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Luxology’s modo 302
Sometimes I get the feeling that I’m constantly writing reviews of modo. But that’s because the talented team at Luxology keeps coming up with new versions of their popular tool. Luxology really gets under the hood and tinkers around to make it faster and add in whole new features. So [...]
Autodesk 3ds Max 2009
I’m not sure when Autodesk is ever going to pull the trigger and just marry Maya and Max together; probably because the marriage is going to end up in death and violence like the Montagues and Capulets, with some felled animator crying out, ‘A plague on both your houses!’ But [...]
Alienware Area-51 m15x
I’ve been reading that the new Alienware Area-51 m15x is a gaming machine. Sure, it’s great at games, pushing through high polycount mayhem at 1920 x 1040 and allowing for death and destruction to occur with high-res blood maps and Z depth fog. This is surely a lot of fun, [...]
Alienware Area-51 m9750 Notebook
I have to begin this review with a little confession: I already own an Alienware laptop computer, and it has treated me with the utmost love from the first day it came into my life. We are still together and I’m actually writing this review on it. So, in the [...]
Eyeon’s Rotation and Vision
I’ve been a Digital Fusion user for the past decade and have seen the evolution of the software to its current form. (The Toronto-based company unveiled the Fusion 5.2 at the recent SIGGRAPH confab in San Diego’which boasts plug-in capabilities that support the native Fusion API, the After Effects API [...]
Maxon BodyPaint 3D V.10
BodyPaint comes to us from the developers of Cinema4D, and it’s now in its third generation. Obviously, with new generations comes more maturity and stability ‘ and new cool features. This handy tool has already established itself with the ability to paint directly on 3D geometry, which isn’t a feat [...]
Massive 3.0: A Real Crowd-Pleaser
The rat pack in Ratatouille, the armies of thousands in 300, the herds of animals in Evan Almighty, and before that, in 20 other feature films, all animated with Massive, might lead you to believe the software developed by Stephen Regelous originally for Lord of the Rings, is crowd simulation [...]
NVIDIA Helps Bring Short to Life
We meet the two slacker stars of animator/director Tim Heath’s short film Plush Life as they drive to work one morning. Lundo is furry and looks a little like a Muppet. Flint has plastic eyes and wears velveteen with a flame embroidered on his belly. Journey’s ‘Wheel in the Sky’ [...]
Caligari Truespace 7.5
Caligari Truespace has been around since the beginning of time; i.e., in terms of 3D content development. In fact, Truespace was one of my first 3D programs running on an Amiga ‘ yes, a Commodore Amiga. When I finally found my way into the visual effects industry, my awareness of [...]
Advanced Maya Texturing and Lighting
Lee Lanier, the author of the more general Maya Professional Tips and Techniques (also reviewed this month), has focused his knowledge into the realm of digital lighting in Maya, which is a topic in need of a full book. Keep in mind that a lot of these techniques can migrate [...]
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While we all steel our hearts and wait for the (second) final season of Matt...
Nexus Partners with...
London-based animation studio Nexus as announced an exclusive partnership with...
