Link via Wide-Format Imaging
 Hampton’s action photo was this year’s Grand Prize winner in Nature’s Best Photography Windland Smith Rice International Awards. Taken in Botswana’s Okavango Delta, Hampton was in the right place at the right time with the right equipment with just enough protection in a safari vehicle as the lioness raced right past him.
“There are a couple of things I do to increase the chances of getting a shot like that… I have a Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II with a full frame sensor and a 600mm lens using AI Servo mode,” says Hampton. “The 600mm lens also helps utilize all the pixels you capture, which is important for printing. Still, I needed to use Genuine Fractals to res it up to the size I wanted for optimized printing on the Epson from the camera’s native resolution. The native size in the camera is around 16×24 at 360 ppi. Even with a high-powered computer it takes 10 to 15 minutes for Genuine Fractals software to generate new pixels to make a print that large at 360 ppi. Then, ImagePrint utilizes the Epson print engine at its maximum capability so that you get the sharpest image available. The RIP takes you the extra mile.”
Genuine Fractals 6 is available at an education discount price of $79.
Genuine Fractals 6 Professional Edition is available at an education discount price of $149.
Link via Guggenheim.org
On the occasion of the exhibitions Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward and Learning By Doing, the Guggenheim and Google SketchUp invite amateur and professional designers from around the world to enter Design It: Shelter Competition. From now until August 23, you can submit a 3-D shelter for locations around the world using Google SketchUp and Google Earth.
Why shelters?
The competition is an extension of Learning By Doing, an exhibition in the Guggenheim Museum Sackler Center for Arts Education that features plans, photographs, and models of student-built shelters from the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. For the past seven decades, students at this school have taken on the challenge of designing, building, and living in small shelters nestled in the landscapes of the school’s Arizona and Wisconsin campuses. In working on these shelters, students consider human needs for safety and comfort, as well as the relationship between architecture and place.
Design It: Shelter Competition opens up the project to you. If you could build a shelter anywhere in the world, where would it be? How would you design it to respond to the surrounding environment?
Key Dates and Deadlines
You can submit your design from now until August 23. After the submission period, current Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture students will select a group of finalists. Public voting on these finalists opens on September 7 and runs until October 10. On October 21, 2009, the People’s Prize will be announced along with a special Juried Prize chosen by a jury of experts.
Accept the Challenge
Find out more about how to enter the competition.
Google SketchUp Pro 7 is available at a student discount price of $49.
Google SketchUp Pro 7 is free for instructors.
Link via Digital Arts
 The newest version of Autodesk’s 3D suite contains some major interface changes. On opening 3DS Max 2010, you’ll immediately be aware of the new Graphite Modelling toolset. This allows you to directly select and manipulate polygon objects.
Now fitted out in understated black and white, Autodesk’s venerable 3D suite has received more than just a facelift. The workflow and tool enhancements are welcome, while the focus on audio and collaborative toolsets makes this a far more rounded package than before.
3ds Max 2010 Superpack Student Version Windows (13-month term) is available at an education discount price of $200.
3ds Max 2010 Superpack Student Version Windows (perpetual term) is available at an education discount price of $400.
Link via Computer Graphics World
 According to Burgess and fellow automotive photographers Michael Lee, Nigel Harniman, and Vic Huber, the Bunkspeed software, called HyperShot, warranted a fresh look at how photography can be used with CGI.
Unlike traditional programs, originally intended for creating images and animations from scratch, HyperShot is designed exclusively for working with photos and HDR data. After shooting the background plate and HDR photos and loading them into HyperShot, the user imports a 3D car model from any standard 3D DCC software, including native data from popular CAD programs. Next, the person applies materials, color, and surface textures using a palette within the software. Then, he or she chooses an HDR map to provide the lighting, adds the backplate image, and adjusts the virtual camera for lens type, angle, rotation, and distance.
Automotive photographer David Burgess used Bunkspeed’s HyperShot software to place a CAD model of the Ford Explorer America concept car in US location shots.
“I had spent a lot of time in the past looking to add CGI capabilities through Maya and 3ds Max,” says Lee, who has done advertising work for Honda and Mercedes-Benz, among others. “It took a lot of time to modify materials, and a great deal of expertise to get the quality I needed. Even with hardware acceleration using 32 processors, rendering a single image typically took as long as 12 hours.
“[Now I can] quickly get to the fun part of the process for any photographer: lighting,” Lee adds. “Photographers are often called upon to consult on lighting, so it’s great to have this much control over that aspect. The rendering is optimized, so what took me 12 hours with 32 processors can be rendered in two hours at the same or greater quality on a Mac quad-core system.”
HyperShot HD Mac/Windows 1-year license (download version) is available at an education discount price of $95.
Link via NZ Herald News
 “If the application is internal to the business, we would probably use Filemaker because it’s quicker to build and more flexible going forward,” Saunders says.
“If someone comes to us and doesn’t want an off-the-shelf system, they want something that suits their business and way of working which will change and evolve, Filemaker is ideal for that. We can do all that with web application, but Filemaker is quicker and richer.
Filemaker bundles up a relational database engine with tools to make it relatively easy to create graphical front ends and for users to modify it or generate reports.
FileMaker Pro 10 is available at an education discount price of $179.
Link via PC Advisor
 Some special effects and filters are fun or useful; only a few become absolute necessities. Nik Software Color Efex Pro is in that latter category because it is not only one of the finest collections of Photoshop-compatible plug-in filters available, its quality and versatility make it almost indispensable.
Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0 Select is available at an education discount price of $85.
Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0 Complete is available at an education discount price of $169.
 Swift 3D v6 is the ultimate 3D software for graphic and rich media designers using Adobe Flash and Microsoft Expression Blend. Swift 3D is the only 3D software to directly integrate with Flash through the Swift 3D File Importer and SmartLayer Technology and exports to Microsoft XAML. Swift 3D’s toolset and interface allow anyone to quickly create 3D content, while providing a full set of advanced tools to grow into. Swift 3D is a powerful, easy-to-use 3D solution that delivers high-quality results for an unbeatable price.
V6 – Our Most Powerful Modeler
That’s right – Swift 3D v6 introduces a very simple but extremely powerful Boolean primitive to our modeler, which allows you to combine or punch holes through objects using other 3D objects in your scene. It’s all non-destructive, allowing easy editing and unlimited possibilities
New Features in V6
- Boolean Operations Support
- 5X Faster Raster Rendering Speed
- New Texture Mapper
- Multiprocessor Support (5X Faster)
- Papervision3D v2 Support
- Background Image Tracing
- Extrusion & Lathe Editor Multi-Path Support – Draw multiple unique paths
- Clone & Arrays Support
- Bump Map Texture Support
- Soft Shadow Support
- Enhanced Camera Contols
- Expanded User Preferences
Superior Flash Integration
Swift 3D is the only 3D tool to offer direct integration with Adobe Flash through the Swift 3D File Importer. SmartLayer Technology offers designers ultimate control over their 3D vector renderings. All important aspects are automatically seperated out into different layers when imported to Flash, reducing file size and broadening design possibilities.
Swift 3D v6 is available at an education discount price of $172.
Free FileMaker Themes Pack when you purchase and register FileMaker Pro 10 or FileMaker Pro 10 Advanced between 4/14/2009 and 6/19/2009 and register by 6/25/2009.
Link via Creation Engine
 Purchase Finale 2009 now, qualify for a free upgrade to Finale 2010 (estimated to ship mid-June 2009).
Request your free upgrade by calling MakeMusic at 800.843.2006 within 30 days of the release of Finale 2010.
Finale 2009 is available at an academic discount price of $252.
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