CGTantra has an interview with Damir Martin about his scene ‘Giant Octopus’ created using ZBrush and 3dsMax/Mental Ray.
First I had it built from z spheres which are great tool for fast 3d sketching and developing rough forms. After i got basic form of octopus, I proceeded with more detail until it was complete. The problem is however that the topology you get from zspheres isn’t allways the best thing about zbrush, and thats the reason the model needed retopologizing. When I do retopo in zbrush, I draw provisional wire on the subdivided model using polypaint technique and only after that I continue with real retopo process. This method allows for some more thought out wireframe and it’s better for me as when I used to do retopo without this planing, I would end up with some messy solutions most of the times before.
We’ve talked about Oscar-nominated Logorama before here on VizWorld, but it’s back online and free for all to view at Vimeo. If you missed it before or on iTunes, check it out above.
The Foundry has just rolled out their first version of MARI, a digital texturing and painting application for Linux and Windows.
MARI has a creative toolset which puts many stand-alone 2D paint systems to shame, allowing artists to concentrate on painting. The user interface is responsive and fluid. You can paint directly on to models and view the results immediately. Save time and take texturing way beyond what was previously possible.
Developed at Weta digital for use in District 9, Avatar, and The Lovely Bones, the system already has industry credibility. It offers impressive speed and workflow integration aspects, integrating with several of the tools available already.
Currently only available for Linux, a Windows build is on the way. Hit their website to buy it or get a free evaluation.
Matrox has released a new version of their DualHead2Go and TripleHead2Go products that offer some nice resolution bumps.
As long as using Intel HD Graphics and Intel 4 Series Express Chipset with Intel Graphics Media Accelerator, either desktop or portable one should be OK. Maximum DualHead2Go resolutions have expanded from 2×1280×1024 to 2×1920×1080, while TripleHead2Go resolutions have increased from 3×800×600 to 3×1280×1024(standard) or 3×1360×768 (widescreen).
Of course, these can’t stand up to something like Eyefinity that offers nice DX11 and OpenGL highspeed rendering, but the ability to take a simple integrated-graphics laptop and drive 3 monitors with it is handy for certain business and financial types.
exPreview brings us news of the new Asus MARS II graphics card that packs in two of the new Fermi-driven GTX480 chips onto a single PCB, with all of the heat and electrical problems that come along with it.
This graphics accelerator employs two NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 (GF100) GPUs on one board, that is to say, this the first dual-GPU accelerator based on GF100, which is dreaded for its thermal and electrical characteristics so much. In terms of power supply, three 8-pin power interface for its big power consumption.
Theoretically, the card is Quad-SLI capable if matched with another ASUS MARS II, but the details of how they keep it from melting into slag are still a secret.
All set for another week of work, and we’ll begin our round-up with an international submission, by Density Design, drawing a map of 300 websites categorized into a “new-socialist” scale, for Wired Italy. Next, another Social Media infographic, this one with a look at the Music Industry, from The Musicians Guide. ChaCha shows where the major drugs come from, and Infographics World tries to give a better understanding on the effects of concussions in young athletes. And we finish with another beautiful design from Michæl Paukner, this one on the future of the Human Body.
This week RealD has it’s IPO (initial public offering) that opened at $16/share, and managed to pull in an impressive $200M over 12.5Million shares, up from the expected 10.75 million. Analysts are mixed as to what this means for 3D movies, as more 3D movies keep coming out but sales seem to be dropping (Toy Story 3 only pulled in 56% of revenue from 3D). In the announcements, I found this interesting little tidbit on how RealD has managed to edge out all their competition in becoming the #1 source of theater 3D.
RealD has vaulted to success by offering theater owners a free upgrade to 3D, and then charging them a license fee. That fee had been 75 cents per attendee, but it has since fallen to between 40 cents and 50 cents, BTIG said in a report.
Hollywood studios are subsidizing the cost of RealD’s glasses at theaters, but BTIG said it expects Hollywood to shift that burden to RealD and the theater owners.
Well now you know why you’re paying extra for those 3D tickets, it’s straight to RealD to subsidize the upgrade.
Getting ready to see a big 3D movie, but not sure if it was shot in stereoscopic 3D or post-processed into 3D? Phil Dhingra to the rescue, with a new website called ‘Is It Real or Fake 3D?’ where he catalogs movies into the two categories.
Many film studios are trying to cash in on moviegoers’ craving for 3D films. However, many studios are “faking it” by converting 2D films into 3D post-production. Worse, the studios are not being upfront in their advertising, with some people feeling ripped-off after paying extra fees for the “3D Experience.” This is no discredit to the actual graphic artists working on these conversions, but there’s only so much that can be done post-production. If you only have one-eye’s worth of content, you can’t just make up the content for the second eye. It’s not as simple as the re-colorization that happened to classic movies.
He has a list of classics back to 1953 through current in-production films to be released in 2012.
PxlEyes has a tutorial online that uses 3dsMax, Glu3D, and Cebas Finarender to create an animation of an egg being shattered by a bullet. The tutorial is a bit old (based on Max7) but many of the techniques used still apply on newer versions.
The total tutorial is about 40 minutes, and split into 2 parts.
The Knowledge Cartography website is dedicated to researching how cartography can be used to represent various types of information, and they’re performing most of their research with a tool called ‘ATLAS’.
The images displayed below are screenshots taken from ATLAS, the application that’s being developed to explore the possibilities of the application of a cartographic metapjor to the realms of knowledge. The concept of atlas in this context doesn’t depict as much a list of maps, but rather a system of representations of space, a communication device aimed at representing complex contexts through the use of many partial overlapping narrations: a network of maps, diagrams, texts and peritexts, combined together to describe the space of research in its multifaceted aspects.
The work is based primarily on a series of papers from Marco Quaggiotto at the Politenico di Milano (Italy), and several videos of the ATLAS interface are available at their site.
CGTantra has an interview with Damir Martin about his scene ‘Giant Octopus’ created using ZBrush and 3dsMax/Mental Ray.
The Foundry has just rolled out their first version of MARI, a digital texturing and painting application for Linux and Windows.
Matrox has released a new version of their DualHead2Go and TripleHead2Go products that offer some nice resolution bumps.
All set for another week of work, and we’ll begin our round-up with an international submission, by 
This week RealD has it’s IPO (initial public offering) that opened at $16/share, and managed to pull in an impressive $200M over 12.5Million shares, up from the expected 10.75 million. Analysts are mixed as to what this means for 3D movies, as more 3D movies keep coming out but sales seem to be dropping (Toy Story 3 only pulled in 56% of revenue from 3D). In the announcements, I found this interesting little tidbit on how RealD has managed to edge out all their competition in becoming the #1 source of theater 3D.
Getting ready to see a big 3D movie, but not sure if it was shot in stereoscopic 3D or post-processed into 3D? Phil Dhingra to the rescue, with a new website called ‘Is It Real or Fake 3D?’ where he catalogs movies into the two categories.
PxlEyes has a tutorial online that uses 3dsMax, Glu3D, and Cebas Finarender to create an animation of an egg being shattered by a bullet. The tutorial is a bit old (based on Max7) but many of the techniques used still apply on newer versions.
The Knowledge Cartography website is dedicated to researching how cartography can be used to represent various types of information, and they’re performing most of their research with a tool called ‘ATLAS’.
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