welcome to cg and concept art thread.
this thread is about world of cg.
all the news and info are welcome to share.


i m at cg field industry about 6 years.
cg and concept art is mostly relate to games or movie.
or even dcc medium industry.
and i found out there are lot of people out there start
discover them into this field. so i start to create one.
it is different from graphic design or normal art line.

soon we will share the world of cg.
welcome cg people.
thank you.

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Added on July 14, 2008, 2:00 am

This early opening of the CGSociety SIGGRAPH Diary wll give you a look at the conference from as many different angles as possible. Throughout these posts, updated every few days, CGSociety will be announcing special features, we'll be interviewing the Chairs, and lighting your way towards SIGGRAPH with our descriptions of the many sessions and attractions. CGSociety will be there!

Over five days in mid-August, the Los Angeles Convention Center and the Nokia Theater will be awash with SIGGRAPH sessions and attractions. Los Angeles is the home of SIGGRAPH and every two or three years, the stage is returned. SIGGRAPH is the place where university labs, studios for film and games, film and animation schools and the CG artists spill their new techniques into the creative community.

The New Tech Demos at SIGGRAPH, which used to be named 'Emerging Technologies,' present creative, innovative technologies and applications in many fields including displays, robotics, input devices, and interaction techniques.

"Many of these cutting-edge technologies exemplify how our past informs our future and how it affects the upcoming opportunities and challenges of computer graphics and interactive techniques," stated Mk Haley, SIGGRAPH 2008 Conference Director of Encounters with Disney-ABC Digital Media. "The technologies and installations in New Tech Demos encourage people to engage with the future, as well as celebrate our past, as we invigorate, explore, and define our potential."

During SIGGRAPH, CGSociety will be at the show in LA, posting a SIGGRAPH diary, updated daily, keeping everyone worldwide up to date with the attractions for the week.

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Added on July 14, 2008, 2:02 amSIGGRAPH 2008's newly expanded Computer Animation Festival is spread over the five days with screenings, talks, studio events, with two days of 3D stereoscopic panels and screenings.

As well as the juried screening, the festival offers inspiring studio content, Flash films, DemoScene animation, international school retrospectives, selections from the Japan Media Arts Festival and the latest in real-time game graphics. To be admitted to the Computer Animation Festival, you will need either a Full Conference Pass or a Computer Animation Festival Pass.

The 2008 Computer Animation Festival presents artists and experts in talks on all aspects of production, from animation to visual effects, from shorts to full-length features, from television to movies, from art to science, from learning the history of animation to learning the craft.

Participate in selecting the Audience Prize and see the results at the Festival's first annual award show: a raucous hour of animation, animation directors, prizes, and surprises. And don't miss exciting nightly events hosted by Pixar, Sony Pictures Imageworks, and Industrial Light & Magic. There will be a full slate of talks and several production sessions, including a mind-bending look into 'Speed Racer,' a journey behind the scenes of 'Cloverfield' and 'Iron Man,' as well as a review of ideas that didn't quite make it through production.

In the studio reel of the Computer Animation Festival, a trailer be premiered from a yet-to-be-released animated feature from animation director Rob Coleman and the crew at Lightstream Pictures. This is accompanied by a talk from the principal members of Lightstream Animation who will talk about building an animation studio while creating their animated feature. More details on this will be discussed in a later entry.

There is a retrospective animation school reel to be shown and an accompanying talk by five top international schools for the study of film, animation and effects. An amazing exhibition of work is on display from AnimationMentor, Austalian Film TV and Radio School, Bournemouth University, Brigham Young University, Carnegie Mellon, Filmakademie Baden-Wurttemberg, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Otis College of Art & Design, the Pratt Institute, Ringling College of Art & Design, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), Texas A&M University, University of Southern California, Vancouver Film School and many others. Hael Kobayashi and Sande Scoredos worked tirelessly to stage and curate this presentation.

PIXAR's Presto and Glago's Guest are both playing in the Nokia Theater, (Petree Hall C, Wednesday 3:45pm) and there is a joint PIXAR/Disney talk with Richard Hollander and Andy Harkness following the screening.

Nominated for best of show is 'Carbon Footprint,' from Jellyfish Pictures. This is part of a Future History session with Look Effects, at the same time in Hall D on Wednesday. The two companies discuss three projects (Look Effects talks about 'Life After People,' and 'Blown Away: Greensberg Kansas'), all three projects use visual effects to tell alternate stories of the future.

There is plenty more in store as part of the Computer Animation Festival. Stay tuned!

This post has been edited by cymon: Jul 14 2008, 04:32 AM

Concept art is a subset of illustration.

What is illustration? Dictionary.com says this of the word “illustrate”:

1. to furnish (a book, magazine, etc.) with drawings, pictures, or other artwork intended for explanation, elucidation, or adornment
2. to make clear or intelligible, as by examples or analogies; exemplify
3. 3. Archaic. to enlighten
4. to clarify one's words, writings, etc., with examples: To prevent misunderstandings, let me illustrate.

So, an “illustration” is art that communicates something.

There is much of fine art that falls into the category of illustration. Any imagine that tells a story or represents an object is illustrative, whether it is communicating something as complex as a scene from the Lord of the Rings, or as simple a thing as “a horse” or “a man”.

What makes concept art different from illustration is that the audience isn’t the person who reads a book, plays a game, or watches a movie. The primary audience of concept art is other artists, and other people involved in the making of the final product. Concept art is the blueprint that is used to make more art. It is also used to communicate with the holder of the intellectual property rights involved in a project, and it can also be the leverage that is used to get funding for a project.

If you want a formal education that will prepare you for being a concept artist, then study illustration.



since local art scene has not been exposed to cg or digital arts as much as foreign countries do
we've thinking around trying to give out as much information as we can,hoping that this field can expand more in our local scene

here's an example of concept arts


of course,it's not as nice as others
but the main point of concept arts is about selling ideas

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Added on July 14, 2008, 2:13 amSIGGRAPH Asia
by westman — last modified 24 December 2007 08:04 AM

Background

Asia is rising. While Japan has been dominant economically for decades, China and India are growing at a phenomenal rate, and the four Asian tigers, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan are still strongly on the prowl. Asian governments are pumping billions of dollars into digital media technology research and development, and Asian contributions in this field have increased tremendously. SIGGRAPH conference figures show that while the number of papers from Asia has more than doubled in the new millennium, Asian attendance at the conference has fallen by about a third, due partly to cost and visa problems.

These form the background to a meeting between Scott Owen and Alyn Rockwood, the President and Vice President of ACM SIGGRAPH, and a group of Asian delegates during SIGGRAPH 2006 in Boston. The meeting explored the possibility of having some form of the SIGGRAPH conference in Asia, which would also include Australia and New Zealand. It was a meeting of minds, and the idea was put on the ACM SIGGRAPH agenda.

Scott subsequently appointed a steering committee, chaired by Alyn. The members were Scott himself and 11 representatives from Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. The committee, together with their Malaysian host, met in Kuala Lumpur in early December 2006 to study the feasibility of such a conference.

The meeting strongly supported the idea of a SIGGRAPH conference in Asia, and Tokyo and Singapore were invited to bid for the hosting of the inaugural conference, to be held in December 2008 or 2009, depending on the readiness of the host. Each bid had to be coupled with a nomination for a Conference Chair who is familiar with the venue both geographically and in terms of its bureaucracy. December was chosen to keep a distance from the annual SIGGRAPH conference in August and to avoid the major Asian Lunar New Year holiday period in January and February.

YT Lee, the Vice Chair of the Singapore Chapter, and Masa Inakage, a founding member of the Tokyo Chapter, presented their bids at the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee meeting in Seattle in February 2007. The EC awarded the hosting of the first event to Singapore, based on the strength of its bid. YT Lee was also confirmed as the Conference Chair. John Finnegan, the Chair of SIGGRAPH 2006, was appointed as the Associate Chair to lend his experience and expertise in running large events.

At the end of June, a team of five ACM SIGGRAPH representatives visited Singapore to inspect the conference venue and investigate Singapore’s readiness to hold the event in 2008. Their recommendation to the Executive Committee that Singapore was indeed ready to host the first event in December 2008 was accepted. It was also decided that the event would be called SIGGRAPH Asia.

Since then, the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee has also confirmed that SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 will be held in the Japanese city of Yokohama and that the Conference Chair will be Masa Inakage.



This post has been edited by yukikaze: Jul 14 2008, 04:25 PM

Concept Art = Advertising?

Let's start.

concept art is not a form of advertising
but more to a form of illustration of an idea
concept art is not for end user but rather the producer
mostly in the industry or game,film and animation industry

here is some sample of my concept work for my clients.
it is public approved visual.

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Added on July 14, 2008, 2:30 amit can be 2d or 3d.
the main core is the ideas(concept)
normally can find through big production game, movie or even mv.
it just a team of concept artist/designer to provide them the concepts
for their project.


This post has been edited by cymon: Jul 14 2008, 02:30 AM

Mattes are used in photography and special effects filmmaking to combine two or more image elements into a single, final image. Usually, mattes are used to combine a foreground image (such as actors on a set, or a spaceship) with a background image (a scenic vista, a field of stars and planets). In this case, the matte is the background painting. In film and stage, mattes can be physically huge sections of painted canvas, portraying large scenic expanses of landscapes.

In film, the principle of a matte requires masking certain areas of the film emulsion to selectively control which areas are exposed. However, many complex special-effects scenes have included dozens of discrete image elements, requiring very complex use of mattes, and layering mattes on top of one another.

For an example of a simple matte, we may wish to depict a group of actors in front of a store, with a massive city and sky visible above the store's roof. We would have two images—the actors on the set, and the image of the city—to combine onto a third. This would require two masks/mattes. One would mask everything above the store's roof, and the other would mask everything below it. By using these masks/mattes when copying these images onto the third, we can combine the images without creating ghostly double-exposures. In film, this is an example of a static matte, where the shape of the mask does not change from frame to frame.

Other shots may require mattes that change, to mask the shapes of moving objects, such as human beings or spaceships. These are known as travelling mattes. Travelling mattes enable greater freedom of composition and movement, but they are also more difficult to accomplish. Bluescreen techniques, originally invented by Petro Vlahos, are probably the best-known techniques for creating travelling mattes, although rotoscoping and multiple motion control passes have also been used in the past.

It's a very old technique, going back to the Lumière brothers. A good early American example is seen in The Great Train Robbery (1903) where it is used to place a train outside a window in a ticket office, and later a moving background outside a baggage car on a train 'set'.

sauce:wikipedia

here's also another category of CG
matte painting

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Added on July 14, 2008, 2:46 amMattes and widescreen filming

Another use of mattes in filmmaking is to create a widescreen effect. In this process, the top and bottom of a standard frame are matted out, or masked, with black bars, i.e. the film print has a thick frame line. Then the frame within the full frame is enlarged to fill a screen when projected in a theater.

Thus, in "masked widescreen" an image with an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 is created by using a standard, 1.37:1 frame and matting out the top and bottom. If the image is matted during the filming process it is called a "hard matte." In contrast, if the full frame is filled during filming and the projectionist is relied upon to matte out the top and bottom in the theater, it is referred to as a "soft matte."

In video, a similar effect is often used to present widescreen films on a conventional, 1.33:1 television screen. In this case, the process is called letterboxing. However, in letterboxing, the top and bottom of the actual image are not matted out. The picture is "pushed" farther back on screen and thus made "smaller", so to speak, so that, in a widescreen film, the viewer can see, on the left and right of the picture, what would normally be omitted if the film were shown fullscreen on television, achieving a sort of "widescreen" effect on a square TV screen. In letterboxing, the top of the image is slightly lower than usual, the bottom is higher, and the unused portion of the screen is covered by black bars. For video transfers, transferring a "soft matte" film to a home video format with the full frame exposed, thus removing the mattes at the top and bottom, is referred to as an "open matte transfer." In contrast, transferring a "soft matte" film to a home video format with the theatrical mattes intact is referred to as a "closed matte transfer."

This post has been edited by yukikaze: Jul 14 2008, 02:46 AM

Out of topic, is this the place in 'get smart' movie where 'kaali' placed the bomb?

yes, it is world famous disney hall. design by world pioneer frank gehry.
it is sort of trademark of this building.

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Added on July 14, 2008, 4:24 am


Creator of video game brands moves in on renowned special effects studio.

Ubisoft has announced the acquisition of Hybride Technologies, a Montreal-based studio renowned for its expertise in the creation of visual effects for cinema, television and advertising.

Created over 15 years ago, Hybride employs 80 team members. The studio’s many projects include such innovative films as 300, Frank Miller’s Sin City and the Spy Kids series.

Ubisoft will work closely with Hybride to share technology and to develop tools in order to optimize the creation of both video games and visual effects and to offer gamers visual experiences that rival those of the cinema. At the same time, Hybride will continue to work with its film partners while also bringing its expertise to leverage Ubisoft’s intellectual properties for the movie industry.

"The future of our industry depends on our ability to create brands that captivate audiences and to extend those brands to other forms of entertainment," said Yves Guillemot, chief executive officer at Ubisoft. “The acquisition of Hybride falls directly into the strategy that has already led us to open a digital creation studio in Montreal and to acquire the Tom Clancy brand for video games and ancillary products. The exceptional quality of the team at Hybride and the expertise of our Ubisoft teams will allow us to create one of the best 3D animation studios in the entertainment industry.”

"This alliance is a true first for the industry,” continued Yannis Mallat, chief executive officer of Ubisoft Montreal. “Ubisoft and Hybride share the same vision of entertainment convergence and a common passion for innovation and creativity.”

“It is the quality and innovation of our artists that made Hybride into one of the most successful studios in cinema and the most important visual effects producer on the North American East Coast,” stated Pierre Raymond, founder and chief executive officer at Hybride Technologies. “The sharing of technological and creative expertise between Ubisoft and Hybride will position the two companies at the head of the pack in an entertainment industry in rapid evolution.”

In addition to bringing its technological knowledge and its collaboration to Ubisoft’s brands, Hybride will continue to work with its external partners. The forecast for this visual effects creation activity for cinema, television and advertising will initially generate sales of approximately 6 to 7 M€ and a current operating income of about 10 % of sales.

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Added on July 14, 2008, 4:30 am


ELEMENTAL 3 is available for pre-order!



ELEMENTAL 3 is the finest art book showcasing the work of CG artists in architectural visualization and product design, and is the first Ballistic title to dedicate half of its pages to architectural subjects. A set of four bonus prints are yours free when you purchase ELEMENTAL 3 Limited Edition. The bonus prints also come with the first 200 Hardcover editions bought during pre-sale.

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Added on July 14, 2008, 4:39 am
Autodesk acquires ECOTECT


report that Autodesk, Inc. has recently completed the acquisition of substantially all the assets related to the Ecotect software tools for conceptual building performance analysis from both Square One Research Ltd and Dr Andrew J Marsh.



Autodesk currently plans to continue support of the existing Ecotect and its related tools and is working to transition the sales process to the Autodesk e-Store. In the interim a free trial version of the latest commercial software is available for download until August 15 2008, after accepting the end-user license agreement (EULA) that accompanies the product.


- Ecotect is a comprehensive environmental design tool that covers a wide range of simulation and analysis functions required to truly understand how a building design will operate and perform. Environmental design principles, such as solar, thermal, shading, lighting, and airflow, are most effectively addressed in the early phases of the design process. With Ecotect tools, architects and engineers can measure how fundamental criteria will affect building performance in the conceptual and detailed phases of design. Architects and designers work easily in 3D and apply a rich palate of tools that are important for our customers to drive and support an energy efficient and sustainable future.

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Added on


July 14, 2008, 4:40 amAward-winning VFX studio Frantic Films VFX, a division of Prime Focus Group, recently served as a lead visual effects provider for the forthcoming stereoscopic feature film, "Journey to the Center of the Earth,"
produced by Walden Media and New Line Cinema.

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Added on July 14, 2008, 4:45 am



'Planet 51' heads into Sony orbit


Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group has picked up U.S. distribution rights for the CG-animated kidpic "Planet 51."
TriStar Pictures will release the film, which features the voices of Dwayne Johnson and Jessica Biel, on Nov. 20, 2009.

Alien adventure comedy centers on an astronaut who lands on Planet 51 thinking he's the first to set foot on it. To his surprise, he discovers it's inhabited by little green people who live in a white picket-fenced world reminiscent of 1950s America. Film is produced by Ilion Animation Studios.

Justin Long, Seann William Scott, Gary Oldman and John Cleese round out the voice cast.

New Line previously bought domestic distribution rights for the $50 million plus-budgeted film and had touted it as it as its first-ever CG-animated feature. After New Line was folded into Warner Bros. in February, "Planet 51" became the domain of Warners and was set to be released by the studio in summer 2009.

This post has been edited by cymon: Jul 14 2008, 04:45 AM

Prof. Don Greenberg announced as First Featured Speaker for Singapore SIGGRAPH conference in December.
Friday, 11 July 2008


Advertisement
SIGGRAPH Asia is pleased to announce its first featured speaker, Prof. Don Greenberg.

Prof. Greenberg has been researching and teaching in the field of computer graphics since 1966. During the past 30 years, he has primarily focused on advancing the state of the art in CG and applying these in a variety of disciplines. He has taught courses in CG in computer science, computer-aided design in architecture, computer animation in art, and technology strategy for business.

His current computer science research projects involve realistic image generation, parallel-processing algorithms for rendering, new GUIs, and computer animation. His current application projects include ornithology and the search for the ivory-billed woodpecker, medical imaging and virtual surgery, architectural design for a green environment, and new types of computer displays, from electronic paper to touch-sensitive table displays.

Speaking on the topic of "The Expanding Boundaries of Computer Graphics", Prof. Greenberg will challenge the new generation of CG artists - those who will take great professional risks to solve big problems - to dream impossible dreams and extend the influence of computer graphics to many other disciplines.

Prof. Greenberg has also been accorded several awards in the course of his work; some of which include: the ACM SIGGRAPH Steven A. Coons Award for Outstanding Creative Contributions to Computer Graphics in 1987 and the NCGA Academic Award (the highest educational award given by the National Computer Graphics Association) in 1989.

Prof. Greenberg is currently the Director for the Programme of Computer Graphics at Cornell University. Many of his graduate students have gone on to become leaders in the fields of computer graphics, computer animation, and computer-aided design for architecture.
Six former students have won Hollywood's Technical "Oscars", and five have won the prestigious SIGGRAPH Achievement Award.

EXOTIQUE 4
Entry Deadline: Noon, Monday August 4, 2008 GMT

Call for Entries - Ballistic Publishing invites you to submit your work to EXOTIQUE 4: THE WORLD'S MOST BEAUTIFUL CG CHARACTERS. The fourth book in the series will showcase the best digital character creations produced for film, television, games and personal endeavor.

EXOTIQUE 4 will showcase the world's most stunning CG characters. We are looking for all types of character work from humans to fantastic creatures.

If your work is selected for publication in EXOTIQUE 4 you will receive a complimentary copy of the book and will also get international exposure by having your work included in the premier collection of digital character art.

There is no cost or limit to the number of entries you can enter for EXOTIQUE 4.

The official Into The Pixel web site give us our first conceptual look at Half-Life 2: Episode Three with this moody painting of, we assume, protagonist Gordon Freeman facing down the Advisor seen in previous episodes. Obviously, fans of the game know that Gordon has a serious beef with the Advisor following the events of Episode Two, but this hardly seems like a fair fight. Don't bring a crowbar to a telekinesis fight, Gordo.

While unconfirmed — the art is listed under "Half Life EP3" — it may lead to more speculation that the final episode in the Half-Life 2 trilogy will make an appearance at E3 2008. That's been denied by Valve spokesfolk, but you know how they love to twist words.

Potentially good news for consoles owners of the Sony persuasion is that the official Into The Pixel listing tags the game as seeing release on the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. Bigger look after the jump.

Emm... This thread seems like a hanging place for the two of you only. I like concept arts but all the thing i can do is hand drawn and photo editing, is there a way for me to learn more bout this?

Concept artists nowadays have an understanding of different art styles (It's optional, but the more talent you have, the higher the chances of getting hired) & must be fast & quick to create said concept art. The only method of learning that I know of is to practice consistently & try new things.

1st thing 1st,how much do you know understand about concept arts?
no mean to offense you
but there's always majority of people misunderstood illustration with concept arts
and yes no doubt,it's all about practice
to begin,1st have to get a strong foundation such as figure sketching
still life drawing.

pls dun it wrong,
the purpose i open this thread is to share wat is happening or exchange ideas/concept art forum.
u may seen there is no one post for mean time.
concept art is still very fresh in malaysia market.

only the few who already venture it professionally.
most will think it is an illustration / graphic design.
no, it is not

concept art is about ideas that translate into medium (2d or 3d).
here not only we exchange concept art but also we talk about cg.
software, hardware, info or news..



This post has been edited by cymon: Jul 14 2008, 11:34 PM

WOW. Finally something that I like is now in lowyat.net. LOL> i support you guys!

Currently studying, going to illus major mainly to grad and get a job as a game/mov concept artist.

here's a great forum for concept art besides the famed cgtalk.

www.conceptart.org

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Added on July 14, 2008, 11:59 pmMaybe I could help out with the explanation about concept art.

When my parents/relatives/friends ask what the heck is concept artist, I told them its something like a visual reference. Client/colleagues gives pretty vague specifications or requirements (ie. I want a graveyard with a oriental style/I want an organic spaceship), the artist finds relevant references and tries to interpret the requirements.

Its an important job in a pre-production phase of most ventures like games or animation/movies. Before 3D modeling/ 2D animation etc. In short, concept artist have more or less the say-so in the creative aspect.

Most of the time the concept artist would also need to have knowledge to visualize the work that is tangible to create in 3D itself. Hence the illustrate/draw very well is a must. And not just only restricted to 1 style, but able to adapt to many styles whether from anime-ish (groan) to realistic, depending on the nature of the project.

In a way concept art is considered as commercial illustration. But different in the sense that the art mostly will be used by work peers and not to the intended audiences of the project (unless they want to use it as marketing for work in progress).

This post has been edited by slumberus: Jul 15 2008, 12:03 AM

well said
the purpose of this thread is not to have fun but rather to educate and share info amongst others about the industry

welcome to the world of cg and concept art.
conceptart / cgtalk is one of my regular daily site i surf.
i m the member too..

really nice to hear tat u are venture into tis field.
i know it is hard for old generation to understand this, most of them will tell u :

same only with graphic design just matter of terms... both also draw draw mah..

the main core is still the ideas that sell..
do u hav anything to share wit ??

This post has been edited by cymon: Jul 15 2008, 12:09 AM

wicked topic you 2. this should at least make people understand what CG is all about. at present i've heard every single layman talking about CG but not knowing what CG is all about. sometimes when they talked to me, i just had to agree because i don't even know if i explained to them, they would understand haha. good topic mates, keep it up. salute!

Eccentrical, they are merely doing a good community service to everyone who's reading this topic. not a hanging out place for them 2 if you asked me hehe.

This post has been edited by subsonique: Jul 15 2008, 09:17 AM

Crashing, breaking, shooting, bleeding and smashing – these are just a few of the many visual effects created by Rhythm & Hues for The Incredible Hulk. To manage all this destruction, Houdini’s particles and dynamics played a key role in achieving quick turnarounds for both the look development and execution of over 183 VFX shots.

For most of the movie, the effects needed to blend with the live action footage to keep the focus on the Hulk and his nemesis Abomination. For the rain grotto sequence, Houdini provided water runoff on the Hulk, rain, and atmospheric mist. For battle sequences, Houdini was used to create the cracking of concrete and asphalt, dynamic simulations of flying car parts and car crushing effects. Other effects needed for the battles included streams of blood, dust and debris, along with gun flashes, grenade explosions and bullets ricocheting off the Hulk.

The Sonic Cannon

While most of the effects stayed in the background, the Sonic cannon sequence was featured center stage. The VFX artists put together an impressive combination of effects including skin peeling, flying glass and debris. The time allocation was extremely tight for this shot with 2 weeks for look development and 5-6 weeks to completion. This timeline demanded a series of 2-3 day deadlines without the typical R&D time available to prototype different solutions.

“With Houdini, one person can fulfill the needs of several departments, making sure there is no feedback lag as information changes hands,” says Nathan Ortiz, FX Supervisor with Rhythm & Hues. “Taking rendered and comped images to our supervisor and, in turn, the director was fast and effortless. Ultimately this helps us control costs and meet deadlines faster.”

Houdini Digital Assets were used to let VFX artists quickly drop down effects to get shots up and running. Rhythm & Hues also developed a custom “RHDA system” which made it easier to package up the solutions within their larger production pipeline. This plug-and-play approach allowed artists to take a creative approach despite the tight timelines.

“Houdini is flexible and its productivity is from the lack of limitations.” says David Horsley, FX Supervisor, Rhythm & Hues. “Artists could set up character animation just as easily as a shader and then plug these into practically everything else that Houdini has to offer. Even new users were able to get up to speed quickly without extensive training.”


Lighting the Hulk

Lighting was accomplished using both the in-house Wren renderer and Houdini’s Mantra renderer. For many shots, Rhythm & Hues exported geometry to the Lighting department to render with the proprietary Wren renderer. Geometry generated by the effects sequences could be modeling and simulated in Houdini then lit with the same lights and environment as the characters.

Mantra was used to render out test shots of geometry that would eventually be rendered in Wren. In some cases these Mantra test images were approved and used in the final composite. Several shots were rendered completely in Mantra. In the Harlem brawl church sequence where the marble floor cracks open, the shots were pre-visualized using Mantra, with shaders designed in VOPs, and then the final render was generated with Mantra. For these shots almost everything was completely created within Houdini.



Unlimited Destruction

For the University Courtyard Raid, a whirlwind of effects was brought together in Houdini. These effects included; glass cracking and simulation of glass flying in the air, grass rendering and grass dynamics for ground interaction, muzzle flashes on guns, grenade explosions, bullet impact and hits on Hulk's body, Humvee Destruction dynamics of metal crushing (cloth), gas steam simulations from the damaged Humvee, gas simulation of tear gas in the glass walkway, and drool and spit from the Hulk.

The tear gas simulations, stream, and grenade explosions were simulated using R&H’s internal fluid dynamic software run through the Houdini interface. In some cases, Houdini’s particle operators were integrated with the proprietary fluid dynamics system.

The ability to prototype then execute hundreds of effects under tight deadlines is crucial for working in production. Houdini has become an important tool for tackling feature-film quality effects and these workflow efficiencies help studios like Rhythm & Hues remain competitive. And in the end, the ability to do all this while supporting the director’s vision makes it all worthwhile.

ABOUT RHYTHM & HUES STUDIOS

One of the world’s leading producers of quality character animation and visual effects for entertainment and advertising, Rhythm & Hues Studios has continually pushed the boundaries of the digital frontier since its founding in 1987. The studio has been recognized with numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards® for Achievement in Visual Effects, (Babe, 1995 & The Golden Compass, 2008), and three Scientific & Technical Academy Awards. The studio’s work is seen in more than one hundred and fifteen feature films, hundreds of commercials, and will be featured in the upcoming releases of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, They Came From Upstairs, Land of the Lost, Night at the Museum 2, Cirque du Freak and Fast & Furious 4.

welcome aboard mate
which college you're going to?
at the moment the industry is kind of slow in m'sia
maybe lack of exposure to the community
but we're doing something here to help out people all around to understand what's CG,concept art and etc that is relevant to this field


well,we pe-planned that this would be a community service
well to those who does not understand well bout this field
feel free to ask question
hopefully we might be able to help out to further understand this field

Here are some good concept works to start up with.

This guy Feng Zhu is a very reputable artist. He along with Ryan Church were among the other pre-production artists who worked at Lucasfilm's Skywalker Ranch for the Star Wars Ep III. His environmental works are phenomenal. He also worked on games as well. I can't link all the pics. But here is two of them that might perk ur interests to see more.



http://www.fengzhudesign.com/gallery.html

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Added on July 16, 2008, 10:25 pmRyan Church is another great artist. Worked in ILM as mentioned, currently freelancing. Here are some of his works related to Star Wars + his gallery links.






http://www.ryanchurch.com/04PRO.htm

This post has been edited by slumberus: Jul 16 2008, 10:26 PM

Technical Papers
At SIGGRAPH’s core are the peer-reviewed technical papers – the technology everyone will be using two years from now, maybe a bit more, and some studios will implement the algorithms right away. This year, researchers submitted 512 papers describing the latest, most innovative computer graphics techniques. Of those, the technical papers committee of approximately 65 senior reviewers selected 90. You can – and should – catch a preview of this amazing new technology during the often hilarious and always entertaining “Fast-Forward Papers” preview Monday at 6:00.

“One of the really interesting sets of papers are on what I characterize as gradient-based illustration techniques,” says Greg Turk, papers chair. “They offer very powerful techniques for image creation and editing. The applications are as compelling as painting. I expect these ideas to move from academia to the artist within a couple years.”

Two papers Turk expects will be controversial offer methods in one, for changing the features of faces to make them more attractive, and in another, for swapping facial features. “Who would have guessed that face manipulation would be a trend this year,” he says.

In another paper, researchers at Electronic Arts reveal how they bring user-created creatures to life in “Spore,” the irreverent, quirky, and highly anticipated game from Sims creator Will Wright, scheduled for release in September. And, researchers at Cornell University explain how they created the knitted scarf on the cover of the Conference Proceedings.

“We look for novelty, technical advancements, the highest quality results,” says Turk. “And, the wow factor. Some people do things you’d never think of like the bizarre self-animating image.” You’ll have to see it to believe it.

New (emerging) Tech
The New Tech committee selected and invited forty-four exhibits specifically to stretch your mind in interesting ways. You’ll find them in Hall H on the exhibition floor and in the South Lobby; they’re open to everyone with a Basic pass. So, immerse yourself in ancient Rome in the lobby and feel digital ants crawl up your sleeve in Hall H. Watch a robot arm move an egg without breaking it, move your hand through space and touch objects in virtual reality, and use the “Bug,” a peripheral-based controller unit to build own custom camera with GPS. There’s more, of course.

FJORG!
Sixteen three-person teams signed up for this iron-animator competition, which takes place over 32 non-stop hours beginning Monday morning and ending Tuesday. Each team gets the same character animation assignment and it’s a riot. During the 32 hours, interesting distractions show up – Buddhist monks, salsa dancers, mimes, dragon dancers, a DJ, and some of the most famous animators in the industry. They pack themselves into one big room with cots in the back, 515B at last report, so stop by and check out the action. And if you’re an animator, you can help mentor. On Wednesday, the judges analyze all the entries during an awards ceremony, pick the top five, and announce the winners.

Talks
Two kinds of talks this year – those as part of the Computer Animation Festival, which tend to focus on the artistry of visual effects and animation, and talks that are part of the core conference, which dig into technical details. A Full Access Pass gets you into all the talks, a CAF pass opens the doors to CAF talks within the festival.

“One that I’m excited about is a piece on digital cinematography,” says Darin Grant, conference production director, speaking of a full conference talk. “We have Pixar and Blue Sky giving their approaches to cinematography and setting up camera rigs for ‘Wall-E’ and ‘Horton,’ and some work from ILM on their digital environments in ‘Indiana Jones’. It’s an eye cracker on Monday morning at 8:30. But, I’ll be there. And Friday is character TD day.”

Grant also singles out the CAF sessions on ‘Iron Man’ and Cloverfield in ‘Monsters and Machines’ early Wednesday afternoon, ‘Speed Racer’ Thursday morning, and ‘Kung Fu Panda’ early Thursday afternoon, as well as a full conference talk on ‘Madagascar 2’s green grass early Tuesday afternoon. If you don’t have a full conference pass, you’ll find abstracts on the full conference DVD, which you can buy.

Stereo3D
Deep within the Computer Animation Festival is an exciting and new two-day conference on stereoscopic 3D. With nine sessions, two days of content on Monday and Tuesday, and a screening, this has to be the most concentrated look at stereo 3D on the planet. It starts with a tutorial and a history.

“Someone could come in cold, not knowing anything about stereo 3D, and come out with an appreciation for the history and technical challenges,” says Rob Engle, who organized the event. Speakers from Disney, DreamWorks, Imageworks and other studios share their expertise. Other sessions look at 3D in games, theme parks, science, animation and live action films. If you think the future of films is stereo 3D, this is the place for you to be, to meet people, see films, and wear funny glasses. The meeting room in Petree Hall C has a 21-foot screen and a RealD system. If you want to just see the films, show up at 5:45 on Monday.

SpeedLab
Lastly but not leastly, something else new, new new. “Here’s how this came about,” says Adam Finkelstein. “A fairly large group of us were having lunch during the jury meeting for the content of SIGGRAPH 08 and one person lamented that at the conference, we go, absorb information, sit passively and listen, and then leave. We’re not creating anything. ‘We’ in this case refers to the research community. So we talked about it.” And, did something about it. That something is SpeedLab. Here’s how it works. People will show up in a room to be determined on Monday at 3:45, they’ll form into teams, and during the week, they’ll work on an assigned problem. On Friday at 1:45, they’ll present their solution and the winning ideas will receive prizes.

“It’s totally freeform, but I imagine people will exchange information at the meeting, arrange to meet, and in the meantime, think about the problem,” Finkelstein says. “We’ll give them problems that are grand in nature. Not something you could solve by writing a paper.”

The first 50 people that show up will get to play the game. “We hope mixture of artists, students and researchers come,” Finkelstein says. “We’re hoping to make this intellectually stimulating as a creative process and just have fun with it. We think it will be fun, anyway. That’s why we’re doing it.”

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Added on July 19, 2008, 1:08 pmThe Primetime Emmy nominations for outstanding work in television have been announced.
Here are the VFX categories:



Outstanding Special Visual Effects For A Miniseries, Movie Or A Special
Comanche Moon • Part 1
CBS • The Firm / Sony Pictures Television / CBS Paramount
John Adams • Join Or Die
HBO • Playtone in association with HBO Films
Life After People
History Channel • Flight 33 Productions for History Television Network Productions, A&E Television Networks
The Company • Part 2
TNT • Scott Free/John Callery Productions in association with Sony Pictures Television
Tin Man • Part 1
Sci Fi Channel • RHI Entertainment


Special Visual Effects For A Series
Battlestar Galactica •
He That Believeth In Me
Sci Fi Channel • Universal Media Studios in association with R & D TV
Heroes • Four Months Ago
NBC • Universal Media Studios in association with Tail Wind Productions
Human Body: Pushing The Limits • Strength
Discovery Channel • Dangerous Films Ltd. in association with Discovery Channel
Jericho • Patriots And Tyrants
CBS • CBS Paramount Television
Stargate Atlantis • Adrift
Sci Fi Channel • Pegasus Productions IV Inc., Metro-
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles • Pilot
• FOX • C2 Pictures in association with Warner Bros. Television


Outstanding Nonfiction Special
The Pixar Story
Starz • Leslie Iwerks Productions
Leslie Iwerks, Producer


This post has been edited by cymon: Jul 19 2008, 01:08 PM

interview for guillermo del toro
for hellboy 2 the golden army

This post has been edited by yukikaze: Jul 22 2008, 01:50 AM

BlurBeta is back online after a long Hiatus, I think it's been 4 years!

Since Blur now uses both Max and XSI, Both Max and XSI tools are available for download. We're happy to be able to share our tools to the community, Enjoy!

To download go to www.blur.com and click on "blurBeta" in the bottom right.

There is a "Light" version for both XSI and Max which includes a limited selection of the main tools, as well as a "Full" version which includes all the tools (But there's lots so don't get lost!).

I know it's boring, but please read the ReadMe after installing, you may have to move a few files around! Also Python is required if you are using XSI tools.


Some Highlights of Blur's tools:
Max
Caching Tools
Transform Caching Plugin
Render Elements - Render Pass tools
Onion - Easy Layer management
Modeling Tools
Animation Tools
Camera Tools
Utilities (Naming etc)

XSI
blurXUI - EASIER creation of complex UIs, You can use OpenSource QT to design UIs
Animation Tools (Plotting Tools etc)
Camera Tools
Caching Tools
PointCache Operator
RigBuilder
Quick Widget Maker ( constrained nulls of all kinds! )
BlurStandard Layout, Macros and Keymap


These tools are provided without warranty or support, but if you like you can email us at beta@blur.com with steps for reproducing bugs, or edited versions with improved functionality, and the bug fixes or improvements may make it into a future update.

N. Evan Van Zelfden in Los Angeles warns, watch out World of Warcraft. In an interview at E3 this week, Electronic Arts chief executive John Riccitiello said that EA is working on the next version of Star Wars game Knights of the Old Republic, and it will most certainly have a massively multiplayer online component to it.

"We've got two of the most compelling MMOs in the industry in development," said Riccitiello. The first title, based on the Warhammer property, will launch soon. "And the one that people are dying for us to talk to them about -- in partnership with Lucas, coming out of BioWare, which is, I think, quite possibly the most anticipated game, full stop, for the industry at the point when we get closer to telling you about it."

Does Riccitiello mean the oft rumored Knights of the Old Republic Online? "Yes," he said.

Moving into MMOs is an essential component for any gaming company, and it's a big part of the reason Vivendi merged with Activision, for that company's World of Warcraft MMO.

Riccitiello told Portfolio.com that he was interested in owning World of Warcraft, and that he did discuss it, but it wasn't in the cards. "Because [Vivendi] couldn't afford control of EA, and I wasn't giving it up."

But EA is firmly on that path now, with a KOTOR MMO, which would sidestep the consoles owned by Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. "Increasingly, people are going to be talking about direct-to-customer in our business," said Riccitiello. "I think we'll be talking about it louder than most."

Today, two-thirds of the game industry is console systems and dedicated handhelds. "We expect in 2011 for it to be fifty-percent," Riccitiello said.

MMOs will also be useful as a way to expand into foreign territories.

"China's a growth market for us," he said. "We're launching some mid-session games on a micro-transaction model." In May of last year, the company announced an equity investment in a leading Chinese online game operator, The9, Ltd. "And there's a bunch more coming that we haven't announced. "

The company has stated that M&A is part of the strategy, and EA is looking for core game companies "only when they bring great [intellectual property] and great teams," he said. The company is also interested in businesses that "help us build our platform in the area of Asia, online, and direct-to-consumer."

"One is strategic and new, one is core and profitable -- and we're looking at both," explained Riccitiello.

Future games aside, Riccitiello is most proud of EA's revenues, its console-business growth, and what's currently on display to the army of reviewers and game journalists in Los Angeles this week.

"We added almost a billion dollars to the revenue last year," he notes. "This year, we've told the street that we're going to add a billion to a billion-three."

And console games are a market that's doing well. "It's grown 30 percent year-to-date," says Riccitiello. "All three of the consoles are way up. The PC business in terms of it's aggregate of subscriptions/micro-transactions is also way up. "

But at the end of the day, it's about the games themselves.

"I think, hands down, there's not a publisher or a platform that's got what we've got," he says. In his own life, he sees how EA's games are making an impact: "I've got twenty-two nephews and nieces. A couple years there, I couldn't buy everything I wanted for them at the holidays. I can do the entire holiday -- and capture my mother for the first time -- at the EA store. That's never been the case before."

DARK KNIGHT SPECIAL EFFECT CG HOUSE

Dneg: Bruce's penthouse scenes, armoured car chase, Batmobile/Batpod/chopper, big crowd scene, ferries, Gotham City views and extensions, Pruitt building sequence, batsignals, digital doubles

Framestore (I'm not entirely sure of their total workload, so if someone from there would like to add to this then please do): Two Face, Hong Kong sequence, Hospital sequence, digital doubles, sonar vision eyes.

Buf (again, if someone from Buf would like to add to this that would be great): sonar vision POV.

New Deal Studios (miniatures and models): Garbage Truck crash, Hong Kong pyro building elements.

Cinesite Europe: ground level Batsignal beams, some grapple gun wires, additional comps.

In all there are approximately 700 shots in the final film. I'd guess that around 200 of those are IMAX, the rest are anamorphic scope.

Around 30 mins of the finished film is in the native IMAX format which is mostly 5.6K with the odd shot at 8.1K. The rest of the film is anamorphic cinemascope with most of the work being done at 4K - the exceptions are shots that started life as IMAX but which eventually ended up as scope only, these shots were all worked on at 5.6K. All of the work, from all the vendors was done in this way. There are very slight differences between the IMAX and standard 35mm releases - the odd shot here and there that is in one version only.

The IMAX version of the movie is the definitive version of the film as everything, including the scope work, was done with that in mind. However, all the shots are composed to work in scope too.

For those who are interested, this is essentially an analogue movie - there's no digital intermediate, it's all graded on film. See it in IMAX if you can - I think it may be one of a kind as the shift to digital IMAX projection will effectively clamp the images to 4K resolution. It looks amazing!

just step in, have a look thumbs up!!

SIGGRAPH 2008 is evolving along with the computer graphics and interactive techniques community.
Join 30,000 creators of computer graphics and interactive techniques at SIGGRAPH 2008 in Los Angeles, 11-15 August, for world-class technical presentations, creative exploration, and the industry's largest marketplace of products and services: the SIGGRAPH Exhibition.

See, hear, and interact at SIGGRAPH 2008 with digital innovators, creative researchers, award-winning producers, provocative artists, energetic executives, and adventurous engineers.

The evolution of SIGGRAPH presents several new ground-breaking enhancements that aim to dissolve the borders between traditional SIGGRAPH programs to create a more fluid, interdisciplinary conference. Highlights include:

- SIGGRAPH's newly expanded Computer Animation Festival features five days of screenings, four days of talks, three days of all-star studio events and two days of 3D stereoscopic panels and screenings.


- Technical Papers - Hear the world's most advanced scientists and engineers in computer graphics present the full range of the world's most significant achievements in the field and illuminate new directions for future investigations.


- The return of FJORG! - the 32-hour international computer graphics "iron-animator" competition.


- Dynamic Featured Speaker presentations from Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios President, Ed Catmull; Irish artist and "U2 3D" film director Catherine Owens; and Takeo Kanade, Professor of Computer Science and Robotics, and Director of the Quality of Life Technology Engineering Research Center, Carnegie Mellon University.


- New Tech Demos - new and innovative technologies that you must experience to understand.


- Art & Design Galleries - Explore the latest digital art.


- Talks, Classes, Special Events and much more!

free trial class on august 25, 26, 27 ,9-1pm at jaya one (any one day) just give me a ring book your seats

stewart 0163381176

This post has been edited by onlineseller: Jul 24 2008, 06:08 PM

YOU SUCK AT PHOTOSHOP
admit it everybody does
now here's a dose of tutorial of "you suck at photoshop"
which comes quite handy when you got really bored and at the same time trying to hone your photoshop skills
enjoy guys


You Suck At Photoshop

---

Added on July 31, 2008, 11:04 amActivision cans Ghostbusters game

Activision Blizzard has submitted its latest release schedule with no mention of forthcoming title from Terminal Reality, Ghostbusters, 50: Cent: Blood on the Sand from Swordfish or Double Fine's Brutal Legend.

Additionally the company plans to "realign" staff at High Moon Studios and Radical Entertainment, while Massive Entertainment and Swordfish Studios are both under consideration for sale or closure.

The future is similarly bleak for Vivendi Games Mobile and Sierra Online, both of which have been designated as "non-strategic business units", with Activision publishing CEO Mike Griffith extolling an efficiency drive.

This post has been edited by yukikaze: Jul 31 2008, 11:04 AM

Hellboy 2 :: Production Focus






Well Hellboy II: the
Golden Army, is a creatures feature, with a decided
emphasis on the plural. On display in the film is a huge assortment of some of the most freakishly bizarre characters to appear in a superhero movie. The singular creatures spring largely from the fertile imagination of director Guillermo del Toro, who also helmed the original ‘Hellboy,’ released in 2004 (as well as multi-award winning ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’).

Del Toro, who dotes on monster fables and supernatural fantasy worlds – as does co-screenwriter Mike Mignola who writes the popular ‘Hellboy’ comic books--significantly ups the visual ante in ‘Hellboy II’. He creates a vast menagerie of characters in a series of set pieces that seamlessly merge practical effects and costumed characters with animatronics and loads of CG animation.

The title character – a cigar-chomping, beer-guzzling, engagingly irrepressible, seven-foot red devil (played by Ron Pearlman) – who has been raised from a helltot by a secret agency of the government, reappears in this sequel to engage in a succession of bouts against a host of magical demons. Encoring Hellboy’s entourage are Abe, the amphibious empathic, and flammable girlfriend Liz. A new addition to the team is Johann Krauss. Described as a “protoplasmic mystic,” Johann has been reduced to a trail of smoke that inhabits a robot outfit.

Mike Wassel was the film’s VFX supervisor. London-based Double Negative was the primary CG vendor. ‘Hellboy II’ was the biggest digital animation project Double Negative has undertaken to date. In the past it has contributed significantly to notable effects films such as ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’, ‘10,000 B.C.’ and, most recently, ‘Batman: the Dark Knight’.







This was the first time Wassel had worked with Double Negative. He was picked for the project by Universal, the studio behind ‘Hellboy II’, in large part because he had delivered as VFX supervisor on a number of Universal productions including the ‘Fast and the Furious’ series of films.

“I was shooting ‘Evan Almighty’ when the guys at Universal approached me about getting involved with ‘Hellboy II’,” he recalls. “I was the film’s overall VFX supervisor but I was also embedded into Double Negative as the lead visual effects supervisor,” he notes. “Since it was primarily a single vendor show, it made sense to have me based at the facility.”


Double Negative, headquartered in London’s Soho district, is known for its character animation capabilities. The VFX company was pro-active in seeking the ‘Hellboy II’ assignment. “The excitement and enthusiasm the company showed had a huge influence on del Toro choosing to go with them,” says Wassel. “Guillermo is a very demanding guy, but the people at Double Negative rose to the challenge. They did amazing work, which is a testament to the company.”

Working with Wassel was Lucy Killick, the VFX producer. The Double Negative team was led by senior visual effects producer Steve Garrad and digital effects supervisors Adrian De Wet, Andrew Chapman and Justin Martin. Eamonn Butler was the animation supervisor.

The director was very involved in talking directly to those doing the animation, so he was able to get the performances that he wanted from his characters that didn’t have a live counterpart. “Many of the creatures are from his drawings,” observes animation chief Butler. “He came to us with his well-known ‘book,’ the one he does for each of his films.“

“Guillermo is a huge fan of animation,” declares Butler, who earned his spurs in Hollywood working for a decade as a 2D animator at Disney. “Right from the get-go he told me he wanted ‘Hellboy II’ to appear like an animated picture, with the CG characters we worked on looking larger than life. He wanted to create a world that was very rich, very textural so you could come back more than once and still see more detail going on in the background.”








In total, Double Negative delivered 1,050 shots for ‘Hellboy II’. That includes about 300 contracted out to other facilities: Cube FX in Budapest and three London houses--Lipsync Post, The Senate and Baseblack. Overall, there were some 1,400 shots, Wassel estimates. These ranged from digital tweaks on practical characters to an entire animated sequence near the start of the film that was assigned to Ghost, based in Copenhagen, which is the largest digital effects house in Scandinavia. Ghost worked completely outside Double Negative’s digital pipeline.

Jepp Nygaard Christensen, a part owner of Ghost, was the VFX supervisor for the striking puppet segment early in the movie. It tells the backstory of the Golden Army a millennium ago, through hundreds of puppets that appear carved from wood but are in fact totally CG. “Guillermo emphasized he wanted the puppets to look like real puppets and we spent loads of hours animating them,” says Christensen.

For its part, Double Negative was faced with a lot of heavy lifting on ‘Hellboy II’. The reason was both the sheer quantity of CG animation as well as the diversity of the many creatures del Toro asked for. The requirements pushed the Double Negative team to come up with many innovative solutions.

“The overall scope of the project and managing all of it simultaneously was one of the most challenging aspects – and all that work was done on a fairly tight budget,” says the VFX supervisor. One of the biggest achievements was “creating what looks like a much larger and more costly production.”

Each of the many creature sequences is dramatically different. “You can’t compare them,” says Wassel. He adds: “The amount of hand animation in the Golden Army scene is one example of the diverse set of problems we were asked to solve throughout the project. In the Tooth Fairy sequence, we had to replicate thousands of the nine-inch creatures. For the Elemental, we had to create a 90-foot vined creature that is extraordinarily powerful and wreaks enormous damage in a New York street scene that was almost entirely animated except for ‘Hellboy’.”

THE MAKING OF THE DARK KNIGHT IMAX

The movie Kungfu Panda seems to be making it to court room too.
Zhao Bandi an artist from China filed a case recently against Dreamworks and
Paramount Pictures for the offensive grotesqueries depicted in the movie
and asks for an apology from the film’s producers.

"I think they painted the panda’s eyes green with ulterior motives. Green eyes are somewhat evil. I have studied drawing and painters will never use green eyes when depicting a kind person."

"The panda is not only a symbol for China but also for the people. Making a panda’s father a duck is nothing but an insult to Chinese people. I am afraid Chinese youth in several years will regard Donald Duck as their ancestors."


“Kung Fu Panda” opened in China on June 20 to strong box office demand. But Zhao has been calling for a boycott of the film, saying it “exploits China’s ‘national treasure’ and its martial arts.”

He also claimed the Hollywood comedy hurt Chinese people’s feelings because it came out shortly after a devastating earthquake hit southwestern China’s Sichuan Province, the primary habitat for giant pandas. The screening of “Kung Fu Panda” was postponed in Sichuan to “appease quake survivors,” Xinhua news agency reported last month.

In Universal Pictures' third installation of The Mummy franchise, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, we get to experience an especially creepy mummy up close and personal. Actor Jet Li is represented in a multi-layered computer-animated performance as a warrior trapped inside a terra-cotta shell. In moments of rage, his terra-cotta face cracks and falls away, revealing a grotesque "under-mummy" that also resembles the actor and delivers dialogue. This warrior’s curse is that he’s doomed to be encased forever in that shell, so terra cotta repeatedly re-grows over his face. The hot clay glows and smokes as it painfully re-seals.

“We basically had two hero characters,” says Nordin Rahhali, CG supervisor at Digital Domain (DD) in Venice, Calif. “The under-mummy resembles a dessicated, burnt Jet Li, and the terra-cotta outer shell resembles Jet Li in a more stylized way. The idea that director Rob Cohen had was that it would be like a Russian nested doll.”

Digital Domain’s effects crew began by amassing reference photography of a terra-cotta statue on set. “This gave us lighting cues and textures,” Compositing Supervisor Lou Pecora says. “We also shot a clean pass of the set and then a pass with Jet Li in it. You notice that when an actor is in a scene, the movement of the camera is more believable.” The actor’s image was then rotoscoped from the plate with the company's software Nuke (now marketed by The Foundry). Then DD’s proprietary tool Track was used to track the camera movement in the plate. “It’s better to rotoscope an environment rather than use greenscreen,” Rahhali says. “You can’t beat the real lighting cues that make a CG character sit in a scene.”

The digital version of Jet Li was modeled and animated in Autodesk Maya and rendered in Pixar RenderMan. “We made a model look like Jet first, and then we started dessicating it,” says Rahhali. To create multiple layers of the dessicated under-mummy, Digital Texture Lead Stan Seo created highly detailed textures on a Z-Brush model. “Displacement maps were then taken from Z-Brush and put onto a lower resolution cage to add back all that detail in Renderman,” Rahhali says. CG Lighting Supervisor Hanzhi Tang took Seo’s textures and created the shading model. “He added all the specular hits, the ambient occlusion, and beautiful subsurface scattering on the thinner pieces of skin,” Rahhali says.

The facial animation of the under-mummy drives the look of the crumbling terra-cotta shell, but a significant amount of simulation had to be added. “After we ran through the animation process, the shot would go through an effects process,” says Rahhali. “We have a pipeline that brings all the character geometry into [Side Effects] Houdini. Once it was in Houdini, our effects lead, Brian Gazdik, worked on all the cracking and shattering. A simulation was created on the surface of the character’s face. It was an interesting technique because based upon the deforming geometry, the animation was driving the surface simulation. The director wanted to have something that would crack and re-seal but still reveal the subtleties of the animation happening underneath. So our effects people would take this deforming geometry—the animation coming from Maya—and calculate stress maps to determine how much of an area of the face was moving during a particular length of time. Through that, they would run the simulation so that we’d have areas that were fully intact. Only when they hit a certain threshold of stress or flex would it crack along a seam. It was a physically based simulation that had artistic user input on where events would happen. It was a mix of articulate hand animation and some meticulous procedural work. Procedural work only goes so far—there was a lot of hand tweaking.”

While the crumbling terra cotta required significant particle simulation, the re-sealing of the character’s face with molten terra cotta was another challenge. “We wanted to come up with something that was physically based that you could believe was super-heated terracotta,” says Rahhali. “It had to be based on something you could relate to, like a hot piece of clay that’s glowing. These effects—including fine, wispy smoke and embers coming off the face—were pretty much all Houdini effects and all hand done.” DD rendered effects with Houdini’s Mantra renderer, though the company used its proprietary voxel renderer Storm (a Houdini plug-in) to render the smoke effects.

“In resealing the face,” says Pecora, “the director specifically wanted to see imperfections burning off, which happens when you’re firing clay. He wanted to see embers come flying off the face help the audience understand the physics of what was going on. When the face reseals and you see the expression on the under-mummy’s face, that has to translate to the outer terra-cotta shell.”

“There were so many layers required to give us what we needed in compositing,” says Pecora. “They got combined through a customized Nuke macro that we affectionately called ‘Pimp my Mummy.’ It was put together by one of our look development compositors, Chia-Chi Hu. It combined all the layers and allowed us access to color sliders and color controls. We had one input node that all had the layers in it—that got fed into Pimp My Mummy, which split all those layers and assigned controls to each of them so we could dial the subsurface scattering separately, without having to dig through the layers. We spent a lot of time in compositing addressing a lot of the lighting issues by adjusting the different passes—all within the interface that Chia-Chi put together for this show.”

This allowed Digital Domain to finesse the final look as efficiently as possible. “There were times when we had our supervisors or the director sit with an artist and dial in the controls interactively. That kind of time saving was invaluable," says Pecora. "You can’t do that by just iterating and iterating. You can cover seven or 10 iterations with one interactive session. What used to be just the toy of the cappuccino-steeped ‘Flame elite’ is now in the hands of us humble compositors!”
Credit Roll:

Director: Rob Cohen
Visual Effects Supervisors: Joel Hynek, Matthew Butler
Computer Graphics Supervisors: Nordin Rahhali, David Hodgins
CG Modeling Supervisor: Francisco Cortina
Animation Supervisor: Kelvin Lee
CG Lighting Supervisor: Hanzhi Tang
Compositing Supervisor: Lou Pecora
CG Modeling Artists: Raul Dominguez, Wayne Kennedy, Daniel Moy
Lead Character Rigger: Richard Grandy
Character Riggers: Marc Wilhite, George Saavedra
CG Animator: Slavik Anishchenko
Lead Compositor: Ted Andre
Compositors: Heather Hoyland, Chia-Chi Hu, Richard Thompson (Technical Developer)
Lead CG Effects Artist: Mårten Larsson
CG Effects Artist: Brian Gazdik
CG Lighting Artists: Diana Sear, Åsa Svedberg
Lead 3D Integration Artist: Geoffrey Baumann
3D Integration Artist: Justin van der Lek
Digital Texture Paint Lead: Stan Seo
Digital Texture Painters: Joseph Lacap, Ting Lo

Warner Bros. Digital Distribution and Warner Premiere announced today a new way for graphic novel fans to connect with their favorite characters and the stories they know and love through short-form digital content. “Warner Premiere’s Motion Comics” draw on a massive amount of source material to bring a visually engaging experience to life through the use of subtle movements, voice-overs, sweeping music scores and stunning comic book artwork. The highly anticipated debut episode of DC Comics “Watchmen” is now available exclusively as a free iTunes download for the next two weeks via Entertainment Weekly’s website (www.ew.com/watchmen). Beginning August 2, the debut “Watchmen” Motion Comic will be available on the iTunes Store (www.itunes.com) for purchase and download for $1.99. In addition, the Eisner Award-winning “Batman: Mad Love” starring Batman, The Joker and Harley Quinn can be downloaded to own from Xbox Live and available on Verizon Wireless’ V CAST Video service starting July 22. A full lineup of “Warner Premiere’s Motion Comics” and release dates will be announced shortly after Comic-Con.

Watchmen – Motion Comic
“Watchmen” takes viewers through the critically acclaimed DC Comics and Hugo award-winning graphic novel by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons. Set in 1985 at the height of the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union, costumed avengers have been banned with the exception of two – The Comedian and Rorschach. During this time the mysterious murder of a United States government official named Edward Blake occurs in New York, possibly by Soviet Communists. It is later confirmed that Blake is actually a costumed avenger – The Comedian. The news of the murder is discovered by his fellow costumed avenger, Rorschach who sets out to discover the murderer.

During his search viewers discover whether Rorschach is really insane or if he’s uncovered a plot to murder super-heroes and, even worse, millions of innocent civilians. On the run from the law, Rorschach reunites with his former teammates in a desperate attempt to save the world and their lives. But what they uncover will shock them to their very core and change the face of the planet. Following two generations of masked superheroes from the close of World War II to the icy shadow of the Cold War comes this groundbreaking comic story — the story of The Watchmen.

In the July 18 edition of Entertainment Weekly fans will find a special link through EW.com (www.ew.com/watchmen) that provides access to the episode via iTunes. Additional episodes for purchase will also be made available via iTunes and other distribution partners in the coming months leading to the theatrical release of Watchmen in 2009.

Batman: Mad Love
“Batman: Mad Love” is taken directly from the pages of the Eisner Award-winning single issue graphic novel by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm. The story revolves around The Joker’s sidekick Harley Quinn who is madly in love with him. She uses crime to demonstrate her love for her “Puddin’” and sets out to commit the ultimate act of love – killing Batman.

The “Batman: Mad Love” Motion Comic will be available to purchase from Xbox Live and viewing on mobile phones enabled for Verizon Wireless’ V CAST Video service starting July 22. “Batman: Mad Love” episodes will also be available from other distribution partners in the coming months.

waa lots of CG's

i wonder wat software the use

This post has been edited by rosihan: Aug 4 2008, 05:21 PM

can't believe you guys roll it out, finally people exposing CG art and getting attention to CG now!! I'm more on to digital art myself because I do admit I'm not good enough to draw everything my own! Well Doing Conceptual Digital Art just one of my hobby!

welcome my friend.
here we can exchange info, ideas and projects too.

i really want to bring out the professional issue, the concept art is still new and not much intro to our market.
i m happy to hear u are doing concept digital art as one of your hobby.
just keep up, friend.

mind to share some of your work?

welcome aboard mate
it's nice to see you actually come into this thread and post
very much appreciated
be sure to drop by often and share as much news ,knowledge and stuff as possible

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.

I think the situation is quite similar in other places (all over the world). Very few Houdini seats compared to other software packages.

How long have you been using Houdini?

yup, it really take all the time compare the rest.
even i render with networking render farm dell precission workstation it still drag me for some time.

i still trap by their end result
i wonder if they can upgrade the render speed?
seem everyone is complain it.

The difference is that all major facilities have a Houdini team even though its small. And if you're really good, you'll find them beating a path to your door. No such luck over here in Malaysia.

3 years or so.

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Added on August 30, 2008, 11:20 pmAll true spectral renderers or their equivalents are the same . . . for now at least.

This post has been edited by Diazepam: Aug 30 2008, 11:20 PM

want to share some of my concept work.
this is release from NDA. so it is public visual.


This post has been edited by cymon: Sep 3 2008, 02:09 AM

Whats NDA? Non disclosure agreement?

Do you do freelance? (for concept design and modelling)

This post has been edited by mysticaldodo: Sep 3 2008, 04:49 PM

yup,

i do freelance too.

Out of curiosity, under what situation or scenario would a model/asset/ artwork be released from NDA?

after certain of time due to the agreement / the owner release due to need public attention or tease /
we ( concept designer ) apply free-off art work for certain purpose & etc..

Maxwell is good if you know what you're doing, and you're very specifically low-res.

Getting over 2k = vRay win. But below that MXW seems to win because its renders don't look "synthetic"/"vRay" (yes, the illumination is near-life but not exactly)


Migrating to Houdini. One man war. Pain.

cheer up
we can always discuss over here.
like now i facing a bit of your situation, i m working on MODO.
i even brought a few books from oversea to learn about it.

having someone teach and learn alone is lot of different.

bump in to say hi~

hi to you too.

nice thread to intro all about cg

someone hav to do it.
lot of manga, sketch and illustration in lowyat.net but no cg.

so better to hav one, where all the cg mate can come in and chat about cg stuff.
actually cg & concept is very professional career in oversea.


This post has been edited by cymon: Sep 5 2008, 04:36 PM

cool cool... used to hang around the other 3d-works thread years ago... will hang around here from now

courtroom use animation

An animated video shows a woman jogging by the side of a road - until a wayward car sends her flying into the grass. In another, a motorcycle crashes into a truck parked in the bicycle lane at twilight. In a third, the pipes in an attic tilt, causing moisture to collect and creating mold that spreads spores through the house and into the inhabitants' lungs.

You won't be seeing those cheery flicks at your local multiplex, but you might in a courtroom. Legal Art Works, based in Jacksonville, produced them to help its clients win - or stave off - multimillion-dollar litigation payouts.

Animation has long served as a powerful tool in the courtroom. What better way to explain a complex series of events to a jury? The cost, however, used to be prohibitive for all but the most high-profile firms. Now cheaper, faster computing power has led to a litigation-animation boom.

According to the American Bar Association, 25% of firms with 50 to 99 attorneys used the technology in 2007, vs. 4% in 2006. More than 20 small businesses currently provide one-stop shopping for accident reconstruction, medical illustration, and animation services. Legal Art Works charges between $5,000 and $20,000 for its videos, 25% of which is pure profit. Founded in 2003 by Jeff Davis, a former medical illustrator, the company's revenues have doubled every year, hitting $500,000 in 2007.

Today's legal animations are extraordinarily sophisticated compared with their predecessors.

"A red rectangle sliding across the screen used to represent a fire truck," says Davis, 36. The latest works feature 3-D computer graphics that rival those in Shrek (if Shrek were under indictment). Typical subjects include patent-infringement cases, medical malpractice claims, and serious highway accidents.


that is serious business in oversea..

all new trailer of The Clone Wars animated series

http://www.cartoonnetwork.com/clonewars/

The Art and Making of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Written by Haden Blackman
Edited by Brett Rector
Foreword by Hayden Christensen
Format: Trade Paperback, 224 pages
On Sale: August 19, 2008
Price: $29.95
ISBN: 978-1-933784-25-0 (1-933784-25-3)


ABOUT THIS BOOK
The Star Wars saga continues! The Force Unleashed: Art of the Game chronicles the four-year development of the anxiously awaited, action-packed video game (releasing April 2008) developed by LucasArts from conception to completion. The book reveals innovative game design concept and images, three-dimensional renders, and behind-the-scenes photos. The Force Unleashed game casts players as Darth Vader's "Secret Apprentice" and promises to unveil new revelations about the Star Wars galaxy. The expansive story, created under direction from George Lucas, is set during the unexplored era between Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. The game re-imagines the scope and scale of the Force by taking full advantage of new technologies that will be seen and experienced for the first time, such as Digital Molecular Matter (DMM) by Pixelux Entertainment and euphoria by NaturalMotion Ltd., paired with the powerful Havok Physics ™ system. These new technologies create gameplay only possible on the new generation of consiles. DMM incorporates the physical properties of objects in the environment so that every element reacts exactly as it should--wood breaks like wood, glass shatters like glass, Felucian plants bend in their unique way, and more. Meanwhile, as a revolutionary behavioral-simulation engine, euphoria enables interactive characters to move, act, and even think like actual human beings, adapting their behavior and resulting in a different response every single time. Well before its release, The Force Unleashed game is already buzzing on blogs and gamer websites, at gamer conferences, and among Star Wars fans. LucasArts is fully backing the promotion of the game to the tens of millions of Star Wars fans around the world.




original cover art.

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Added on September 6, 2008, 10:34 amnice info
thanks for sharing.

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Added on September 7, 2008, 2:46 ami3DTutorials releases “Mastering the Art of ICE Volume I: Breaking the ICE”

i3DTutorials has announced their latest training product for SOFTIMAGE|XSI, called "Mastering the Art of ICE Volume I: Breaking the ICE ". This latest offering from the growing i3DTutorials library of SOFTIMAGE|XSI training products, teaches artists how to use one of the most stunning features of SOFTIMAGE|XSI 7, the new Interactive Creative Environment, known as ICE.

Approaching ICE from an artist’s point of view, learn to harness the power of ICE step by step. Learn about the ICE Tree, the tools and features that give the artist more power than ever before with ICE’s amazing workflow. Learn to work with nodes, compounds, simulations, caching, optimization, forces, and how to take advantage of the new volume shaders in SOFTIMAGE|XSI 7, which will take your visual effects work to a completely new level.

Upon completing your training with the fundamental techniques and tools of ICE, you will be taken through the entire process of putting all your newfound knowledge to use in an actual production scene. By taking you through the entire production process and showing you how the tools you learned apply to industry work, artists will go beyond a simple “introduction” to ICE through a more profound learning structure.

“Mastering the Art of ICE Volume I: Breaking the ICE” teaches the techniques needed to take advantage of the power of ICE and opens new possibilities to artists previously available only to programmers.



This post has been edited by cymon: Sep 7 2008, 02:46 AM

Massive $208 million petascale computer gets green light
The 200,000 processor core system known as Blue Waters got the green light recently as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and its National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) said it has finalized the contract with IBM to build the world's first sustained petascale computational system.


Others too are building toward a petaflop generation. NASA, Intel and SGI in May said they would team up to crank up the space agency's supercomputing power, making it up to 16 times more powerful than it is today. Specifically, NASA Ames, Intel and SGI will work together on a project called Pleiades to develop a system with a capacity of one Petaflops peak performance by 2009 and a system with a peak performance of 10 Petaflops by 2012.

Might I suggest that if we post up snippets of info from other sites, we should also provide a link or state where it came from?

Don't want to get into problems later for not giving credit to the original authors.

I suggested that sometime ago. But most of the articles were republication friendly so nothing to worry about be "sued" or something else.