I do can share some works I tried
but is not that good anywhere, well I didn't get into any design course before just base on tutorial on the web and figure it out myself!






Wanna do space art next if I got the time!

This post has been edited by snake1983: Aug 5 2008, 04:29 PM

great work snake
nice colors

work done by photoshop?

yeah Purely Photoshop!

George Lucas Meets the Press For Animated 'Clone Wars'










The mere attendance of George Lucas at a Monday morning press event for Star Wars: The Clone Wars — the new CGI-animated feature film opening August 15th — was viewed by the many of the reporters in attendance with as much interest as in the film itself.

After all, it’s been more than thirty years since Lucas released his first Star Wars film. In that time his complex relationship with the sweeping space epic he created has taken many forms: he produced all six films, wrote their stories, and directed four of them, including the 1977 original and the prequel trilogy of 1999’s The Phantom Menace and its follow-ups, 2002’s Attack of the Clones and 2005’s Revenge of the Sith. And although Star Wars has been undeniably profitable for Lucas, more than a few men would probably choose being digested by a Sarlacc to spending three full decades of their life steering a story — and a cottage industry — between the rocky shoals of creative innovation and fanboy appeasement.

But Lucas continues to keep a firm grip on his franchise, despite Star Wars: The Clone Wars being the first Star Wars film not directed by Lucas to appear on the silver screen since 1983. During Monday's press conference, asked what kind of entertainment industry exists in the Star Wars universe, the silver-haired filmmaker confidently replied, “You won’t see the entertainment industry until we get to the live-action TV show, several years down the road.”

That question, like the majority of reporter's questions in the brief thirty-minute press conference, was directed at Lucas, who appeared relaxed and expressive. Seated next to director Dave Filoni and producer Catherine Winder, Lucas held forth on topics ranging from the art of animation to the realities of television production. Explained Lucas: “I’m trying to take Star Wars — which is a $50 million an hour adventure — and do it for two million for television, without a noticeable gap in quality, and that’s a real challenge.”

A feature film wasn't a part of the original Clone Wars plan, but sprang from Lucas’ satisfaction with how his team met the production challenge. The film bridges the gap story-wise in the Star Wars universe between "Episode 2" Clones and "Episode 3" Sith and serves as an introduction to the upcoming animated Clone Wars television series that will air on Cartoon Network beginning this fall.

“We ended up doing the [animated] TV series, the first few shots came back, and I looked at it on the big screen, and it came back so much better than I had ever planned," recalled Lucas. "I said, ‘We should do this is a feature. This deserves to be on the big screen.’ And it seemed like a good way to introduce, Asoka, Anakin [Skywalker’s] apprentice, who plays a big part in the TV series.”

Although Lucas occasionally discussed the appeals of the story and the scope of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, not surprisingly it was this focus on the technical challenges and how it shapes the creative experience to which Lucas returned again and again.

Speaking at length about the film's non-photorealistic animated style, the filmmaker explained, "photorealistic is what movies are. Animation is an art"

"And to be philosophical about it, you either like photorealistic art, that’s something you want to hang in the Museum of Modern Art, or you like something that actually tries to find the truth behind the realism through design and exaggeration," he continued. "Animation is an art that’s all about design, that’s all about style. Movies are photorealistic — all my movies have been photorealistic, even when they’ve had animation, but animation is very different. And what we tried to do with this is not make animation that looks photorealistic — which is what 3-D animation always seems to be striving for, to look more like reality — but make 3-D animation that takes animation in new direction.

Director Dave Filoni expanded on that idea.

"I came from a 2-D animated background, where we use design and shape and color all the time," he explained. "I wanted to apply that thinking to 3-D features, and George did, too. We talked a lot about sculpting with light and shadow. And I thought by having artists hand paint textures over the [computer animated] characters, it would keep the spontaneity, a little bit of 'painter-liness', the experience that you can get where something isn’t quite perfect but that improves the emotional reaction. And it kind of came together with this new technology we’re using.”

“Art is a technological medium,” Lucas mused. “That’s all art is. Your artistic choices are dictated by the amount of resources allocated to you. If you’re a pharaoh, you can build pyramids. If you’re a shaman, you have some colored chalk and a wall.”

Although he didn’t extend the analogy, it wasn’t hard to understand after walking the grounds at Big Rock Ranch, the home for Lucas’s animation division: George Lucas wants to be both pharaoh and shaman with his art, the builder of the pyramids that last, and the shaper of dreams that inspire. It is how these twin poles of his aspiration conflict and mesh that continue to make Lucas a compelling figure, as much a creation of his own mythology as Yoda or Darth Vader.

To the extent Lucas is aware of his place and stature within that mythos, he uses it as he seems to use much of what he has — pragmatically.

“Most animated features cast big voice actors because it helps build publicity for the film,” Lucas said. “The actors aren’t paid nearly as much for their voice work, as they are to show up and talk to the press, to lure people’s attention to the film. And as much as I love you guys, I don’t think I need to bring Angelina Jolie here to have you turn up for this. I think you guys will come and if you love it, you’ll let me know. But I don’t think I need a big star to have turn out.”

---

Added on August 10, 2008, 4:17 pmAutodesk Mudbox 2009













Designed by professional artists in the film, games, and design industries, Autodesk® Mudbox™ digital sculpting and texture painting software gives 3D modelers and texture artists the freedom to create without worrying about the technical details.

Autodesk Mudbox 2009 combines a highly intuitive user interface with a powerful creative toolset for creating ultra-realistic high-poly 3D models. Breaking the mold of traditional 3D modeling applications, Mudbox 2009 provides an organic brush-based 3D modeling experience that ignites the creative process.

Features
Autodesk® Mudbox™ software is an advanced, high-resolution, brush-based 3D modeling software built on a unique sculpting paradigm. This production-proven digital modeler has been designed from the ground up to address the needs of professional modelers working in the film, game development, design, and visualization industries.

User Interface
Cameras
Display
Sculpt Layers
Advanced Digital Sculpting
3D Brushes
Workflow
Texture Painting and Assignment
Texture Baking
General Workflow
Connectivity and Integration

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User Interface
Become productive in hours, rather than weeks with the intuitive Mudbox user interface.

For traditional artists with no previous 3D experience, tools that closely mimic the behavior of their real-world counterparts are quickly understood and easily adopted.
Work with tools such as brushes, stamps, and stencils to quickly sculpt and create lifelike textures.
Use the Layer editor to organize your work.
Maximize your workspace by hiding UI elements and using standard hotkeys to manipulate the camera.

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Cameras
Mudbox features innovative, accelerated camera manipulation, for excellent interactive performance with even the densest meshes.

Use multiple real-time cameras within a scene, including true perspective and orthographic cameras.
Bookmark your camera positions.
Model using reference images: each camera has its own image plane.
Use Smart Focus to position the camera based on the cursor position and brush size.
Manipulate your camera with trackball-style controls.
Use the same keyboard shortcuts for Mudbox cameras as those that are used for cameras in Autodesk® Maya® software.

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Display
Work interactively in an environment in which high-res 3D models retain their subtlety, realism, and detail.

Apply one or more image maps to any object, independent of the other objects in the scene.
Use smooth shading mode to get a display more representative of the limit surface.
Interactively view multiple texture channels (including bump and reflection) at the same time.
Interactively view multiple maps and multiple materials in the scene.
Work in real time with models that properly display advanced lighting (including HDRI-based lighting) and shadows.
Incorporate advanced display options into your presentation, including ambient occlusion, depth of field, and tone mapping.
Back to the top


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Sculpt Layers
Store different detail passes, design directions, libraries of morph targets, and more on multiple layers.

Mirror or flip the detail stored in one or more layers.
Edit nondestructively: Mudbox delivers paintable masks.
Quickly duplicate, merge, flatten, group, and reorder layers.
Precisely blend layers using interactive multiplier sliders and layer masks.
Use layers to store libraries of morph targets.

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Advanced Digital Sculpting
High-quality brushes, stencils, and curves let you quickly “sculpt” your geometry into the 3D model you envision.


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3D Brushes

Use intelligently designed default brushes or quickly tailor them for custom behavior and performance.
Choose from a number of base brush types, including
Sculpt brush—enables you to create complex forms with great control
Flatten brush—enables you to quickly create planes and wipe away detail
Wax brush—enables you to easily fill in areas
Accurately shape your brush tips with falloff curves and stamps. A sharp falloff curve will cut an accurate, sharp stroke into the geometry with no soft stroke profiles.

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Workflow

Sculpt both sides of topologically symmetrical models simultaneously—even when they are in an asymmetrical pose—with the powerful tangent space mirroring functionality.
Use curves as guides for brush strokes.
Use image stamps to quickly brush (in 3D) a detailed texture directly into your mesh.
Quickly add high-quality detail through mesh displacement. Use 8-, 16-, or 32-bit images to displace your mesh; Mudbox even supports displacement using multiple maps at one time.
Back to the top


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Texture Painting and Assignment
Quickly and easily paint multiple diffuse, specular, reflection, and bump textures across multiple high-resolution maps on your 3D models.

Apply detail precisely where required, regardless of UV distortion or surface complexity. In the Mudbox 3D Paint mode, the brush position relative to the model is calculated in true world space; paint is projected tangent to the model. 3D painting is integrated with the familiar stamps and stencils workflow.
Selectively paint reference images onto the model from a particular viewpoint. Using the new Projection brush, you can project paint onto the model from screen space.
Paint hero characters with ease: Mudbox supports the painting of multiple maps on multiple meshes.
Paint both sides of your model simultaneously with the familiar symmetry workflow.
Paint and display a different texture for each UV square unit tile.
Use the intuitive layer editor to easily manage multiple paint layers. You can select, blend, and organize several images for each texture channel.

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Texture Baking
With its robust texture baking capabilities, Mudbox solves one of the most common bottlenecks in production pipelines: baking of normal and displacement maps.

Bake high-quality normal and displacement maps between multiple arbitrary meshes. Detail can be baked into 8-, 16-, and 32-bit maps.
Generate smooth, high-quality maps using extraction options designed to address issues related to poly faceting by extracting between the limit surfaces of the given meshes.
Displace your meshes using multiple floating point maps.
Bake normal maps that are compatible with Autodesk Maya and Autodesk® 3ds Max® software.

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General Workflow
Mudbox performance is renowned, with tools organized in a familiar, intuitive manner.

Work in real time even on 3D models that are fully subdivided into tens of millions of high-quality polygons.
Manipulate the camera using conventional camera controls—to maximize your workspace and reduce “back and forth” workflows.
Streamline your workflow through tools such as the Hover Pick functionality and hotkeys.
Use asymmetrical mirroring to streamline the process of working on posed or asymmetrical models.
Work on one mesh in the context of others: Mudbox supports multiple meshes within the scene.
Use the built-in image browser—with full support for 8-, 16-, and 32-bit images—to view reference images and quickly assign them to stamps, stencils, or camera image planes.
Back to the top


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Connectivity and Integration
Mudbox interoperates well with Autodesk Maya and Autodesk 3ds Max, as well as with other 3D software applications, making it a natural choice for experienced artists.

Integration with Autodesk Maya 2009 and Autodesk 3ds Max 2009
Autodesk Mudbox provides enhanced interoperability with Autodesk Maya and Autodesk 3ds Max through improved matching of Maya and 3ds Max normal and displacement maps. Additionally, Mudbox employs, by default, the same keyboard shortcuts as Autodesk Maya for camera manipulation.

Supported Formats
Scene Import : OBJ
Scene Export : OBJ
Texture Import : BMP, EXR, GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIF
Bitmap Output : BMP, EXR, GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIF. Some formats applicable to certain renderers only.


System Requirements
Software
The 32-bit version of Autodesk® Mudbox™ 2009 software is supported on the following operating systems:

Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional, SP2
Microsoft® Windows Vista® Business, SP1
The 64-bit version of Mudbox 2009 software is supported on the following operating systems:

Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, SP2
Microsoft Windows Vista Business, SP1
Mudbox 2009 documentation is compatible with any of the following web browsers:

Microsoft® Internet Explorer® 6.0 or higher
Mozilla Firefox® 2.0 or higher
Hardware

At a minimum, the 32-bit version of Mudbox 2009 software requires a system with the following hardware:

Intel® Pentium® 4 (or equivalent) processor
1 GB RAM (2 GB recommended)
650 MB free hard drive space (2 GB recommended)
Ethernet adapter or wireless Internet card
Qualified hardware-accelerated OpenGL® graphics card
Three-button mouse or qualified Wacom® tablet
DVD-ROM drive
At a minimum, the 64-bit version of Mudbox 2009 software requires a system with the following hardware:

Intel EM64T, AMD Athlon® 64, or AMD Opteron® processor
1 GB RAM (2 GB recommended)
650 MB free hard drive space (2 GB recommended)
Ethernet adapter or wireless Internet card
Qualified hardware-accelerated OpenGL graphics card
Three-button mouse or qualified Wacom tablet
DVD-ROM drive
Notes:

Latest graphics card drivers are required for proper display.
Latest Wacom drivers are required for best tablet support. When installing a new Wacom driver, be sure to first uninstall the old driver, restart, and then install the new one according to Wacom instructions. Failure to do so may impact performance of the hardware.



This post has been edited by cymon: Aug 10 2008, 04:17 PM

Cant wait for Mudbox 2009 though i am a zBrush user. Anyway, nice to have you putting up production news but its best that after every end of the article, put up a credit from where you got the source.

Also, i am starting to realize that Autodesk is trying to make a production suite out of 3DSMAX, Maya and Mudbox, the integration is so tight that even the requirement to export objects to Mudbox is still .obj instead of other format. Personally, i still prefer the old Mudbox when Skymatter first established instead of the current Mudbox that is geared to monopolize digital sculpting market.

i m zbrush user too but not very active.
i m active at other dcc. 3d max or maya.
but mudbox quite ram-eater depend to zbrush.

the source is searchable.
it just my duty to active the thread, i really want to exposed the cg market to the local market.

MAXON DELIVERS FULLY-LOADED CINEMA 4D R11 RAISES BAR FOR 3D ANIMATION EXCELLENCE Next Generation Product Suite Offers Non-Linear Animation, a Boost in Rendering Speed and Quality,
Including Re-Engineered Global Illumination, and the Highly Anticipated Projection Man Matte Painting System

MAXON, August 12, 2008 - MAXON Computer, a leading developer of professional 3D modeling, painting, animation and rendering solutions, today unveiled CINEMA 4D Release 11 (R11), the next generation of its highly acclaimed 3D animation software suite. The super-charged release is packed with advanced capabilities that deliver dramatically improved ease of use and workflow, image quality and integration into any production pipeline. CINEMA 4D R11 highlights include a non-linear animation system, new global illumination render engine and dramatically improved render speed. Customers also benefit from the powerful Projection Man matte painting system, developed by MAXON for Sony Pictures Imageworks, support for the COLLADA™ file format and CineMan - a RenderMan-compliant tool that connects to Pixar's industry-leading rendering solution. Additionally, multiple improvements were made to MAXON's popular texture painting toolset BodyPaint 3D Release 4. All of these capabilities and more serve to underscore MAXON's ongoing and deep commitment to helping 3D digital artists further advance creativity and control.

"MAXON has spent the last 20 years developing some of the industry's most advanced 3D software technologies; continually raising the bar for 3D animation software excellence," said Harald Egel, CEO and co-founder, MAXON. "CINEMA 4D R11 is no exception. This release contains the next-generation features our customers worldwide have come to expect from MAXON."

Expanded integration options, new workflow tools and boosts in performance for both PC and Mac users sit at the heart of the new release. On average, rendering speeds are now more than twice as fast as the previous version. CINEMA 4D R11 also boasts an all-new Cocoa-based architecture supporting 64-bit processing under Mac OS X Leopard.

"We are pleased, that MAXON has created the CineMan connection to Pixar's RenderMan directly from within CINEMA 4D," said Chris Ford, Business Director - RenderMan at Pixar. "Now MAXON customers can benefit from Pixar's Academy Award-winning rendering technology, featured in Ratatouille, The Incredibles and many others."

"Our customers told us what they needed and we listened," said Paul Babb, president and CEO of the MAXON US office . "This exciting new version is as ideal for the novice as it is for the power user who wants to produce compelling imagery in today's fast-paced environments."

CINEMA 4D Release 11 Highlights:
The list of capabilities and enhancements that comprise the new CINEMA 4D R11 is extensive; with each element designed to provide ultimate control to enhance the professional 3D modeling, texturing, animating and rendering process:

- Non-Linear Animation
Move beyond the keyframe. Animation Layers and Motion Clips tools let users easily build, layer and loop discreet motions containing hundreds of keyframes in complex hierarchies.

- Completely New Global Illumination
Take advantage of the most current algorithms and computer hardware with the all new easy to use Global Illumination engine. This technology delivers heightened flexibility to achieve ultra-realistic results with a minimum of setup time, even for animations.

- BodyPaint 3D
New tools for painting rich, detailed textures onto a 3D model as well as an improved workflow are part of this major upgrade to the popular 3D painting application. The improvements facilitate even tighter integration into industry-standard painting pipelines with brush import, WACOM tablet support, PSD format enhancement and more.

- Improved Rendering Speeds
Tremendous optimizations in multithreading and CPU efficiency offer dramatically improved rendering speeds. Overall render quality has been greatly enhanced as well. New parameters make it possible to create even more realistic glass materials.

- Support for 64-bit on Mac OS X
CINEMA 4D R11 is the first comprehensive 3D package completely re-engineered to take full advantage of the Mac OS X 10.5 release. As a native 64-bit Cocoa application, CINEMA 4D can be used in 64-bit mode to utilize greater RAM resources so you can build and render more complex projects. All 64-bit processors are supported. Users can easily switch between 32-bit and 64-bit mode to suit their individual needs.

- Projection Man
Leverage the same powerful matte painting system originally developed by MAXON exclusively for Sony Pictures Imageworks and recently used to create such blockbuster features as Hancock, Speed Racer, Beowulf and Surf's Up. This formerly exclusive toolset enhances workflow and makes it easy to create and patch the mattes. Tight integration with Adobe Photoshop and MAXON BodyPaint 3D simplifies editing and manipulating extensive digital mattes and even fully immersive 3D environments.

- CineMan
Power users can easily render CINEMA 4D projects utilizing Pixar's RenderMan Pro Server, or other RenderMan-compliant engines including 3Delight (dna research) and AIR (SiTex Graphics) through support for the RIB format.

- COLLADA Support
R11 now supports COLLADA, an open standard XML-based format that facilitates the transfer of 3D assets between applications. Exchanging scenes with other 3D applications is now easier than ever for diverse Digital Content Creation (DCC) production pipelines.

- Customer Friendly
An online update mechanism ensures users always have access to the latest updates and enhancements. A new license server technology helps corporations, studios and schools maximize and manage their investment.

- Additional Features
CINEMA 4D R11 also boasts optimized render control settings, animation ghosting, a doodle tool and support for 3D Connexion devices (Mac and Windows). For a complete list and description of all the exceptional elements that comprise this new feature-rich version of CINEMA 4D, please visit the products pages

Extensive CINEMA 4D R11 tutorials and demonstrations can be found on the MAXON U.S. 24/7 education and training resource site, Cineversity.

Availability
CINEMA 4D Release 11 is expected to ship September, 2008. For pricing and upgrade information, please visit www.maxon.net.

Download Pictures
Screenshot CINEMA 4D "Global Illumination"
Screenshot CINEMA 4D "Non-Linear Animation"
Packshot CINEMA 4D

All trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners. COLLADA is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment.


About MAXON Computer
MAXON Computer is the developer of professional 3D modeling, painting, animation and rendering solutions. Its award-winning products have been used extensively in the film, television, science, architecture, engineering and other industries. MAXON products have been used for and in The Golden Compass, Beowulf, all three Spider-Man films, Surf's Up, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Ghost Rider, Open Season, all three Pirates of the Caribbean films, Monster House, Eragon, Superman Returns, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Serenity, War of the Worlds, Polar Express, The Flight of the Phoenix, Van Helsing, King Arthur, Star Wars: Episode II - The Attack of the Clones, the On-Air Packages for TMZ T.V., Comedy Central, Monday Night Football, Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, ESPN, NFL Network, TiVO, NBC, DirecTV, CBS NFL, Smart House, Fox and many more. MAXON has offices in Friedrichsdorf (Germany), Newbury Park (CA, USA), Bedford (UK), Tokyo (JP) and Paris (FR).

Maya 2009 Key Features & Enhancements

• Fully integrated mental ray 3.7 core: The integration of the mental ray 3.7 core provides the following enhancements:

– Motion-dependent Displacement: It is now possible to control displacement while motion blurring, improving render times for motion blurred scenes, while producing a more realistic result.
– Improved, Adaptive Tessellation for Catmull-Clark Meshes: Catmull-Clark Meshes are now adaptively tessellated at render time. This produces better displacement maps with render time mental ray subdivision surfaces.

• Streamlined Multi-Camera Rendering with mental ray: Multi-camera renders in mental ray are optimized though the re-use of pre-computed elements, reducing the penalty for multi-camera rendering and making the production of stereo films more viable.

• Native Render Proxy Support: Render Proxies (also known as mental ray assemblies) can now be natively rendered from within mental ray for Maya as well as through mi file rendering with mental ray standalone 3.7, yielding performance gains in multiple ways.

• mental ray Volume Rendering Enhancements: A new intersection engine for volume shaders eliminates artifacts where two or more different types of volumes intersect, without the need to use Auto Volume feature that is specific to ray tracing. Volume types such as Fur, Light Fog, Particles and Fluids to be rendered together without artifacts using scanline or rasterizer rendering for improved render speed and memory usage.

• High Quality, High Performance Global Illumination: Irradiance particle
support and algorithm improvements to enable a higher degree of physically correctness; 'one button click' renderings with select tuning capabilities and automatic adaptivity.

• Built-in Ambient Occlusion Support: Built-in ambient occlusion algorithm with caching capabilities provides an alternative to shader solutions for animations.

• Fully integrated OpenEXR library: No longer an external component, the OpenEXR library supports “windowing” capabilities of the format used in the renderer, as well as improved multi-channel support.

Nvidia releases OpenGL 3.0 beta drivers during Siggraph


http://developer.nvidia.com/object/opengl_3_driver.html

This driver is aimed at developers to start coding to the new OpenGL 3.0 and GLSL 1.30 features. These features are not enabled by default. They can be enabled using the nvemulate utility, as described here: http://developer.nvidia.com/object/nvemulate.html

You need one of the following graphics cards to enable the OpenGL 3.0 and GLSL 1.30 functionality.

Desktop: GeForce 8000 series or higher; GeForce GTX 260, 280; Quadro FX 370, 570, 1700, 3700, 4600, 4700x2, 5600
Notebook: GeForce 8000 series or higher; Quadro FX 360M, 370M, 570M, 770M, 1600M, 1700M, 2700M, 3600M, 3700M

This driver implements all of GLSL 1.30 and all of OpenGL 3.0, except for the following functionality:

* One-channel (RED) and two-channel (RG) textures
* Mixed size FBO attachments (mixed-format attachments are supported)
* The Clearbuffer API
* Windowless rendering support (We suggest you use GPU affinity instead)
* Forward-compatible context
* Debug Context

This driver exposes the following new extensions:

OpenGL 2.1 extensions: ARB_vertex_array_object ARB_framebuffer_object ARB_half_float_vertex OpenGL 3.0 extensions: WGL_create_context ARB_draw_instanced ARB_geometry_shader4 ARB_texture_buffer_object WGL_create_context

This post has been edited by Benny-T: Aug 17 2008, 12:38 AM

LightWave 3D® v9.5 for Windows released




Achieving new levels in animation, illumination, hair and fur, rendering and workflow


SAN ANTONIO, Texas – August 7, 2008 – NewTek Inc., manufacturer of industry-leading 3D animation and video products, today announced the release of LightWave® v9.5 for Windows®, a major update to its award-winning 3D application, LightWave 3D®. LightWave v9.5’s new capabilities include FiberFX, a complete hair and fur solution, a new lighting system and many improvements to animation, rendering and workflow. The update is available to registered owners of LightWave v9 series at no charge. SIGGRAPH attendees can see LightWave v9.5 demonstrations at NewTek booth #159.

“With so many features and enhancements in LightWave v9.5, users suggested that we could release it as v10. Customer feedback has been positive,” said Jay Roth, president of 3D division, NewTek. “LightWave is the application choice of Emmy® winners, and is seeing increasing use in feature film projects. With this new version, the LightWave community is experiencing a renaissance."

A highlight of LightWave v9.5 is FiberFX, a proprietary polygonal fiber modeler for creating realistic hair, fur and feathers. It provides artists with a full suite of tools to model and style each fiber, create volumetric shadows, render-in reflection and refraction and more.

LightWave v9.5 also offers improved rendering quality and speed, with major upgrades to the radiosity sampling system and interpolated modes. Also, there are new disk-based caches for radiosity: the Static Cache, for animations where only the camera moves; and the Animated Cache, where any element of the scene can move. Both types allow the user to pre-render the cache and apply the solution when doing the full scene render – either locally or across a render farm. LightWave radiosity can now be rendered at reduced resolution and applied to the full size final render, providing a higher quality output with even faster render times, a huge benefit for today's time-pressured production environment.

LightWave v9.5’s IK and animation system includes numerous improved character animation controls. Adding to LightWave’s z-axis bones, artists now have joint-type bones, which is more familiar for users of other programs with joint-based metaphors. It also adds a "stretchy bones" capability to LightWave.

The lighting system is now a plug-in API, allowing third parties to create custom lights and lighting plug-ins. IES lights have been added with a thumbnail preview of the luminaire with other information and controls. Also available are new size-selectable spherical lights and dome lights.

LightWave v9.5 allows the import and export of FBX and Collada scenes and objects. This greatly improves compatibility with other 3D applications, as you can now seamlessly transfer meshes, rigs, materials and animation information. The LightWave OBJ I/O plug-in now provides extended import capability for this file type.

LightWave v9.5 Update Includes:

Character Animation Enhancements

* Hair and Fur System
* Collada, FBX and OBJ I/O support
* Enhanced IK and Animation Systems

Lighting, Rendering and Surfacing Enhancements

* Lighting System is now an API
* IES, Spherical and Dome Light types
* Enhanced Area and Linear Lights
* Faster and higher quality GI Rendering
* Disk-Based GI Caching
Static Cache (only the Camera moves)
Animated Cache (anything moves)
* Interpolated Soft Reflections/Refractions for Node-base surfacing
* Oren-Nayar Shading Option for Many Materials
* Optimized Materials and Shaders

SDK and LScript Improvements

* Light Plug-in Class for Third Party Lights and Light Plug-ins
* SDK Support for New GI Functions and Disk Cache
* SDK Support for New IK and Animation Capabilities

UI and Workflow Enhancements

* Composition Tool Overlays in Camera View
* OpenGL GLSL Enhanced View for New Lighting System
* Audio Waveform in the Graph Editor

NewTek will be providing a free trial edition of LightWave v9.5 on disc and by download. Artists should note that there are now more than 24 hours of free LightWave training at www.lightwave3d.com, in addition to an extensive library of printable tutorials.

Hey,mind to show me your work with Zbrush?& also the interface of your Zbrush....

Since I really want to model a figures.....but just want to see wheter it was better than 3dsmax since I used to modelling a human figures with Max but just want to see if Zbrush is really more effective in term of complex geometry of human/organic figures construction.....

Its best to model the base mesh in 3dsmax then export to zbrush for sculpting, so far thats that optimal way to do organic modeling.

You can do direct modeling in zbursh by using zsphere but so far not many prefer that way as it sometimes can be very complicating.

my works are craps at zbrush.
most at a time i only use to make organic stuff like creature/aliens thing.
of course in zbrush it giv u more option of crafting tool.
the rest i still depend on 3dmax for all my project.

but when i do interior/archi stuff i work on cad program.
cad program now a these day are really powerful/friendly user compare 5 years ago.
only lack in rendering tool i would say.

This post has been edited by cymon: Aug 18 2008, 11:39 AM

new blizzrad wrath of the lich king cinematics

http://www.wow-europe.com/wrath/intro.xml

Cymon,

You left out one of the more important highlights for Maya 2009. NParticles!

I am slowly (very slowly) learning Houdini, mostly for its particle work.

(edit. I think its nParticles...with a small n)

This post has been edited by mysticaldodo: Aug 26 2008, 01:00 PM

thanks for the info.

houdini is quite good software base some of my friend's feedback.
so how do u think about it?
how about the render? it is good compare to maya or 3d max?

I'm only a beginner here

Overall, the procedural way of doing things is very clean. I find it easier to manage and adjust all your past settings.

I only touch the particles and some fluids, haven't played around with modeling. As a hobbyist, I do not think procedural modeling will serve me any benefit...yet.



I am not a lighting and rendering person. Its something I haven't explored yet and I only touched it briefly in Maya

Mantra is comparable to Mental Ray, and has been used for some films as well.

Learning Houdini in Malaysia is a bit sad, as it'll be tough to look for companies using Houdini here, so you'll have to default back to Maya or Max anyways.

yup. you were right houdini , modo or softimage user is quite rare in malaysia.
mostly 3d max or maya.

i still figure out the maxwell render. it is really time eater.
but the result quite amazing.

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Added on August 29, 2008, 7:51 pm











This is the opening day at NVISION in San Jose, CA, the amassed crowd moved into the darkened exhibit rooms ahead, where we found, among other attractions, the French based ESWC (Electronic Sports World Cup) Tournament.

Teams traveled from all over the world to compete for a substantial cash award. Upon entering the vast room, you see nothing but dark and saturations in light of every hue, flashing off the faces of gamers intent on wining the prize. Wearing headsets for the audio, the room was a fury of clicking, the occasional color shift of splattering virtual blood, a fleeting look of satisfaction before the drive to continue took over again. Either on LAN tournaments or over the Internet, two players or teams per country come to compete creating a large number of participants. The event has been in France since 2003, and this was the first time it had been elsewhere. Most of the PCs were dedicated for the most popular game called Counter Strike. Those players get the most prestige, and therefore the most money.

One volunteer assistant said the prize was $50,000 for men and about $35,000 for women. The difference was apparently due to the lack of female competitors and related sponsors. According to Louise Thomsen, nickname ‘Aurora’ of the MYM.CS team, who traveled all the way from Sweden, Denmark, and Norway for this event, “There are more males than females, so if you look at the ratio, the chances of finding better guys in one group is better than finding girls at the same talent level.” Blinking in the bright sun, the girls in pink were a stark contrast to the intensity inside where row upon row of teams or individuals from around the world competed.

The tournament took up an enormous space and the exhibition had yet to open, so I went over to see the Keynote speaker with his list of impressive guests and demos. The sheer size of the event required the Center for Performing Arts. 3D glasses waited on each of the seats. The mayor of San Jose first greeted the attendees and thanked NVIDIA for recognizing Silicon Valley as the location for this event.

Then out came co-founder, president, and CEO of NVIDIA, Jen-Hsun Huang. He took the stage with his assorted guests for the next 90 minutes, sharing insights about the innovation of the GPU in the last 10 years. The computational ability has reached the teraflops. “To put that into perspective, a teraflop is equal to 1000 Cray X-MPs. He talked about Folding@Home, a Stanford project that, in shared cooperation with public volunteers and their 2.61 million, representing 288 teraflops, computing the massive information to better simulating protein folding.

Huang went on to introduce Peter Stevenson, the COO of RTT to discuss the sold out but not yet built Lamborghini, a 1.5 million dollar sports car that sold on the real time video alone. Raytracing on the car was so perfect that even the headlights, design by jewelry designers, were completely correct.

Huang went on to give some background on Google Earth and how it developed into what it is today, and used that as a launching point to extol the widespread use of MMOG’s. or Massive Multiplayer Online Games, a form of entertainment that now has roughly 100 million active players. He said that analysts project that in another ten years there will be 2.5 billion PC users, and out of that, one of every three people will be involved in virtual worlds.

Other guests to steal the show was Tricia Helfer of Battlestar Galactica who shared some funny tales about working with virtual actors; and Buzz Aldrin, one of the first men to step out onto the moon. He was there to introduce a screening of the 3D 'Fly me to the Moon.'

A demo with the CTO of Sport Vision’s technology gave an overview of how the graphics are added to the screen during sporting events. Football fields were measured via camera to provide all the information needed to change the point of view to a quarterback to show instant playbacks from various angles. Racecars had wind tunnels reaching out behind them to show resistance using computational fluid dynamics.

One of the most interesting to me was a demo using HDR and merging multiple exposures in a program called Photosynth. Joshua Edwards from Microsoft gave the demo of something that had just been released 90 hours earlier. It organizing images taken in a common space. The free software will analyze each photo and find the common points, puts those images together in 3D space, creating a point cloud. Another amazing demo was with Jeff Han, research scientist at NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. He was one of the main developers of the interface-free touch-driven computer screens, now so popular in the iPhone. Working on an enormous screen, he could tap anywhere and have the menu pop up, cut, scroll, and even animate, even while sharing the work space with Huang.


This post has been edited by cymon: Aug 29 2008, 07:51 PM

Maxwell is not worth the time unless you're doing really small batches of still-renders and your delivery time is wayy wayy off.

Unless of course you have a render-farm of Quad cores lying about.

Its a waste that no one really uses XSI here. I actually prefer it over Max or Maya, and now with ICE, its going to be so much more exciting . . . but everyone's too stuck with the other 2.