The long lost robot is here

A long time ago, I wrote:

Does anybody remember a Lightwave page with a faked radiosity render of an awesome Grendizer robot? It was somehow connected to a rendering hack. If you know about it, please send me the link!

Well, today I found it. Only, it wasnt’ a Grendizer, it was a Wanzer.

That’s why no one told me about it, I guess. Anyway today I found the page and the image while browsing for totally unrelated stuff. Rendered by Jim May (Court Jester Creations) it demonstrated an hair-tearing technique to generate GI like illumination and glossy reflections without raytracing. Still cool!

First impression: it’s not as small as it looked like in the videos, and the auto stereoscopic display works well. Not exceptional, but good enough.

I’m glad it has been fixed quickly, as I find 501 a pleasure to work with.

Now all I have to do is to convince someone to buy me a 12 core Mac Pro.

Nice, cool, fast, character animation tool.

I probably am not the only one that thinks a match made in heaven would have been Modo+Project Messiah+Lightwave 9.6.

Could have been some sort of a 3D terminator, unleashed over a starving 3D market. And I still think they all should rejoin forces – 3D animation in 2002 was so cool.

But let’s skip this for now, it’s not gonna happen, ever.

And get back to Messiah. It’s a cool 3D character animation tool. It evolved, as solution-driven software often does, and is now a complete rendering solution, but I can’t comment about this since I only used it for animating and baking out MDDs to be rendered elsewhere.

Yet, it’s a fantastic opportunity to spend $10 and get a full featured character animation toolset. With rendering thrown in as a bonus.

The scheme is pretty simple: you fork out $10 for the basic version, or $40 for the pro one. If they reach an unspecified amount of purchasers, the deal is over: you get the license, and price goes back to original one ($499 or $1195, hey it’s a lot of money!).

If they don’t reach the expected amount of sales, no license is given, and your money is refunded.

Given that PGM has been in business for so many years, this seems a no-risk propositing, and for what is worth I did jump on this offer. I don’t think I’ll have the time to explore Messiah in the near future, but it’s a slick tool that ought to be upgraded anyway. And $40 is a decent price. I just wonder if they are going to send a dongle as well.

I hope this cash flow -albeit small, it’s still a cash flow- allows the fine guys and gals at pmG to keep developing Messiah as it deserves. And maybe release a 64bit Mac version as well.

Anyway here’s the deal-url: http://projectmessiah.com/x6/shop.html and have fun with armatures: they’r so cool I am thinking about restoring that old XP backup with Messiah on it.

Will it go ahead an release Autodesk’s Maya 2012 despite the bad omen relating to the world’s end?

Will it skip an year, just like a thirteenth floor? No, wait, that would make it Maya 2013. Bad luck again.

Or maybe it will go for a 12/12/2012 release date, and bundle it with a tutorial DVD to recreate the impressive hard body dynamics in Emmerich’s movie?

The report does mention that now Modo has an SDK. Yeah! This is something I want to look at.

Looks like there are no particles, but having an SDK…

*
Humor.

Speaking of bio mechanical monsters, does anybody remember an old tutorial, maybe for 3DS Max, that linked a human mask to a few pistons linking them to the facial animation? If so, please leave a comment and link to it. It seems I can’t find anymore most of my favorite links online. (Another being a closeup animation of a Mantis done in Lightwave and featured somewhere as the demo for a plugin -please drop me a link for that as well if you can remember it).

UPDATE #1 I have been in the game for a long time, but have never heard of randomized upgrades before. It seems upgrade emails will be sent randomly to customers, someone will get the upgrade first, someone else will get it later. Looks like a prize draw, funny. (not)

UPDATE #2 got it! on august 10th, I received the email and was able to download my eagerly awaited zBrush 4 for Mac. After a little struggle with their activation process (php errors in the header…) I finally activated it and added a zSphere. Way to go Pixologic! Now please keep PC and Mac in sync. If you have to, start charging for upgrades, but keep ‘em in sync.

Anyway, ZB 4 is way beyond coooooool.

Fancy some realistic camera shakes with real time rendering?

But what made me drool was when the presenter bumped the camera to zoom it, and the preview updated with the bump. I want that camera controller!

Better yet, since I am now daydreaming, I want a GPU powered, real-time, camera tracker capable of controlling any 3D application. And, a chroma key shader surface. Octane Renderer guys, are you listening?

Anyway, that video is cool. I remember when a beige spacemouse with RS-232 interface was the most awesome controller money could buy (except maybe a Nintendo Poweglove) and this video made me feel like a dinosaur.

After Effects and Lightwave

Looks like there’s still life in the Lightwave world. This new plugin creates an hybrid lightwave after effects tool, allowing to export Lightwave cameras to After Effects and synchronize the 3D scene in real time. Besides looking as cool as a Zack Snyder shot, this tool fills a long standing gap in Lightwave’s toolset and puts it haeads and shoulders above the once king of the hill of After Effects integration (you know, that 4D thing).

It’s amazing that it took so long for software developers to realize that we all need a super fast, no brainer connection with compositing applications. Autodesk unveiled its own exporting tool for 3DS about at the same time the Lightwave plugin was released, and I wouldn’t be surprised if more developers went ahead with similar solutions for Nuke and Fusion in the near future.

So let me add something to the wishlist above: I still want that camera, but I now want it to be able to pass through the data along several applications, all in real time. So that if I bump it, both Lightwave and After Effects bump at the same time (okay, a slight delay would be acceptable). Daydreaming? Maybe, but what about Brekel’s Kinect driver that talks to Motionbuilder in real time? Can’t we just have a standard tcp/ip stream of realtime 3D data flowing around and joining whatever app we happen to use?

zBrush celebrates ten years and looks better than ever

However! All this is moot when you look at the video posted 2 days ago at zbrushcentral: zBrush 4.0 new features. Awesome is reductive! I was laughing out loud at every mouse move. zBrush 4.0 is not a new release, it looks like a designer’s dream come true. Time to shop for a better gfx card I guess. And thank you Pixologic -looks like you have raised the bar again.