Alain Bielik peers into Luc Besson’s world of Arthur and the Invisibles to see how the live-action director handled the film’s animated fantasy world.
Bioarchitecture Offers a New Spin on Energy-Efficient Design
Dollens is applying botany and digital design to architecture. Software that can mimic biological processes on a computer screen dates back to the 1960s, when researchers created a program letting scientists mathematically see how an organism grows and conduct virtual experiments, such as the University of Calgary’s algorithmic botany program. Using software programs such as Xfrog.com — which also is used by film animators — Dollens created computer-generated, three-dimensional models of building trusses constructed along the lines of a pea plant’s tendril and a tumbleweed’s frame. He also designed a virtual multistoried building with rooms, balconies, and solar-panel surfaces based on the structure of a penstemmon.
Tumbletruss.com contains examples of Dennis Dollen’s work.
Bill Desowitz speaks with director George Miller, various supervisors and the co-founder of Animal Logic about the challenges of making Happy Feet.
Autodesk’s 3D Software Drives Next-Generation Gaming Graphics
A number of this season’s most anticipated games have been created with Autodesk 3ds Max and Autodesk Maya 3D animation, modeling and rendering software products from Autodesk, Inc. Insomniac Games Resistance: Fall of Man and Monolith Productions F.E.A.R. were created with Autodesk software and are expected to become blockbuster games for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3 (PS3).
Autodesk’s 3D software has also been used to create other hot gaming titles shipping this fall, including: Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, Epic Games Gears of War and Relic Entertainment’s Company of Heroes.
CGTalk – Meet the Artist: Simon Otto – Flushed Away
Simon Otto began his animation career at the right place, studying the craft at the renowned Les Gobelins in Paris. He lives on the US West Coast and is a native of Switzerland.
Otto previously worked as a supervising animator on the title character Sinbad in ‘Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas’ as well as supervising the animation on two of the members of Sinbad’s crew, the Chinese brothers Jin and Li.
In addition, he worked as an animator on the character Spirit in ‘Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron’, and he also supervised the animation of the eagle in the film. Otto began his career at DreamWorks in 1997, as an animator on “The Prince of Egypt” and later animated on “The Road to El Dorado.” Clearly some very nice work in those two features.
Prior to joining DreamWorks, Otto received animation training during an internship with Walt Disney Feature Animation in Paris, France. CGSociety is very happy to have Dreamworks’ cooperation for this very timely ‘Meet the Artist presentation.
Adrian Pennington chats with Peter Lord, Aardman co-founder and producer Flushed Away, on the company’s adventures in CG.
Peter Lord’s Aardman Adventures in CG
Timeline of CGI in film and television
Pioneering uses of computer-generated imagery in film and television:
From Westworld:
to Elephant’s Dream:
Hey everyone so I haven’t posted in a while, but I just completed a Gnomon training DVD where I used Zbrush extensively on a character, and I thought i would share some of the stuff I have done(that I can show) that used Zbrush here at Blur.
ZExtension Bundle for ZBrush 2
Now you can find all your tools in one convenient place. Download all ZExtensions at once! Individual installation is required.
These extensions have been created by Pixologic, and members of ZBushCentral online community that powerfully expand the core functionality of ZBrush 2. They are a must-have for serious ZBrush users. A ZExtension is a ZBrush program written in ZScript, ZBrush’s built-in scripting language. You can use zscripts to automate common tasks, or to add new abilities to ZBrush.
The Maya animation community is doubtlessly breathing a collective sigh of relief that Maya 8 has shipped at all, considering that this is the first release of the venerable animation package since Alias was taken over by its then arch-rival, Autodesk, last year. That said, this is yet another in a series of Maya releases that doesn’t offer a lot of sexy new features. While Maya 7 seemed to be as mostly about bug fixes and refinements, this release is more about real-world productivity.
Most notably in this direction, Maya 8 has been re-built to run natively in 64-bit operating systems. Currently, this includes Windows and Linux only. While 64-bit, rather than humdrum 32-bit operation may sound sexy, the vast majority of users will notice almost no difference between the two modes. Those who will are animators working with huge or very complex 3D scenes – primarily the ones involved in film and television production. (Game artists rarely build sets with tens of thousands of models or multiple millions of polygons.)
