Category Archives: News

Getting Excited For SIGGRAPH 2013

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I’m doing that thing where one try’s to do a million things at once, like some kind of human blender taking the tiniest of chunks out of each task as I pass by. So, work is getting done, but is this the most efficient I can be? Probably not. Anyway, I thought I’d do a quick obligatory getting excited for SIGGRAPH 2013 post.

Getting to SIGGRAPH has been a lifelong dream of mine ever since this time last year when I first heard about it. Yeah, call me green but being utterly obsessed with CGI (and a life-long pure blooded technophile) I have developed enough knowledge to get myself all excited about new software, tools and techniques, even if I don’t always understand the finer details. Well, replace “don’t always” with “a little bit frequently”. Also, I’m a window drooler. Yep, I can’t afford to even consider 99% of the software and hardware in these shows.

SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival

So, suffice to say I won’t even be getting to SIGGRAPH, unless by some awesome luck I get rich quick. In which case I’ll see you in Hong Kong. Ok, that’s enough rambling. The primary reason I started this post was to share the very spiffy SIGGRAPH 2013 Computer Animation Festival preview video, but alas it is presented in a custom player I can’t embed here. Of course, you can follow the link to feast your eyes. I did manage to find last years, which in my humble opinion, doesn’t have the same omphf, but still exciting all the same.

Real-Time Live

Also looking like it will be an absolute nerdy blast is the Real-Time Live presentations.
Real-time technologies are developing and emerging at a spectacular rate and giving us visual feedback that once would have been thought impossible. State of the art graphics, animation, dynamics, radiosity, huge poly counts – all these things are going real-time in a big way. Can you feel an interactive RT revolution coming? Perhaps in the near future these technologies will be the exact sort of thing that will be testing our new super-fast broadband infrastructures we’re building.

LightWave: Join The Rebellion

And finally, SIGGRAPH is one of those dates that all the 3D graphics software nuts get very excited. It is that time when many of the modelling, animation, and rendering players unveil the next salvo of upgrades. Of course, a key focus, for me, will be on finding out what NewTek/LightWave are up to. It’s something! We want to know now, but we’ll have to wait for an announcement made later this month at the Anaheim, California convention. The below promo poster was uploaded to the LightWave FB page on the 29th of June. LightWave 12? 11.6? Something huge and exciting? If I can get some new modelling tools I’ll be happy enough.

Ron Deviney Brushes 70% Off Flash Sale

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Rons Devinery brushesSo there were now Genesis 2 or Victoria 6 releases today, but we got a nice gift (those that bought/buy into the pro bundle), and the first one that I will probably actually use. There was an 8 hour sale of Stonemason’s City Ruins 3, which has already gone, but an even more awesome sale has taken its place. Anyone for some of Ron Deviney brush sets?

Just about everyone in the Poserverse knows and loves the Deviney range of Photoshop brushes. I’ve used these to create textures and postwork many of my images, and in that time I’ve only scratched the surface with the diversity of brush sets and the many different techniques that can be applied. I remember thinking when I was first starting out with DS that Rons brushes could turn anyone into an artist, and in my case it seems to have worked 😀

Anyway, DAZ describe this as a flash sale, so it probably won’t last long. If you’ve been itching to grab that set or three of brushes then now is the time. Also worth checking out is the massive new Dreamlight prop/environment bundle. even if you own one or two of these it would still be worth picking up on special – the total saving for the bundle is over $130.


DAZ3D’s Genesis 2 And Victoria 6: Bringing An Early Sunset to Generation 5?

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Looking for a Full Genesis 2 and Victoria 6 review?

Genesis 2: rumour to reality

Rumours of Genesis 2 have been bouncing around since December of 2012, just a year after the release of Victoria 5. Whether the quote from a 3D World promotion was correct at the time or not is not known. It prophesised the emergence of the sixth generation of figures and characters for 2013, which to many seems absurdly soon considering Genesis was only released at the end of 2011. Considering Victoria 4 and her gen 4 counterparts ran rampant for more than half a decade before the birth of Genesis, a two-year reign does seem on the short side.

The subject was quite for just over six months until the release of Gwen Hair, on the 13th of June, once again exploded the cat in the bag (that’s how the saying goes, right?). In the included features it lists Genesis 2 and Victoria 6. Whether this was an intentional slight or not is debatable, but since then several other products have come out with similar support, with the release of one character product (FW Candace) designed specifically for Genesis 2 being promptly removed.

A Member’s Club (PC) only Genesis 2/Victoria 6 preview thread (which I can’t directly link to for some reason) was created on the 11th of June but not made public till the 14th. The thread features renders by various DAZ published artists depicting Genesis 2, Victoria 6, and other related characters and products. Examining the images does yield some information about what we can expect. Character mesh appear to be more detailed, and flexing joints are more realistic. There is no other concrete information, but judging by the wording of some of the promo material and comments by some of the vendors has led to speculation that Genesis 2 characters will not share a common mesh. Whether Gen 6 products will be backwards compatible with Genesis is not known, and many are wondering if this indicates a return to the days of buying matching his and hers morph sets and the like.

I would love nothing more than to spruce up this thread with some fresh Gen 6 images, but alas the images posted on the member’s forum have yet to leak onto Google in any serious or obvious way. I feel compelled to play by the rules here, but in any case it should only be a matter of a day or two before we can expect a full press release and/or product release.

Generation 6 splits community

Sentiment and opinions are split between those are looking forward to seeing new advancements, those that are wary, and those that are out-and-out pessimistic. With Genesis being supported primarily by DAZ 3D, and only a very small pool of content creators selling on other stores working with the figure, the days of fresh Genesis content could be short indeed. Generation 4 figures, on the other hand, have remained popular with vendors servicing the other big DAZ/Poser stores like Renderosity and Runtime DNA.

Why?

Why exactly DAZ has decided to release Genesis 2 just two and a half years after Genesis is a head scratcher, but for it to gain a slice of the market, let alone own it, there would have to be some serious advances in technology. One suggestion is that it could be Poser compatible to a greater and more flexible extent than is currently possible with Genesis’s DSON plugin for Poser. Certainly since Poser’s adoption of Pixar’s OpenSubdiv, which was included in the last DS point release, this removes one obstacle. Of course, the two programs still work with two different weight mapping solutions… Specific inclusion of OpenSubdiv’s power into Genesis could be another reason for the release, but alone seems unlikely to generate a huge amount of interest.

Whatever the reasons DAZ has decided to spring this rather unexpectedly early Gen 6 on the community, some are already chalking this one up as another DAZ PR disaster, but only time will tell.

See our Full Genesis 2 and Victoria 6 review

 

The Plant Factory Pre-Release II Sees Relaxed Feature Restrictions

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The Plant Factory - e-on softwareE-on Hoses Down Fire On The Plant Factory Blog

The tune has certainly changed over at The Plant Factory’s blog. Whether it is a sensible distillation of the overwhelmingly blood curdling response from the blog’s angry mob, and the probable torrent of emails, or whether it was the more mild-tempered feedback from pre-release adopters (or some combination of the two), but E-on has relaxed a number of the harsh feature restrictions.

Changes for The Plant Factory Pre-Release II

TPF Studio users will now enjoy full node and graph capabilities that were previously restricted only to Producer. Essentially this means that users of Studio can now produce the same content they would be able to with the Producer version.

Plant Factory Designer replaces Plant Factory for Vue

With all the features of the previously announced PFfV, Designer users will now be able to export static objects as FPX, OBJ, and 3DS formats.

Pre-Release II will be available on Monday, 10th of June and the new price will be $595 for one week after release – still a discount of $400.

A move in the right direction

E-on have undoubtedly won many users with their alterations. Many will be happy that they no longer have to fork out almost $1500 for a product they spent months reading about with every teasing post. Being able to settle with a fully featured TPF, just without the fancy compositing/rendering capabilities, for $995 (or $396 if you grab it now) will settle a lot of bad blood. For some, the final price tag will still be much too high, which I tend to agree with, especially considering that objects created with any version of TPF cannot be distributed outside Cornucopia 3D. Given the price of the software one can still only ask, WTF?

WTF indeed

In a post on the blog, one responder pointed out that free redistribution of TPF products would be commercial suicide for e-on. If people could just go out and buy plants from any old back alley brokerage, then why would anyone need to buy the software in the first place? How would e-on be compensated for their fabulous software development?

Umm… are we serious here? This sort of thinking plays right into the hands of e-on, and simply just doesn’t fly. Clients and content consumers are always hungry for new varieties and unique content. Artists always want/need to create new from scratch. If free distribution of content killed sales of content creation software then why is there so much software out there, and why are these suicidal developers constantly updating it?

E-on are certainly heading in the right direction here, but are they more concerned with creating tools (to sell at enormous cost – think upgrades here too people), or with establishing themselves as a content distribution service which? If the latter, it would be greatly appreciated if they dropped the price of such software.