SHOOTING THE MAYAN PYRAMIDS OF TIKAL FOR UNESCO

Today, visitors to the largest excavated ancient Mayan city can begin to imagine what it was like at its peak, when it sustained some 200,000 people within its 30 square miles. Around 870AD construction slowed, likely due to overpopulation and the resulting destruction of forests, soil and other resources, and by the 10th century Tikal was completely deserted.

The ruins were officially discovered in 1848 and restoration began in the 1950s. The Ruins area is about 10 square miles, a small percentage of the site. The fraction of Tikal’s estimated 3,000 buildings that have been excavated reveal temples, shrines, ceremonial platforms, small and mid-sized dwellings, ball courts, terraces, religious monuments with hieroglyphic inscriptions, causeways and plazas, most interconnected with aqueducts. Only about a dozen have been reconstructed or excavated to any degree while the vast majority is high mounds covered with lush vegetation.

Tikal is also a nature lovers paradise boasting 285 species of recorded birds, hundreds of orchid species and more than 30 hardwood species. Wildlife abounds: howling monkeys, toucans, hawks and parrots are home in the subtropical jungle, amidst trees measuring up to 150 feet in height and endless hanging vines known as lianas; Jaguar, puma, Occidental turkeys, ocelot and snakes can also be found.

Greg Downing, an expert in panoramic and HDR photography, had just finished work on the movie Narnia when he was approached to work in Tikal, primarily to shoot HDRIs that will be used in conjunction with a laserscanning project for UNESCO. In our interview Downing discusses the nature of and his involvement with the project, how 3D modeling and laserscanning were used, and the obstacles unique to jungle photography.

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3D Animation :The little cow from Malibu had one football shoe

The statement may sound a bit awkward at first, but afer watching 3 mins 21 seconds of this video you’ll be convinced, too. According to the team at Soul Pix studio, producing the latest video clip for ‘Die kleine Kuh von Malibu’ temporarily changed the production house into Animal Farm. “The four-week production of this 3D-animated music video dealing with a funny animal football team was quite a lot of fun and a real challenge, for we all know even coping with 2 legs can drive some kickers insane, ­ let alone having 4.” Modeled and animated with Max, rendered with VRay.

Source : http://www.soulpix.de/muh

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DX Studioâ„¢ Version 1.30 Released

We are pleased to announce that a major new version of DX Studio™ is now available for download.

New features in this version include…

• A brand new user interface with faster viewports and better quality icons.
• New demos demo_asteroids, demo_arkanoid and demo_waypoints show the power of script to create games. We’ve also added some user demos to show off what current DX Studio users are building and how it’s done.
• A new fractal cloud system effect has been added.
• Faster player - you should notice a performance boost in all of your documents.
• You can now Freeze/Unfreeze objects so they don’t interfere with the editing process.
• A new waypoint system - add ‘Waypoint’ objects, scale them up so the sphere covers the tolerance, then select and link them together. Use the object.path.createViaWaypoints function to then traverse them.
• New events onCollisionBegin and onCollisionEnd notify just once about collisions.
• You can now directly control an animation with object.animationSetPos("myanim", proportion, play); where proportion is between 0 and 1 of the whole animation, and play is true if it should play from this point or false if it should just hold the frame.
• When you add the same mesh after modifying it, it should now just update the file and not create a new mesh entry.
• Unicode support has been added throughout the product.

Download the new version 1.30 from here!

Many thanks for using DX Studio - please let us know if there’s anything you’d like to see in future versions.

DX Studio Team

Source : http://www.dxstudio.com/news_latestversion.aspx

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Quest3D version 3.6 released

Quest3D version 3.6 released

November 17, Leiden, The Netherlands, version 3.6 of Quest3D™ is now available from Quest3D resellers and the Quest3D website.

With the new version Act-3D™, the creators of Quest3D, introduce exciting features such as HDR rendering, water simulation, improved support for VR equipment, a better web plug-in and native export from 3D Studio MAX®

The new version is an exciting release for existing users or new users that are looking for a high quality real-time 3D solution. The new software further expands the possibilities for development of real-time 3D visualization, real-time 3D web pages, entertainment, architecture visualization, serious gaming and high end VR applications.

At a glance

“It’s safe to say this is the most stable release to date.” – says Remko Jacobs, Quest3D director and product manager. “We really took every effort to get as much information from the user community as we could and incorporated it in this new release.”

High dynamic range rendering allows for visual effects similar to a photograph or film. A post process effect simulates the effect of bright light sources interacting with the lens.

The water rendering system enables effects ranging from wild oceans to calm shallow puddles. The algorithms run almost entirely on the GPU which ensures optimal performance.

The 3D Studio MAX® plug-in provides a complete platform to export 3D scenes directly to Quest3D. Special effort has been taken to ensure smooth exporting of light maps and animations. For other applications users can use 3^rd party export plug-ins but one of the goals of the platform is a future port to other applications like Maya®, AutoCAD®, MicroStation®, Sketchup® and other content creation tools.

The Quest3D web plug-in was redesigned from scratch to solve any issues with previous versions. The result is a rock solid system for running real-time 3D applications inside a browser.

The VR edition of Quest3D was enhanced to offer better support for stereo displays and it now includes native support for the most frequently used motion trackers and cyber gloves.

Availability

The new version is available for free for users that purchased 3.0 or above. New users will get the new version directly if they purchase it through the Quest3D web shop or through the Quest3D reseller network. Both web shop and a list of resellers is available on www.quest3d.com. Existing users can download the update here: http://www.quest3d.com/index.php?id=103

Abstract

Quest3D Version 3.6 is now available from the Quest3D website and reseller network. The new version is a major improvement because of exciting new features such as HDR rendering, water simulation, improved support for VR equipment, a better web plug-in and native export from 3D Studio MAX®. This news should be interesting for both existing and new users since it enhances the real-time 3D applications they can create.

About Quest3D™

Quest3D is a tool for real-time 3D application development. It is widely used for broadcasting, project visualization, entertainment, web, training, and virtual reality.

Recent projects include the broadcast of 2006 Italian elections, the ground breaking VR center of the Offshore Simulation Center in Norway and the Cult horror movie “Trapped Ashes” where Matrix special effects specialist and Academy Award winner John Gaeta used Quest3D for real-time 3D special effects.
More information available here: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20061017/mcmaster_01.shtml

Quest3D is unique because it has extensive and deep functionality packaged in a graphically user interface. Quest3D provides a usable, flexible development environment for users that aren’t necessarily programmers but still want to create high-end real-time 3D applications.

Quest3D is compatible for any computer with a 3D card and Microsoft DirectX 9. It is available from local distributors or from the Quest3D.com web shop.

About ACT-3D™

Officially registered in January 2000, Act-3D is the company behind Quest3D. The company is completely devoted to development of Quest3D.

Source : http://quest3d.com/index.php?id=201

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TV Commercials using Blender in Brazil

Brazil based company ZQuatro has finally proved that Blender is capable of delivering high quality 3D TV Commercials. The artist responsible for the use of Blender on these productions is Lucio Cavalcanti. The post production of the commercials is made in After Effects and with the Blender Node system. You can check out Lucio`s Demo reel too, where he created a model of himself in Blender.

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3D Animation by French Artists

Russian Nightmare 3D Animation by French 3D Artists Caroline Bugnet and Didier Won Shoo Tong.

The Short Story Narration is as below
"Christmas Eve time, Douchka is alone in her parents’ huge home. She’s playing as usual with her toys inventing her imaginary world. Catched by her delirium, the little girl doesn’t make any difference anymore between dream and reality."

Watch the Movie

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Craft Director Tools 8.1.1

Craft Animations announces the release of its new and significantly re-made plug-ins suite, Craft Director Tools. Version 8.1.1 incorporates a number of different customer requests with the unique functionality of supporting Pre-Rigged Solutions.

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DreamWorks now in India

According to a ‘Hollywood Reporter’ story over the past couple days, Technicolor has invested in Paprikaas, a Bangalore-based animation company that services clients in features, TV, commercials and video games.

In fact, Paprikaas was recently relocated to Thomson’s 100,000-square-foot digital content production facility in Bangalore. Thompson is the parent company of Technicolor and is clearly ramping up plans for extended production in the subcontinent.

DreamWorks‘ COO Ann Daly is reported to have said, "Our objective is to tap into and further develop the gifted talent base in India, with the potential to do the kind of feature-level work for which we are renowned worldwide."

Frank E. Dangeard, chairman and CEO of Technicolor parent Thomson, said: "We are committed to creating a center of animation excellence with DreamWorks in India. This strategic alliance is an important step for Thomson: animation represents a significant opportunity for us to expand our content services offering into the media and entertainment industries."

The agreement penned by the group signals that DreamWorks will assist Technicolor in the recruitment, training and development of animation talent for Paprikaas, with particular emphasis on created a dedicated team for DreamWorks projects for the next few years.

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Download Free 3D / CG Wallpapers from CG Artist

Download Cool and free 3D / CG wallpapers calendar for your desktop which are submitted by CG artists for 3D artists. We live in a beautiful world of computer graphics where every day many artworks are made but only some of them stand out to be the best. Here you will find some cool and free CG wallpapers calendar for your desktop which are submitted by artists for artists in various sizes 1280 x 960 (works for 800×600, 1024×768, 1152×864), 1280 x 1024 (works for 1600×1280), and 1680 x 1050 (works for 1440×900, 1280×800). This calendar featured the artworks of Bartek Jurkowski, Soa Lee, Dani Garcia, Claudius Vesting, Dragos Jieanu, Kerem Beyit, Marco Lazzarini, Alon Chou, Don Dixon, Tom Krieger, Vlad Kuprienko and Hau Ming Li.

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