+ hairfx is an sophisticated fur and hair solution for Autodesk's® 3ds Max. Being the successor to the popluar Shag: Fur and Shag: Hair plug-ins, it's now much more evolved and offers various advanced tools including a new anti-aliasing engine to help produce smooth, non-jagged hair and fur strands, a new Cloth Mesh converter to support reactor® 2, clothfx, and SimCloth's. As part of the Autodesk Certified 3ds Max Plug-in program, hairfx now also offers bucket-based rendering support for rendering technologies including finalRender Stage-1 and VRay. This helps conserve memory over the default stripe size rendering for Scanline scenes with these powerful renderers. Composite shadows from light sources can easily generate hairfx shadows in addition to shadows specific to tools like V-Ray and finalRender.
>> Download HairFX for 3ds Max

Labels: 3ds Max 9, 3ds Max plugins

Posted by Boss at 6:46 PM | Permalink | Comments

+ The 4Th Istanbul International Animation Festival will be held on 3-8 of December. And "Call for Entries" has been announced for the 4Th İstanbul ANIMATION AND VISUAL EFFECT Short Film Competition, in seven different categories.The competition is open to all international/National animator and have no entry fee.
Competition Categories:
- IAF Grand Prize: The best blended short film about story and animation technique.
- Turk Short: Best short film made by Turk animator or animators.
- Advertisement: Advertisement film which includes one or more animation technique.
- Music Video: Music video which includes one or more animation technique.
- Motion Graphic: Animation short film by motion graphic technique.
- Student Film: Animation short film made by student.
- First Film: Animation short film made by a person's first experience.
......Short films produced in 2005 or after, are only accepted for entry. The Application deadline is on 30Th of October 2007 (until 18:00) and Announce date of accepted films will be 12Th of November Monday.Entry form has to be filled completely for each entry and sent along with film copy. For more information, please visit: www.iafistanbul.com

Labels: Awards and Events, competition

Posted by Boss at 6:44 PM | Permalink | Comments

+ HOLLYWOOD, Calif. –- Family Friendly Films, LLC announces that the popular e-book, “Zea Zoo and the Land of Boo: An Urban Fairy Tale,” has entered into movie production stage after making its presence known online. Based on a popular children’s poem, “Zea Zoo and the Land of Boo” was so successful as an e-book that it is now being made into a computer-generated illustration (CGI) short animated movie. Targeting the vastly under-served urban youth/family markets, “Zea Zoo and the Land of Boo” has nurtured an international, online audience that has created branding as a positive youth/family-friendly favorite.
“The film is refreshingly new and much anticipated in the animation film industry,” P.D. Blackmon of Family Films, said. Blackmon has recently returned to study at the UCLA Film School after 20+ years in the media industry as a writer/director and producer.Post-production VIP screenings of the film are being sponsored by Women in Films (Beverly Hills) and Universal Studios. Equity partnership and distribution deals are currently being shopped. CGI animation has eclipsed other animation forms and has emerged as one of the most successful film-art forms. Through state-of-the art CGI animation, coupled with traditional artistry, Family Friendly Films has achieved a new level of storytelling that still pays homage to Walt Disney and other great past animators. The film’s characters are reality and fantasy based, giving the animation studio extreme longitude to tell a story while exploring creative boundaries. At the center of the story is a young, disenchanted boy from Bay Village, a town near the Gulf Coast of Mexico. He gets caught in Hurricane Katrina, nearly drowns, and awakens in the “Land of Boo,” a magical wonderland under the sea. While there, he befriends unique characters who help him to return home to save his family and friends.
The boy’s efforts are fraught with challenge and he must continue to stay one step ahead of King Nino, Queen Elvia and their evil followers the “SeaWeeds” who seek revenge and, ultimately, his death.The film is being produced by Family Friendly Films, LLC, Family Film Animations Studio and Blackmon Entertainment.
To learn more, visit: www.landofboo.com

Labels: Animation - Vfx, animation short

Posted by Boss at 6:35 PM | Permalink | Comments

+ Pixologic, Inc. has announced the release of ZApplink Version 3 for Zbrush. ZAppLink 3 is a ZBrush plugin that allows you to seamlessly integrate your favorite image editing software into your ZBrush workflow. Call up your image editing package while in ZBrush, use it to modify the active ZBrush document or tool, and then go straight back into ZBrush. Some of the ZApplink features includes; # Create New ZBrush Layers in Photoshop # Store views for your model to be painted in your image editing software # Create ZBrush Stencils in Photoshop via selection tools and many more.
For full features list and free download of ZAppLink - Click Here

Labels: ZBrush

Posted by Boss at 6:33 PM | Permalink | Comments

+ D&AD has announced "Call for Entries" for 2008 D&AD Global Awards, in 30 different categories encompassing all aspects of creative communications from writing and art direction to architecture, Graphic design and photography. The D&AD Awards, which is also popularly known as the "Yellow Pencils", are one of the most internationally prestigious creative awards for the design and advertising industry. D&AD awards has been rewarding creative excellence since 1962.
The D&AD Global Awards offer the creative community the opportunity to be judged by its harshest critics - its peers. Over 270 eminent creative practitioners selected for their expertise in their field, looking for great ideas that are well executed and appropriate to their mediums. So, now its your chance to hold well respected and popular "Yellow Pencil," and do remember to submit your entry before 14 November 2007, to avail a discount of 10% on entry fee. The regular online Entry Deadline is Wednesday 16 January 2008 and all postal entries must arrive at D&AD by Monday 4 February 2008.Also note that, the D&AD Student Awards 2008, will be officially launched late this month, and tentative Entry deadline is Thursday 20th March 2008.
For categories and prices for the D&AD Awards 2008 - click here
For more information regarding D&AD Student Awards 2008 - click here
For D&AD Pencil winning work from previous years - click here
For getting Award easy way - visit local stationary shop :)

Labels: Awards and Events, competition

Posted by Boss at 6:29 PM | Permalink | Comments

+ Visual Effects Studio "Sway" delivers New Nissan Rogue Commercial spot, which showcase quite Astonishing Virtual Environment and Ground-Breaking VFX Techniques. For this stunning Nissan Rogue commercial entitled “Seamless,” Sway VFX team integrated live action, motion control and PhotoReal computer graphics (CG) techniques to create an astounding virtual environment. The :30 spot creates the illusion of the Nissan Rogue on a real studio set, surrounded by virtual projection screens displaying the environment through which the car is traveling. The strong CG imagery in “Seamless” allows the viewer to journey in and out of this illusion by creating the impression that the car is actually traveling through a real live environment.
“This commercial required intense planning and pre-visualization,” noted SWAY Visual Effects Supervisor, Wayne England. “An elaborate single shot camera move required many motion control passes to account for the spot’s complex and ambitious nature, but once combined with our photorealistic CG methodologies and compositing, the project gained a great deal of dynamic and compelling motion.”
A precise CG replication of the vehicle’s exterior was seamlessly integrated with a live action interior, which required intense 3D tracking and compositing techniques. This combined with flawless compositing of all motion control passes, allowed the characters inside the car to appear and change as the camera moved throughout the shot. Because the car could not physically move within the visible soundstage setting, the ground beneath the Rogue required a large amount of CG effort for which careful reference photography and high dynamic range (HDR) images were taken. Through texturing and modeling details, the car appears to roll on a large conveyor belt, while simultaneously driving on a realistic road. To further create the Rogue’s apparent motion, SWAY captured live-action high-definition footage using a specially configured three camera rig that collectively captured a 150 degree field of view. The footage was then stabilized, re-timed and projected onto virtual screens which appeared to surround the Rogue. This required considerable synchronization inside the 3D scene, so that the content of the screens would appear in exact alignment with the 3D elements within the shot.
During the live-action shooting process, SWAY additionally captured HDR images of sky environments, and after careful editing, used them as the primary CG lighting source for the entire spot. SWAY utilized a variety of off-the-shelf hardware and software to complete the Nissan spot. The most prominently used tools were NVIDIA Quadro professional graphics boards, NUKE and After Effects for compositing and LightWave for pre-visualization animation. Autodesk’s 3ds Max 9 was used as the primary 3D package while PF Track was used for 3D tracking.
>> Visit Sway Website
>> Watch Nissan Rogue Seamless

Posted by Boss at 6:27 PM | Permalink | Comments

+ Schematic Material Editor is very handy open source plugin/script for 3ds Max and is developed by Finland based young digital artist Jerry Ylilammi. With Schematic Material Editor, 3ds Max users can create very complex, animated and procedural materials n maps very easily. It is perfectly "safe" (doesn't corrupt your max files) and work well with 3ds Max 8 (32bit) and 3ds Max 9 (both 32 and 64bit). All max files and materials created with Schematic Material Editor work even without it installed.
Features Includes;
- Schematic/Node based material editor
- Customizable user interface
- Automatically arranges nodes in sensible way
- Hides all unnecessary submaterial/map slots
- Controls to easily hide/unhide nodes
- Ability to handle multiple schematic views
- Support for 3rd party material and maps
- Support for controllers (Color, Float, Script etc.)
- Advanced Math and Channel nodes for complex material and map setups
- Materials and maps are fully compatible with systems without Schematic Material Editor installed
- Scenes saved with Schematic Material Editor info can be opened even without it installed
- Material and maps are stored inside Schematic Material Editor so they aren't lost even if not present in Material Editor or Scene.
>> Download Schematic Material Editor (for Max 8/9)

Posted by Boss at 6:24 PM | Permalink | Comments