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Category: Visual Effects

Headline News

NVIDIA Introduces Quadro Professional GPU Solutions, SLI Multi-OS

NVIDIA has announced two major technologies: its intelligent lineup of Quadro professional GPU solutions and NVIDIA SLI Multi-OS, a ground-breaking technology that allows users and visualization applications, for the first time, to take full advantage of multiple NVIDIA Quadro GPUs from a single graphics workstation in a virtualized environment, enabling digital artists and designers to streamline the process of using complex workflows that require a combination of GPU-centric applications running on multiple operating systems concurrently.

Toon Headline News

Toon Boom Announces New Animate Pro and Manager

Toon Boom Animation Inc. has announced two new outstanding innovations: Toon Boom Animate Pro builds upon Animate's feature set and delivers also 2D-3D integration as well as scanning options and full compositing capabilities with 50 built-in special effects. Toon Boom Manager provides full tracking capabilities to monitor the production progress in real time.

Toon Boom Animate Pro and Manager are integral parts of the new modularized Harmony Solution, which is ideal for creating traditional, paperless and cut-out animation, all integrated in a network environment.

Work Headline News

Framestore Gets More Primeval in Season Three

PRIMEVAL, ITV's critically acclaimed, hit adventure series, returned on March 28 to take a monster size chunk out of Saturday nights. With an extended run of 10 episodes, the action continues to evolve with more new faces joining the team. Also evolving are the creatures that Professor Nick Cutter and his team face each week, with a more diverse menagerie than ever before leaping out of Framestore's Wells Street offices and onto the screen.

Effects Headline News

CourtsFx 2009 Call for Entries

CourtsFxBegles, FranceJune 12-14, 2009Deadline: April 15, 2009

Le Festival, the first theater specialized in animation and special effects in France, is organizing a short film competition with fiction films using special effects.

This competition takes place from June 12-14, 2009, in the Le Festival theater in Begles, France. The deadline to enter is April 15, 2009.

You can enter your film using the entry form available at http://www.cinemalefestival.fr/telechargement/courtsfx-en.pdf.

Headline News

Digital-Tutors Introduces Character Creation in ZBrush, Intro to ICE Strands

Digital-Tutors, an Autodesk Authorized Publisher and Pixologic Authorized Training Provider, has launched two new training titles for artists learning character development and modeling, and effects animation and dynamics. With the addition of CHARACTER CREATION IN ZBRUSH and INTRODUCTION TO ICE STRANDS, Digital-Tutors' collection of video-based training continues to grow for new and experienced artists using ZBrush and Autodesk Softimage.

Headline News

Intel Ships New Tools that Boost Game Performance

Intel Corporation has released the Intel Graphics Performance Analyzers (GPA), a suite of software tools created in support of the Visual Adrenaline developer program.

Offered worldwide, GPA enables PC game developers to analyze and optimize game performance on Intel Integrated Graphics. The Visual Adrenaline program, launched at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco in August 2008, provides tools, resources and information for game developers, artists and animators.

Headline News

Rockstar Games Announces Max Payne 3 for Winter 2009

MAX PAYNE 3 is currently in development and scheduled for a winter 2009 release on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC from Rockstar Games, a publishing label of Take-Two Interactive Software. Developed by Rockstar Vancouver, MAX PAYNE 3 tells the story of a retired police detective embroiled in a world of corruption, turmoil and intense violence.

Headline News

Luxology Announces Customized COLLADA Plug-in for modo

Luxology has announced a new customized COLLADA plug-in for modo 401. Introducing a host of new features for exporting from modo and a totally new COLLADA importer, modo 401 users will be able to easily preserve key attributes of their modo creations for file export and round-trip manipulation even in complex 3D pipelines.

Headline News

Fume FX 2 Advanced Fluids Training DVD Officially Released

Allan McKay, director at Catastrophic FX, has officially announced the new FUME FX ADVANCED DVD. The follow-up to FUME FX ESSENTIALS, the new training DVD is aimed at advanced fluids for feature film visual effects.

Headline News

Tony Scott to Direct An Unstoppable Train

Fox's thriller UNSTOPPABLE has a director: Tony Scott, who will helm the project as his next film, according to VARIETY.

The hire puts the production on the fast track, with Scott to work with screenwriter Mark Bomback on prep. Julie Yorn is producing with Scott on the film, set to begin filming later this year.

UNSTOPPABLE involves a runaway train carrying a cargo of toxic chemicals that an engineer and his conductor must stop from crashing.

Work Headline News

Effects and Finishing Boutique Arsenal FX Launches in Santa Monica

Arsenal FX, a special effects and finishing boutique catering to a diverse global client base that spans Advertising, Film, and Sports, has announced its official launch in Santa Monica, California.

Headline News

Digimation Relocates Company Headquarters to Central Florida

Digimation, a provider of 3D content, software, and custom services to the defense and entertainment industry, is relocating its corporate headquarters from New Orleans, Louisiana to Lake Mary, Florida.

The company's new address is; 250 International Parkway, Suite 320, Lake Mary, Florida 32746.

David Avgikos, president of Digimation, said, "Our business is experiencing rapid growth, and being in Orlando puts us near our customer base, and the area's large pool of experienced 3D talent, both of which are critical as we grow our business."

Headline News

Vue 7 Pioneer Full Application Released for Free

e-on software, maker of Vue, has announced the immediate availability of a new series of products in its Vue 7 line for 3D artists: the Vue 7 T-Packs (for "Thematic Packs"). Vue 7 T-Packs are specifically designed for physical and download retail and include a Vue 7 Core Application together with a large collection of thematic content centered on the worlds of Fantasy, Science Fiction or Fairy Tale.

E-on software also announced that the full Vue 7 Pioneer application is now available free of charge from cornucopia3d.com.

Painting Headline News

Blacksmith3D Launches New 3D Painting, Morphing & Modeling Software

Blacksmith3D, an independent 3D graphics design applications company, has launched a new version of its 3D painting, morphing and modeling software: Blacksmith3D-Suite v3.2, allowing easy integration with 3ds Max and featuring Alpha Mask Support.

Offering a large variety of painting and image editing tools, as well as easy to use morphing and bonus modeling tools; this package was designed to streamline 3D texturing and painting workflow and intended for artists to paint textures directly onto the 3D models utilizing smooth continuous brush strokes.

Motion Headline News

RE:Vision Effects Releases ReelSmart Motion Blur v. 3.3.0 for Softimage

RE:Vision Effects has released version 3.3.0 of ReelSmart Motion Blur for Softimage animation software. ReelSmart Motion Blur (RSMB) automatically tracks every pixel in a sequence and blurs based on calculated motion. RSMB is fully integrated with your 3D scene, so it also works from Motion Vectors generated by shaders and user-supplied points (for example, tracker positions). RSMB gives Softimage artists an extremely fast, intelligent 2D motion blur for 3D renders, dramatically speeding up the rendering pipeline.

Headline News

Digital-Tutors Unveils Industry's First mental ray Nodes Reference Library

Digital-Tutors, an Autodesk Authorized Publisher and a provider of mental ray training, has announced the release of MENTAL RAY NODES ONLINE REFERENCE LIBRARY, a non-linear approach to learning each mental ray node available in Maya.

Headline News

Ben Hur to Ride Chariot to ABC

Alchemy Television Group and Spain's Drimtim Ent. will produce a four-hour miniseries about the life of Ben Hur, according to VARIETY.

ABC will air the project as a limited series, but no date has been set. Alchemy and Drimtim will also shop the project about the renegade ancient Roman hero around to other territories at next week's MIPTV.

David Wyler, son of William Wyler, the director of the 1959 version of BEN-HUR, is exec producing with Simon Vaughan at Alchemy and Roger Corbi at Drimtim.

Marvel Headline News

Marvel Looks for Writers

Marvel Ent. is looking to assemble a group of writers to pen scripts for various upcoming film projects, according to VARIETY.

The program will be similar in nature to one Disney has had since 1990, in which a dozen writers are hired to work with creative execs to develop films for the studio and TV shows for the Disney Channel, ABC and ABC Family.

Up to five writers a year will work on specific projects and can include current staff working on Marvel's comicbooks. Agencies are currently pitching writers to Marvel.

Autodesk Headline News

Autodesk Talks GDC

It's been a busier GDC than usual for Autodesk, which was expected after the recent Softimage purchase. First came the announcement of 3ds Max 2010, followed by new versions of its two runtime technologies for the game engine -- HumanIK 4 animation middleware and Kynapse 6 artificial intelligence (AI) middleware -- as well as Softimage Mod Tool 7.5 software (formerly SOFTIMAGE|XSI Mod Tool), the free 3D modeling and animation package for aspiring artists.

Headline News

Riverworld, The Phantom and Alice Coming to Sci Fi Channel

Sci Fi and RHI Entertainment will continue their partnership in 2009 with three new adventure movie events. The two-night, four-hour movie events -- RIVERWORLD, THE PHANTOM and ALICE -- will begin production in the coming months and casting is underway for each. In addition, RIVERWORLD and THE PHANTOM will both serve as backdoor pilots for potential series.

Software Headline News

mental ray 3.7+ Will be Integrated into Autodesk 3ds Max 2010

mental ray 3.7+, the photorealistic rendering software that now utilizes MetaSL universal shader language to easily and efficiently create and deploy shaders across platforms, will be integrated into Autodesk 3ds Max 2010 software.

Headline News

NVIDIA PhysX Now Integrated Into Trinigy Vision Engine 7

Trinigy, an independent company and supplier of 3D game development engines, is now providing out-of-the-box, multi-platform integration with NVIDIA PhysX technology for licensees of the company's latest Vision Engine 7.

As a result, Trinigy Vision Engine licensees will gain access to NVIDIA PhysX technology for the PC, Xbox360, PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii as an integral part of the Vision SDK license at no additional charge.

Headline News

Battle: Los Angeles Getting Rewrite

Columbia has tapped Scott Silver (8 MILE) to rewrite BATTLE: LOS ANGELES, according to THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER. Chris Bertolini penned the original script about an alien invasion in L.A.

Original Films' Ori Marmur and Columbia's Sam Dickerman picked up the project in April. Original's Neal Moritz is producing.

Aaron Eckhart is set to play a Marine platoon commander. Jonathan Liebesman (THE KILLING ROOM) will direct.

Headline News

Redgrave Crowned in Robin Hood

Following the news of her daughter Natasha Richardson's tragic death, Vanessa Redgrave has signed on to play Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine in Ridley Scott's ROBIN HOOD, reports the trades. French actress Lea Seydoux (INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS) is also joining the cast.

Russell Crowe stars as Robin of Locksley with Cate Blanchett playing Lady Marion. Redgrave will be the mother of King John (Oscar Isaacs). Additional cast members are Mark Strong (BODY OF LIES); Scott Grimes (BAND OF BROTHERS); Kevin Durand (3:10 TO YUMA); and Alan Doyle.

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