 LightWork Design, the world's leading supplier of rendering solutions for developers of advanced 3D computer graphics software, are pleased to announce the launch of their new quarterly LightWorks Image Competition.
The Image Competition is open to users of any LightWorks-based application and images may be focused on any market sector or theme. The only criterion is that the image must be created using one of the 80+ software applications which integrates the LightWorks rendering engine. The winner will receive an 8GB Apple iPod touch and the best entries will be featured on the LightWork Design website.
Entries for the first competition must be received by Wednesday 30th April 2008.
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 OPG is a freeware utility for Max that allows you to create occlusion passes with the click of a button. The plug in will allow you to control all the relevant parameters and even keep bump / opacity / displacement maps in the calculations.
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 The Adobe Acrobat 8.1.2 Professional, Standard, and 3D update addresses several known issues in Acrobat 8 Professional and Standard software. Adobe recommends that all Acrobat 8 Professional or Standard users apply this update.
Improvements in the 8.1.2 update include the following:
* Closes some potential security vulnerabilities
* Addresses several PDF forms-related issues
* Addresses several accessibility issues
* Provides additional stability
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 Side Effects Software, an industry leader in 3D Animation software is pleased to announce the release of Houdini 9.1, which for the first time will include access to the new FBX importer. This addition gives studios a clear choice for interoperability with other 3D applications making it easier than ever to leverage Houdini within an existing pipeline.
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 Vanilla Pass Manager is an automatic and visual render pass manager. The passes can be composited directly in Max to check them, and the pass parameters are stored in the Max file. It works with all of the standard and 3rd party renderers.
Features:
* Automated, pass parameters are saved in one 3dsmax file, with only one click all passes are recomputed.
* Visual, passes are directly composited inside 3dsmax
* Intuitive, a clear interface, reusing your prefered renderer panel (3dsmax, MentalRay, Brazil, Vray...)
* Secure, the scenes parameters aren't changed, just keep working the way you know.
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 3D Architecture Animation Creator is a scripted plugin which can help designers quickly create animations, especially architectural growing animations. It gives you easy control over the creation of position, rotation, scale and visiblity animations for multiple objects.
The Pro version additionally gives you control over the speed of the animation, batch adjustment of pivot coordinates and the ability to add a certain amount of randomness to your animation.
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 BlenderArt issue 14 released. Features Articles/Tutorials on Modeling & Rigging a Cartoon-looking Spider, Making a Low Poly Character from High Poly, Material Retouching using Node & Vertex Color, Creating a Cartoony animation with Blender, Learning the Blender Game Engine, Blender Game Networking, Making of Orion Tear, Making of a Teenage Duck, Making of Monkey Game Project, Case Study on Blender’s Realtime Engine & more…
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 CGArena like always proudly announced the release of another issue of free bi-monthly PDF magazine for download. CGArena Feb-Mar 2008 Issue Articles: Interview with Matthieu Roussel, Photoshop: Making of Black Bashi-Bazouk, After Effects: Radar Screen, 3ds Max: Making of Hell Yeah!, Maya: Making of Quiet Room, Gallery - Showcase of latest 3D inspiring art, 3D Challenge: Ancient Time (15th Feb - 28th Apr 2008).
3D Challenge sponsored by Pixologic, Craft Animations, iZ3d, Hyperfocal Design, N-Sided, Polyboost, ambientLight and Noesis Interactive.
More than $8400 prizes to be won
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 Information:
This modifier allows to create outline of selected spline shape and remove intersections
Requirements:
3ds Max 8 or higher
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 What marks out a truly great 3D movie? The knowledge that it pioneered techniques that became standards within the industry, as Flight of the Navigator did with reflection mapping?
Or that it raised the bar on the volume of effects work possible in a movie, as with Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace? Or simply that it told a memorable story? That was the question we posed in our recent poll to determine the most influential 3D movies of all time, organised in conjunction with 3D World magazine, the industry's leading community portal.
To qualify for inclusion on our shortlist, a movie needed to meet three criteria: to have a running time of 60 minutes or longer; to have received a full cinematic release;
and to include a significant element of 3D animation or VFX work, as opposed to matte painting or compositing.
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 LightRigger is a freeware Maxscript lighting utility for Autodesk's 3ds Max.
The LightRigger script runs inside 3ds max 3-2008 and provides a draft-quality, global illumination lighting system for the default scanline renderer. Unlike full-featured global illumination renderers, LightRigger uses standard 3ds Max lights and components to simulate only the diffuse interreflection component of global illumination.
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 PolyBoost is an extensive set of easy to use, but advanced tools for 3d artists working in 3ds max. The focus of the PolyBoost tools is at speeding up and streamlining workflow for the artist. PolyBoost offers a wide range of tools for creating various types of subobject selections as well as a set of modeling tools which will make many tasks in everyday modeling a lot easier. Included is also a Viewport texture painting tool, UVW editing tools and a set of useful transform tools.
Almost all parts of PolyBoost 4.0 have now been converted to c++ using the 3ds max SDK which means a lot for the speed and efficiency of the tools. They are now just as fast as native max tools would be! New tools in this release include Symmetry Tools, Texture Wrap, Cavity, Density, Dust and SubSurface Map, UV Space, SurfaceSelect, SymmetrySelect, StepLoop and surface offset for the PolyDraw tools.
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 Nimbus is a lightweight, experimental cloud rendering engine. Its far from complete and states that its still under development. The interesting thing is the python script for Blender that could make creating cloud shapes with particles more easily.
Cloud rendering in Nimbus is based on a method used by Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight, which is described in a paper by developer Niniane Wang. Briefly described, this method models clouds as particle systems of billboarded sprites. Realistic lighting is approximated using a combination of simulated ambient light and directional light. Ambient lighting is defined as a range of colors over a range of heights in the cloud. Directional lighting is defined as a range of colors that are mapped onto the cloud depending on the direction of the light source to the cloud.
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 DAZ Productions Inc., a developer of professional-quality 3D software and models, has released beta version of its DAZ Studio 3D Bridge for Photoshop plug-in.
Compatible with Photoshop 7, CS, CS2, and CS3, this new plug-in allows DAZ Studio users to automatically apply 3D imagery and artwork to any Photoshop project.
To help users build their 3D Photoshop library, DAZ is offering a free 3D Bridge Starter Bundle, valued at more than $ 230. The 3D Bridge Starter Bundle contains DAZ’s Aiko 3 Base with several textures, hairstyles, and poses; a Millennium dragon, cat, and dog; a futuristic car, and the EmotiGuy.
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 This plugin contains 4 new procedural materials for Max: Wood, Noise, Tile and Distortion. All of them are 3D maps except for Tile. They will work with scanline, VRay, finalRender and Brazil (not mental ray).
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