Steve Lim / SuperSteve3d - My Blog

What’s New in mocha v2

supersteve3d — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 09:26:46 +0000

What’s New in mocha v2

* 64 bit Architecture: Re-engineered for 64-bit operating system support * Improved User Interface: New icons and streamlined interface make mocha even easier to learn and master; * Improved Licensing Activation: mocha users can now easily activate and deactivate licenses for use on multiple systems; * Stabilize and Smooth Module: Smooth jittery camera footage or lock down shots for effects plates; * OpenGL Acceleration: Hardware rendering of mattes with motion blur; * Nuke 6.0 & Nuke X support: Copy and paste RotoPaint and CornerPin nodes from mocha directly into Nuke; * Apple Motion support.

3ds Max 2011 Changes/Enhancements

supersteve3d — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 06:50:05 +0000

3ds Max 2011 Changes/Enhancements

This is a more complete list of changes organized slightly differently. It’s important to understand that the 2011 release delivers on some aspects of our XBR vision (as did 3ds Max 2010). XBR is being implemented in a series of phases, and with 3ds Max 2011, we can say that Phase 1 is complete. One down, two to go!

1. XBR Graphics

1. New Quicksilver hardware rendering using the GPU
2. Enhanced viewport material display (most 3ds Max legacy shaders were converted to metasl)
3. Improved MetaSL Shaders (performance and quality improvements in many areas)

2. XBR UI

1. New Slate Node-based Material Editor (with integrated metasl workflow)
2. Simplified material/map browsing
3. New Caddy UI for faster modeling
4. Fully customizable ribbon
5. New collapsible command panel

3. Workflow

1. New Local Edits to Containers
2. New object paint feature in Viewport Canvas
3. New layered texture painting features in Viewport Canvas
4. New 3ds Max Composite (based on Autodesk toxik technology)
5. New mental ray 2011
6. Better snapping
7. Shift clicking selects loops or rings intelligently
8. CTRL clicking only adds to the selection sets instead of toggling
9. Bitmap pager changes (user control of paging)
10. New CAT character-animation toolset (with bug fixes and stability improvements)
11. New FBX File Link for Revit files (with several import optimizations)
12. Dynamite VSP for civil visualization (3ds Max Design subscription customers only)
13. New Autodesk Materials library and workflow (over 1,200 presets)
14. Native import of Inventor IPT/IAM files as solids
15. SAT file import/export and solid-model support
16. Native SketchUp file import
17. Improved OpenEXR support
18. Enhanced SGI RGBA file support

4. Misc:

1. New “Save to 3ds Max/Design 2010”
2. 100% plug-in compatible with 3ds Max/Design 2010
3. Windows 7 Support

5. New Third-party tools:

1. Craft Animation free tools – SoftMotionCam, ObserverCam, MultiStateCam, HumanizerCam, PreRigged Models (4)
2. Pixelactive Cityscape free tool for GIS import

6. New Content:

1. (10) Biped and (10) CAT rigged hires characters from aXYZ Design
2. (60) low-poly, mix of trees and palms from Marlin Studios
3. (25) high-quality vehicles from aXYZ Design
4. (50) low-poly, vehicles from Cacheforce
5. (20) assorted motion clips from Mixamo
6. (70) pedestrian motion capture clips (male and female)
7. “The Dark” animation (and related files) from NMTrix (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUVMSZSvado)

7. Unsupported features (not documented to work):

1. Exposed mental ray string options for “under-the-hood” manipulation of mental ray
2. Native import of Alias Design files (.WIRE) as surfaces

Framestore Joins the Nuke Crowd

supersteve3d — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 03:25:04 +0000

The Foundry announced today that Framestore, the largest visual effects and computer animation studio in Europe, has invested in a Nuke site license. Adoption of Nuke at major facilities seems to have hit the tipping point, as Framestore joins Sony Pictures Imageworks, ILM and Weta Digital as Nuke site license holders.

Topogun Released

supersteve3d — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 01:13:56 +0000

What is TopoGun?

TopoGun is a stand-alone resurfacing, and maps baking application. The resurfacing functions in TopoGun will help you modify and/or recreate the edgeflow of your digital 3D models. The maps baking functions, will help you bake various types of texture maps from your high resolution 3D models and then allow you to apply them to your newly created optimized meshes. These texture maps contain information that will help you recover the appearance and features of the original high resolution mesh.

In today’s 3D graphics, high quality 3D models, due to their nature, usually have millions of polygons. This is because most of today’s 3d models are created from real world scanned models, or they are digital sculptures, created using brush based 3D sculpting applications.
In order to better serve their purposes, 3D models should have a much lower polycount and must provide for a deserved ease of handling. Even more than this, they need to have specific edgeflows in order to be more easily animated, or further detailed.

A lot of artists nowadays create their concepts as 3D models, using brush based sculpting applications. They usually start from basic primitive objects, such as cubes. At a certain point, they need to rework the topology of their models. There are several reasons for doing this: to make the 3D models more animation friendly, to create lowpoly versions for gaming or further sculpting and detailing, or as a way to change the highres topology in order to improve the model’s capability of handling the highres information at a lower polygon budget. A resurfacing tool like TopoGun is needed for these purposes.

Furthermore, you can use TopoGun to bake multiple maps out of the original highres meshes. These maps can be used by texture artists when texturing the models. They can also be used by 3D engines in order to preserve the original mesh’s features, (i.e., small details that couldn’t be recovered after retopologizing due to the limited polycount an engine can render in realtime).

Autodesk Toxik (Standalone)- RIP

supersteve3d — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 09:00:37 +0000

Development efforts for Autodesk® Toxik™ compositing software have been transferred to Autodesk® Maya® 3D modeling, animation, visual effects, and rendering software. Autodesk Toxik is no longer available for purchase as a standalone product.

Continued Support for Autodesk Toxik
Support resources will continue to be available until March 2010 to support Autodesk Toxik customers.

Double Negative Expands PFTrack Pipeline To Singapore

supersteve3d — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 08:32:50 +0000

Double Negative (DNeg), one of Europe’s largest post production houses for film and already a prolific user of The Pixel Farm’s popular matchmoving toolset PFTrack, has recently purchased an additional 10 licenses of the product for use in its new facility in Singapore.

Matchmove Supervisor at Dneg, Sam Schwier explains some of the reasons why PFTrack just keeps getting better and is the tool of choice for Dneg: “PFTrack is widely used in the London office and we have found the latest version (v5) to be a huge improvement for problem solving shots we undertake. The interface improvements in this version allow us to see the status of a track much more clearly, and it is now also much easier to feature track.”

In helping to establish the new facility, CG artists and professionals were brought from singapore to DNeg’s London HQ to familiarize them with the DNeg pipeline which tightly integrates PFTrack, so that the two studios can work together seamlessly. “The idea was to expose them to our established pipeline for world class VFX ” Says Victoria Rodgers, Head of HR at Dneg. “As there hasn’t been a lot of tracking done in Singapore it is almost an entirely new concept to most artists in the studio, so we need them to be able to pick it up very quickly and PFTrack allows us to do this.” adds Schwier.

Over the last couple of years, Dneg have invested heavily in PFTrack, making it a significant part of their VFX pipeline using unique tools such as the XML camera data importer, survey data management and geometry tracking. “Dneg are exactly the kind of forward-looking company that The Pixel Farm develops products for. It’s always a pleasure to see the continued high quality results they produce using our software.”, says Michael Lancaster, Product Director at The Pixel Farm. “We wish them every success with their expansion plans in Singapore”.

DNeg is currently hiring local talent to compliment it’s 3D department in the Fusionoplois, Singapore studio, specifying a preferred knowledge of PFTrack. www.dneg.com

Announcing ZBrush 3.5 and GoZ for Windows and MacOSX

supersteve3d — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 02:01:25 +0000

Since the release of ZBrush 3.2 for OSX and the introduction of GoZ (www.GoZBrush.com), we have received a tremendous amount of positive feedback from the artistic community as well as companies interested in becoming GoZ supported applications.

In order to continue refining GoZ and other ZBrush4 features, we have decided to postpone the release of ZBrush 4 and instead release an interim ZBrush 3.5 for Windows and Mac users. Version 3.5 will have all the features of ZBrush 3.2—including GoZ—as well as additional refinements.

Some of the features in ZBrush 3.5 are…

Multiple texture, normal and displacement maps per SubTool, with enhanced displacement and normal map options such as native export of 32-bit displacement maps. High-Definition displacement and normal maps from HD geometry. Improved perspective with a floor grid. Reorganization of the Tool sub-palettes to coordinate with selected SubTools. The ability to merge all visible SubTools and optionally weld the seams. The new PUVTiles mapping method, which represents the most efficient use of UV space yet. PolyPainting and masking have now been enhanced to 16-bit from the previous 8-bit. New navigation to work with the virtually unlimited zooming. Right-Click Navigation. New sliders added to Project All, providing more control over your results. Memory management enhancements give the capability to subdivide your models to higher polygon counts. New ambient occlusion masking, which can create an AO texture for use in other applications.

Furthermore…

ZBrush 3.5 will also include one of the still unannounced key features of ZBrush 4. We are very excited to include this very powerful and creative new feature in version 3.5, and are sure that you will be too! An introduction to this feature will be made available here, at ZBC, within the next couple of weeks.

The Windows version of 3.5 will be released by the end of August, followed by a release of the OSX version in September. Following the release of 3.5, we will continue to refine ZBrush 4 and its features (such as LightBoxand Spotlight) for release in the 4th Quarter of 2009.

ZBrush 3.5 and ZBrush 4 will be released as free upgrades to all registered users.

Apple Finally Discontinues Shake?

supersteve3d — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 01:50:51 +0000

Alongside today’s introduction of updated Time Capsule models, Apple appears to have finally discontinued Shake, its long-standing high-end digital compositing and visual effects software package. While Shake’s product pages remain available on Apple’s site, it is no longer listed in the online Apple Store and MacRumors has received word that Apple sales representatives have been informed of the product’s discontinuation. Shake had been priced at $499.

Shake was originally launched in 1997 as a product of Nothing Real, which was acquired by Apple in early 2002. Apple continued to update Shake over the next several years, but the release of Shake 4.1 in mid-2006 was accompanied by the announcement that no further software updates were planned. A minor update to version 4.1.1 was issued in late 2008.

At the time of Shake 4.1’s release, rumors claimed that Apple’s replacement for the software package, code-named “Phenomenon”, would be based on Apple’s Motion software and released in 2008. While such a standalone product has not surfaced, it is possible that Apple finally views Motion 4 and other components of the updated Final Cut Studio released last week as a sufficient replacement for Shake’s features.

Update: Apple’s Shake product pages now redirect to the Final Cut Studio main product page.

Vicon to showcase boujou 5 in special presentations at SIGGRAPH 2009.

supersteve3d — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 03:35:07 +0000

Vicon will be showcasing a pre-release version of its eagerly awaited boujou 5 at the SIGGRAPH conference in two weeks in New Orleans. boujou is the industry leading camera match-moving software for artists to capture complex camera motion and calibration data from image sequences.

Building on its established ease of use and automation, boujou 5 is enhanced with a unique new way of solving 3D camera positioning and motion paths from image sequences. This new approach radically accelerates the solve and allows users more manual interaction within complex shots.

The upgrade includes new features that many existing boujou users will have been eagerly waiting for:
•   New Automatic Sequential Solver-Previous versions of boujou took the entire shot into account before delivering a solve. Now, the application looks at a single frame at a time, which not only enables the user to intervene, it can make the entire process a lot faster.

•   Fully functional Graph Editor-Lets the user manually tweak the camera data and, if necessary, reprocess a shot. boujou 5 also provides the ability to lock valid sections of solved data or sections which are known to be correct, which animators can then use to improve other segments of an image sequence.

•   Reference Frames- Allows users to import still images taken with any camera and use them to assist in a solve.

Moved to new host last week

supersteve3d — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 19:44:29 +0000

Moved to new host last week