Design and Construction Technology » Animation

Focus 360 – Hawadi Revealed!

Bobby Parker — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:44:42 +0000

This video is 98% computer generated and a great example of how CG can tell a compelling story. The subject matter is a master planned community in King Abdullah Economic City in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Produced entirely by the creative team at Focus 360.

Focus 360 – Hawadi Revealed! from Focus 360 on Vimeo.

Lagoa Multiphysics 1.0 – Teaser

Bobby Parker — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:33:26 +0000

Lagoa Multiphysics 1.0 – Teaser from Thiago Costa on Vimeo.

3ds Max 2011 How-To Movies

Bobby Parker — Sun, 16 May 2010 04:05:08 +0000

Hidden away in the training section of the 3ds Max product page you will find a handy link to over 50 How-To movies. The focus of the movies cover all aspects of the software and from beginner to intermediate skill levels. This year Amer Yassine and the rest of our documentation team have been quite busy and added 23 new videos using 3ds Max 2011.

www.autodesk.com/3dsmax-howtos

V-Ray 1.50.SP5 released today

Bobby Parker — Sun, 16 May 2010 02:24:22 +0000

Chaos Group has just announced the release of V-Ray 1.50.SP5. The new build adds compatibility with 3ds Max 2011 and 3ds Max Design 2011 and includes new features, together with many modified and improved ones. There’s also a number of additions and fixes listed in the Chaos PR.

bit.ly/crNzZD

New features:
*Added VRaySamplerInfoTex texture and VRaySamplerInfo render element
*Added VRayObjectSelect render element which allows to extract objects with specific IDs into a separate element

Modified features:
*Added an option to the VRayPhysicalCamera to perform image distortion based on a texture map
*Allow the user to specify texture bounds for 3d displacement
*Added displacement slot to VRayFastSSS2 material
*Added “prepass id” parameter to VRayFastSSS2 material so that multiple materials can share the same illumination map
*Added displacement slot to VRayLightMtl material
*The color parameter of VRayIES lights is now animatable
*The min/max z-depth values for the VRayZDepth render element are now
animatable
*Support for reflection occlusion in VRayDirt
*Support for environment sampling in VRayDirt
*Support for Particle Flow vertex color mapping and particle visibility
*Support for the “Use transparent shadows” option with Arch&Design materials
*The clipping planes for the VRayPhysicalCamera are now displayed in the viewport
*Added an option “show cone” to the VRayPhysicalCamera to control the display of the camera in the viewports
*Ability to save and load color correction curves for the VFB in Adobe(r) PhotoShop(r) .acv format
*Support for pixel aspect ratio display in the V-Ray VFB
*Support for anaglyph stereo preview in the V-Ray VFB
*Support for LUT color correction in the V-Ray VFB from .cube files
*Ability to display the value of the corrected colors in the V-Ray VFB pixel info dialog
*The “Dynamic memory limit” parameter can be set to zero to remove any limit

Bug fixes:
*Motion blur for Hair&Fur in “mr prim” mode does not match the “buffer” mode
*Occasional random crashes in 3ds Max 2010 due to progress bar updates
*Fixed invalid smoothed normals causing issues with displacement
*Fixed AA artifacts with thin bright lines when using Adaptive DMC image sampler
*Stuck buckets with perfectly transparent surfaces and GI
*Incorrect vignetting for VRayPhysicalCamera when using horizontal/vertical offset
*Set VRaySilentMode should disable the dialog for overwriting raw .vrimg files
*Missing reflections in VRayFastSSS2 when it is a coat material inside a VRayBlendMtl
*Incorrect bump mapping for GI when using time-interpolated irradiance maps
*Fixed artifacts with VRayFastSSS2 when one of the scatter color components is zero
*Fixed incorrect normal map with VRayNormalMap on VRayProxy objects
*Fixed crash with animated irradiance maps and objects with zero scale
*The color of VRayIES lights was not animatable
*VRayIES lights did not produce photon-mapped caustics
*Fixed invalid normals with VRayEdgesTex in the bump slot

What’s New in 3ds Max 2011

Bobby Parker — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:34:32 +0000

Autodesk^® 3ds Max^® 2011 3D modeling, animation, rendering software includes the following new and enhanced features:

Slate, a new node-based material editor, enables you to more easily visualize and edit material component relationships.
Quicksilver hardware renderer enables you to create high-fidelity pre-visualizations, animatics, and games-related marketing materials in less time.
Graphite modeling and Viewport Canvas tools help accelerate modeling and texturing tasks.

The new 3ds Max Composite feature offers high-performance, HDR-capable compositing tools and is based on technology from Autodesk^® Toxik^® software.
3ds Max 2010-compatible format enables you to save scene files to help manage the transition to 3ds Max 2011.

Watch Videos of these new features in Autodesk^® 3ds Max^® 2011

An amazing new timelapse film by Philp Bloom

Bobby Parker — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 23:31:11 +0000

Sky from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

Sneak Peek: Object painting in 3ds Max?

Bobby Parker — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:47:54 +0000

Here’s a sneak peek at some things we’ve got cooking. We’re going to do a series of these and you can classify them as “developer art” because either developers created them or we’ve had our sales engineers throw them together while training them. Don’t confuse these with the professional videoas that will come later.

Sneak peek: Object painting in 3ds Max

That crazy wizard, Carl-Mikael, developer of Polyboost and Graphite has been busy. Here’s a sample of what he’s been up to (and trust me, there’s more coming):

Google SketchUp Pro: Case Study

Bobby Parker — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 04:49:05 +0000

Google SketchUp Pro Case Study with Mortenson Construction. SketchUp Pro is software for creating and presenting professional 3D models. Learn more at http://sketchup.google.com/pro

The Third & The Seventh

Bobby Parker — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 19:07:48 +0000

A FULL-CG animated piece that tries to illustrate architecture art across a photographic point of view where main subjects are already-built spaces. Sometimes in an abstract way. Sometimes surreal.

Autodesk Navisworks for Construction Professionals

Bobby Parker — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 01:27:21 +0000

Autodesk Tangible View Cube

Bobby Parker — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:25:58 +0000

Antics Technologies – 3D animation software can interface with SketchUp

Bobby Parker — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 23:03:48 +0000

Alex brings Brad from Antics Technologies into the studio to discuss how Antics 3D animation software can interface with SketchUp to bring your models to life. If you know us, you know that we love case studies, and this episode is no different. Production Designer Dave Blass narrates how SketchUp and Antics have transformed his profession and, more specifically, how it saved his life while he was designing the set for Bravo s ‘Shear Genius’.

See Video

Drop in animation

Bobby Parker — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:01:35 +0000

I am in the process of animating some concept designs and here is what I am calling a drop in animation. I can imagine using this method to drop landscaping in one tree at a time.

ScalpelMAX

Bobby Parker — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:17:13 +0000

Once again, another successful purchase and implementation of a 3DS MAX Design 2010 plug-in from the Cebas folks. I am getting ready to animate the 4D phasing of an elder care community project we are working on. I did have an issue logging into Cebas’s website, but I got a call minutes after I sent a support e-mail, which is very uncommon these days. My hats off to Cebas!

Revit Tutorial – Sun Study

Bobby Parker — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:38:52 +0000

Revit Architecture sun studies enable you to quickly analyze sun positions and solar effects while informing and influencing design strategy. Choose a spec-ific date and time, or time frame, to generate astill or animated sun study.