Creating 3-D Animation: The Aardman Book of Filmmaking
Jerry Beck reviews Creating 3-D Animation, a complete stop motion how-to guide from the hugely successful Aardman Studios. A must have for filmmakers, enthusiasts and Wallace & Gromit lovers.
Category: Technology
Inside SoftImage 3D
Mark Christiansen reviews Inside SoftImage 3D, a long overdue text of tips, tricks and tutorials on the popular 3D animation package.
Character Animation In Depth
Mark Christiansen reviews Character Animation In Depthwhich relates how to advice for 3D animation setup across most major platformsand software packages.
Puppetology: Science or Cult?
Brad DeGraf and Emre Yilmaz demystify performance animation and explain why the `Devil's rotoscope' might not be so bad after all....
ILM's Seth Rosenthal on Motion Capture
Seth Rosenthal, the motion capture department supervisorat Industrial Light & Magic, took time out of his "menacing"schedule to discuss a gamut of topics relating to motion capture with HeatherKenyon.
Nick Strives to Define Motion Capture
Deborah Reber profiles three applications of motion capturetechnology that are currently in production. In "Nick Strives to DefineMotion Capture," she interviews Jeffrey Beers, Executive Producer ofthe Digital Animation Group at Nickelodeon.
Sinbad Brings Motion Capture Feature Animation into New Terrain
Deborah Reber profiles three applications of motion capturetechnology that are currently in production. In "Sinbad Brings MotionCapture Feature Animation into New Terrain," the feature film Sinbad:Beyond the Veil of Mists is profiled.
Voltron Returns...This Time In 3D
Deborah Reber profiles three applications of motion capturetechnology that are currently in production. In "Voltron Returns...ThisTime In 3D," the television show Voltron: The Third Dimension
Roster of Motion-Capture Companies
AWN's roster of motion-capture companies.
Stop Motion City: Visible and Invisible Production in Bristol
There's no denying that Bristol is the stop motioncity, especially with Aardman Animations' coup of bringing a feature filmto the area. Andrew Osmond investigates the hubbub.
A Roster of Stop-Motion Companies
AWN has compiled a roster of noteworthy stop-motion companies from around the world.
SGI announces new Intel-NT based workstations
Silicon Graphics Inc, a company that built its reputation on UNIX-based systems used to create visual effects for countless films, has unveiled new workstations based on Intel processors and the Windows NT operating system. Dictated by a changing marketplace, the new systems will appeal to a wide group of users who need the computing power but not the prohibitive prices. However, SGI believes that these systems will not replace the high-end UNIX workstations but will rather complement them.
Adobe acquires GoLive
Adobe Systems Incorporated, a leading provider of publishing and imaging software, has announced an acquisition of GoLive Systems, Inc.s assets including GoLive CyberStudio, a professional web design and publishing software, and the GoLive Web Publishing System. CyberStudio has been used to produce web sites for Music Boulevard, Cartoon Network, Warner Bros. Records and The Associated Press, among others.
Puffin announces new Commotion
At the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco, Puffin Designs announced version 2.0 of its award-winning visual effects software Commotion. Commotion 2.0 is expected to ship around April this year, and will expand Commotion's current creative tool set with third party plug-in support, a new FX Brush for creating texture and stylized media brush effects, and new text creation and animation tools. Puffin Designs' founder and ILM visual effects supervisor Scott Squires commented that, "Commotion users have completed several challenging projects in recent months.
CGI's Hits and Misses of 1998
From hit movies to recent mergers, Eric Huelsman relays every facet of what happened last year in CGI and how it is going to effect 1999. Includes Quicktime movie clips.
Lens Flare Pro Conductor for Maya Composer
Puffin Designs, the producers of the award-winning compositing system Commotion, recently introduced Knoll Lens Flare Pro Conductor for Alias|Wavefront Maya Composer. The new version, developed by John Knoll, a Visual Effects Supervisor at Industrial Light and Magic, will give users the ability to create realistic sunflares, lasers, flames, bursts, explosions, and "photon torpedoes," among other effects. The plug-in is already available for Adobe After Effects, Adobe Photoshop, ElectricImage, and Discreet Logic Flint/Flame/Inferno.
Dig This! Humongous Cartoons with a Little Technology
Animation World Magazine takes a jaunt into the innovative and remarkable: IMAX invents a new technology that allows animators to animate in thin air!
Dig This!
IMAX invents a new technology that allows animators to animate in thin air!
ReelMotion for 3D Studio MAX
Motional Realms, LLC has released the ReelMotion plug-in for 3D Studio MAX, a real-time, physics-based procedural animation tool. The plug-in is designed for the professional animation artist and ideal for forensics animation, animating space and aerial dogfights, cars, helicopters and other rigid-body objects. It's possible to drive or fly a vehicle through a scene interactively using a mouse or joystick via a real-time display using QuickDraw 3D (Mac) or OpenGL (Windows).
Director and After Effects: Storyboarding Innovations on The Iron Giant
Brad Bird, director of Warner Bros. Feature Animation's The Iron Giant, discusses the latest in storyboarding techniques and how he applied them to the film.
Toon Boom looks to Windows NT
Toon Boom Technologies has released the Windows NT version of its USAnimation software package. Seoul, Korea-based Sun Woo Entertainment is the first studio to place an order for the new product. The studio is already using the SGI version of the software, and will now have a multi-platform set-up that allows the NT and SGI platforms to be used simultaneously.
Sheridan College making magic with Houdini
Sheridan College is using Side Effects Softwares Houdini package in its one-year-old educational program aimed specifically at training technical directors (TDs). The complexities involved in technical animation are much greater than can be taught in a single year, so I developed the technical director program as an optional second year to our Computer Animation program, said Avrim Katzman, a former TD and current director of the Visualization Design Institute at Sheridan College.
7th Level reveals Agent 7
7th LEVEL has released Agent 7, software that utilizes voice recognition and RealAudio to create talking animated characters. Users select from a pre-made cast of animated characters, speak into a microphone or add an existing voice track, and Agent 7 automatically animates the character's lips and facial expressions using "phoneme" (voice) recognition. The resulting animation can be streamed in the same manner as RealAudio. 7th Level is offering a free, two-character trial version on the web site, www.real.com/products/tools/5.html.
Microsoft is Totally Hip
MICROSOFT has renewed its contract with TOTALLY HIP SOFTWARE for the licensing of GIF animations used in Microsofts software. Randall McCallum, CEO of Totally Hip, said, Using our own technology to develop content for Microsoft products provides our development team with feedback that has helped make WebPainter an award-winning Web design tool. Read a review of WebPainter in the April 1997 issue of Animation World Magazine.
Inklination patents software
THE University of Washington has obtained a patent for its pen-and-ink illustration software developed by INKLINATION, a young Seattle-based company started by people in the schools Computer Science and Engineering Department. The technology, which was presented in two papers at SIGGRAPH 94, is now available for worldwide licensing.
