July 26, 2013
The Foundry, Pixar bring together KATANA and RenderMan
ANAHEIM, Calif.–The Foundry and Pixar Animation Studios have announced at SIGGRAPH a concerted technical collaboration to bring KATANA and RenderMan together, creating a combined best-of-breed toolset for high-end lighting and rendering.
KATANA will now include a full RenderMan license as standard, along with a base set of shaders and free KATANA batch render licenses to help get the most out of any RenderMan pipeline, creating an out-of-the box solution. The results of these efforts will be released to all customers inside future releases of KATANA.
KATANA, a premier lighting tool from The Foundry, and Pixar’s RenderMan, which has long been recognized as the industry standard in visual effects and animation rendering, were both recently used together to great effect on Disney/Pixar’s acclaimed short “The Blue Umbrella,” now playing in theaters with “Monsters University.” The successful outcome involved significant dedicated engineering effort from both parties, not only to better support RenderMan workflows, but to build new features into KATANA itself, based upon Pixar’s own creative expertise and production-proven technology.
These continuing developments firmly cement KATANA and RenderMan together as a leading rendering and lighting collaboration, while being open and agnostic remains central to both solutions.
Autodesk implements Creative Commons Learning InitiativeSAN FRANCISCO–Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK), announced that its Media & Entertainment (M&E) support and learning content for its 2014 product line is now live and available under Creative Commons (CC) licensing; that equates to 20,000 pages of documentation, 70 videos and 140 downloadable 3D asset files.
“Autodesk embracing Creative Commons licensing is a big win for Creative Commons, but more importantly, it’s a big win for the design community online,” said Creative Commons CEO Cathy Casserly. “The power of the Internet lies in how easy it is for people to share and build on each other’s work. CC licenses make that kind of sharing possible without the law getting in the way. In opening its resources, Autodesk is demonstrating that it understands the capacity for creativity and collaboration among its community of users.”
The company established the Autodesk Open Learning Initiative in response to a request from Paul Duguay, a 3D and multimedia studies instructor at the Coll๏ฟฝge Communautaire du Nouveau-Brunswick, Canada. After discovering a series of videos on the Autodesk 3ds Max Learning Channel that perfectly fit his curriculum needs, Duguay wanted to translate the audio into French as well as provide his students with legal access to the videos from the college’s website. Eventually Duguay hoped to share his video translations with the wider French speaking 3ds Max community. Unfortunately, the legal complexities of traditional copyright agreements proved insurmountable. Thanks to the Creative Commons framework, Autodesk is now able to facilitate creative sharing and the Power of Open.
“The new digital world is forging powerful networked communities of people eager to share their knowledge and expertise and to mentor each other, and we can play an important part in making that happen,” said Chris Bradshaw, Autodesk senior vice president. “With Creative Commons, we are adopting an easy-to-follow legal infrastructure for the worldwide user community to effectively share knowledge. I can’t wait to see what artists create: a Finnish translation of new Maya software features or an independent school in Bangladesh teaching 3D animation — the possibilities are limitless.”
The Autodesk Knowledge Network is initially implementing Creative Commons licensing for the media and entertainment industry, but also plans to publish product help materials across the company under the license. In addition, Autodesk intends to place its Knowledge Base and Discussion Forums, as well as past and future training content from Autodesk University under the Creative Commons model. Once digital content has been released to Creative Commons, it can be modified, remixed and shared globally.
Earlier this year, Autodesk jumped on board to help maximize digital creativity, sharing and innovation by investing at the Innovator level in Creative Commons, joining Creator level corporate donors such as Google and eBay; numerous foundations including: the Bill & Melinda Gates; William and Flora Hewlett; the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur and Alfred P. Sloan; as well of thousands of committed individual contributors.
Creative Commons is part of Autodesk’s ongoing support of students’ pursuit of careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. Today’s students face a challenging job market, and Autodesk’s goal is to ensure the next generation of designers, engineers and digital artists have great training and free access to the same software that professionals use every day.
For more information on Autodesk and Creative Commons implementation, please visit: http://www.autodesk.com/creativecommons . To participate in the Autodesk Media & Entertainment Creative Commons community visit: http://area.autodesk.com/creativecommons.
Luxion Introduces Integration between KeyShot and ZBrushANAHEIM, Calif.–Luxion, a developer of advanced rendering and lighting technology and maker of KeyShot, the first real time ray tracing and global illumination program, has introduced integration between KeyShot and Pixologic ZBrush debuting this week at SIGGRAPH 2013 in Anaheim. The integration is based on GoZ, Pixologic’s in-house application for transfer of meshes with a single button click.
ZBrush is a digital sculpting and painting program used by 3D professional across the media and entertainment industry. Previously, ZBrush users have imported ZBrush geometry into KeyShot by exporting an .obj file. Now, with the new KeyShot for ZBrush integration, through the installation of the GoZ KeyShot plugin, users gain the ability to import geometry while retaining SubTools, texturing and PolyPainting. Models may also be updated inside KeyShot through KeyShot’s LiveLinking capability.
Currently in private beta, the KeyShot plugin for ZBrush will be available late summer of 2013.
LightWave 3D Group Unveils LightWave 11.6ANAHEIM, Calif.–The LightWave 3D๏ฟฝGroup, a division of NewTek, Inc., announced at SIGGRAPH new features in LightWave 11.6, the newest version of its award-winning 3D modeling, animation and rendering software for artists and designers. LightWave 11.6 software offers modeling, rigging, animation, effects, dynamics, and near limitless render nodes in an award-winning integrated LightWave render engine—providing studios and artists with everything they need to create an affordable and powerful end-to-end production pipeline.
LightWave 11.6 complements features introduced in LightWave 11.5, including the Genoma character rigging system with modular presets, predator and prey Flocking capabilities, per-object Instancing control, and soft-body Bullet Dynamics with support for FiberFX. With the new features and enhancements in LightWave 11.6, artists and designers have the ability to:
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Animate in New Ways: With the Spline Control tool, nulls or other objects act as nodes in a spline to control or deform objects such as tentacles, tails, whips or even elevators. Raycast Motion utilizes Raycasting technology to make an object aware of its surroundings in an animation; the Compound Node allows users to simplify and customize complex networks down to a single node.
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Streamline Real-Time Virtual Production, Pre-Viz, and Game Development: Use NVIDIA CgFX shader technology to create 3D assets for virtual production, pre-visualization, or game development and view assets within LightWave OpenGL exactly as they will appear in the final real-time display engine. Users can also place Normal Maps on 3D objects to make lower-polygon objects or characters display as higher-resolution objects, and create custom CgFX shaders or use existing CgFX shaders.
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Output to 3D Printers: LightWave Modeler now includes new import and export options to support the popular STL and PLY file formats. VRML is also supported and offers surface color data for 3D color printing of objects with texture maps. Also included is full control of the export format used, whether in ASCII or binary, the up direction, and units for export. New geometry clean up tools specifically for 3D printing output are also included.
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Review in Full Stereoscopic 3D: With support for NVIDIA 3D Vision, 3D Vision Pro, and HDMI stereo devices, artists and designers can visualize high-quality advanced stereoscopic 3D environments across multiple devices, including enabled desktop monitors and multi-projector wall displays.
LightWave has been used in the creation of CG and visual effects for leading feature films and television shows, including “Defiance,” “Skyfall,” “The Hunger Games,” The Amazing Spider-Man,” “The Adventures of Tintin,” “Avatar,” “The Walking Dead,” “Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome,” “Fringe,” “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” and many more.
MAXON unveils CINEMA 4D R15 for 3D Content Creation
FRIEDRICHSDORF, Germany–MAXON has introduced CINEMA 4D Release 15 (R15) that redefines the 3D motion graphics, visual effects, painting and rendering software workflow. The next generation release of the widely used 3D software platform elevates creative experience from project planning to content delivery, and is marked by powerful enhancements to modeling, text creation, rendering and sculpting.
Packed with improved capabilities and added features such as all-new beveling for modeling efficiency, interactive kerning for advanced 3D typographic control and Team Render allowing for convenient rendering across networks directly within the CINEMA 4D interface, R15 delivers to 3D professionals the ultimate toolset for creating compelling creative content and collaborating more effectively to take on the most demanding projects.
“CINEMA 4D R15 is a milestone release packed with trail-blazing innovations and our renowned, easy-to-learn workflow for 3D designers across creative markets — film, video, broadcast, Web, multimedia, visualization and games,” Harald Egel, co-founder and CEO of MAXON Computer, says. “Digital content and media creation professionals continue to face relentless cost and operational pressures to take on demanding productions under severe time constraints. With sustained programming development in areas such as modeling workflow, rendering and sculpting, R15 sets new standards to spark the imagination of individual artists and design teams to make sure they have the features they need to push 3D performance to new levels and achieve the highest quality creative results in less time than ever before.”
The new and enhanced 3D modeling, animation and rendering workflow features and performance enhancements in CINEMA 4D Release 15, available for both Mac OS X and Windows, include:
Rendering Enhancements – R15 is packed with rendering improvements to achieve faster, higher quality imagery. The new Team Render delivers quick control over an entire network to take advantage of all surplus processing power – either manually or automatically via Bonjour. Utilize an unlimited number of render nodes with CINEMA 4D Studio and 3 nodes with CINEMA 4D Visualize or Broadcast. Users can distribute the rendering of a single frame or complete animation directly within the CINEMA 4D interface and view the results in real time within CINEMA 4D’s Picture Viewer for a streamlined workflow.
On the quality side, a new irradiance caching algorithm for faster approximation of Global Illumination and improved ambient occlusion, physical rendering and multi-threading features in R15 has been added offering artists unprecedented rendering performance.
Modeling Enhancements – MAXON has enhanced modeling productivity in CINEMA 4D, introducing all-new interactive beveling for improved manipulation and control over object edges and curves for adding depth and dimension to designs and ensure that resulting meshes are clean and flow correctly.
Improved Typographic Tools – CINEMA 4D R15 continues to elevate the design experience delivering significant typographic, text editing and control capabilities over MoText and Text Splines directly in the 3D view. New kerning, and tracking tools can be applied with MoGraph effectors or used in Xpresso and edited at any time to create complex typographic elements and animation.
Dynamic Sculpting – Improved dynamic sculpting tools in CINEMA 4D Studio Release 15 ensure artists can sculpt with finesse and optimize with ease. In cases where there is adequate subdivision, sculpting tools can be used directly on any polygonal model. Advanced masking, mirroring and duplication options, as well as the new Amplify brush that gives control to interactively inflate and use new draw modes to sculpt lines and areas defined by lasso, polygonal drawing or a rectangle, gives artists complete control and flexibility for adding and preserving desired sculpted details.
Miscellaneous Workflow, Modeling and Animation Improvements
Renowned for outstanding ease of use, CINEMA 4D R15 also includes many new productivity-boosting features including:
Texture Manager – Provides artists with powerful new texture management tools to fix broken texture links and wrangle bitmaps with ease to control even the most complex scenes.
Architectural Grass – Based on the powerful Hair and Fur engine in CINEMA 4D Studio, the new Grass Material features lets users quickly and easily simulate and add grass to any object within CINEMA 4D Release 15 Visualize and Studio.
Camera Crane — A new Camera Crane rig offers customers a dependable, production-friendly solution to easily simulate real-life Jib crane shots by adjusting the angle and length of the base, arm, head and the camera itself.
Snell’s Mike Knee to Present ‘New-Generation Scalable Motion Processing From Mobile to 4K and Beyond’ at IBC2013
READING, U.K.–Mike Knee, consultant engineer for research and development at Snell, has been chosen to present his technical paper, “New-Generation Scalable Motion Processing From Mobile to 4K and Beyond,” at IBC2013 in Amsterdam on Sept. 12 at 11:30 a.m. Knee’s paper will be presented as part of the “Cutting Edge 1 — Featuring High Dynamic Range Video” track. The paper will describe advanced algorithms for motion-compensated processing to meet today’s multi-platform delivery challenges in both live TV and file-based operations.
“Today’s broadcast video content is being viewed on the widest range of display devices ever known, from small phone screens and legacy SD TV sets to enormous 4K and 8K UHDTV displays. The growth in size and resolution is happening alongside many other improvements in gray-scale resolution, colorimetry, 3D, and especially higher frame rates,” Knee said. “These developments mean that the requirements for very high-quality, artifact-free conversion in resolution and frame rate have become more important than ever — but when it comes to motion processing, one size no longer fits all. In this presentation, I will describe how operators can achieve a balance across the full range of processing complexity and performance, and show how the trade-offs can be managed gracefully and optimally.”
