Tuesday, May 31, 2011

The Foundry MARI 1.3 now available

MARI 1.3 is a creative texture-painting tool that can handle extreme projects. MARI was developed at Weta Digital to handle the massively complex, highly detailed look development work demanded of the texture department by projects such as DISTRICT 9, THE LOVELY BONES, and AVATAR.

WHAT'S NEW IN MARI 1.3?



  • Ptex - Per-Face Texture Mapping

  • Displacement Preview *

  • Snapshots

  • Environment Mapping

  • Tiled textures


Complete details and video at the Foundry!

Monday, May 23, 2011

Chaos Group May 2011 Newsletter!

The May Newsletter from Chaos Group is out.

Have a read and also don't miss the V-Ray 2.0 for Maya training videos.
Starting with the overview below and many more at the Chaos Group YouTube channel.

Autodesk Softimage 2011 Service Pack 2 Available

The latest service pack for Autodesk® Softimage® 2011 software is now available for download on the Autodesk website. Softimage 2011 SP2 includes several important fixes.



 

Just to be clear this is for 2011 and includes these bug fixes below.
The full list of fixes is as follows:

FELX-1993:           Scene Corruption and Failed Imports Using Models Containing Corrupted Materials
FELX-1991:          Repair Shader corruption for previously persisted scenes

IMPORTANT:  If problems still occur when working with external material libraries, change them to be internal.

Also included are the fixes that are found in HOTFIX 1 and 2 which addressed the following issues:
FELX-1702:           Disconnected shaders when importing Referenced Model
FELX-1651:           Scene Corruption due to Material
FELX-785:             3rd party renderers crash on Linux
FELX-670:            Custom renderer DirtyList isn't cleared properly
FELX-120:            UVunfold fails to load when in suite license mode
FELX-88:               Scene corruption - Softimage  crashes when you try to load scene after saving it
UDEV00258435:    Saved scene is corrupt

Friday, May 20, 2011

Realistic Facial Animation & Motion Tracking

Check out this video of a facial animation from a company called Janimation. Pretty cool stuff.

Mocha Pro Remove Module Overview Video

Imagineer's Martin Brennand recently created this fun video showcasing some great examples of mocha Pro's remove module in action.

  • object removal

  • wire removal

  • removing tattoos and blemishes

  • multi-pass removals


If you are running mocha for After Effects, that ships with CS4 & CS5, this is what you are missing!

Save hours of time on complex tasks with mocha Pro.

Imagineer releases mocha v2.6












new release! version 2.6 for mocha, mocha Pro & mocha AE

improved Nuke support, faster tracking & stability improvements



New point release for all current mocha products:mocha v2.6 release

  • Nuke Roto Export Improvements: now supports a 1:1 keyframe relationship between mocha and Nuke 6.2 roto keyframes.

  •  
  • Tracking on Windows Speed Improvements: multiprocessing optimization on Windows operating systems result in faster tracking speeds.

  •  
  • New SSF Batch Export Feature: ability to export unlimited roto layers in popular Shake .SSF format



  • Improved After Effects tracking export



  • Project Save and Load Speed Improvements

  •  
  • General Stability & Bug fixes


· Upgrade is free to all customers with a valid mocha v2.x, mocha Pro, and mocha AE v2.5 license or support contract.





 

 

Motion Media is Donating 1% of sales in June to Red Cross

June is Red Cross month at Motion Media. We want to give back to the American Red Cross for all of their hard work not only in Japan, but all over the world.  So in June, we are raising funds for the Red Cross via a Comedy Night & Auction for VFX, Animation, Film & TV Professionals as well as donating 1% of sales in June. We believe that, with the help of our customers and community, we can raise $35,000 to donate.

On June 9th, we're having a Comedy Night & Auction Fundraiser at the Hollywood Improv with all benefits going to the American Red Cross and their relief efforts in Japan. We currently have over $54,000 worth of vfx/animation software & hardware donated from our amazing sponsors like Adobe, Autodesk & AJA, with more to come. If you're interested in attending this free event, click here to RSVP.

Also, all of June, we will be donating 1% of all sales from our vendors that donated gear for our auction.  So 1% of anything purchased during June, 2011 from the following list of vendors will be donated to the American Red Cross.

  • 3D Connexion

  • Adobe

  • AJA

  • Autodesk

  • Axceleon

  • Blackmagic Design

  • ChaosGroup

  • E-on Software

  • G-Technology

  • Luxology

  • Maxon

  • PipelineFX

  • Pixologic

  • PNY Nvidia

  • Red Giant Software

  • The Foundry

  • Thinkbox Software

  • Tiger Technology

  • Vicon

  • Wacom


Together with your help, we hope to knock this out of the park! Hopefully we'll see you on June 9th!

Monday, May 16, 2011

Update 2 for AutoCAD/LT 2011

Autodesk has released Update 2 for AutoCAD 2011 and AutoCAD LT 2011. 32-bit and 64-bit versions of this update can be found at the following links:

AutoCAD 2011 Update 2
AutoCAD LT 2011 Update 2

This update is only for AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT and cannot be applied to vertical products that are based on AutoCAD 2011.

Important: Before installing Update 2, you must install Update 1.1 for for your respective product. Update 2 does not include the fixes from Update 1.1 so both updates must be installed separately. If you have already installed Update 1.1, you can proceed with installing Update 2. The previous updates can be found at the following links:

AutoCAD 2011 Update 1.1
AutoCAD LT 2011 Update 1.1

Before installing Update 2, I strongly recommend you review the associated readme file for installation instructions, deployment notes, and details about the primary issues that are resolved by Update 2.

Friday, May 13, 2011

The Foundry Nuke 6.3 Beta is now available

The Foundry have released Nuke 6.3 Beta.

Important Notes:

It is available to customers with an existing Nuke license key and valid maintenance.

Be aware that this is a beta build, some features are not yet fully implemented, and its performance cannot be relied upon in a production environment.

Follow the link for complete details, introduction videos and download information.

Don't have a seat of Nuke?

You can purchase Nuke at the Motion Media online shop.

Nuke(X) evaluations are available for 30 Days.

Contact an Account Associate at Motion Media for more details.

Ph: 310. 450-4000

Autodesk Mudbox 2012 Service Pack 1 Released




Service Pack 1

Mudbox 2012 Service Pack 1 addresses stability issues, performance issues with the Freeze brush, interaction issues with Wacom® tablets, and other fixes across several areas including the Grab tool and file import/export operations.

Be sure to delete your Mudbox Settings before install (find them in your ......DocumentsMudbox12-x64settings directory for WIN 64)

Grab it here:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=17019428&linkID=11937426

Release Notes (with bug fix list):

http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/mudbox_2012_sp1_release_notes.pdf

- Craig Barr on the Autodesk Area |The MudRoom

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

eyeon May 2011 Newsletter




Here's the latest from eyeon, Uncharted Territory and Anonymous, the IT'S ART challenge, sponsorship of The Ark At Eight O'Clock, and much more... - Susan Samonig, eyeon Software Inc.

I couldn't have set it better than Sue.  Follow the link to the  eyeon May Newsletter.

Add Fusion 6 to your VFX pipeline at the Motion Media online shop!

Monday, May 9, 2011

NVIDIA Customer Spotlights

If you weren’t able to make it to NAB last month, you wouldn't have made it to the NVIDIA booth.

Please check out these handy video vignettes that summarize some of the on-air graphics, film/video editing, color correction, and 3D video processing solutions they are providing.

There were several solutions for the broadcasting, video/film production, and digital content creation communities, all utilizing NVIDIA Quadro GPU technology. - CGSociety CGNews

Read the complete story and see the client videos at CGSociety CGNews

Quadro Graphics cards available at the Motion Media online Shop.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Mocha Pro Remove Module Overview Video

Imagineer's Martin Brennand recently created this fun video showcasing some great examples of mocha Pro's remove module in action.

  • object removal

  • wire removal

  • removing tattoos and blemishes

  • multi-pass removals


If you are running mocha for After Effects, that ships with CS4 & CS5, this is what you are missing!

Save hours of time on complex tasks with mocha Pro.