Marc Pampols

And the “looser” is… Windows Vista!

3dspeedmachine.com has done a speed comparison between the three most famous 3D packages available: 3dsMax, Maya and Softimage XSI

They made some tests with Windows Vista and Windows XP (both 64bit) with different amount of geometry and the main problem detected is that the same machine with the same application, runs slower in Vista.

You can also see that XSI seems to be the fastest!

Link: 3ds Max | Maya | XSI Comparisons at 3dspeedmachine.com

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