Avid Technology has announced SOFTIMAGE XSI 6.5 with new features and price tag. Also, XSI Essentials now includes features previously available only in XSI Advanced, like Fur, Hair and Syflex Cloth Simulation. Click the image to see the full list of enhancements.
Dreamworks Animation’s first film utilizing stereoscopic 3-D technology, MONSTERS VS. ALIENS, has been pushed ahead from May 15, 2009 to March 27, 2009. Conrad Vernon (Shrek 2) and Rob Letterman (Shark Tale) are directing this 3-D look at the 50’s era of monster movies & both Dreamworks and Paramount are excited about this new technology they’re using for the feature film.
By putting on a virtual reality mask, holding a stylus in one hand and a tracking device in the other, an artist can draw 3D objects in the air with unprecedented precision. This new system is called “Drawing on Air”, and researchers have designed the interface to be intuitive and provide the necessary control for artists to illustrate complicated artistic, scientific, and medical subjects.
Funny shortfilm made by Michael Sormann, taking place in his Theme Planet World. This was made for the SIGgraph presentation at the Autodesk booth in San Diego.
Blender is a great FREE 3D program. Have a look at its features here.
Blender 2.45 is the latest release from the Blender Foundation. To download it, click the image above.
Watch some pages of IT’S ART Magazine #0011 Online, using a Flash preview. Interviews with: David Ho, David Munoz Velasquez, Neil Blevins, Francesco Mai, Ben Hibon, Grzegorz Jonkajtys, Chris Hawkes, Mario Pochat, Darrel Anderson.
The Gnomon Workshop announced three new additions to its 3D and 2D libraries. Zack Petroc (SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW) returns with Volume 2 of his ART DIRECTION AND DIGITAL SCULPTING series, utilizing ZBrush 3. Meanwhile, new instructors Henry Goecke (POSEIDON) and Jeremy Vickery (RATATOUILLE, WALL-E) offer the basics of modeling surfaces in StudioTools and light and color theory from a practical perspective as applied to 2D and 3D image creation, respectively.
This animated video for the song “Evil Bee”, by Menomena (from their current album Friend and Foe) explores the darker side of life for a worker bee and can be seen exclusively on pfflyers.com until October 31, 2007.
The Scientific and Technical Awards Committee of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced the final 15 scientific and technical achievements that have been selected for further Academy Awards consideration. RealFlow4 is amongst the competing candidates.
The Awards Committee will meet in early December to vote on recommendations to the Board of Governors, which will make the final awards decisions.
To view the official press release, click on the image above.
Illuminate labs yesterday announced that its flagship product Turtle 4.1, has entered public beta stage.
Turtle 4.1 includes a completely new GI user interface, which enables you to select the primary and secondary GI solver of your choice and then tune them individually.
Turtle 4.1 also introduces a Radiance Cache, speeding up Radiosity Normal Map calculations, giving both faster and better results. In addition, we’ve now included Path Tracing in the global illumination toolbox, making it easier to setup multi bounce global illumination renders, and improved the Image Based Lighting and HDR user interface by unifying the environment control settings.
Turtle 4.1 supports Maya 8, 8.5 and the new Maya 2008.