Here is all of the news we’ve collected about Autodesk, creators of such products as AutoCAD, Maya, 3ds Max, and Mudbox.
Browse around, then check out some other popular software producers like:
Another acquisition for Autodesk today, this time it’s TinkerCad. TinkerCad is a solid modeling tool popular amongst kids and hobbyists, designed for rapid design of 3D printer models. With this acquisition, Autodesk has a new toolsuite to target at the smaller markets.
I am happy to announce that we have just signed a deal where Autodesk will purchase the Tinkercad site and core technologies. This is a great day for all Tinkercad users, Autodesk is a very enthusiastic and capable steward. There are two main impacts of this deal: the site is fully operational and Autodesk has some very exciting plans for Tinkercad.
via SolidSmack.com – Tinkercad is Back. Autodesk Acquires Site, Tech and Plans 123D Integration.
Whether you’re at SIGGRAPH or not, be sure to check out Autodesk’s offerings from the show floor that will be discussing the use of Autodesk technology in a variety of fields.
Be among the 400,000 AREA community members worldwide to watch AREA TV during SIGGRAPH. Catch product demonstrations and customer presentations streamed live from the Autodesk booth, or attend an Autodesk® MasterClass online. Great content will be added during and after the event, so be sure to check out AREA frequently.
So far I see guys from MPC behind “Prometheus”, Weta, Spark, and lots more, plus they promise they’ll keep adding over the week. Hit their site for all the details.
via AREA | SIGGRAPH 2012.
Autodesk has released their 2012 Corporate Show Reel, showcasing some simply amazing work from television, movies, commercials, and more.
Autodesk has finally answered the prayers of animators around the world with their new “ultimate bromance” pack, also knows as the new Ultimate Suite, that brings together 3dsMax and Maya together for the first time into a nice package bundle.
Whether you want to call them the ultimate tag team, the ultimate bromance, or the ultimate dynamic duo, Maya and 3ds Max have come together in the Ultimate Suite to provide you with a complete set of tools that give you the flexibility to tackle any project, any time. With single-step workflows and the ability to create sophisticated effects in Softimage, real-time character animation in MotionBuilder, sculpting and texture painting in Mudbox, and 2D concept art in Sketchbook Designer, the Ultimate Suite offers a complete set of 3D creative tools that unleash your creativity.
Of course, such luxury isn’t cheap: Currently $8000 USD. But for that, you get Maya, 3dsMax, Softimage, MotionBuilder, Mudbox, Sketchbook, along with tools like Turtle, Face Robot, and more.
Autodesk has just announced the details of 3dsMax 2013, including the feedback from their recent Beta run.
With this release, we tried to do something slightly different. Along with the bigger features, we tackled improving things that might seem small, but can be annoying or cause inefficiencies when you work. For example, we now allow you to move the viewport while creating various entities like arrays so you don’t stop creating, change your viewport, then begin again. Instead, you simply move the viewport while continuing to draw/create. These are old legacy issues, many of you are used to it, but it doesn’t mean it needs to remain that way. We tackled dozens of these workflow improvements and you’ll encounter them all over the product. This is one outcome of our 3dsmaxfeedback.autodesk.com effort from a year ago.
They acknowledge that certain issues found late in the cycle were still allowed to ship, so expect a Service Pack soon. Also, 2012 is not plugin-compatible with 2013 so you’ll have to get all new plugins (and that means I’ll have to build the PLY Importer again). Get all the details on the new features in their blog post.
There’s a new version of the glu3D fluid motion simulator for 3dsMax that brings it up to date with 3dsMax2012 and adds in CUDA computation for improved performance.
It speeds up intensive computations that glu3D performs to calculate particle fluid dynamics. With this glu3D edition it is possible to simulate faster and with more particles than before; it is possible to simulate your scene more times; it is almost interactive. Animated fluid scenes with more quality and level of detai
You can download their free Demo version at their site, or buy it for $760.
Click for Fullsize
The Autodesk Research team has just published “Citeology” on their website. It’s a java applet for visualizing a large collection of technical research papers. As you can see from the image above, the end result combines both the text of the papers along with a timeline and information on a chosen topic and where it appears within.
Citeology looks at the relationship between research publications through their use of citations. The names of each of the 3,502 papers published at the CHI and UIST Human Computer Interaction (HCI) conferences between 1982 and 2010 are listed by year and sorted with the most cited papers in the middle. In total, 11,699 citations were made from one article to another within this collection. These citations are represented by the curved lines in the graphic, linking each paper to those that it referenced.
I’m surprised to see this coming from Autodesk Research, not what I would typically expect from them. Nonetheless it’s an impressive visualization that’s both beautiful and functional.
Yesterday GraphicSpeak ran an article detailing all the may acquisitions Autodesk has been involved in this year. Ranging from engineering products to web collaboration systems, they’ve maintained their place in the headlines through constantly buying up more companies.
In a recent meeting with the press Autodesk CEO Carl Bass confessed that during the last twelve months, Autodesk has been even more enthusiastically acquisitive than usual and promised the company would slow down for a while. But, he said, Autodesk is not going to stop acquiring companies because it is an important part of their strategy for growth.
Then today, as if to prove their point, they announced their acquisition of T-Splines, a popular modeling plugin used by Rhino and SolidWorks. Not only this is an interesting move to acquire a huge tool used by their competition, it’s an interesting addition to the Autodesk portfolio.
This tech is particularly interesting in that in has applications for the entire line of Autodesk products, from Alias and Maya to Inventor and Revit. Where Inventor Fusion eases the process for those moving from AutoCAD to Inventor and history-driven modeling to history-free direct modeling, T-Splines technology adds the ease of creating and transitioning to creating complex manufacturable geometry.
FireUser.com has a user-contribution from Antonio Fontenele benchmarking a Quadro 1800FX against the AMD FirePro v5800 in a variety of tests. In an interesting twist he compares the various vendor “optimized” drivers against their counterparts provided by Autodesk (Both of these cards are Autodesk approved), and finds a startling different in performance.
In Cadalyst Systems Benchmark 2011 test, Quadro a little faster than FirePro while using AutoCAD default drivers due c2011_8.dwg file score, but it was slower than FirePro in the other files (where FirePro was 102.32% faster). However, using AutoCAD optimized drivers, Quadro earned 613 points while FirePro earned a higher score equal to 2060 points. This is means about 336.05% faster in AutoCAD 2011.
Get all the numbers in the article.
Autodesk is currently in the process of gathering up resources for their upcoming GDC2012 booth, and has asked the community to submit stills and video for inclusion not only at the conference, but on their website, Youtube channel, and more.
We’re especially interested in HD material. Of course, video submissions in other formats are still welcome. We’re also looking for your high-resolution images for inclusion in our marketing throughout the year. The deadline for video and imagery submissions is January 13, 2012.
via Autodesk – Games – Autodesk 2012 Games Show Reel Call for Submissions.
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