Seasons Greetings
Seasons Greetings…!
You are probably all too busy drinking Egg-Nog and eating mince pies to worry about reading this. Anyway, at this time of year it wouldn’t be right to not have an obvious and overly unimaginative Santa theme running throughout the newsletter. So here we go with sleigh bells ring ring ringing along…
Experience, the Experience of Experience
Experience Building is a new quarterly magazine published by X3Dmedia. The publication is aimed at Autodesk’s AEC (Architecture, Engineering and Construction) community. Printed copies of the magazine are currently only available within Northern Europe, but there’s certainly some good PDF articles on the website. Register here to receive your free copy.
In the latest publication (Issue 2), you will find a daylight analysis tutorial, By Darren Brooker, and in the showcase section, articles on Uniform and Boogertman and Partners.
Giftwrapped Autodesk Overview
Every wanted to see an overview of Autodesk(r) in a visually compelling way, that doesn’t involve a trace of PowerPoint? Then click here.
AU Tech Demo Unwrapped
This is an example of what the research teams have been exploring within viewports. Have a look at Ken Pimentel’s blog to grab a sneek preview of what was unwrapped at AU. Obviously this is a highly GPU intensive task, but is impressive none-the-less. My personal highlights are:
- Screen-space based ambient occlussion (AO)
- DOF
- Interactive Tonemapping/Exposure control
- HDRI environment maps
**Note: this is not what to expect in the product, but is purely an insight into ongoing research.**
Labs ‘Showroom’
Project Showroom is a technology preview for Autodesk’s vision of a new web-based home decorating tool. Allowing you to browse product selections from leading manufacturers, and get a feel for how those products will look in real-world settings. It’s free and open to anyone.
Select products of interest; then drag and drop them into the virtual space. Project Showroom requires no download and no special software - all you need is a standard web browser.
Frosty Windows
This free beta application brings the new Windows 7 drag-and-snap-to-size feature to your pre-Windows 7 machine. With ‘AeroSnap’ installed and running, pulling a window to the right edge of your screen resizes it to half of the screen on the right side; pulling it to the left resizes the window to your left half. Pulling a window to the top of your monitor will maximize it.
AeroSnap is a free download, and requires Microsoft’s Windows and .NET 2.0. This is as handy as Santa’s Elves when working with lots of menus. To ensure the app starts every-time you restart, you should add the app to the startup menu in Windows.
Yule love this from Craft Animations
The guys at Craft Animations have been kind enough to release condensed versions of some of their tools, for Free. Check out this link to download the range of powerful camera tools and extras they have uploaded. Hopefully these tools will be a welcome addition when setting up complex rigs or camera moves in 3ds Max/Design.
These tools are extremely powerful and it’s great to see more of them being adopted.
Softimage joins the family for Xmas
This acquisition is now complete. Read this link to find out more. Most noteworthy is ‘the SOFTIMAGE(r)|Cat(tm) character animation system is expected to be integrated into the Autodesk(r) 3ds Max(r) software product line.’
Finally, I wish you all a very happy break away from your workstations/coffee machines, and look forward to meeting up again in the year ahead.
Happy Max’ing into 2009…
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