Sherman, Menken Team Up for...
A special musical treat is in store for attendees of this year’s D23...
Archive
Luxology’s modo 401
Luxology is seriously out of control! I’m going to recommend that you go visit their website to check out all the colorful candy they have to offer in the Easter basket they are calling modo 401. I’m certainly not going to have enough room to even scratch the surface. modo [...]
Orbaz’s Particle Flow Tools Box#2
Particle Flow, for those outside of the loop, is the quite powerful particle system within 3ds Max. It’s not quite Houdini, but it does have some remarkable tricks’including a few that were added in Max 2010. Orbaz Technologies has been developing their box set of tools for Particle Flow that [...]
Autodesk’s 3ds Max 2010
A few months ago, Autodesk released Max 2010 with a brand new coat of paint to enter the Vista age, as well as some new features that fortunately have some chops. The first noticeable change in Max when you open it is, well, everything. The layout is roughly the same [...]
3DAliens glu3D
Fluids are difficult! Just ask anyone’scientists, physics students, crabbers in the Bering Sea will all agree. In 3D animation and visual effects, the goal is to make them not so difficult’or at least simple enough that the CPUs can deal with the already intense calculations. There are a number of [...]
Wacom’s Intuos4
I know I’ve said this many times before, but seriously, folks: I love my Wacom. For what I do in the visual effects world, I get to rely on my Wacom tablet a lot. My productivity drops down to that of a drunk newborn chimpanzee with arthritis if I have [...]
Autodesk Toxik
For the purposes of this review, I sat down with an artist who has been using Toxik in production so that I could see how the software dealt with real day-to-day challenges. Autodesk referred me to Michael Vaglienty at GiantSteps in Venice. Since Michael has been an expert Flame/Inferno guy [...]
Autodesk Maya 2009
This past year was a very busy period for Autodesk, which has added a few new jewels to its crown while keeping on top of its own current slate for products. One of the company’s more recent releases has been Maya 2009, and I am happy to report that among [...]
MotionBuilder 2009
MotionBuilder 2009 is a new version of an Autodesk 3D tool which focuses exclusively on animation and all things animated. It is often used to edit data in motion-capture pipelines for both film effects and videogames, but the extensive toolset is geared toward creating and managing complex character animation. The [...]
SoftimagelXSI 7
Softimage’s latest release of XSI is leaps and bounds beyond the previous one’which is saying a lot since XSI was already an extremely powerful piece of software to begin with. A huge list of advances have been implemented including new toys inside the latest version of mental ray, refined render [...]
Adobe’s Creative Suite 4 (CS4)
You can’t really discuss any one component from Adobe without discussing the entire suite and how the programs work together. However, we can only fit so much info into such a small space that I’ll focus on the biggies, and then follow up with the ‘supplemental’ programs’those without the fanfare [...]
BinWeevils Appoints Henwood...
U.K.-based digital social world BinWeevils, for kids 6-12, has appointed media...
Blue Sky’s...
Epic, the new animated adventure from director Chris Wedge and his gifted team...
