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Bijan Tehrani
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Articles by Bijan Tehrani
Discreet’s Combustion 3
May 11, 2004 – Visual effects artists, motion graphics designers, animators and almost anyone who deals with film, video and animation have another reason to thank the folks at discreet: The new combustion 3 is a...
HP Compaq’s nw8000
May 11, 2004 – Although Notebook workstations have given us the possibility of working on projects while traveling or shooting on location, many fail in the performance and durability arenas. It’s not unusual for...
Apple’s Final Cut Pro 4.5
May 05, 2004 – Apple revolutionized the non-linear editing world when it introduced its first version of Final Cut Pro back in the 1999 edition of NAB. Available for only $999, FCP opened new doors to indie edito...
Character Animation Technologies 1.15
May 05, 2004 – We all know that animating 3D characters is a time-consuming and sophisticated task. For Discreet’s 3ds max users (before version 5 and 6) the only tools for character animation were Bones and Char...
Total Training for Adobe Photoshop CS
May 05, 2004 – Although there are presumably more instructional books written about Photoshop than all other graphic software together, artists and photographers continue to look for the ultimate, comprehensive t...
Kaydara’s MOTIONBUILDER 5
March 26, 2004 – For many years Kaydara’s FilmBox was the animation industry standard program for editing, cleaning up and modifying motion capture and computer character animation data. When developers of 3D packa...
IBM’s ThinkPad R50
March 26, 2004 – We tested the latest mobile workstation from IBM, the ThinkPad R50, which comes with a speedy Intel M 1700 MHZ processor and one GB of RAM. What’s striking about the ThinkPad is its graphic card, A...
mental ray 3.2 for 3ds max
February 01, 2004 – Many beginning 3D animators assume that rendering is the easiest step in the process, but, in reality, it is one of the most difficult parts of the job. 3D artists should have a good knowledge of l...
Adobe Photoshop CS
February 01, 2004 – Here’s one of the first major upgrades of the year that is bound to make artists happy. Yes, I’m ecstatic about Photoshop CS’ new version, and here are a few reasons why: I needed to work with a 24...
e-on Software’s Vue 4 Professional
February 01, 2004 – The team at e-on software who gave us Vue d’Esprit 4 (Seal of Excellence) have improved on the existing software and come up with Vue 4 Professional. To refresh your memory, Vue 4 is a 3D natural s...
Creative NOMAD’s Jukebox Zen NX
February 01, 2004 – If you’ve been looking for an affordable hard-drive-based MP3 player that can compete with Apple’s i-POD, then Creative’s NOMAD Jukebox Zen NX is the answer to your prayers.
The 30gb Jukebox Ze...
Introducing Maya 5: 3D for Beginners
February 01, 2004 – We all know that learning a 3D application on your own can be as tough as Sam and Frodo’s journey to Mount Doom: You play with the program for a few months, but then you hit a brick wall and can’t ...
321 Studios’ DVD X Copy Platinum
February 01, 2004 – 321 Studios has a good reputation among digital video connoisseurs for its practical DVD back-up and archiving tools. Trying DVD X Copy Platinum convinced me that this latest 321 Studios product is...
Maxtor’s 5000DV External Hard Drive
November 05, 2003 – If you are dealing with digital animation or video, the need for more storage space is never-ending. Fortunately, the number of available Firewire and USB 2 drives is increasing while prices are co...
Samsung’s i500 Playing Pool on the Palm of your Hand
November 05, 2003 – Samsung i500 is the first color Palm OS phone that actually fits in the palm of your hand and weighs only 5.1 ounces. The i500 display might be smaller than a few other palm phones, but it supports...
eHelp’s RoboDemo 4.0
October 22, 2003 – RoboDemo is a handy tutorial/ demo-creation software that enables users to make tutorials for other software packages in Flash format. It basically records the steps you take in any application, wh...
Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware 6.0 Professional
October 22, 2003 – Web pop-up ads have replaced telemarketers and pushy girl-scout cookie agents as one of the main annoyances of daily life. For some reason, companies don’t seem to get the message that we’re really...
Wondertouch’s ParticleIllusion 3.0
September 09, 2003 – ParticleIllusion is a stand-alone particle effects application that utilizes Open GL hardware acceleration to produce near or real-time renders. It has been used in big-budget studio fare such as ...
Anark Studio 2.0
September 09, 2003 – Anark Studio 2 is a multimedia-authoring software with 3D interaction capabilities. Anark Studio 2’s UI consists of a preview window, a toolbox, a scene library, a storage window, a parameter inspe...
IBM’s IntelliStation M Pro
September 09, 2003 – You can customize this new IBM workstation to meet your needs, but the one I reviewed for this column had a 3.00 GHz processor, 1 Gig of Ram, a 80 GB HD, NVIDIA Quadro FX 1000 (128mb) graphics card...
3COM’s OfficeConnect
Wireless Cable/DSL Gateway and Wireless LAN Access Point 8200
August 02, 2003 – The new 3Com OfficeConnect wireless cable/DSL gateway and the 3Com Wireless LAN Access Point 8200 helped me get over my networking phobia. Both devices were easy to install and didn’t require any t...
MindAvenue’s AXELedge V2
August 01, 2003 – MindAvenue’s AXELedge V2 is an interactive web authoring software designed for 3D modeling. After going through a few tutorials, I was able to create some interactive objects without using a single...
Avid’s Xpress Pro
August 01, 2003 – Avid Xpress Pro offers the same tools high-end Avid products are famous for, plus DV resolution. You can work on a low-res version of your movie in Xpress and then transfer your final edit into Avi...
HP Workstation xw4100
August 01, 2003 – The super speedy xw4100 workstation that I tested came with a 3.0GHz/800 Pentium 4 processor, an 80GB harddrive, six USB ports (two front ones), three firewire ports, one DVD+R/+RW, an NVIDIA Quadr...
Next Limit’s RealWave 2.0
August 01, 2003 – RealWave is a physically-based water and ocean simulation plug-in that can even track the propagation of gravitational waves on a mesh. RealWave 2 creates waves by a simple mouse click, and then al...
Digital Video s.r.l.’s Toonz Animation Board 2.0 (The Tab)
August 01, 2003 – This intuitive software for web animation allows you to draw directly into the computer. It also offers a revolutionary approach to handling vectors; instead of grabbing vector points, you can pull...
3D Nature’s World Construction Set 6
August 01, 2003 – If you’re in the market for creating brave, new worlds, alien planets, or actual geographical locations rich with streams, lakes and flowers, World Construction Set 6 can be your best little helper...
Introduction to Level Designs for PC Games
By Andy Clayton
August 01, 2003 – Clayton’s well-researched tome covers almost all the steps and details of game development from planning to lighting to texture. The author also spends the time to explain the ins and outs of gmax,...
Npower Software’s Power Booleans 2.0 (for 3DS MAX)
August 01, 2003 – This plug-in for 3ds max and Rhino helps animators create complex models and shapes with quality meshes and fewer faces. This new version features Level Editing and Quad Meshing.
The Good Ne...
EZQuest’s USB 2.0 Cobra harddrive
August 01, 2003 – EZQuest’s new line of USB 2.0 hard drives are available in 40, 60, 80, 120 and even 250GB. The Cobra 250 GB USB 2.0 drive we tested delivered the superb transfer rate of 470 MB/S. Cobra 250 GB work...
Pioneer DVR-A05U
August 01, 2003 – The Pioneer DVR-A05U is one of the most reliable DVD writers on the market right now. It is versatile and very easy to use. The DVR-A05U executes well when authoring DVD video onto DVD-R or DVD-RW ...
ATI’s FIRE GL X1-128 Graphics Card
August 01, 2003 – The Fire GL X1-128 is one of ATI’s latest products and boasts better performance than most other graphic cards out there. It can handle tons of textures and high poly models with ease, enabling use...
Digimation’s Stitch Lite
July 01, 2003 – Ask animators about the difficulties of simulating cloth in 3D and their tales of woe will fill up a whole book. For a while, 3D cloth simulators raised some hope in providing a fast solution to th...
Corel’s Painter 8
July 01, 2003 – In the mid '90s Fractal Design’s Painter (Fractal Design was eventually purchased by Metacreations which, in turn, was eventually purchased by Corel) was a computer artist’s dream come true. Back ...
ADS Pyro A/V Link
July 01, 2003 – Sometimes when we have the choice of spending a lot to pay for a device that we need or finding a creative solution instead, we can make some curious decisions. For example, I had been using a rela...
Compaq’s Evo N800w
June 02, 2003 – Animators, game developers and artists dealing with digital video have always been on the lookout for a portable workstation that offers them both power and mobility. During the past five years, I ...
Technical Animation & Video’s 3ds max 5 Training DVD Set
June 02, 2003 – We all know that it’s not easy to be a good teacher, and that’s the reason why useful training materials are hard to find. There are more instructional materials published for Discreet’s 3ds max th...
Sonic Foundry Vegas 4 DVD
May 13, 2003 – There’s no need for PC users to envy the MAC pack over their usage of the powerful and top-notch Final Cut Pro for non-linear editing projects. For under $700 (street price), Vegas 4 DVD offers man...
Discreet's Character Studio 4
April 30, 2003 – Back in 1996, Discreet Character Studio introduced a new and easy way of creating 3D character animation. When you opened CS, by click-and-drag of a mouse button, you created a biped (a human skele...
Imagineer's mokey 2
April 30, 2003 – An old Tibetan proverb says, "Just do one thing right, and it becomes a pillar for your heaven and to jump in hell, try a thousands goals in your life." The creators of mokey must have li...
HP XW 5000
April 30, 2003 – Anyone who has ever tried to show a client a DVD of a project on a PC workstation while running a power-demanding software can tell you horror stories about how the DVD can start skipping frames an...
