Electronic Arts Adopts Vicon Offerings

Vancouver, Canada; August 29, 2005 Gaming powerhouse Electronic Arts has purchased an 86-camera VICON MX 40 motion capture system. Electronic Arts (EA) is one of the world's most prolific users of motion capture content, and has been employing mo-cap techniques as part of its game development pipeline for over 10 years. After evaluating different motion capture solutions on which to base the company's future motion capture workflow,

EA selected VICON MX 40 for its 4-megapixel grayscale camera resolution, its postproduction toolset, and the resulting ability to produce immense volumes of high-fidelity data quickly and efficiently. EA is a force in game development and publishing with over three billion dollars in annual revenue and 6100 employees. EA's in-house motion capture stage is located in a brand new, state of the art studio in Vancouver,Canada. The new VICON MX 40 rig will provide a new level of capture detail,along with simultaneous full body and facial capture from a single or multiple actor performance for game production for all current and forthcoming gaming consoles, including Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Motion capture solutions from VICON include high-resolution, high-frame-rate cameras built by VICON specifically for motion tracking. VICON's next-generation VICON MX real-time optical motion capture systems usher in ultra-high-resolution,

true grayscale processing, virtually artifact-free capture with VICON MX 40, the world's first four-million-pixel gray scale motion capture camera. VICON MX revolutionizes the quality, flexibility and ease with which motion capture data can be applied to real-time and off-line applications in film, television, video games, virtual prototyping, biomechanical analysis, and more.

SOURCE: Divin Forum

Lucasfilm Ltd. Invests in HP Technology

Palo Alto, CA; August 30, 2005

HP and Lucasfilm Ltd., a leader in visual effects and sound engineering for feature films, has announced a three-year, multi-million dollar technology and marketing agreement.

Lucasfilm will use HP Adaptive Enterprise solutions to generate new video games, visual effects, and animation, as well as store and manage its business applications. The HP technology will be deployed at Lucasfilm's new Letterman Digital Arts Center in the Presidio of San Francisco and at the company's Singapore operations.

Lucasfilm will roll out up to 1000 high-performance HP workstations powered by Dual-Core AMD Opteron processors for the production of its visual effects and video games. The HP workstations put unprecedented power in the hands of artists and developers as they create video games for the new generation of consoles. They will also be used to produce the visual effects, rendering, compositing and editing for which Lucasfilm is world renowned.

In addition, HP Services is working closely with Lucasfilm to deploy a storage environment to securely store and archive critical business information.
The HP xw9300 Workstation environment at Lucasfilm will run both Linux and Windows XP operating environments in both 32-bit and 64-bit modes, with in-house software applications for creation and editing.
Lucas visual effects and game development requires the most powerful workstation configurations available. The 64-bit dual processor, dual-core and dual-graphics HP workstation is designed for customers with such intensive computing demands.
The HP xw9300 Workstation's performance and visualization capabilities are enabled by the processing power of two AMD Opteron processors and advanced 3D graphics capabilities made possible by NVIDIA's dual PCI Express x16 graphics.
Lucasfilm selected the latest HP StorageWorks offerings for its business applications. With a 35-terabyte capacity, the HP StorageWorks XP12000 Disk Array and Cisco MDS 9509 is a powerful, high-end disk storage system delivering "zero downtime" for mission-critical environments.
The system incorporates HP software innovations for single-system management, remote copying and cross-continental disaster recovery. The HP StorageWorks XP12000 Disk Array offers Lucasfilm the most advanced solution available to ensure business continuity and asset protection.

SOURCE: Computer Graphics World Magazine

Invitation to first Emmy Visual Effects ''Bake-off''

The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Title Design & Special Visual Effects Peer Group will host a Bake-Off" showcase of Emmy Award nominees and its Nominee Reception in tandem, it was announced today by Bill Millar and Steven J. Scott, Governors for the Television Academys Title Design and Special Visual Effects Peer Group. The event will be sponsored by Autodesk, Inc., a leading software and services company that helps customers realize their ideas in the manufacturing, building, infrastructure and media and entertainment fields. This marks the first time such an event will be held for this Peer Group. The "Bake-Off" will be a combination voting event and nominee reception to showcase the final Emmy nominees for the categories of Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Miniseries, Movie or Special, Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Series, and Outstanding Main Title Design. The event will take place on Friday, September 9 at 6:30 p.m. at the Television Academy's Leonard H. Goldenson Theater in North Hollywood. The resulting Emmy recipients will be announced at the Creative Arts Awards presentation at the Shrine auditorium on the following Sunday, September 11, 2005.

"The Annual Visual Effects 'Bake-Off' presentation by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Visual Effects Branch has been hugely successful for several years, and it was the inspiration for our Peer Group Executive Committee to conduct a similar voting event," said Scott. We will finally be able to share the incredible work
we see every year with a broader audience. We feel that holding the event on the Friday evening before the Sunday Creative Arts Ceremony will make for a far more exciting experience for our Nominees and Peer Group members."

Added Millar, "We are hoping that this will become an annual Emmy related activity for us. It will provide a unique opportunity for us to reach out beyond our Peer
Group to the larger Special Visual Effects and Broadcast Design community.

The "Bake-Off and showcase portion of the event will begin after all voting members are seated together, and ballots have been distributed. Voting for categories 84 (Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Miniseries, Movie or Special) and 83 (Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Series) will take place after all nominated clips have been shown. Once voting is completed in the respective categories, each nominated team will be brought up to the stage to be introduced individually and the team leader may make a brief speech.

Although votes for the Outstanding Main Title Design (category 36) submissions are cast on an At Home basis, they will be showcased at this event. For each entry, the Main Title clip will be shown, the team will be introduced individually, and the team leader may make a brief speech.

The team introductions may be made in person or pre-recorded if the team is unable to attend. A Nominee Reception/Mixer for all attendees will be held in the
theater lobby immediately following the presentations.

VFX3D.blogspot.com
SHOUTmag 2005

Massive Software Launches Massive Jet

Massive Software has announced Massive Jet, a new agent 3D animation application designed to aid in the creation of large-scale, believable digital crowd shots "out of the box," with high quality and a low learning curve. A full-functioning package priced less than $6000, Massive Jet leverages the company's Academy Award-winning artificial life-based technology, pre-built Ready-to-Run Agent library, and GPU-accelerated rendering support to enable animators and artists to quickly and easily produce realistic Massive scenes.

Massive Jet takes advantage of Ready-to-Run Agents, which Massive customers can use to shortcut the pre-production process and create animation automatically for typical crowd scenarios in just a few steps. Each agent is pre-built with skeletons, geometry, cloth, rigid body dynamics, textures, shaders, controls, and motion-capture actions provided by industry leaders Giant Studios and House of Moves.

Users simply load terrain and camera from their 3D package, drop in a Ready-to-Run Agent -- or a custom agent built with a license of Massive 2.0 -- and then light the simulation and render the scene.

Ready-to-Run Agents are currently being rolled out for: Locomotion Extras -- for digital background characters that run, walk, stand and sit; Spectator Set -- for the actions and reactions of arena crowds; Background Extras -- for low-key background activities such as milling around in a plaza or mall; and Combat -- for fight scenes with characters such as the Medieval Swordsman.

With GPU-accelerated rendering recently launched for the Massive product
line, huge-scale shots can be rendered 30 times faster at film quality without a render farm or additional software. Massive Jet customers can use desktop-based OpenGL solutions, currently including Nvidia's Quadro FX 3000 or higher, for a cost-effective crowd-creation pipeline.

Massive Jet includes the same artificial life-based responsive agent technology in the company's premier product, Massive 2.0. Massive Jet includes Smart Stunts for responsive digital stunt moves, Massive's Cloth tools, rigid body dynamics, terrain adaptation, and high-level controls to create life-like animations. As in Massive 2.0, users can generate unlimited numbers of characters with virtually limitless variation and a wide range of human and non-human-specific skeletons -- whether birds, insects, aliens, cars or fantasy creatures.

Massive Jet is expected to be available in Q4 2005 for $5990 per license. Massive 2.0 is available now, with licenses priced at $18,000.

Massive Jet and Massive 2.0 run on Red Hat 7.3, 9.0, Fedora Core 2. For optimum performance, a 2GHz to 3GHz Pentium Processor, 1GB to 2GB of RAM, and an Nvidia Quadro graphics card are recommended. Visit www.massivesoftware.com for more details.

VFX3D.blogspot.com
SHOUTmag 2005

Adobe, Macromedia takeover approved

Stock holders of Adobe and Macromedia on Wednesday voted in favour of plan
for Adobe to acquire Macromedia in an all-stock deal expected to close later
this year, the companies said in a joint statement.

The approval faced little resistance, with 99 per cent of the votes by Adobe
shareholders cast in favor of the deal, and 99.8 per cent of Macromedia
shareholders voting to support the acquisition, the companies said. Ballots were
cast for around three-quarters of the shares in each company, they said.

Adobe the deal, valued at $3.4 billion, will increase Adobe's heft in the
document and Web publishing market by uniting in one company such popular
technologies as Adobe's PDF format and Macromedia's Flash, along with Adobe's
Photoshop image software and Macromedia's Dreamweaver development application.

Macromedia shareholders will receive 1.38 shares of Adobe common stock for
each share of Macromedia common stock they own at the closing of the
acquisition, the companies said.

The deal is still subject to further regulatory approval, and the
satisfaction of other closing conditions, the companies said.

Last month, US regulators asked the companies for more details regarding the
acquisition.

VFX3D.blogspot.com
SHOUTmag 2005

BAFTA Awards call for short films entries

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts is now accepting entries
for its Short Film and Short Animation Awards.
The awards for Short Film and Short Animation are presented annually at The Orange British Academy Film Awards
in February. Designed to encourage the growth and development of new talent within the British film industry, Shorts offer both new and established talent alike the chance to create experimental and innovative films. Past winners of the Short Animation Award include Nick Park, Sylvain Chomet and Michael Dudok de Wit.

Films must be no more than 30 minutes in duration and may be submitted on
35mm film or on Digital-Beta.

Award rules and entry forms can be downloaded at BAFTA http://www.bafta.org

VFX3D.blogspot.com
SHOUTmag 2005

Roxio launches Toast 7

Toast 7 will be available directly from Roxio starting Aug. 31, and in shops in mid September.

New features include multiimage High Definition slide shows with pan and zoom
effects; transitions and background soundtracks; audio DVDs carrying over 50
hours of Dolby quality music and navigation; and data spanning abilities that
allow users to backup large files, folders and applications across multiple CDs
and DVDs.

Toast 7 also breaks new ground by becoming the first third-party application
on any platform to support DivX 6, which allows users to turn DivX format files
into DVD-Video discs. Users can also convert any video file to DivX, including
iMovie HD and FinalCut Pro HD projects.

Toast 7 features

Support for data spanning lets users 'span' large files and folders across
multiple CDs and DVDs. The application also allows for the creation of hybrid
discs for Mac and Windows users; customized icons and backgrounds. Toast 7 also
includes an iLife browser.

Alongside support for the creation of music DVDs for standard DVD players and
Dolby support, Toast 7 also includes a Dashboard widget that lets users capture
live Internet audio. It supports most common audio formats, including OGG and
AAC.

The application offers a gallery of DVD menu styles; support for HD slide
shows and can convert video assets to low- and high-bandwidth alternatives, such
as H.264 and 3GPP.

Toast 7 also offers DVD Compression, which lets users compress and copy an
entire 9GB dual-layer DVD-Video to a standard 4.7GB recordable DVD disc.

Toast 7 will be available August 31 direct from Roxio, and from shops in
mid-September. It costs £69.99 (US$126) including VAT.

Registered Toast, Jam, Popcorn and The Boom Box users will be eligible for
discounts direct from Roxio.

VFX3D.blogspot.com
SHOUTmag 2005

Vue 5 Easel Announced

E-on Software delivers new entry level

Software announces the upcoming release of Vue 5 Easel, the new entry level
version of it's award winning Vue product line. Vue 5 Easel will be retailing at
a breakthrough pricing of US$99.

Vue 5 Easel is specifically designed for 2D digital artists looking for a
simple introduction to 3D. Vue 5 Easel lets 3D newcomers create great-looking
images and animations within minutes. Based on the original paradigm of using a
predefined set, adding characters and then choosing the best point of view to
take the image, Vue 5 Easel constitutes an ideal introduction to the world of
3D.

Vue 5 Easel feature list includes:
- 22 preset
decors
- 52 ultra realistic SolidGrowth vegetation species
- Over 320
material presets
- Over 125 preset atmospheres
- High quality rendering at
up to five megapixels
- Easy editing of materials
- Global Illumination,
realistic atmosphere model, lens flares.
- True Metablob organic modeling
from all Vue Boolean primitives
- Static Poser 4, 5 and 6 import
- Camera
animation using Dynamic Motion Reaction technology
- Compatible with
Cornucopia3D interactive content management technology.

Vue 5 Easel will be released simultaneously for the Mac OS X and Windows
2000/XP platforms in September, 2005. Upgrade and sidegrade paths are detailed
on the E-on Software website.

Related links:
E-on Software

Krishnamurti Martins Costais - n.01_Face Modelling

If I say that Krishnamurti Martins Costais is one of the best 3D artists in the world, I dont say nothing wrong. He work with the 3D modelling software ZBrush and you can find some of his works on the software website. Recently he was the Grand Prize Winner of the Master & Servant Challenge (CG Challenge XVII), that was running from 21 March to 18 May 2005

If you want to see some impressive operas from this great artist visit his website here, and rejoin VFX-3D blog in the next times to see some new exciting images!



Some info about the artists:

> Tell us a little bit about yourself.
My name is Krishnamurti Martins Costa aka "Antropus". I was born in Rio de Janeiro-Brazil and I'm 32 years old. I started to draw at age 4 and I was always facinated by art in general. I discovered the CG world at age 16 (some Amiga Computer Graphics in a magazine). At same time, I started to work in a Brazilian bank. With my first salaries in the bank, I bought a TV, a skateboard and an Amiga 500 computer (LOL).
Amiga 500 was a cool computer for my first steps in CG area, using mainly 2D software. After some years, still working in a bank, I bought my first PC: a DX2 66Mhz and 8mb RAM! I started to learn 3D Studio 3 for DOS. After some months, I and some friends decided to work with CG, at age of 21, but always as a hobby, because of my job at the bank. At 25 I moved from Santa Maria, a small city in the south of Brazil, to Brasilia. In Brasilia I went to the university (UnB), for a bachelor's degree in fine arts. I started to work as animator and illustrator for the marketing department and I helped to develop the visual identity for the bank's internal television channel.
There I met my wife Celia, who always did everything to support my personal projects. I worked as animator and art director in O Lobisomem e o Coronel, an independent Brazilian short movie, together with four more friends. We won over 20 prizes in several festivals in Brazil, including Animamundi 2002, the biggest animation festival in South America.
After a few months, I finally decided to leave my work as a banker (after 16 years) to work exclusively with CG. I started my own animation project (SenzaAzione) and finally I begin to work as CG Artist/Animator for a company called MisterGrafix, in Brasilia, Brazil, where I worked for one year. I decided to post my works in some CG-related websites and forums and, to my surprise, I was frontpage in several important websites.
I started a series of tutorials to help other people learn about CG modeling, textures and rig. Because of these frontpages, tutorials and works in CG web galleries, I received about 20 different purposes to work in different places all around of the world. I took the offer that I thought was the best for me (in January 2004) and after 5 months waiting for my work visa I started to work in CA-USA as character animator for a CG-animated movie project, my dream for a long time.
I'm the founder of a new Brazilian CG forum, www.3d4all.org, a good place to find CG-related information, with lots of information in Portuguese. Seems like a long time ago, but in fact, everything about my CG career really started to happen just 2 and a half years ago. I hope I can continue to work as a CG artist for the rest of my life, because I simply love this job!

VFX3D.blogspot.com