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Amazing piece of software, not only does it allow you to bake normal/displacement maps but it does ambient occlusion as well. Works with several file formats and It’s free too! What more can you ask for?

xNormal - santy.xnormal.net

Can’t afford a Cintiq? Get a DS and this amazing software that allows you to draw (ala photoshop with a tablet minus the pressure sensitivity). There is still no news of a commercial release for this software so keep your fingers crossed. Imagine sketching on the go with this!

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Check out this very impressive video on what Pixologic’s Zbrush 3 will be about.

After a very long wait, version 2 of Splutterfish’s Brazil is out, with rendertime displacements. Finally!

Skymatter releases 15 day trial version for Mudbox 1.04

Amazing what technology can do these days. This video pretty much sums up where photorealism in CG is heading towards to. The question you can start asking, will there be a need for CG modelers to model photorealistic human models? Already, scanning human actors/actresses is a common thing in the film industry.

Extremely interesting indeed, just imagine what kind of impact this will have in the CG and film industry, even games as well. For more info on this new technology, head over to Volker Blanz’s website.

Imagine modelling and sculpting with one of this screens. Read the full article here.

Yes it’s possible now with an “affordable” US$9,900. Ask your mom for one next Christmas. Check out the full article at CGTalk

Yes, they are going 3d as well. Google Sketchup

… Developed for the conceptual stages of design, Google SketchUp is a powerful yet easy-to-learn 3D software tool that combines a simple, yet robust tool-set with an intelligent drawing system that streamlines and simplifies 3D design. From simple to complex, conceptual to realistic, Google SketchUp enables you to build and modify 3D models quickly and easily. If you use Google Earth, Google SketchUp allows you to place your models using real-world coordinates

Check out this very cool plugin, NEX for Maya. It has very neat soft selection features as well as very intuitive polygonal selection functions, with features like:

• Improved Hotbox Marking Menus for Camera View Changing
• Custom Hotbox Marking Menus for Component Selection Modes
• Shift + Ctrl + Middle Button Drag Edge Extrusion
• Shift + Ctrl + Middle Button Drag Object Duplication
• Smart Ring / Loop Edge Selection
• Soft Selection with Visual Falloff Feedback Read the rest of this entry »

No one can get enough of Pirates 2, here’s another article from CGTalk regarding the rendering pipeline for Davy Jones and his crew. An excerpt from the full article:

Several people asked, in the Davy Jones appreciation forum, about how ILM rendered Davy and his digital crew of half-human, crustacean-covered Pirates. We have some answers, direct from Christophe Hery, Lead Research & Development Engineer at Industrial Light & Magic.

Check out this topology software, aptly named Topogun, it’s still in beta though. Nonetheless, take a look at some of the videos there, this piece of software might speed up existing character workflows a tad bit, especially in games production. Here’s a short description from the site:

TopoGun is a specialized retopologizing application. It contains two main modules: TopoGun:3D and TopoGun:2D.
You can import highres scanned models or just any other 3D model you wish to retopologize in TopoGun:3D and create a lores to midres animation ready mesh. TopoGun:2D handles the dispmap, normalmap and ambient occlusion map creation. Furthermore, you can divide the TopoGun:3D midres mesh in TopoGun:2D and “conform” it on your original highres model, recovering the full range of high frequency detail you initially had.
Another cool feature TopoGun:2D has is the texture transfer from the highres model to the retopologized mesh.

Finally, mudbox 1.0 is released with 2 different pricings, a professional license and an academic license.

xRez is a consortium of digital artists committed to exploring new creative opportunites made available by the advent of extremely high-resolution gigapixel digital photography. We believe this is clearly the next revolution in photography, allowing photographic experiences with a deeper level of fidelity and impact than previously seen.