Link via Creation Engine
 V-Ray for SketchUp
$50 off normal price of $229!
Offer good through 2/28/2009.
Link via SketchUp Plugins
 The Phlatprinter is a home-built CNC cutter designed and built by Mark and Trish Carew. It is designed to cut flat media (think foam) to be folded into 3d models. Foam radio-controlled airplanes are just one example from the gallery, but I imagine it could be very useful in Architecture as well.
The cutting of the foam is done with a Dremel tool which is mounted in a “printer” box. The foam (up to 1.5 inches thick) is driven back and forth through the machine with a drive roller and the Dremel is moved side-to-side and up and down to make the cuts. You can watch the videos of how it works. The Phlatprinter can handle material up to 22″ wide and unlimited length.
The CNC control software is PC based, so you can design your parts and send them to the phlatprinter using the same computer. The software is called Mach3 and is available on this site.
The best part is that you can use SketchUp to create models. You create your model in 3D using SketchUp, unfold your design to 2d in SketchUp, and then send it to the phlatprinter to be cut out. The phlatprinter comes with a SketchUp plugin to export the flattened model to a format which the CNC software can understand.
You can purchase plans to build your own phlatprinter; or better yet, you can purchase a kit from the store to build your own which includes everything you need to build a fully-functional phlatprinter. The cost seems very reasonable – well within the hobbyists budget.
Google SketchUp Pro 7 is available at an academic discount price of $49 to students.
Google SketchUp Pro 7 is available at no cost to instructors.
Link via TheStreet.com
 TSC’s master video editor Daniel Byrne was our man on the front line when it came to road-testing CS4 in Las Vegas. He installed the Master Collection on a brand new M70Vn-C2 laptop. It’s a super-heavy duty portable (I wouldn’t want it sitting on my lap for very long) with a 2.53GHz Intel Core2 Duo processor, 4GB of RAM and dual 500GB hard drives. It runs on Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate. This is one amazing machine.
The Asus hardware and the Adobe software were a perfect match. Don’t take my word for it. Here’s what Dan had to say:
Adobe Premiere CS4 is quite brilliant. I first put it to a crash test at this year’s CES in Las Vegas. I am a Final Cut editor by nature and was a bit nervous about road-testing new software. Premiere really came through for me. I was able to learn everything on the fly in about an hour. Adobe has really combined the best parts and elements of all of the current popular editing software titles Avid, Premiere and Final Cut and put together something that can be used by novices and professionals with outstanding results. Adobe has also included the stand-alone Media Encoder, which has a wide choice of file outputs for compression of video. For TheStreet.com’s videos, we use a Flash 8 encoder. I was surprised at the speed of the compression and the overall quality. I would say it leaves Apple’s compressor in the dust. Overall, I still love my Final Cut, but when left to edit on a PC, I see no reason why this shouldn’t be every editor’s first choice. The other contender, Avid, is way too involved and requires a foolish amount of steps to get anything done.
Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection is available at an academic discount price of $999.
Link via CGSociety
When the CG artists weren’t working on characters and faces, they were building props. The props luckily didn’t have to be a technically pretty computer model, the topology was not as relevant. Something like silverware or a door knob could be designed and printed in a matter of minutes, ready for sanding and painting. “We printed out growing fur for the mouse to rat morph, and replacement hair caps for the two Other Mother morphs,” said McLean. “Because these morphs had to end with the real puppet it was challenging to make sure it matched. We used ZBrush to add fur and hair detail, all while staying within the pipeline guidelines.
ZBrush 3.1 is available at an academic discount price of $390.
Link via Adobe Education Leaders
 This year we will be launching our Free Stop Cyberbullying tool kit. It is a soup to nuts resource collection to help schools and parents deal with a situation that is growing daily.
Our informal surveys of more than 45,000 students indicate that 85% of them have experienced or been involved in some form of online bullying in the last year. Yet only 5% of them have made their parents aware of it.
I’ve just put the finishing touches on the professional development portion of the tool kit and there is no way I could have come close to developing this material without Adobe support and software.
The professional development is unique in that it is not add-on curriculum. It is Web 2.0 training with ideas and resources for fighting cyberbullying woven throughout the lessons and activities that will help teachers and students achieve a wide range of national standards.
Rather than simply creating a written manual, Adobe Presenter allowed me to create and include nineteen different multimedia presentations that make the content come alive. But if reading is your thing, Presenter allowed me to include the text of the presentation as searchable notes.
When it came to creating tutorials on making and using blogs, wikis, and other Web 2.0 tools in the classroom, Adobe Captivate 4 allowed me to make ten video tutorials that show teachers the step by step processes.
Needless to say, we used Acrobat to create PDF files throughout the tool kit, and dozens of our WiredSafety videos, animations, and games that are included throughout the product were created with Flash and other Adobe tools.
Finally, I used DreamWeaver to package my material and send it off to be included in the final product that we will announce at the Summit.
Creation Engine provides academic discount prices for Captivate 4 ($249), Acrobat 9 Professional ($149), and Dreamweaver CS4 ($199).
Link via CNNMoney.com
 Avid Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVID) today announced that creative teams behind all of 2008’s most loved and most watched films worldwide used one or more Avid products in the production process of the film. According to Box Office Mojo, these films were at the top of the worldwide box office in 2008, with combined revenue of more than $6 billion.
Tasked with simultaneously delivering IMAX and conventional versions of the film, the post production team for “The Dark Knight” created a collaborative work environment with a solution comprised of Avid Media Composer editing systems running on an Avid Unity shared storage system. As a result, editors had shared access to more than three terabytes of media, including resources from the earlier Batman film, “Batman Begins,” to enhance the storytelling process. The film’s complex sound production, which included more than 1,000 audio tracks, was completed using six Pro Tools|HD® systems.
“The Dark Knight” Picture Editor Lee Smith, who was recently nominated for both an Academy Award® and A.C.E. Eddie Award for best editing, said, “We try to keep technology as bulletproof as possible. These films are so complicated. We need the equipment to just be humming along. With a story like this, we had access to some of the most brilliant performances and had to be assured that when we tried something creatively that we weren’t limited by the technology. Avid makes it easy for us to make the best cut possible, every time.”
Avid Media Composer 3.0 is available at an academic discount price of $295.
Link via PC World
 Silver Efex Pro efficiently produces great black-and-white effects that are fiddly to create in Photoshop alone. Silver Efex Pro runs responsively, even as a Smart Filter. It also works on 8- and 16-bit images in both RGB and CMYK. Overall it produces great black-and-white effects that are fiddly to create in Photoshop alone.
Nik Silver Efex Pro is available at an academic discount price of $115.
Link via Popular Photography
Does the love of your life complain that you may as well be married to your computer? Well, here are five ways to turn the admonishment “You spend too much time on Photoshop!” into the happy, loving “Oh honey, you spent so much time on Photoshop!”
Photoshop CS4 Extended is available at an academic discount price of $299.
Link via c4dcafe.com
 The hot new enhancements in Release 11 are a totally reworked GI (Global Illumination) engine. Not only is GI rendering much improved with better quality and flicker free animations, rendering without GI is significantly quicker as well and things like glass render more accurately. NLA (Non linear animation) and Animation Layers are introduced in the Timeline. CINEMA 4D now has Collada import and export. BodyPaint has had lots of painting enhancements like supporting Photoshop brush presets. There is a new Doodle screen collaboration / annotation tool. Support for Windows Vista is much better. CINEMA 4D now has automatic on-line checking and installation of updates. There are lot’s of other minor enhancements plus a lot of bugs have been squashed.
Cinema 4D R11 (includes BodyPaint 3D R4) is available at an academic discount price of $195.
Link via Consumer Electronics Net
 For the photographer, Lightroom has been a godsend. At least it has been for me. I can’t think of one other program that speeds up the importing, sorting, editing and outputting to file, print or web site the hundreds or thousands of images a photographer has to deal with on a daily basis better than Lightroom does. It has saved me hours worth of work, no probably more like days, since I started using the first version of Lightroom in 2007.
Photoshop Lightroom 2 is available at an academic discount price of $98.
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