Bones Pro For 3D Studio Max

Skinning is probably one of the most annoying and invidious task you can face in 3D graphics. It usually takes a whole lot of time, it requires a great deal of patience and - in most cases - never works well after the first try.

Max offers a standard skin modifier as well as a physique modifier, however these options can be rather time consuming and inflexible.

click through for video

ChaosGroup Sneak Peek - Siggraph Asia 2012

We cant all be so lucky to get to Siggraph Asia this year, but I will be keeping a close eye on the news straight out of the usual camps. Early rumours are, we are going to see the first sneak peeks of the latest installment of ChaosGroup's Vray 3.0, as well as their up and coming fluid dynamics plugin Phoenix FD. I have been 'in' on their fluid simulation software since version 1.0 and its great to watch this software improve and develop.


Chaos Group is attending Siggraph Asia for the 5th consecutive yea, they are presenting, speaking, and releasing by the sounds of it, should be good to look out for!

RayFire - TD video

Made by mir-vadim himself! This is a Technical Demo video showing some of the best features of RayFire. I have followed this little plugin for years, and am completely amazed to see where is has develop to, and where it has been seen in industry.

I love the new fracture patterns!

Buy here >

This little video will go a long way to driving some new custom to your site, all the best!

3D assets into legacy photography - quickly

This looks fantastic, A quick photographic matching tool for inputting 3D objects / animations directly into photographic scenes. This tech needs to be extremely easy to use, as you could see this being used as an API for consumers to use to use and postion 3D content within real world environments. This could be coupled with some AR API tech to develop better realtime model matching tools.

We have seen elements of this before a few times, however I do like the way Kevin has created the lighting matches and shadow cast algorithms. These additional levels of detail allow the final result to look far better and far more real than any other system has been able to generate.

Heres the video:

Ifttt.com - coding without coding!

I have just set up some coded links with:

"if this then that.com" - ifttt.com

I love this site, its a really simple tasker-based site, that allows users to create links between the thousands of the sites and accounts we have online.
Things like:

Facebook > Dropbox

Where you can quickly set up a script to download any tagged photo of you and put it into your dropbox.

Weather > Email

Where the site will check for a particular state of weather on your favorite weather site, then email you when this is active, ie. If it starts raining!

TUTORIAL - feather rigging using pflow box #2 in 3d MAX

Great feather rigging tutorial by Anselm von Seherr-Thoss.

Rig a single feather with a bone structure and a Pflow and Toolbox #2 particle system.

Bluetooth, Wireless headphones and Win 7

Ok, so I bought these headphones on Saturday to solve an odd problem I had been having at the office. I have been working with two systems for a while now, using one as a render engine and post pro system and the other as a main modelling system, as well as browsing and trouble shooting unit, but I also have a tablet that services the emails and some music / podcasts / and audio books etc....

So, I did a bit of research into finding a set of headphones that could be quickly accessible from all these systems without having to move wires around! Obviously I ended with a wireless solution with bluetooth adaptors but I had explored other options from wireless (KVM style) docking stations which were connected to all the systems and then to the headphones, I also looked at wired solutions with a central docking unit, but this all felt too permanent and not portable enough.

I know this is a proper "first world" gripe ! but I did thing of other potential real world uses from;  

Computer led teaching classes
allowing the teachers to move between the students and connect into their system quickly.

Wireless DJ heaphones (commerical not enterprise)
allowing the consumer to manage multiple audio signals from a variety of devices, eg iphones, ipads, laptops.....

Anyway, needed or not, this post is to help users achieve this using multiple platforms:

So, I tested the WP-300 Creative headphones this morning on iPad, iPhone, HTC, Desktop (win7), Laptop (vista), and Mac OS 10.whatever!

I wanna to register these headphones with all of these devices so that I can flip between them quickly.

The iPhone, iPad, and HTC worked immediately ! these all have Broadcom bluetooth adaptors with A2DP drivers installed.

The Desktop, and Laptop did not have a bluetooth transmitter built in, so I bought a small Belkin bluetooth adaptor, this did not work! Apparently the A2DP drivers are not compatible with Windows Vista or 7, and there is no easily accessible online solution to this.







I did find a solution for this is the back end of a forum and thought it deserved its own post!
This works with must Bluetooth adaptors as well as most bluetooth enabled headphone units.

"After a couple of hours of agony, searching online for proper drivers for my Motorola HT820 headset, I had to do these in order to pair my headset successfully with my Win 7 RC system

1. Uninstall Broadcom bluetooth software
2. Download and install this
3. Now, add your device, Windows 7 should automatically download various drivers
4. Go to your bluetooth devices, see and entry for your headset, right click, properties, services tab and make sure headset option is selected
5. After all these, right click volume icon, playback devices and you should find an entry for the connected bluetooth headset. Set that as default and you're good to go!"

RayFire 1.56 Released

Mir Vadim has annouced today that his RayFire 1.56 Plugin for 3ds Max is now Available for Download:

Check out the new RayFire videos

Feature list:

• NVidia PhysX Rigid Body support via RayFire user interface.
• NVidia PhysX Force Influence Allows You to affect on objects in simulation by forces, space warps and mouse cursor. Animatable Time Scale property allows You to create Bullet Time effect in a seconds. Glue allows you to glue objects together and break connections between objects during simulation.
• Interactive Demolition System.for NVidia PhysX engine. Creates dynamic simulation and demolishes objects accordingly to their material and collision strength. Each fragment can be demolished further with proper amount of collision strength.
• Different Fragmentation types. Allows you to fragment geometry objects. RayFire Tool supports Irregular, Uniform, Voronoi, Wood splinters, Radial fragmentation types. Ability to draw cuts over your objects by mouse.
• Automatic update system.

New features in version 1.56:

• Support for 3ds Max 2012
• Support for Nvidia PhysX plugin 2.61
  

PSD manager 3 - 3D Studio Max

 Victoria, BC - August 5, 2011 Cebas visual technology previews psd-manger 3.0 - the next major release of the PSD file exporter for Autodesk 3ds Max at Siggraph 2011.

New Feature Highlights:

• 32-bit (HDR) layered PSD files:

• psd-manager 3 now offers the high dynamic range and color precision of 32-bit floating point Photoshop files for ultimate flexibility in post production. Los-less ZIP compression with prediction ensures a maximum of image quality at reduced file sizes. 

• Deep image matte extraction:
• psd-manager uses deep image data generated by the artist’s renderer of choice to generate PSD layers or channels from 3ds Max objects and materials. Artists worldwide value the effortless way to generate precise mattes aplenty from within 3ds Max.
• 3ds Max layer export:
• Scene layers can now be exported as PSD layers, offering a new way to produce masks that eliminates the tedious task of having to assign IDs to objects.
• Render Cut-outs:
• "Render Cut-outs" is a new PSD layers export mode that cuts the rendered image into pieces by object, object-Id, material-Id or by 3ds Max layer. The PSD layers provide artists with an excellent starting point for post-production.
• Autodesk 3ds Max 2012 support
• psd-manager 3 supports the complete Autodesk 3ds Max 2012 and 3ds Max Design 2012 product line.
• Render Elements the easy way:
• New built-in customizable presets for VRay 2.0, finalRender 3.5 make it simple to compose render elements. Layers are sorted and blending modes already setup as soon as PSD files are imported into Photoshop, as a composition into After Effects or any other application supporting PSD files.
• Optimized Adobe Photoshop and Adobe After Effects workflow:
• Layered PSD files - unlike OpenEXR files - are first class citizens in Adobe applications and work out of the box including support for multiple-layers, blending modes and color precision up to 32-bit (HDR).
• More Control:
• New built-in options to control image resolution (DPI) simplify the workflow of architectural and product visualization artists. The alpha channel of the rendered image can now be exported as layer transparency, layer mask, disabled layer mask or a separate PSD alpha channel. 

Availability
All purchases of psd-manager 2 that are made in August 2011 will be upgraded to psd-manager 3 for free when it becomes available. psd-manager 3 is expected to be released on 2011-08-31.

www.cebas.com