nPower Software launches v. 2.0 of Power Solids and Power Translators for 3ds Max/ Viz. Power Solids 2.0 supports 3ds max 6 in an effort to enhance 3D modeling. Power Solids introduces a state of the art precise CAD geometric modeling kernel into 3ds max. It performs dynamic tessellation at render time to generate the most precise and efficient representation. Power Solids and Power Translators data is very well suited for export back to CAD systems through nPower's STEP, IGES, SAT, Rhino data translation.

Vfx artist and editor Jay Tilin has joined R!OT Manhattan. Tilin, employing both Quantel's Henry and Discreet Logic's Fire, is known for his award-winning spot work as well as his long-form and music video finishing.

Academy Award-winning director James Cameron will present the first ever Lifetime Achievement Award from the Visual Effects Society (VES) to George Lucas at the 2004 VES Awards ceremony.

Cameron, acclaimed director of such visual effects powerhouses as TITANIC, ALIENS, THE ABYSS and the first two films of the TERMINATOR trilogy, will be a featured presenter at the second annual VES awards event which will be held at the Hollywood Palladium on Feb. 18, 2004.

LA SIGGRAPH Hosts Visual Effects of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy
North Hollywood, California, USA
January 13, 2004

Andy Boyd is on board the Framestore CFC commercials team as senior technical director. Boyd joins the company after several highly successful years at Glassworks, where he worked on a broad variety of projects, from conventional CG character animations such as the Kit-E-Kat cat, through edgier avant-garde work for Chris Cunningham's Monitor-award winning MONKEY DRUMMER video, to more abstract work such as the extraordinary faux-microscopic life forms seen in the award-winning video for Bjork's NATURE IS ANCIENT.

The Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has voted to award Douglas Greenfield the John A. Bonner Medal of Commendation. The medal will be presented during the Scientific and Technical Awards dinner at The Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel in Pasadena on Feb. 14, 2004.

Greenfield will receive the Bonner Medal for his longstanding support of and service to the Academy and the motion picture industry.

Early bird registrations and pricing are now available online for 3D Festival 2004 (www.3dfestival.com), which will be held May 3-6 at Bella Center, Copenhagen. The festival features a noteworthy line up of showcases, master classes, workshops and speakers. Early Bird pricing is available through April 4.

An impressive list of speakers for the conference, organized by CGNetworks and Gnomon School of Visual Effects, has already been announced, with more to be confirmed before the event in May. These include:

- Alex Alvarez, Gnomon School of Visual Effects

The Gnomon Workshop has partnered with Design Studio Press in the production of analog training DVDs. Leading concept designers from the film, game and industrial design industries will share their techniques in an effort to inspire and educate artists around the world.

Vampires and werewolves wage war in UNDERWORLD, which comes to DVD Jan. 6 (Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment, $28.95), boasting VFX from Framestore CFC and Luma Pictures. Think ROMEO AND JULIET meets THE MATRIX, starring Kate Beckinsale and Scott Speedman, and you get the gist of this indie sensation directed and co-scripted by Len Wiseman, which will spawn both a prequel and sequel from Lakeshore Ent. and Screen Gems.

Peter Jackson (THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING) appears to be the leading contender among the five DGA nominees for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for 2003. The other nominees, announced by Directors Guild of America President Michael Apted, are: Sophia Coppola (LOST IN TRANSLATION), Clint Eastwood (MYSTIC RIVER), Gary Ross (SEABISCUIT) and Peter Weir (MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD).

Digital Anarchy has launched Text Anarchy 2.1 for After Effects and Final Cut Pro. Text Anarchy 2.1 is the newest version of Digital Anarchy's best selling plug-in, and includes many product optimizations, the most significant of which is improved font support. Other key improvements in Text Anarchy 2.1 include:

* OpenType support: In addition to TrueType and Postscript type 1 fonts, all the Text Anarchy filters now support OpenType fonts.

The Gnomon Workshop has released three new training DVDs by feature animator Cameron Hood (lead character animator on DreamWorks' SHARKTALE). Focused on both the aesthetic and technical art of digital character animation with Maya, these four titles contain more than six hours of instruction, lecture notes and project scene files. Students new to animation, or artists transitioning from 2D to 3D, will benefit from these titles.

The Gnomon Workshop has released five new training DVDs by Ryan Church, one of the industry's leading concept designers and a conceptual art supervisor for STAR WARS EPISODE III. On each DVD, Church masterfully executes a digital painting, while sharing his insights into his own creative and technical process. The focus of these lectures is not on software, but on the fundamentals of design, composition, lighting, material indication, storytelling and workflow.

To help independent advertising agency davidandgoliath launch KIA's new luxury sedan, Amanti, Anonymous Content director Jeffrey Plansker collaborated with award-winning Zoic Studios to apply visual effects expertise to BOOKS.

combustion 3 for Apple Macintosh, the latest version of Discreet's award-winning visual effects and 3D compositing desktop software, was announced on Jan. 5, 2004 in conjunction with MacWorld in San Francisco. combustion 3 for the Mac will deliver industry-leading features benefiting customers who produce Web content and professional video motion graphics, repurpose video content for the Web and create effects for independent feature films and HDTV content.

Turbo Squid announced the release of Service Pack 2 (SP2) for cebas' finalRender Stage-1, a Discreet certified 3ds max plug-in. SP2 is a free download and provides the following to finalRender Stage-1 users:

*All-New Anti-Aliasing Core Engine Technologies – The latest advanced adaptive anti-aliasing sampling algorithms have been implemented within SP2 and provided as a new engine along with significant speed enhancements to the existing engines.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Michael Powell will address top public policy issues facing the consumer technology industry during a "One-on-One" discussion with Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) president and ceo Gary Shapiro at the 2004 International CES. The session will take place on Jan. 9 at 7:30 am in the Las Vegas Convention Center Room N257. The 2004 International CES runs Jan. 8 – 11, 2004.

Oscar-winning editor Walter Murch chose a Rorke Data Storage Area Network (SAN) containing 1.2 terabytes of Seagate disc drives for post-production editing on Anthony Minghella’s Golden Globe nominated film, COLD MOUNTAIN. Reliability was the main concern for the system that was first built and configured by DigitalFilm Tree before being shipped to the film set outside of Bucharest, Romania.

yU + co explores the elusiveness and transience of memory in its absorbing main title sequence for the new John Woo thriller PAYCHECK, which opened Christmas Day through Paramount Pictures. The design studio's mercurial graphics, where words and names form out of random characters on a computer screen before being quickly erased, serve as a subtle metaphor for the conflict that besets the film's protagonist, who is engaged in a desperate struggle to reconstruct his past.