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Sunday, August 9, 2009

3DCreative Magazine - August 2009 Issue - Available Now!

3DCreative Magazine - August 2009 Issue - Available Now! See 3DCreative Magazine - or click on the image below - for further information and to download the free 'Lite' version of this month's magazine:



August 2009 brings you the 48th issue of 3DCreative. Which, if I’m not mistaken (and I’ve calculated this wrong before, so bear with me while I’ll add this up…), is the mark of four whole years in production! Woo-hoo! It’s been a great four years and we’re happy to announce that we’re going for five, so stick with us for more and more (and more) 3D into 2010!

So what’s new this month? Well, you’ll notice a slight change to 3DCreative in that we’re going tutorial crazy from here on in and cutting back slightly on interviews and making of articles. We’ll still have the gallery as normal, and the quality is certainly not going south, so we hope you’ll like the changes we’re making and enjoy all the tutorials we’ll be covering now and into the future. As always, suggestions are very welcome – pop an email over to me at lynette@3dtotal.com if you’d like us to consider any topics for future issues!

New to the August issue is chapter one of a three-part series on Creating Custom Textures, by in-house 3DTotal artist, Richard Tilbury. And what’s more, we’re giving away another great selection of Total Textures for FREE in this issue to accompany the tutorial, so forward-click to p.54 to get yourselves some free textures and learn some top tips from our very own texturing artist – who, by the way, worked previously as a texture artist for a U.K. games company before joining 3DTotal, and he sure knows his stuff!

3DCreative is all about tutorials now, so catch up with Joseph Harford on p.82 as he takes our next-gen character low-poly base mesh, created in last month’s instalment, into ZBrush for the first of two-parts sculpting, before moving onto the mapping and unwrapping in chapter four of the series. James Busby (LightWave), Gavin Goulden (Maya) and John Hayes (modo) will be back with us in part four of the Next-Gen Character Creation tutorial series when Joseph hands over the high poly ZBrush sculpt for the mapping/unwrapping fun to begin!

Also in its second chapter this month we have part two of Photoshop for 3D by Richard Tilbury, who takes us through retouching final renders, and our ZBrush Manimal Creation tutorial hits part three this month with Brazilian artist, Diego Maia returning to 3DCreative to take us through the production of an Aquatic-Man, on p.38. Diego also gives us some ZBrush rendering tips, the result of which is this month’s front cover feature!

Our artist interview featuring in this month’s magazine is with Californian-based artist, Christophe Desse, who teases us with sunny beach stories (whilst we sit here under what seem to be forever gray skies), and tells us a little about his move from film and advertising into real-time projects. You’ll no doubt have seen one of Christophe’s stylized cars featured in last month’s gallery, so you can now take full advantage of our interview and delve straight into his portfolio on p.6.

Finally, our making of has been kindly contributed by Marco Aurelio Magalhaes da Silva, another talented Brazilian-based artist who talks us through his workflow when dealing with inorganic subjects, such as this beast of a car, the Mustang Shelby 67, on p.66. And before you leave us and wait patiently for next month’s issue, be sure to check out our top picks in the gallery, with images by Andrei Cristea, Stéphan Brisson, and Christian Rambow just to name a few - p.14 is the one want!

Enjoy!

Lynette - 3DTotal Content Manager - 3D Total - The cg artists home page
Don't forget we also have a 2D magazine! 2DArtist Magazine

Blender 2.5 at Siggraph 2009

The Blender Foundation, the organization behind the free and open source 3D creation suite Blender, today unveiled the result of the Blender 2.5 project, a fully customizable interface layout system, with advanced access to all tools and options Blender offers.

During an almost two year process of design, review, and artist feedback, the Blender team has implemented a new core architecture for Blender. The key changes involve a high level of configurability of the interface and the ways tools are used, and a further elaboration of the original non-overlapping and non-blocking parallel working UI system. All of the interface elements in Blender are now defined using a scriptable layout engine, with scripted access to all of the data Blender provides. Keyboard layouts for hot keys and user input can be changed on the fly, including definition of macros, and reapplying tools with adjusted settings.

Blender 2.50 also provides a upgraded animation system. Now every setting and option can be animated via function curves, higher level actions, the non-linear animation mixer, or scripting.

Blender Foundation is also preparing the third Open Movie project, “Durian”, which will explore epic action content in 4k digital cinema. Six artists and two developers will work in the studio of Blender Institute, for a period of 6–8 months. A key goal of Durian is to ensure that Blender 2.5 series is production ready.

The first of the official 2.5 versions will be released in October, during the 8th annual Blender Conference in Amsterdam. The Blender team plans to give regular updates, with the 2.5 project to be completed with the Durian film premiere in 2nd quarter 2010.

Link: www.blender.org

Download "Autodesk Maya 2010" from 10th August



Those of you in Autodesk subscription will be able to download

Maya 2010 from Monday 10th August from the Autodesk Subscription Centre.

More Details on Monsters, Inc. Blu-ray and Luxo Jr. Premium Combo Pack


Important questions have now been answered for both the Monsters, Inc. Blu-ray and the Luxo Jr. Premium Combo Pack (AKA Pixar Luxo Lamp Collection), both highly anticipated releases, both in stores November 10th!

Let’s start off with the mega-delayed Monsters, Inc. Blu-ray which was originally slated for last May with A Bug’s Life. The set has been increased from a 2-Disc set to a 3-Disc. To refresh your memory, it was previously announced that Monsters will contain a brand new game Roz’s 100-Door Challenge, a Roundtable Discussion featuring Pete Docter, Lee Unkrich and Darla K. Anderson and a new featurette Monster’s Inc Ride and Go Seek: Building Monstropolis in Tokyo! Also included are all of the bonus material from the original DVD release.

Moving on we have the Luxo Jr. Premium Combo Pack featuring, you guessed it… an actual replica of Luxo Jr.! Previously only available for pre-order in the UK as the Pixar Luxo Lamp Collection, this limited edition item will be available on November 10th in the US. To differ, it’ll be packaged with Up on Blu-ray instead of the whole Pixar Blu-ray collection. Luxo Jr. himself is an actual working lamp and has a storing area at the base for Blu-rays. It comes at a steep price of $199 but I’m sure it’s worth it.

You can pre-order Monsters, Inc. on 3-Disc Blu-ray from Amazon now. US pre-orders for the Luxo Jr. Premium Combo Pack coming soon.

Up Blu-ray & DVD Out November 10th; Features & Cover Art Revealed!


Adventure is out there and coming to your home on Blu-ray and DVD November 10th, 2009!

This release will come in three main variations: a 4-Disc Blu-ray (2 Blu-rays, a Digital Copy for handheld devices, and a standard DVD), a 2-Disc Special Edition DVD (can’t confirm this one) and a 1-Disc Standard DVD. The barebones 1-Disc release will only include the shorts Partly Cloudy and Dug’s Special Mission as extras. The 2-Disc would add commentary, a featurette and a digital copy. On the other hand the 4-Disc set is packed with bonus material!

In this collector’s must-have you will find all of the above plus making-of extras such as character focused Geriatric Hero, Canine Companions, Russell: Wilderness Explorer and Our Giant Flightless Friend, Kevin, as well as set, research and music focused Homemakers of Pixar, Balloons and Flight, Adventure is Out There (the much talked about trip to South America) and Composing for Characters. You can also find alternate scenes like Married Life and The Many Endings of Muntz included in the set. Like all others Pixar Blu-rays you’ll also be treated to Cine-Explore with Pete Docter and Bob Peterson and an exclusive Java based game called Global Guardian Badge Game. To see the detailed description of these features click on [Extended Description] at this link.

The 1-Disc release will be retailing for US SRP $19.99 and the 4 Disc Set will be selling for US SRP $34.99 through Disney. You can pre-order these releases at the links above and receive a pin set or through Amazon (which is listing a different price) among others.

There are two other major Pixar releases coming our way November 10th. Stand by for a write up on those.

Absence: What I've Missed

This past week has been crazy. Lots of fun, but crazy. It was my birthday this past Monday and I was surprised with a mega-trip to Walt Disney World. As it would be, I had no time to do anything on the internet.

That’s exactly why I haven’t posted in days, I’m not ignoring you, I swear! Well anyways I’m back and I apologize for my absence (second time this month/won’t happen again) so as a token here’s some notable news I missed:

Woody’s Last Name: Here’s some surprising news coming from Lee Unkrich on Twitter, Woody has an official last name! That would be Sheriff Woody Pride. Very fitting for this iconic character. Will we be hearing this name in Toy Story 3? No, but it has been his surname since early development of the original picture! Apparently the name was used in the description for the Toy Story Toy Box Collection once. Happy Early Birthday Mr. Unkrich!

Up’s Worldwide Success: Last Friday Up opened in major territories including France, Israel, Spain and Taiwan as their number one movie! Internationally Pete Docter’s latest has collected about $71 million. Meanwhile, Up is ending it’s US run with $286 million so far. (via Box Office Mojo)

So I hope you accept my apology (with the late news) because we’ll be back with lots of news, actually really soon. The next post should be very exciting…

Awakening 3.5 Released!

What's new in Awakening 3.5?

* Terrain
Terrain system supports collision detection, also supports height map, altitude adjust, etc.

* Video Texture
You can load video to texture to produce animated image.

* 'Exclusive VB' option for mesh
This feature use more video memory but can speed up rendering, especially for massive vertices objects.

* More options of Portal
New options let Water Rendering more convenient.

* Sound supports video files
Can load video file as sound source.

* Save to tri file
Can save mobile to .tri file

* Text editor assigning
Can assign text editor for 'Edit User Script File', etc.

* Improved Command Script API
New classes and enhanced functions:
SaveScene()
VectorToYawPitch()
terrain
texturelist (changed)
scene (changed)
movable (changed)

* New & Improved plugins
1. Terragen Terrain Files Importer: Can import .ter files as terrain.
2. OBJ Files Importer: Have repaired the vertex normal error and support polygon now.
3. Collada DAE Files Importer: Can import skinning animation from .dae files.
4. tri & ani exporter for 3dsmax9, 3dsmax2009


Download (34,813K)

http://www.AwingSoft.com

DigitalXModels - New Model Collections and Discount Available

New Model Collections Available - Clothing 3 and Golf Course/Pro Shop

DigitalXModels.com has become a leader in providing the 3D community with realistic clothing models for the visualization industry and has continued to produce more models. This new collection focuses on Men's Dresswear and contains 25 new items. Multiple preview images for each model are available for viewing on the product detail page.

The Golf Course/Pro Shop collection is ideal for anything golf related and contains some of the best quality models on the internet. This collection has 33 models including a fully detailed golf cart, golf bags, clubs, products found in pro shops, and many other items. Details can be seen here.

Additionally, there are several new free models available for download, nearly 30 models in all.

DISCOUNT COUPON AVAILABLE


Rarely seen in 3d model stores are sales and discounts. DigitalXModels is offering it's first sale since the very successful "Economic Stimulus Sale" back in January. Use coupon code "SHOWMETHEMONEY" and receive 25% off your entire order. This coupon is valid through the end of August and may be used up to two times.