Casa em Alenquer (House in Alenquer) Charrette - Work in progress images

Here are some images of my work in progress for the charrette challenge being held at 3dAllusions.com. Click images to enlarge.

The images are far from complete but show the two views that I have planned for my final images. I hope to post at least one more set of work in progress images before my final images so that you can see how they evolve over time.

For more information about the challenge please visit the challenge thread at 3dAllusions.com by clicking here.

CGSociety - mental mill

mentalmill,mentalimages,mentalray,shaders

The following article on CGSociety explains some of the features of mental images new software mental mill, which is behind a lot of the new rendering features being introduced into the latest versions of software that use the mental ray rendering engine such as 3ds max and Maya.

Quoted from http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=4916&page=1:

CGSociety - mental mill

Up until now shader writing has been left to those with computer science degrees and extensive programming experience. Expert shader writers spend countless hours developing software that describes complex and life-like appearances that other artists incorporate into video games, film, and CAD visualizations.

Autodesk Toxic

Last Thursday I attended a design viz evening hosted by bluegfx which amongst other things had a demonstration of Autodesk's new compositing package Toxic. Being a Combustion user I was interested to see what its replacement was like.

I am a big fan of Combustion so finding out that it was to be discontinued was a disappointment. I can however see that with the ever increasing need to use extremely high resolution imagery and HDRI footage that something needed to be done.

Well from what I saw it looks stunning, its interface is extremely clean looking and has a number of very nice features which make it look like a pleasure to work with. As for the performance, seeing it handle extremely large footage with a number of blur effects added in real-time playback was incredible. Unlike Combustion, Toxic is truly node based, something that people have been wanting from an Autodesk compositing package for awhile and which will prove to make it very powerful indeed.

The pricing of Toxic is considerably more than that of Combustion so it does not really fit into the gap left by its predecessor and might prove to be a bit too much for smaller companies and individuals that may only occasionally use it and do not need all of the features, especially if they already have After Effects. The price is however justified as you do obviously get a lot more than you did with Combustion.

Final word on Toxic is that it looks very good indeed and I am sure that we will be hearing a lot more about it in the future.

For more information on Toxic please click here.

Benjamin Button FX Website

Anyone who was interested in the previous Curious case of Benjamin Button post may be interested in the following website from paramount pictures themselves.
The website has some really interseting footage showing before and after images from the film and shows you exactly what was done to the images to get the final results.

Click here to view

Autodesk 3ds Max 2010

Any 3ds max users may be interested to read the following on the Autodesk Area website.
The article lists some of the new features that are likely to feature in the next release of 3ds max and 3ds max design and looks at some of the other changes to the software.
Some look pretty interesting to say the least.

Click here for more