working in and saving your SketchUp models.
Twilight offers physically accurate materials, photometric (IES) lights, image based (HDR) lighting, a long list of easy-to-choose optimized preset render settings, animation with SketchyPhysics and ProperAnimation, and more!
We welcome you to the Twilight website, and invite you to our forum and on-line shop.
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Related links:
twilightrender.com
HyperShot is the worlds first digital camera for 3D data. Whether you have prior 3D experience or not, it doesnʼt matter. Anybody can render them speechless … in minutes, not hours … with photographic images of their 3D data. To learn more about HyperShot
click here.
HyperShot ʼ10 takes photographic image creation to the next level. Completely redesigned for both Windows and Mac OS X, you can create the photograph of your 3D data even simpler and faster. Just when you thought rendering canʼt get any easier, HyperShot ʼ10 gives the ultimate user experience you may have been missing in the past.
Here is what some of our beta testers had to say:
“The interface in Hypershot ʻ10 has undergone one of the biggest changes I've ever seen a single software revision. It's more attractive, intuitive, and pleasurable to use”
- Phil Renato, Associate Professor, Chair Allesee Metals/Jewelry Design Program, Kendall College of Art and Design
“HyperShot ʼ10 just feels better”
- Carter Hickman, Carter Hickman Design
“It is much faster than before”
- Abed Sabeh
“HyperShot ʼ10 speeds up the overall workflow”
- Charles Gerstner, CGI specialist
“I think the most useful feature has to be the model tree”
- Peter Allen, Marketing Director, UC Santa Barbara.
Window User or Mac User
Related links:
bunkspeed.com
The virtual event doors will open at 12:00pm EDT (9:00am PDT) on September 30. Their exhibit hall will feature a number of Autodesk booths, providing valuable information about their industry offerings as well as information on education and Autodesk Subscription. Within these booths you can chat with representatives, view and download information, and complete our event survey for your chance to win an iPod touch. Their Auditorium will air webcasts throughout the day and will feature live text Q&A. Be prepared for an informative and inspirational day; look forward to seeing you there!
Prior To The Event
Test the computer that you will be using the day of the virtual event and make sure you have the minimum technical requirements to attend. Allow sufficient time prior to the event for this test. Test today at http://vshow.on24.com/view/vts/tys/tys.htm.
Minimum System Requirements
Operating System: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OSX, Ubuntu
Browser: Internet Explorer 6.0+, Firefox 2.0+, Safari 3.0+
Media Players: Flash 9.0.115, Windows Media Player 9.0+, Real Media Player 8.0+
Display Size: Optimized for 1024X768
Bandwidth: 300Kbps
*Apple and iPod are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.
HERE YOU GO
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vshow.on24.com
The new QUIDAM has come with many improvements, see for yourself:
- 100% Compatible with the new MacOS X "Snow Leopard", QUIDAM has also been tested successfully with Windows Seven.
- The 3D Paint Module has been enhanced, optimized and it supports now very high resolution textures!
- In the Studio version of QUIDAM, the visualization and the export of normals in LP mode have been corrected and improved.
- Smarter, the COLLADA export is now compatible with the Torque Pipeline.
- Maya and Lightwave plugins have been enhanced to handle the import of material parameters (color, bump, transparency)
- ... and many other corrections and improvements...!
A demo version of QUIDAM 3.1 is available immediately here.
Related links:
n-sided.com
The idea was kids who survived from the destruction of world war III and found the beauty and hope in the world
READ THE CONTENT HERE
Two weeks prior to the launch of the Radeon series 5800 graphics cards ATI dropped a bit of a bomb on the industry by introducing a new feature on their future generation graphics cards, starting with the Radeon series 5800.
READ THE CONTENT HERE
New Era of Animation Tools Provide High-quality, Real-time Cinematic Results in a Fraction of the Time
GOTHENBURG, Sweden - September 22, 2009 - Further expanding the artist-friendly workflow, Craft Animations(TM) today announced the availability of its Craft Director Studio(TM) for users of Autodesk(R) Softimage(R) software. Craft Director Studio utilize high-end artificial intelligence and autonomous control systems to drastically condense traditional animation processes. Combining these unprecedented animation tools with Softimage software's ease-of-use and image quality, users receive a time-saving and cost-effective animation solution capable of helping saving hours, days and weeks of laborious animation time.
"Craft Director Studio makes it much easier to add an extra dash of reality to CG animations," said Jason Brynford-Jones, technical product manager for Softimage at Autodesk. "The comprehensive toolset allows the artist to focus on the result rather than the technology behind it. Autodesk is pleased that Craft Animations has ported this powerful set of tools to Softimage, making the life of creative minds even easier."
By eliminating the prolonged tasks of key framing and scripting, Craft Director Studio provides artists more time for creative processes. Professional users including Digital Dimension, Toyota and Lockheed Martin have reported reduced production times by up to 90 percent. Additionally, they have gained the opportunity to create natural motion paths on the fly through autopilot functions, or a variety of input devices such as gamepads, joysticks, keyboards, Wacom boards and 6DOF controllers (such as Space Pilot(R)).
Allowing for precise control of object placement, as well as the instant gratification received by highly realistic interactive real-time animation, Craft Director Studio include:
- Craft Camera Tools provide users with real-time camera control for immediate, professional-quality cinematic results.
- Craft Vehicle Tools allow artists to create the most realistic and accurate simulations for in-motion vehicles.
- Craft Accessory Tools add the finishing touches to action-packed productions by simulating and animating props such as missiles, trailers, cog wheels and other moving parts.
- Craft Freeware Tools offers a free-to-use extended toolbox for Craft Director Studio allowing real-time recording, interaction and depth orientation.
"Autodesk Softimage animators, industrial designers and architects may now achieve the quality of real-time, real-world animation and filming techniques within a fully 3D environment," said Craft Animations' Co-founder and Head of R&D, Luigi Tramontana. "Craft Camera Tools put CG cinematics back into the hands of directors by shortening lead times between concept and reality. This alleviates the struggle between sub-standard camera behavior and 3D animation that has plagued the industry for years."
PRICING AND AVAILABILITY
Craft Director Studio for Autodesk Softimage software are available for purchase and are individually priced between 99 USD and 1,199 USD. For easy download and installation within Softimage, please visit the Craft Animations download site: Craft Director Studio Download
The Windows version of Craft Director Studio is compatible with Softimage 7.5 and 2010. Craft Director Studio is also available for Autodesk(R) 3ds Max(R), Maxon(R) Cinema 4D(R) and Autodesk(R) Maya(R) software, Mac and Windows platforms.
ABOUT CRAFT ANIMATIONS
About Craft Animations Founded in 2006 and based in Gothenburg, Sweden, Craft Animations(TM) AB is a leading developer of a new era of professional real-time 3D animation technology, Craft Director Studio(TM). Based on cutting-edge research in artificial intelligence and autonomous control systems, Craft Director Studio and it's add-ons simulate the complex physical behavior of cameras and 3D vehicles such as helicopters, cars, airplanes, boats and motorcyles. Utilized by high-profile companies world-wide such as Disney, Pixar, Digital Domain, Lockheed Martin, Ford and Toyota; Craft Director Studio streamline production, enhance realism and increase creativity for users in the visual effects, game development, forensic reconstruction and architectural design industries. For more information, please visit www.craftanimations.com
Related links:
craftanimations.com
A compilation reel of visual effects and animation work created by artists from around the world using Autodesk Media and Entertainment software.
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youtube.com
"A rising star in the digital art world. Thierry Doizon, also known as BARoNTiERRi to some, along with a rag-tag group of similar-minded artists such as David Levy (Vyle), are poised to have a major impact on the world of concept painting" Cg Channel said
Related links:
barontieri.com
cgsociety.org
cgchannel.com
thegnomonworkshop.com
My principle joy in life has two sides: sculpting and teaching sculpting. Sculpting has become such a large part of who I am and how I see the world that I could not define myself without mentioning it.
Read the interview with Ryan here
Related links:
thegnomonworkshop.com
Version .4 will not only model your buildings for you, but will also texture them
Here are a couple of example renders with the automatically applied textures:
New stuff in v.4:
-Several minor bug fixes
-Rewrote the algorithm for generating roof buildings, to fix some problems encountered with the old one.
-"Indent" option for windows now has spinner allowing user to control indent amount
-New Mat ID control allows user to specify up to 7 extra mat ID channels for variations of window textures
-New UV controls, allowing you to exclude doors and windows from gizmo randomization/normalization so that they preserve the texture coords that "fit" their shape
-Various speed improvements during certain stages of generation process (helping to offset the extra time it takes to generate the materials)
-New Material Generator! This system implemented into the normal UI allows users to generate randomized building textures on the fly.
How does the material generator work? Well....it's pretty simple. Here's what the UI looks like:
1: Here is where you can manage specific settings for the look of the windows. If it's a night scene and you're using lit windows, you can specify how much self-illumination the window shaders will have.
You can also specify what kind of reflections the base texture will have. You can turn reflections off, set them to default Raytrace, or choose Vraymap instead.
2) You can see a button here at the top that links to the texture pack I've provided, for easy access. Click that and your download will begin without having to fumble around a website looking for the link. The texture pack includes 44 maps specifically tailored for Building Generator. You don't have to use these textures though, the material generator supports all kinds of textures.
Before I get into the next options and parameters, let me outline basically how the whole thing works:
First, you select any folder(s) you want that contain the textures you'd like to use. Once you've done that, the material generator will search through those folders for image files and collect them for you to see. Once you see the textures you want, you can tell the material generator specifically where you want them to be applied on the building. This process can be done manually, or with "flags"...which are essentially keywords which match up textures to objects on the building. Each "part" of the building has one or more "flags" (keywords) that help the material generator match up textures with objects. Once you've set that up....you're ready to generate!
So, here's an outline of the specific parameters:
2: Here you'll see a box labelled "Texture file folder(s)" with an "Add" and "Rem" button beside it. This is where you tell the material generator to search for textures. By clicking "Add" you can choose folders to add to the list.
Once you've found your folders, click on the "Auto-add textures from the folders above!" button. All of the image files from those folders will be dumped into the next listbox for your choosing.
3: Here is where you'll find the specific texture files that were either dumped in here through the "Auto-add" process described above, or added with the "Add" button to the right of the listbox (ie, you can manually add texture files as well as have them found automatically).
The "Texture files" box is essentially a texture browser, allowing you to choose which ones you'd like to use.
Beside the "Texture files" box, on the right near the bottom of it, you'll see 3 buttons. Below the "Texture files" box you'll also see a drop down menu. The drop down menu controls which Material ID you are choosing textures for at the moment. In the image above you can see it's at "01-Wall", with ":0" to the right. This means that you're currently choosing textures for Mat ID 1 (the walls of the building) and so far there are 0 textures assigned to it.
The three buttons work as follows: "Assign selection to ID" will assign any selected texture files in the box on the left, to the Material ID selected in the dropdown menu.
The "Assign all by flag" button will go through ALL of the textures, and assign any textures that contain "flags" to objects that have those flags. So, for example...the "flags" for Mat ID #1 are "wall" "concrete" and "brick". This means that if any of the texture files listed in the box contain the words "wall" "concrete" or "brick", they'll be assigned as possible candidates for the corresponding ID. This is essentially the most useful feature, since you can setup a folder with a bunch of textures containing relevant "flags", and the material generator will automatically assign them to the right objects. The texture pack provided contains textures which all have proper "flags" in their names....so a person needs only to point the material generator to that folder, auto-add the textures inside to the "Texture Files" box, then click "Assign all by flag" and the texturing process is done!
Finally, the last button is "Un-assign all", which removes all texture assignments from material IDs. This basically allows you to clean the texture slate and start over with the assignment process.
4: This area of the UI is where you can do several things:
a) You can see which textures are assigned to which material IDs. By selecting a material ID from the dropdown, the listbox underneath will update with a list of applied textures. The "Rem" button below also allows you to manually un-assign textures from material IDs.
b) The listbox on the right allows you to see and change flags for specific Mat IDs. So lets say you want to texture your building with stone, and you have a whole bunch of textured labeled "stone" that you don't feel like manually assigning with the "Assign selected to ID" button. Well, you can just type in "stone" into the text box below, click "add"....and it will now be a flag for whatever Mat ID is currently selected in the dropdown. Once that's done, all you have to do is click "Assign all by flag" and all the stone textures would automatically be applied to the IDs with the "stone" flag.
It's also important to note that the material generator randomly grabs one of the assigned textures for an ID when texturing a building. So....the more textures you assign to a particular ID the more variety of textures you'll have in the generated buildings. This is especially critical for windows, hence the option for 7 extra window IDs in the Mat IDs rollout. The texture pack contains a variety of textures for each type of object.
The very last thing to note, is that now there's a new button under "Generate!", called "Generate Material!"...this allows you to generate just a material with whatever settings are currently in the material rollout. This is a convenient way to quickly get new materials for buildings without having to re-generate the buildings themselves.
It should be noted that when a material is generated it is put in the first slot of the material editor, but does not overwrite any materials that were in that slot before. So...if you need to get to the material that was in the first material editor slot after the material generator has already placed a building texture in there, just eyedrop the object that the old material was applied to and it will still be in tact.
Well, that's about it
I wanted to give a thorough explanation of the material generator, even though it only takes a few seconds to use it once you understand the overall procedure. The scene files pertaining to the building images images above took about 30-40 seconds to setup (draw a spline + load building generator + tell generator to generate along a path + point the material generator to the texture pack folder and auto-add by flag + then click "Generate"), 2 minutes to generate and another few minutes to light and render. Instant results!Enjoy!
Download Script HERE
And here's the texture pack he's bundling with it for use with the automatic texturing system
More same news:
>> Building Generator v.01 script for 3dsmax
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