Modo News

Eric craft has started a conversation with Autodesk's Chris Vienneau regarding the future of Composite / Toxik, now that the application has been released for free. Eric is asking users to submit their ideas for feature requests/tweaks to the software, and general improvements that would enhance the user experience. Low hanging fruit would be particularly important to request (small things that are simple to fix but make a big difference). In a week, Eric will collate and forward the requests on to Chris Vienneau. More on Autodesk's Area.

Autodesk has posted an interesting video that goes through Black Forest Games' remake of the 1987 platform game "The Great Giana Sisters", which was originally developed by German company Time Warp Productions (and released for the C64, Amiga and Atari ST, among others). Black Forest Games even asked the composer of the music of the original title, Chris Hülsbeck (known for the music of R-Type, Turrican, etc.), to work with them on the remake. In this 56 minute video Alex Horst explains the process of concepting art for the game, creating 3D content and specifically creating transformation effects similar to those seen in the "Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams" game, using Max, Mudbox, Autodesk Sketchbook Pro and Unity. Watch the video on YouTube.

(Updated) Next Limit's Luis Miguel Mora has released two new videos showing improvements to the Hybrido mesher in RealFlow 2014: video 1-video 2.
In advance of releasing the 2014 version of the fluid simulation tool, RealFlow, Next Limit has announced that they will be reducing the price to $2,500 per node-locked license. Also announced, is standard floating licenses will now include one free node, and the RealFlow RenderKit will be free and unlimited. For full details, you can check out the Next Limit email newsletter on their website.

3DVF has an interesting interview with Canadian artist Jocelyn Simard (a.k.a. Strob), who shares his experiences of working 20 years in the CG industry, including his choice of working as a freelancer, his collaboration with film directors and more. (French|English online translation)

A nice video of a beer fluid simulation scene created by Ivaylo Katev using Phoenix FD 2.2. Watch it on Vimeo.

The Foundry has released a new version of its flagship 3D application, which incorporates a significant number of features, including nodal shading for complex shader building, a completely rewritten referencing workflow for large scene management, new animation tools, etc. Read on for more. (more...)

A number of years after mathematicians came up with possible 3D fractal formulas, collective open source software projects have been born for creating images and animations rendered with these formulas. Some of these applications offer advanced rendering features such as ambient occlusion, depth of field, reflections, fog, glow, water and more. Watch a recent video created with these techniques on Filmnosis, and find out more by visiting the Mandelbulb 3D (MB3D) and Mandelbulber software pages.

Vizpark, developers of Max plugins Mosaic and Walls & Tiles, announced the development of a new plugin designed to free patterns from the chains of square tiles. Ultramap provides a pattern editor that allows to create shapes by drawing lines along the edges of your tile. Each shape / tile can have its own map assigned. (more...)