Finally its here and with a bunch of new features and visual performance improvements, now you can download Adobe Flash Player version 10 from Adobe website!
Adobe Flash Player 10
I’ve discovered this new physically-based unbiased render engine, it looks really nice and it is free for non-commercial use.
As more other features, it includes an integrated network renderer, sub-surface scattering, HDR support,a physically based sky and sunlight model and a physical camera.
Compatible for Windows and Linux, and with available exporter tools for Blender, 3dsMax, Cinema 4D, Sketchup, XSI, Maya and Houdini
The glass of old whiskey, sample from the Indigo Renderer gallery
More fun from Siggraph 2008!
This is the new stuff coming out from the Microsoft Labs:
Link: Unwrap Mosaics: A new representation for video editing (Microsoft Labs)
Oh god, it’s Siggraph time, lots of new CGI things are coming up… and now I thing that the end of pure reality in TV and movies is coming really, really soon.
OTOY, “The 3D engine that renders graphics in the cloud”
Unlike AMD’s Cinema 2.0, the OTOY technology allows weak computers and mobile phones to render a very detailed and realistic 3D scenes by sending the data to a server and receiving the rendered result.
OTOY Render engine
Link: OTOY Developing Server-Side 3D Rendering Technology (TechCrunch)
Link: OTOY Website
AMD is creating a new interesting technology to achieve the quality of a movie in real time 3D rendering, like it happens in games, where every scene and action performed by user is interactively rendered by the GPU.
Actually the 3D effects in movies are more complex that the render used in games, a LOT more realistic and detailed, and that’s because in the film industry every frame needs a lot of time to render, like 4 or 5 hours for example.
With Cinema 2.0, AMD wants to take the same quality that we can see actually in film and bring it to real time and games, achieving 24-25 rendered frames per second.
AMD Cinema 2.0
That could be dangerous, imagine that in a near future you can not distinguish reality from fiction, for example, in the TV news… oh wait!
ProMotion Studios has finished a new 3D short film called Lighthouse, Directed by Charlie Short & Ming Hsiung, created using 3dsMax and Blender, and made for the American insurance firm Liberty Mutual.
Its a short (3min) film with a great animation and rendering, the overall quality is very nice.
Lighthouse shot
They have also developed open source tools that will be released in the next versions of Blender, a software that is growing fast and it has been used in some very interesting and successfull projects like “Elephants Dream” and “Big Buck Bunny”
Click in the image below to watch the film (flash video)
Link: Original CG Talk thread anouncing the film
Link: Making of (Flash movie)
Guillermo M. Leal, a 3D artist from México, has released a great new script for 3dsMax 2009 called MultiLight, a script for VRay that lets you interactively change the parameters of the lights in your scene, like intensity, gamma, tint, etc…, modifying the resulting HDRI maps.
I have seen the first post at CG Society (CG Talk) where Guillermo showed some details about the project and many users quickly became interested, if you are, more details and price is available at the author’s homepage.
Now it supports VRay, but the author says that Mental Ray and Final Render support is in development.
Have you ever heard something about the ”greeble” effect ?
“A greeble or nurnie is a small piece of detailing added to break up the surface of an object to add visual interest to a surface or object, particularly in movie special effects.” - Wikipedia
Here is a nice example of what does this effect:
Greeble example, Rendered by Gargaj / Conspiracy.
I discovered this effect some time ago with a plugin for 3dsMax called “Greeble”, a funny plugin that generates random detail in objects simply by adding a modifier, it was available since 3d Studio Max version 3.
Another great resource for greeble fans is Greebelicious: http://www.greebelicious.com, a forum-gallery where users post their artistic creations with various greeble tools available for 3d software.
Render by "pure render" from Greebelicious
If you like it and you want to start greebling, below is a list of plugins available for various 3d packages, and if you don’t have any, I recommend you starting with Autodesk 3dsMax (trial demo available), or if you like open source software, Blender is a good choice.
Greeble plugin for 3D Studio Max (from R3 to the actual 2009) - Tom Hudson website
Discombobulator, greeble script for Blender (working version is for 2.40, latest release of Blender is 2.46)
LW Greeble & Nurnies, script for Lightware - Download
Last week I had the opportunity to watch the WALL-E movie in AMC Theaters from Times Square, New York
WALL·E Movie poster
As always Pixar has done a tremendous great job, stunning 3D computer graphics combined with a great characters. It seems this people can’t make a bad movie… and this one is the best they have done to date.
Characters are full of emotions, and they not even speak! there’s a great moment in the movie when Wall-e meets Eve and say their names for the first time.
Don’t worry about the dialogues, the film don’t need any!, but there are human characters too, maybe the “worst” part of the movie if there’s any… but it’s necessary to show them in the way they interact with robots, it’s someway funny, and they have the same look as in “The Incredibles”
Forget the fu%&$ng screeners and go to the big screen to enjoy this masterpiece and also the shot film Presto at the beginning.
Well, I almost finished the wheel, now i’ve tried to make a better looking shot with a first looking materials.
As you can imagine, the tire needs some final touches… and the brake is missing too
The "Audi R8" wheel - Click to enlarge
