Sketchup
Skatter 2 for Sketchup crowdfunding campaign
Lindalë, a small two-person company that created Skatter for Sketchup, has set up a crowdfunding campaign to finance version 2 of the plugin. (more...)
Sketchup
Lindalë, a small two-person company that created Skatter for Sketchup, has set up a crowdfunding campaign to finance version 2 of the plugin. (more...)
Resources
Texturing.XYZ has released a new set of iris assets for creating eyes. Each pack consists of two high poly models plus low-poly models that can be used with a height map, 6 utility maps, an AO map, a fresnel map, and 3 different albedos. Shaders are also included that can be edited to get a specific look. Find out more, including tutorials, on the Texturing.XYZ website.
Renderers
Keyshot has released the latest version of KeyVR, its simplified VR renderer. New features include: optimised load times; reflections on transparent materials; support for glass, solid glass, gems and dielectrics; the ability to hide or show multiple model sets; new move and rotate widgets and more. Read the full details on the Keyshot blog.
Tutorials
Ming-Lun Allen Chou has started a new series of written and illustrated tutorials that explain useful maths and physics concepts for 3D artists and game developers. Read them on Ming-Lun's blog.
Software
Ziva Dynamics has announced the release of Ziva VFX 1.7. The latest release introduces Art Directable Rest Shapes (ADRS) enabling users to make characters conform to any shape without losing their dynamic properties. (more...)
Events
Unity Technologies has made a recording of its keynote from Unite Copenhagen available to view online, including details of updates to Data-Oriented Tech Stack, Unity Simulation, Scriptable Render Pipelines, multiplayer services, new 2D tools, and more. Watch it in full on YouTube or see the highlights on the Unity blog.
Articles
Once the domain of a handful of committed artists in the know, the 3Ds London meetup isn't the well-kept secret it used to be. Thanks to the hard work of organisers Simon Moir, Josh Newman
and Nigel Hunt, this month's free independent event saw more than 200 people RSVP to watch talks by DBOX and Rockstar North's Mirriam Bellard.
On the first Wednesday of each month, tucked away in the basement of Truckles pub, the organisers of 3DS London put on a free event with the kind of high-quality organisation and talks you'd normally find at expensive commercial conferences. Each night follows a similar pattern. After some general networking and chit-chat, recent news and vacancies, a new speaker is invited to showcase their work. That might be an intimidating prospect in front of a professional crowd, but Sini Software's offer of a free annual license of their Max Plugins, the chance to participate in the friendly community, to raise their profile, and potentially get spotted by an employer certainly helps sweeten the deal.
Then we get the meat of the evening - the headline presentations. This month, not one, not two, not three, but four artists from DBOX got the ball rolling in style. Partner Christiaan Klaassen delivered an interesting overview of the studio before handing over the reins to Motion Director Jeremy Cheung to present their latest film projects. Art Director David Connolly followed on with a detailed discussion about the studio's work for the Tulip project by Foster and Partners. Finally, Laura Frasson concluded the presentation with a fascinating insight into the production planning and delivery of some of the studios more complex film projects. Unfortunately, the animations themselves are not yet publically available for us to share, but DBOX has kindly allowed us to reproduce some stills taken from the films to give you a taste of their work.
Following DBOX, Miriam Bellard, took to the stage. After gaining an architecture degree, Miriam's varied career has included filmmaking, set design, art direction, and currently, working as the head of visual development at Rockstar North. Her department occupies an unusual position in the game-dev pipeline that is perhaps unique to Rockstar games. The visual development department helps out with environments that are "particularly difficult or problematic", this includes difficult exteriors and all interior environments.
What is meant by tricky? Unlike film, in a great many video games the player controls the camera limiting the traditional tools of cinema to tell stories. However, Mirriam's department helps developers to manipulate the player's experience by controlling what's on-screen by using the environment to direct the player's movements and attention. She calls this principal spatial cinematography and her engaging talk systematically explored this concept with reference to several theoretical ideas from art, science and psychology and showed them in practice using examples from GTA V Online DLC.
The founder of 3DS London Simon Moir described Miriam's talk as "possibly the best presentation ever". High praise indeed, and if you wish you'd seen it you're in luck! Although not recorded on the night, an earlier version given at GDC earlier this year is available to watch online. Also, like all the best talks it leaves the audience hungry to learn more, fortunately Miriam was kind enough to include a fairly extensive reading list of all the books and research mentioned during the presentation.
That shelf-buckling list gives attendees plenty to read while they wait for the next meetup, scheduled to tak place on 2 October at 7pm. Three speakers are already booked: FloodSlicer's Daniel Flood will be presenting the story of the 13-year-old multi-location studio and share some of the studios latest work; Purest VFX's Rupert Thorpe will be talking about the infrastructure, tools and workflows that the larger companies use to complete epic projects; and Leadson Viz's Claudia Parnia and Laurentiu Stanciu will be talking about their studio’s latest work as well as 3DS Romania and a recent book titled ‘Great talks about photorealism’ by Bogdan Sasu.
Remember 3DS London is a free community event, If you're a 3D Artist and you find yourself at a loose end in London on the first Wednesday of the month, you'd be a fool to miss it.
Find out more about the next event on Meetup and check out some images from the last meetup below.
Disclosure: CGPress are media partners for the 3DS London events. Expect more news and features soon to help keep those planning to go informed, and share a flavour of the events for those who are unable to attend in person.
Events
We have published a short summary of September's 3DS London event which featured talks by DBOX and Rockstar North. Read it here.
You can also visit Meetup to sign-up for next month's dose of 3D themed bonhomie, including talks by Foodslicer, Purest VFX and Leadson Viz.
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