nShatter’s RUINS plugin for Maya, now with CUDA
8:20 pm
Free Plant Textures from Michal Kotek
5:19 pm
Michal Kotek has released a collection of plant textures suitable for architectural visualization. It includes 17 trees, 4 shrubs, and 2 plant textures all in TIF format and JPG diffuse and opacity maps.
Create a Procedural Textures in Blender
11:00 am
A new tutorial on CGCookie shows how to create a Teddy Bear from Burlap, using nothing but Procedural Textures and Materials in Blender.
In part 2 of this Teddy Bear tutorial we will be looking at home to make a nice burlap texture with nothing but procedural materials.
CGcookie also hosts various other tutorials on modeling and rendering in Blender.
Making of “Le Rabbit” by Jose Alves da Silva
10:40 am
Jose Alves da Silva talks about an interesting image he created called “Le Rabbit”, and how much difficulty he had in creating it.
During the creation of this image I have bumped into several problems, especially regarding the fur. I am not a digital hair expert and I had to face some questions for the first time. These problems may sound basic to a part of the readers but I have decided to talk about them and the way I have solved them because some of you might consider these tips valuable. Regarding the motivation to create this piece, I had been wanting to make a more cartoonish character for ages, because this is a type of language at which I feel really comfortable. An image about a humanized rabbit with lots of attitude started forming in my mind… and what was supposed to be a modelling exercise of a few days ended up being a finished piece that took me about 2 months! Jose Alves da Silva
Review Modo 401 by Marc Hermitte
10:08 am
Experienced Modo user Marc Hermitte sat down with the new Modo401 and compared it to the previous Modo302. He found that it’s slightly slower, simple scenes went from 21.25s to 22.75s in his tests, but the new features more than make up for this minimal impact to rendertimes.
Numerous new features have been added in the render department :
Better motion blur (Anti Aliasing up to 256 sample/pixel), stereoscopic rendering, shadow catcher shader, selective radiosity type (per surface) which allows hybrid global illumination scenes setup, volumetric lighting (with deep shadow map option to speed up the rendering of such effects), lights linking (inclusion / exclusion), new anisotropy mapping, blurry refractions and much more.
The After Effects Output Module Exposed
12:32 pm
If you render movies with Adobe After Effects, you probably have a single output setting that you like and use it repeatedly. However, there is a world of possibilities there and AETuts+ has taken the time to catalog all of the output formats for you.
We get tons of questions on how to output After Effects project renders, mainly which format and codec to use. Topher decided to do some research and wrote this long article that aims to try and answer some questions.
I had never heard of the “Adobe Clip Notes” output, but I’m gonna have to look at that one closer.
The Descent into Debt Hell Infographic
11:00 am
Mint.com has a humorous, but educational, infographic about just how easy it is to become overwhelmed by credit card debt.
When used wisely, credit cards can be the cornerstone of a sound financial strategy. A solid credit history makes you a good credit risk and that in turn allows you to purchase the necessities of life. But credit cards can also be a slippery slope. One misstep and you’ll tumble into the abyss of credit card debt hell, a mounting spiral of missed payments, fees, high APRs, and rate increases that will take years to recover from. Only by remaining vigilant can you hope to avoid this fate. Here’s our guide to what you may experience on the way down.
Transformers 2 isn’t as Digital as you may Think
10:40 am
Transformers 2 is out in theaters now, and if you see it with the amazing special effects made by ILM then you’ld assume the entire movie was digital. Not so, as Micheal Bay is a fan of classic film.
Bay insists on employing film rather than digital recording partly because he likes the grain and color range of film and partly because he prefers spectacular natural locations. Farrar scans the negative to create a pristine digital copy for ILM. A high-def digital camera requires an unwieldy electronic “umbilical chord” that makes it hard to maintain out of the studio especially in the Jordanian desert. It s heartening to think of Bay getting a thrill out of shooting in Wadi Rum Jordan where David Lean directed part of Lawrence of Arabia.
This does, however, create alot of problems for the digital effects people who then have to recreate alot of work that could have been captured better with digital imaging.
Outsiders tend to think of techies as slaves to the computer. Farrar though says “Computers are dumb they can t do anything unless they have a ton of information.” ILM must translate into digital language every surface and texture in each shot and set up lights within each scene s 3-D landscape according to “how a particular location looked at a particular time of night or day.” Because of the shifts in shadows and light the images in a sequence set in a deep forest could turn brownish yellowish or vivid green. Since the robots are reflective they would look markedly different depending on the circumstances. An ILM craftsman on set stands at camera position for most of the set-ups and swings around in a circle to photograph the environment.
via ‘Transformers’ special effects guru gives machines a ninja-like fluidity – baltimoresun.com.
Micheal Jackson’s Billboard Rankings Over Time
10:15 am
The New York Times has published an interactive infographic of the recently deceased Micheal Jackson’s billboard rankings, comparing it to the rankings of such stars as the Beatles, U2, and Usher. They plot the billboard ranking on a logarithmic scale for all of the stars, with a background of MJ’s greatest hits.
Jackson’s Billboard Rankings Over Time – Interactive Graphic – NYTimes.com.
LucidLogix reinvents Multi GPU with Hydra
10:00 am
LucidLogix is back in the news with a new chipset called ‘Hydra’ which offers a completely new way to support multi-GPU’s in systems. What makes it different than SLI and CrossFire you may ask? Well, first you need to understand one of the major drawbacks of those technologies:
Nvidia’s SLI and ATI’s Crossfire run in alternative frame rendering (AFR) mode where each card renders one frame. Problem is, there are inter-frame dependencies, and for each GPU one always renders more than one frame ahead – often two – to make the GPU more efficient.
So when users run triple or quad SLIs (or Crossfires), they are actually rendering at least eight if not more threads ahead. If a user is running a game at 30fps, eight frames is a big deal: he would experience either an eight-frame delay or skipped frames and lowered performance.
The “Hydra” system works by dividing the scene into discrete objects, such as segmenting a scene into floor, walls, characters, weapons, particle effects, etc. These objects can be distributed among the various GPU’s, and then re-composited by the Hydra chipset. It’s a far more scalable solution than SLI or Crossfire, but puts additional load on the software to properly segment the scene.
Will it take-off? Who knows. As multi-GPU becomes more commonplace as an alternative to higher-end video cards (Moore’s law in action, if you can’t make `em faster, just make more of `em) solutions like this will keep popping up.
via Multi gpu tech lucid to take on graphics giants – The Inquirer.
VizWorld.com 
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