SuperNatural puts on workshops and lectures at the Tate Modern in London

Supernatural Studios in London is hosting a series of afternoon workshops and evening lectures exploring computer animation and the current crossover in art, design and technology, coming up Tuesday 25 March / Wednesday 26 March 2008. For the series of lectures and workshops called Digital Dreams, there is an amazing line-up of speakers including Mike Milne, the Director of computer animation at Framestore CFC; Richard Seymour, co-founder of SeymourPowell; Scott Eaton, founder of Armature Studios; Duncan McWilliam, VFX Supervisor at The Moving Picture Company as well as other leading lights from Cinesite, and EA Games and Bunkspeed.

In the afternoons before each evening’s lecture, there will be a unique opportunity to meet other senior visual effects artists and get hands-on with the tools used in a huge variety of 3D disciplines from the creation of Hollywood blockbusters to commercials, games, product design and architecture. SuperNatural Studios also has over £25,000 worth of prizes to give away from the latest laptop from HP and NVIDIA, as well as full commercial licenses for Autodesk’s Maya and Bunkspeed’s Hypershot software to a training course of your choice at Escape Studios and even a chance to get your creation 3D printed. The afternoon workshops are free and the evening lectures are £8 - £6 for students. Book early before tickets run out!

Apple iPhone patent suggests a flip phone version

One of Apple's recent patent filings seems to indicate that it has at least considered the possibility of an iPhone flip phone of sorts, among other dual-screen possibilities. The application itself is for what's described as a "dual sided trackpad", which would be translucent and boast touch sensitive panels on each side, allowing it to be used both when it's opened or when it's covering the main display.

In the case of the iPhone, that would seem to offer yet another option for the oft-discussed iPhone nano, but the patent application doesn't stop there, with it also offering up possibilities for laptops and tablets based around the technology.

In the former case, the touchpad would open up a small window on the main display, allowing it to work like a SideShow display, while the tablet would boast a touchscreen encompassing the entire display. Needless to say, don't your hopes up for any of that just yet but patent filings are always a good indication for future plans of developer companies and speaking strictly for myself I always had a soft spot for flip phones...

Autodesk moves into middleware

At GDC, Autodesk announced its intention to buy French AI specialist Kynogon, makers of the Kynapse middleware, a move that has a lot of implications for the 3D Studio Max developing company. Intel (annual revenue $38 billion) has Havok and the Project Offset game engine. Nvidia (annual revenue $3.8 billion) has Ageia and, if you cast your mind back a couple of years, graphics optimisation specialist Hybrid too. It should be no surprise that big technology corporations are interested in game middleware.

But, despite owning the majority of most game developers’ asset creation pipelines, Autodesk (annual revenue $1.8 billion), hadn’t looked to move upstream into real-time smarts (back in the early 2000s, Alias tried the trick with the Maya Real-Time SDK but without much conviction). The surprise acquisition of French artificial intelligence company Kynogon, announced during GDC 2008, has changed that conventional wisdom however.

On the simplest level, Kynogon's Kynapse pathfinding engine provides a great fit with Autodesk’s HumanIK animation engine, itself a product of Alias’ acquisition of Kaydara back in 2004. Together with an as-yet unspecified physics engine, these three technologies are expected to be rolled out as an intelligent character animation package that can deal with navigating through dynamically changing environments.

"Our theme is Create, Animate and Integrate," confirms Rob Hoffman, Autodesk’s senior 3D product marketing manager. "On the creation side we have 3ds Max, Maya and Mudbox and on the animate side we have MotionBuilder. The integration portion is about having more elements of the overall pipeline". Part of Autodesk’s decision making seems to have revolved around its experience of selling the HumanIK system. It’s been used in high profile games such as EA Sports’ titles and Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed but it was offered more as a consultancy service than a freely available middleware package like Kynapse.

"You have to crawl before you can walk, walk before you can run and run before you become an Olympian," Hoffman points out. "We started working with some Tier 1 customers to make sure the interest was there and that what they were expecting out of the software was also there. It was a safe way to begin and it’s starting to pay off". "At the moment, artists are having to work closely with coders to try and solve this animation issue," Gaubil, a Kynapse representative explains. "The bottleneck is the interface between art packages and the game engine. Only Autodesk can solve this problem".

But he’s looking beyond the short-term to consider the sort of future technology Autodesk will be able to create thanks to its financial muscle and sales teams. "The middleware market is changing fast. The industry desperately needs stable, longterm player who can offer cross-platform products. That’s what we aim to provide," he predicts. Hoffman also sees the current consolidation as a signifier of widespread change. "Not only are we seeing a blurring between industries such as games, films and design in terms of the tools that are being used, but most of the game facilities we’re talking to would prefer to buy their technology off-the-shelf."

Microsoft's XNA game studio to deliver games for smartphones?

An interesting piece of news regarding mobile gaming that has recently emerged stems from a Microsoft XNA chief Chris Satchell recent interview. He has given some hints as to the future of the XNA platform. Asked what was next for the XNA framework, given that the recently-announced Xbox Live Community Games distribution system is the last major piece of the XNA initiative to fall into place, Satchell said: "Well, we're extending to Zune this year, beyond that, I think there are other platforms we could extend to such as, for example, smartphones." Given Apple's committing to gaming on mobile devices yesterday, such a move would be an effective counter strike from Microsoft to promote its own Windows Mobile smartphone platform.

He also says that his team 'isn't focused on business model' and that he wants to enable community-created games first. Also touched upon in the interview is whether users will have to pay to play Xbox Live Community Games, to which Satchell responded: "We haven't decided that yet. To be honest, we're not really focused on the business model, we've been focusing on this pipeline and connecting people. Once we're in beta more will come to light. For now, it's just getting this distribution to work - it's a hell of a lot of work!"

You can check both parts of this interesting interview below, if you can read between the lines you can definitely see some of the future directions Microsoft plans to take regarding XBox, mobile gaming and game development in general.

http://www.developmag.com/interviews/136/QA-Chris-Satchell

http://www.developmag.com/interviews/138/QA-Chris-Satchell-Part-2

Predicting Crowd Behavior In Dense Urban Settings

One of the most interesting talks I sat through during my visit at IEEE VR 2008 was by Paul Torrens of Arizona State University talking about geosimulation as an engine for synthetic actors in urban models. Scientists who want to see how a crowd behaves in an emergency can now shout “Fire!” on a city street and watch everyone panic and run thanks to a newly developed computer simulation. The 3D model starts with patterns of human behavior and movement and uses them to simulate the behavior of a crowd in mob situations and pedestrian habits under certain building configurations, resulting in a virtual crowd video.

"Crowds are vital to the lifeblood of our cities,” said Paul. But, he adds, it is impractical “to establish live experiments with hundreds or thousands of people along busy streetscapes, to reproduce mob behavior during riots for the purposes of academic experimentation, or, to expect to replicate the life and death behavior under emergency situations in a fabricated fashion”. Torrens’s model uses what he calls an “agent-based methodology.” He can put individual people, or “agents,” each with different characteristics of age, sex, size and health, into the model and have them process information about the world around them. Their unique characteristic combinations make the agents interpret that information and react in different ways.

“It’s the same way we process information in the real world". Though you’re not aware of it, when you walk down a crowded street, your brain is constantly monitoring your surroundings and planning the path you will take to your destination while simultaneously monitoring for obstacles.

A prototype that Torrens has developed models the evacuation of a crowded area during a fire when there is only one point of escape, but he has used his method to develop a primitive model of a situation in which a disease spreads through casual contact, and he is attempting to create scenarios in which agitated crowds turn into unruly mobs. The model could also be used in planning cities to optimize walking space for pedestrians and alleviate congestion.

For more info check http://geosimulation.org/

3D urban model of London in Hellgate: London video game

A game released almost 6 months ago, which certainly has passed me by, and features an apocalyptic version of London in 3D is Hellgate: London, developed by Flagship Studios. While it failed to set the world on fire in sales it does offer the interesting alternative of being a Diablo/Counter Strike-clone ... only set in the UK capital, now invaded by demons various other ghoulish creatures (as you would!).

What is even more interesting is the approach the creators of the game used for the urban modelling workpackage. According to Flagship CEO Bill Roper when asked about modelling London, "it was a big challenge. One of the things we do is to have this concept of meta asset sets. There is one massive set that we create for a setting, and from that we make different thematic choices, allowing us to create different kinds of shapes. You might have really wide boulevards or winding back-alleys, and we can move between these and larger outdoor areas like parks. All of those have certain core assets that they would share and there are a lot of unique styles that get thrown into those. We can do lots of things to make them feel distinct and actually play differently from one another, particularly by using props."

"If you take one of the areas that have been procedurally generated, one of the things that will have been decided by the algorithm is whether this is to be, for example, a military stand-off point – so it puts in tanks and overturned vehicles and tattered tents and barricades. Or if it’s a mercenary response area, then we have ambulances and police vehicles. Or if this is more of an urban area, those props get pulled out, and you’ll see normal cars and London buses and things like that. So even thematically, what’s there can be different, and even the placement of those things is randomised as well."

"When quizzed about not opting to painstakingly recreate areas of London accurately, apart from Landmarks, he replies "from the outset we wanted to do something that was divergent from anything we’d done before. Obviously we’d done a high fantasy setting, and we’d done a gothic fantasy setting, both within completely created worlds. We wanted to do a near-future real-world basis for our next game. It would make the artistic challenges more exciting for us. We also really love London – it’s an international city; a lot of people around the world know it; it has great landmarks we could play with; it has a great mystic background. We could get a lot of cool gameplay above and below ground – that was important to us. We wanted somewhere players could recognise."

"One decision in game-design is where you are going to need players to stretch. For us we thought players were going to be stretching in terms of just understanding what the game was. It’s an action-RPG with FPS elements and it’s got this and that. It’s a lot like Diablo in many aspects and Counter-Strike in other ways – that was going to be something we’d have to spend a lot of time on – so a highly recognised city was something people could lay a foundation on. London wasn’t only a fun challenge, it provided a solid anchor point for people. We could go on and do other crazy stuff and they wouldn’t have too much to absorb all at once."

Pixar video talk on the Human Story Of Computer Animation

Following from the previous post here's another incredibly interesting vid talk, more in the form of an expert panel discussion, again from the respective leaders of the field of human computer animation. An intriguing absolute must-see for anyone in the computer graphics or indeed computer animation field!

These include Brad Bird (Writer/Director, The Incredibles, Pixar Animation Studios), Ed Catmull (Co-Founder and President, Pixar Animation Studios), Alvy Ray Smith (Co-Founder of four centers of computer graphics excellence (Altamira, Pixar, Lucasfilm, New York Tech) and a Microsoft Fellow), Andrew Stanton (Writer/ Director, Finding Nemo, Pixar Animation Studios) and Michael Rubin (Moderator, Author of Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution).

Video talk on the Procedural Inc. and CityEngine 3D urban modelling approaches

Writing this blog entry while waiting for my San Francisco flight from Reno, Nevada where this year's IEEE Virtual Reality conference was held. I was here in order to present a position statement paper at the Virtual Cityscapes: Key Research Issues in Modeling Large-Scale Immersive Urban Environments workshop (more details on the workshop here).

One of the most interesting and impressive talks I sat in during this workshop was the one by Pascal Mueller, PhD candidate and research assistant at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. I was aware of the work, which is quite possibly leading in the field of procedural architectural and large scale urban modelling, but it was really impressive to see it summarised in a 40-minute talk. Moreover, I just found out that a vid of a previous talk of Pascal's (similar to the one I saw) has been posted on YouTube, this time for a Google Tech Talk, it is essential viewing for anyone interested in interactive 3D city modelling...

The site of the spin-off company generated by this work can be found at http://www.procedural.com/ and again it is well worth visiting to check out the very high-profile publications stemming from it but also the numerous demo vids. The only criticism I could level at all this (and I'd be really really struggling here!) is the fact that the work seems more geared to delivering fictitious content than GIS-based models with accuracy that can be used in more sensitive and critical applications. Still, that's probably missing the point, this is research that is at the moment defining 3D urban modelling and well worth checking out!

iPhone and mobile games, John Carmack speaks out

ID Software co-founder and technical director (plus also legendary games programming guru!) John Carmack has come out in praise of Apple's plans for developers and its iPhone. In a post over at Slashdot, he said that the upcoming ability for developers to sell their creations via iTunes' new AppStore is the key part of the strategy, which is outlined here.

"Just based on the blurbs, it looks very good - a simulator plus debugging on the native device is the best of both worlds, and a 70 per cent royalty deal for apps over iTunes is quite good," he said.

Carmack added: "The iTunes distribution channel is really a more important aspect than a lot of people understand. "The ability to distribute larger applications than the over-the-air limits and effectively market your title with more than a dozen character deck name, combined with the reasonable income split make this look like a very interesting market. This type of developer/customer interaction is probably the wave of the future for mobile devices, it will be interesting to see how quickly the other players can react. Based on our experiences with the carriers, I am betting not very quickly".

He also said that ID had already applied to be an official developer, but didn't have any insider info as yet, adding: "I think Steve [Jobs, Apple CEO] is still pissed at me over some negative comments I made about iPod development tools a while ago".

Carmack had previously said that he felt Apple was "not supportive" of games on its iPhone, although clearly the new strategy will change that view. At last year's Apple yearly developer event, Carmack joined Jobs on stage to debut the developer's new Rage technology, which runs on Mac as well as PC. ID recently opened a mobile games division.

Serious Games Institute Event, Coventry, 4th March

Yesterday I attended a Virtual World, Wireless, Mobile, Video, Sound, GIS and Augmented Reality Technology Showcase event at the SGI (Serious Games Institute) in Coventry in a range of digital media and communications technologies. The event's purpose was to showcase the use of advanced and innovative technologies to enrich the culture, heritage and tourism experience and make it globally accessible to the widest audience.

The workshop featured demonstrations and innovative interactive displays from industry leaders and was a good opportunity to get a comprehensive overview of the potential benefits of a holistic and integrated approach to technology solutions for culture, heritage and tourism. Managers, planners and developers of culture, met with digital media specialists to explore how to get best value from integrating these technologies to create innovative and high value experiences.

Here's the agenda of the event:

09:00 – 09:30 Registration & networking
09:30 – 10:00 Introduction and Overview of Emerging Technologies An outline of the day and introduction to emerging technologies and their application to culture, heritage and tourism by David Wortley, Director of SGI
10:00 – 11:30 Session One - 3D Visualisation of Heritage Sites Invited speakers include Professor Bob Stone, Mike Gogan, Dick Davies, David Neil and Martyn Ware with examples of projects from around the world, including Rome 400AD
11:30 – 13:00 Session Two – Augmented Reality, Mobile and integrated real/virtual world Technologies for Culture, Heritage and Tourism Invited speakers include Ambient Performance, Giunti Labs, Implenia, Blackridge Games and Stratford Unplugged
13:00 – 14:00 Networking Lunch and Interactive Demonstrations Delegates will have an opportunity to see and interactive some highly innovative technologies including the launch of a brand new augmented reality experience.
14:00 – 15:30 Session Three – Serious Games and Educational Technologies for Culture, Heritage and Tourism Invited speakers include Blitz Games, Immersive Education and Playgen
15:30 – 17:00 Session Four - Creating a Total and Memorable Experience Invited speakers include Venue Solutions, The Virtual Heritage Company and representatives from end users involved in culture, heritage and tourism
17:00 – 18:30 Drinks Reception and virtual cabaret & disco Delegates can network, relax and be entertained by artists performing in a virtual cabaret then dance the evening away at the Wheelies Second Life Disco. This session will be jointly hosted by Implenia and Enable Enterprises Ltd.

There are more events like these scheduled at SGI in Coventry so if you are around the area it's worth checking their site at http://www.seriousmesinstitute.co.uk/ for future listings!

Subversion game, in-game rapid 3D city generator

Game developer Introversion, creator of indie darlings Darwinia and DEFCON, have announced their next project will be called Subversion. Company co-founder Chris Delay made the announcement earlier last week, noting that the project is early in production and the development will be blogged.

Part of this blogging process so far is a fascinating insight into creating a rapid city generator for the game content creation process. Chris Delay is already gushing over the game's scalable city generator, which is not only able to custom-build its own cities - with around 70,000 buildings in them - but each individual building's design as well. The process can be witnessed on the YouTube vid below.

Check the blog entry describing the city generator in much more detail, it does look incredibly impressive indeed and a step forward for rapid city creation for games...

http://forums.introversion.co.uk/defcon/introversion/viewtopic.php?t=1230&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight

CG Chosen, Architecture Magazine No.7

To everybody interested in manual 3D architectural modelling, a new issue of downloadable PDF CG Chosen Magazine is dedicated to the endless theme of architecture. As many CG artists work in the area of architecture visualization which usually assumes making an ordinary job on modeling and rendering a certain object one can say it's no more a creative work... The mag tries to prove the opposite by mixing ordinary visualization projects and real masterpieces devoted to outstanding architecture buildings.

You will find really interesting projects described here in 6 Making Of articles, stories about artists and companies working on architecture visualization and design in 2 interviews and lots of inspiring artworks including 4 Chosen Artist sections and the Gallery. All that on the 90 page of the magazine that is moreover available for printing now.

Download a free sample copy of this great mag from:

http://www.3dm3.com/mag/cgchosen/no07_architecture/

Microsoft DreamSpark provides Visual Studio and XNA bundle at no charge

Chairman of Microsoft Bill Gates unveiled a few days ago a new free software scheme for students that gives them development tools designed to 'unlock their creative potential and set them on the path to academic and career success'. Called Microsoft DreamSpark, the student program makes a range of development and design tools available for free. Microsoft said that software is available to 35 million students studying around the world in 10 countries (Belgium, China, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the U.K. and the US). More territories will be added throughout the year.

DreamSpark is available to all students whose studies touch on technology, design, math, science and engineering. Specifically for game development, the developer tools available are Visual Studio 2005 Pro and Visual Studio 2008 Pro, plus XNA Game Studio 2.0. Students also get a free Acadamic membership for the XNA Creators Club. Microsoft said this move meant students would "be able to invent compelling new gaming content and make their dream game a reality by porting their creations to their Xbox 360 console".

Microsoft's Expression Studio and platform resources SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition and Windows Server are also available for download. "We want to do everything we can to equip a new generation of technology leaders with the knowledge and tools they need to harness the magic of software to improve lives, solve problems and catalyze economic growth," Gates said. "Microsoft DreamSpark provides professional-level tools that we hope will inspire students to explore the power of software and encourage them to forge the next wave of software-driven breakthroughs".

I too think this is a great move and very clever of Microsoft. It has to be noted that from memory they are the first console game company that unlocks the full power of its SDK for the masses, for XBox 360, and that is an action that not only them but a number of graphics programmers can benefit from.

m-LOMA, a 3D map project for mobile phones

Writing this blog entry from Innsbruck, Austria where yesterday I presented a publication of mine for the 10th IASTED Computer Graphics And Imaging conference (the publication itself can be found here, more details on it on a previous blog entry too, here). One of the most interesting things I saw while at the conference was a demo on a Nokia N95 of the m-LOMA project from a fellow conference attendee which really caught my interest.

The m-LOMA application is one of the first full-featured mobile 3D maps. In comparison to 2D maps, 3D maps offer recognizability via a more realistic representation. m-LOMA, mobile LOcation-aware Messaging Application, delivers a real urban virtual environment to mobile users, with optimized wireless networking and efficient rendering. It allows entire cities to be rendered in real-time in mobile devices, even those lacking 3D hardware. It supports both vector and raster 2D maps, and navigation features such as GPS and routing. It also acts as a platform for location-dependent information.

Users can annotate the 3D world with their messages, and even track their GPS enabled buddies. The environment can also be annotated by service providers, which can be queried directly from the 3D view via the associated logos, or via textual searches. In addition, any annotation attached to a building is linked to the entire building, the location is not just an XYZ position. These annotations act also as bulletinboards, where users can discuss, or evaluate the services. The application runs on many different devices including mobile phones (Symbian S60v2 and S60v3, such as Nokia 6630 and N93, respectively), PDA's and personal computers (Linux, Windows, MacOS X, unices).

More information on the official site of the project found at http://www.init.hut.fi/research&projects/m-loma/, well worth checking out for a number of reasons; a) this is an approach that focuses greatly on rendering locally the 3D urban models without the need of a remote database b) it manages, using OpenGL ES, to display large scale models, fully-textured, not on PDAs but on simple cellphones with even more limited processing power! c) the VR engine used is extremely user-friendly but more importantly very efficient when it comes to FPS framerates. Also worth taking a look at are the publications that have come out of this project, found at http://www.init.hut.fi/research&projects/m-loma/publications.html.

A mobile Zeevolution, new controller device for mobile games

Most gamers will admit don’t play many mobile phone games, and they’ll inevitably say that it’s because of the controls. If the N-Gage has taught people anything, it’s that in order to be successful a phone must be a phone first and foremost and that means a layout not particularly conducive to gaming.

Massachusetts-based tech startup Zeemote thinks the solution isn’t producing a phone that looks like a gamepad but separating those components out into two devices and the company is currently courting developers, with an SDK release ahead of the device’s rollout later this year.

Asked how mobile developers could benefit by implementing support for the device, Zeemote CEO Beth Marcus is clear in the message: “Better sales, better visibility and enhanced gameplay. It attracts consumers who wouldn’t necessarily play the game because they think that this 3D game couldn’t possibly play well on their cellphone. But with a Zeemote, they immediately know that they’ll get a gaming experience that they are used to”.

Key in designing the SDK, says Marcus, was making sure that it didn’t get in the way of developers. “It’s cognisant of developer concerns with getting product out that we make it as easy as possible for them to take this thing and go, without needing a lot of work. Developers have said that it only takes them an hour to implement”.

Of course, she explains, an hour is the figure for implementing basic functionality. The real draw of the Zeemote, though, is the switch from digital button presses to analogue movement, and taking full advantage of that will take extra time. It’s this analogue movement that is critical to 3D gaming, and possibly the reason why the uptake of mobile 3D titles has been slower than anticipated.

The quick implementation time also means that developers can rapidly engineer support into older titles, which Zeemote is already doing with several of its partners. It also plans to launch http://www.zeemote.com/, a one-stop portal for Zeemote owners that the company believes will drive extra revenue to the whole ecosystem as users share information on the latest Zeemote-enabled titles, giving a second lease of life to older titles as well as effectively promoting newer ones.

Finally, although Zeemote sees applications beyond gaming for the device, it’s keen to stress that the emphasis is on game developers. “Right now the SDK is focused on game developers, it’s crafted around their needs. We expect other stuff to happen after release. Still, our main goal is to get out of the way of people being creative and help them to succeed”.

Two versions of 3D Studio Max in 2009?

Autodesk has announced that it will release two versions of the 2009 edition of 3D Studio Max - one for entertainment software and another for design professionals. The firm launched 3D Studio Max 2009 Entertainment Software at it's World Press Days event. 3D Studio Max 2009 includes a new Reveal rendering toolset, the ProMaterials material library for simulating real-world surfaces, and biped enhancements and new UV editing tools.

"Every design has a story to tell," explained Marc Petit, senior vice president, Autodesk Media & Entertainment. "Entertainment technology enables design professionals to explore ideas, validate concepts and communicate design intent. It allows them to experience their designs before they are real. Autodesk 3D Studio Max now comes in two distinct flavours to better meet the specific needs of our entertainment and visualisation customers. 3D Studio Max 2009 and 3D Studio Max Design 2009 provide users with tailored online experiences, user interface and application defaults, tutorials, samples, and more. This simplifies the learning process and makes it easier for users to find the information that’s most relevant to them".

It's a step that shows how important 3D Studio Max is for game development today and it remains to be seen whether other modelling/animation packages such as Maya or SoftImage XSI will follow down the same route...

Call Of Duty 4, Chernobyl in real life vs the 3D urban model

Picked up from the ever brilliant Digital Urban blog, one particularly chilling, yet technically very accurate, rendition of a 3D urban model worth highlighting is that of Chernobyl, featured in Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, a first-person game developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision.

The game is available for Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 it features various real world locations, one of them being set in the aforementione tragic city where a very well-known nuclear accident took place in 1986...

The first movie showcases some real-world, recently-taken still images from Chernobyl with a fascinating story behind them, found at http://www.nextgenboards.com/vb/call-duty-4-discussion/8215-map-real-life.html.

The second movie is the full Chernobyl level itself in the game, the similarities are, somewhat disturbingly enough (the area is still a high-risk radiation spot, which is quarantined, even after 20-odd years) there for everybody to see. A great piece of in manual urban 3D modelling nonetheless and definitely a good incentive for myself to finally get convinced in investing in a copy of Call Of Duty!

3D Architecture Animation Creator 3D Studio Max plug-in

For all of us using dedicated MaxScript to setup video walkthroughs of urban and architectural scenes, here's a valuable little tool I have just come across.

3D Architecture Animation Creator is a 3D Studio Max plug-in which can help designers quickly creat animations, especially for architecture growing animations. By using it, you can fast create position, rotation, scale, as well as visiblity animations for several objects.

Key Features of Standard Version:

1) Generate position, rotation, scale and visiblity animation

2) Along the x, y, z direction generated animation

3) Along the path generate animation

4) Anti-direction generate animation

5) Generated by random order

6) Objects along the x, y, z direction or randomly generate position, rotation, scale animation

7) Objects along World or Local Coordinate System generate position, rotation, scale animation

8) Can point out start frame of animation, length of frames for every segment of the animation, length of internal frames between animation segments

9) Internal and segment of animation generated randomly

10) 3D Architecture Animation Creator can calculate position of the end frame

11) Set the moving distance, rotating angle and percentage of scale

12) Any combination of position, rotation, scale and visibility can create complex effect

Key Features of Professional Version (besides all features of Standard Version it also includes):

13) Control the speed of generation

14) Set moving distance, rotating angle, percentage of scale as well as turn on random options which can get numbers of distance, angle and percentage randomly

15) Batch adjust coordinate pivot of objects

You can find both versions at http://www.3dbrother.com/

Microsoft buys developer of 3D modelling software for Virtual Earth

Microsoft has bought Caligari, a developer of 3D modeling software, in a move that could help enrich the graphics experience in Microsoft's Virtual Earth mapping system. Caligari started making 3D modeling and animation software for the Amiga computer in the mid-1980s. Its signature tool, called trueSpace, has a user interface that makes it easy to build complex 3D animations, according to an entry on the Virtual Earth blog on Wednesday announcing the acquisition.

Caligari has offices in Mountain View, California, and Slovakia. Its development team will work with the Virtual Earth group, and Caligari's "tightly knit community of beta testers" will stay the same, said Roman Ormandy, founder and CEO of Caligari, in a blog posting. He said the company will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft. "Now we will have more resources to rely on, larger market to consider and I hope more fun doing that," he wrote.

Microsoft was reportedly not available for additional comment but it seems to me that this could be a key move that will take their system in front of Google Earth's competition...

3DS Max 2008 Architectural Visualization book - Beginner to Intermediate

One upcoming book on architectural 3D modelling which I find a very good purchase based on the information about it so far, is 3DATS only 3ds Max 2008 book dedicated to architectural visualization: Brian L. Smith's 3ds Max 2008 Architectural Visualization - Intermediate To Advanced. This 480 page, full-color, hard-cover bound book takes you through the challenge of learning one of the most complex computer programs ever created, by way of easy-to-follow tutorials and time tested production techniques. It specifically focuses on those parts of the program you need to know to be productive in this part of the industry today.

It looks like the intent is not to show you every possible way to accomplish a task, but rather some of the fastest and most efficient ways. 3ds Max is a large and complex application - but by learning just the features that apply to visualization int his field. Included at the end of the book is a large gallery of 3D visualizations by some of the top artists in the field, along with their best advice for beginners trying to advance in the industry. Special discounts from leading industry vendors and valuable downloadable content is also available to readers. Support files are available in release 9 and 2008.

For a sample chapter and an order link check the URLs below:

http://www.3dats.com/images/tutorials/Book2-sample.pdf

http://www.3dats.com/products.asp