iPhone 5 and why Apple makes so much dosh

When you try to improve something that is done very well, you have to be careful not to loose sight of what made it good in the first place. The irony of this is that when you do offer an update to the product, it can appear like you've changed very little, even if everything has changed.

Is design purity a blessing and a curse?

Apple is trying to keep it simple, it's hard to expand on something if your philosophy is simplicity. If they made it more complicated you'd find people complaining that Apple had lost sight of what made the original iPhone so good, and current satified users might switch to another platform. If they keep it as close to the original as they can, they get accused of recycling the idea over and over again.

For me, it's the manufacturing process that stands out as being the most remarkable thing about the new iPhone 5. The back appears to be made from a single, two tone piece of whatever, but it is in fact 3 pieces, so precisely chosen from a selection of over 700 panel variations, with mere microns in difference, it is almost impossible to tell. The design itself, aside from the larger screen is only subtly different from it's predecessors and for all internet "disappointment" about today, it may seem to the creators that all their effort and passion over such tiny details may have been wasted. (Although, perhaps the 2% share price rise may be seen as a positive sign). But there are a lot of people who would not be impressed with the new iPhone, even if it could wash the dishes for you.

Apple's main advantage over the competition is that people spend money on their stuff and are large part of it comes straight to Apple. That is why, even though Android sells more devices, has a larger market share per device, Apple still creams off a much larger percentage of revenue spent on smartphones than everyone else. Granted, hundreds of companies benefit financially from Android-based revenue but they are free to bastardise the original blueprint however they like - usually to it's detriment. When you buy an Android, you can't really be sure what you're getting.

Appstores

Hardly anyone buys Android apps, even the good ones. Android OS suffers from instability and problems with incompatible apps because there are so many different devices on offer and so many versions of the OS out there that it's no longer economically viable (even for big companies) to buy and test their apps on every available device.

If your Android device can't run the app it is NOT primarily the fault of the developer. It's the way Android is free to be customised on anything and everything. I can't ensure it will work. Sorry. That's why I have a lite version of my apps so you can be sure before you purchase the full version. If it doesn't work I can only apologise, but unless you pay 10x the current selling price and buy ten's of thousands of units, my hands are tied.

Google don't make money on Android, per se, rather they make money from sales of Apps/Books/ Videos on the Appstore. Their current arrangement is vastly inferior to Apples in terms of the company that founded the platform.

So why do people spend so much money on Apple related stuff. Well, it's good quality. It's reliable, there are multiple ways to buy apps and games. What all the other phone makers miss is one detail. A detail that is the sole reason for the Apple Appstore's success:

The iTunes Card  (Apple's seemingly invisible advantage over Android)

This means, anyone with a bit of spare cash can buy apps/games/music. A teen or child with birthday money can walk into a store and buy a card, top it up, go online and go crazy. Every other store, as of today, requires a credit/debit card to pay. The people with the least financial responsibilities, and therefore most likely to buy throwaway things like Apps are currently denied access as a result. This is crazy and a clearly overlooked detail.

Until Google Play sells top-up cards in retail stores like iTunes and Appstore cards, developers on Android will not get nearly as much as they do on iTunes. As a result, quality apps will continue to debut in Apple's store first, some will never make the transition over to Google.

In the same way that the developers battle is to get downloads and retain users of their apps/games, Apples' is to retain it's existing customers while attracting new ones. This is becoming harder because there is now a clear polarised Smartphone market. In the Smart Phone customer base, a cavernous rift appears to be forming between Apple and Android and getting people to migrate from one side to the other will become increasingly harder for all concerned.

EDIT: Ethics

So I asked why Apple makes so much dosh but shamefully forgot to consider the ethical implications of it's manufacture and what things are sacrificed to get such good profit margins:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/sep/13/cost-iphone-5-foxconn-factory#post-area

So, the most important question is how much does it cost to make one iPhone in a factory? Noone knows, this is a closely guarded secret no doubt. Is the poor working conditions in the factory something that could be avoided? Why couldn't Apple sacrifice a little of it's margins to ensure the workers get decent conditions to work in and reasonable pay for the place where they live. Maybe you couldn't make them at all if you had to take this into consideration.

And are Apple Appstore developers party to this inethical treatment of workers? Should consumers or developers worry at all?

One day there will be next to no human involvement in the mass manufacture of these devices. What will people say then? Robots stole our jobs? Or humans no longer need to do degrading low wage manufacturing jobs? Perhaps these people wouldn't have jobs at all if Apple wasn't there.

PS: I own an iPod Touch 4 and Samsung Galaxy SII, a PC and a Mac. I don't favour one or the other, but I do need an iPhone or iPad for development purposes.

Good luck Nintendo, you're going to need it

 Nintendo just announced their new Wii U console release date. December 8th release for Japan: 26,260 yen for basic set, 31,500 yen for premium.

I have fond memories of previous Nintendo hardware, I'd love to see them succeed with this....

However, I believe it will not be a success like the Wii and it could end up being their last TV-only console. They will probably end up converting all their games to work on multiple platforms and focus on Software. Sony will not release a PS4 or another PSP. The nextXbox will be seriously challenged (pricewise) by the Ouya and Steam box, which will make profits from day one and be easier to publish on.

The old masters are loosing out to iPad/iPhone/Android, PC gaming is coming back with the indie revolution (plus the intro of Windows 8 tablets). The risk of building a new game-focused console that only works on TV/in the living/bedroom right now is massive. Nintendo seem to grudgingly know this as they are trying take an intermediate step to handheld/portable delivery with the controller. They should have been much bolder and made a tablet-style console that can stream to the TV but has it's own screen with a wide-open software market straight away.

Personally, I feel that the 2nd TV games console era is actually drawing to a close. I think the global economy will remain stagnant for several more years and people will not buy so much new tech in the west (if they do it will be phones and tablets). China and India might be the saviours of the next gen, but they will soon be making their own kit and their own games.

In a few years - in front of the TV/on the couch - we in the west will be playing on the Ouya and Steam box, Apple's TV / Airplay, Oculus Rift/AR and streamed gaming will be making an impact. Freemium will suck out the dwindling revenue from retail sales which would have fed AAA titles in the past. People will come to expect their gaming fix for free as their money goes back on essential things like food, fuel, clothing, and saving for a rainy day and their tastes shift from demanding every new game look more photo-real than the last to expecting every game be unique to look at.

Nekro - Shiva3d developed PC title reaches crowdfunding target

This post is basically a quick congratulations to darkForge for successfully getting their action game Nekro crowdfunded over at Kickstarter They passed their target of $100,000 with 4 days still to go. My main interest in the project is its use of Shiva3d - an extremely underrated and less well known multi-platform game engine. The game is scheduled to be released on PC, Mac and Linux currently.

 

WHAT IS NEKRO?

Nekro is an overhead, randomly generated action game about summoning evil forces of darkness to do your bidding!

Hailing from the era of great classics such as Myth: The Fallen Lords, Giants: Citizen Kabuto, Dungeon Keeper and more, we are creating a game rooted deep in PC gaming's history, but with all the flourishes you've come to expect from a modern experience.

Combining full HD graphics, a unique premise, solid gameplay, and tight controls Nekro can be one hell of a game - but not without you...

Check out their Kickstarter page here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/343838885/nekro

Anyway, congratulations and good luck to darkForge.

V-Ray for Autodesk Softimage

Looks like this amazing plugin for Softimage is almost Built on V-Ray’s core platform of rendering speed, stability, and quality, V-Ray® for Autodesk® Softimage® is an advanced rendering solution for the VFX and animation industries. V-Ray for Softimage includes ICE support, efficient Global Illumination, versatile shaders, and much more.

V-Ray for Softimage: General Overview - February 2012

V-Ray for Softimage: V-Ray Materials - February 2012
Shading with V-Ray for Softimage - Create materials quickly and efficiently using V-Ray Materials, and simplify the creation of complex, layered materials with the V-Ray Blend and V-Ray Car Paint Materials.

V-Ray for Softimage: Render Elements - February 2012 
Render Elements - Take control of your compositing workflow using the expansive list of Render Elements.

V-Ray for Softimage: V-Ray Proxy - February 2012
V-Ray Proxy - Manage scene memory and efficiently render massive amounts of geometry using V-Ray Proxy objects.
 

V-Ray for Softimage: Hair & Fur Shading - February 2012
Hair & Fur Shading - Render hair and fur with unprecedented quality, control, and speed with the VRayHairMtl shader.

Chaos Group products are licensed per machine and with one V-Ray for Softimage license you can start and use V-Ray GUI and tools inside the platform, start one local render job, speed up batch rendering using up to 5 render slaves with V-Ray Standalone or up to 5 render nodes with Softimage batch.

The official suggested end user price of a single new license of V-Ray 1.5 for Softimage is 890 Euro/ 1230 USD/ 770 GBP

Exocortex | Species

Exocortex Species 1.0 Official Release Video from Exocortex Species on Vimeo.

Exocortex Technologies, in collaboration with CG Artists Chris Covelli and Eric Thivierge , is pleased to introduce Exocortex Species. Exocortex Species simplifies the process of human character creation from designing your character’s unique attributes, integrating sculpting results, to rig creation, even animation. With Species, you will create higher quality animated characters faster and at a lower cost, while avoiding the generic look that often come when purchasing off-the-shelf models.
Exocortex Species supports both Autodesk Softimage 2010, 2011 and 2012 on both Windows and Linux. Floating and node locked licenses are available starting at $299. For full licensing details, please refer to the Species Purchase Options.

Simplifying Characters Creation
The brain child of Chris Covelli, Exocortex Species has been designed to meet the needs of production animators and TDs while simplifying the process of character creation. Chris realized that the types of characters required in production can be viewed as variations of the fundamental human form. Thus Chris designed a system that starts with a high quality human proportional rig, either male or female, which is then customized via a simple but powerful morphology blender to the unique character proportions required for your production. Eric Thivierge joined the project to apply his Softimage plugin experience to make the best product possible. The resulting unique character form can then be converted, at the push of a button, to a high quality production rig that your animators will love working with.

Save Time, Save Money and Iterate Faster
Exocortex Species is primarily designed as a time saver. Species will save studios and artists days if not weeks of time developing character assets.
In a matter of minutes you can create multiple characters from the same proportional rig and line them up for quick reviews by your designers. Once approved you simply generate the animation rig which takes less than a minute and you’re off and running into layout and shot production.
No longer are your artists required to spend days building a mesh from scratch and the same if not more to build the rig to go along with it.
Less time spent in character development means more time for creativity in animation and thus bears a higher quality product.

Flexibly Body Types avoid that that Generic Look
To avoid both the generic cookie cutter look that often comes with using pre-build, off the shelf models and to better meet the needs of your art direction, Species has integrated an innovative body type blending system. Chris and Eric have created more than a dozen classic body types for both the male and female proportional rigs each with its own unique twist including:

Standard Build Out of Shape / Beer Belly Cartoon-Style Stocky Skinny Obese Pro Athletic Muscular Exaggerated Muscular Midget If one of our classic body types doesn’t meet your needs, it is possible in Species to blend these classic body types together to create the unique mix your production requires. These presets are accessible in the custom synoptic (GUI Picker) for the Proportional Rig.

Quality Models to Build Upon
Species includes two high quality human models, one female and one male. These models have been designed by the creators to meet the needs of production. The meshes have been modeled to ensure the topology allows for the best deformations and come complete with quality mapped UVs. For the large majority of projects, these models should be sufficient for modelling humanoids.
Mesh Customization to meet Production Needs
But if these meshes don’t meet your needs, Species supports a number of convenient work flows for achieving more:

• Both of the models and Species rigs are designed such that additional detail can be added to the meshes.
• Because the meshes already have quality UVs, it is straightforward to import any fine details sculpted in either ZBrush or Mudbox.
• It is even possible to use Species with user supplied meshes. This provides the flexibility to rig a character that has already been generated by other means, enabling Species to be adopted mid-production if required.

To accelerate work flow, Species utilizes the primary synoptic view below (featured in the animation rig section) for navigating the proportional rig controllers. This synoptic is also automatically attached to any custom meshes upon import.

A Professional Grade Rig, Automatically Created Eric Thivierge, a professional character TD at Animal Logic, has created in Species a fast and fully automated conversion system that converts your proportional rig and mesh into an animation rig. Eric’s data driven approach allows for a vast range of different rig configurations to be built on the fly. The animation rig includes: Look at control with parent switching IK / FK arms and legs with stretch Gimbal offsets for FK arms and legs FK controls are mirrored so selecting both and rotating provides mirrored posing Roll divisions along the arms and legs Foot Roll and banking Adjustable roll and banking pivots Re-sizable biceps, forearms, femurs, and shins Hybrid IK / FK spline based spine Scalable rig via the Offset_M_Con

Like the proportional rig, the animation rig comes with a multi-page synoptic allowing your animators to select controls and animate with ease!

The animation rig has been designed with a mixed pipeline in mind. The deformations of the meshes are driven by null (locator) objects and thus allows users to export the mesh along with the deformers to other packages such as Maya or any others that support FBX.
The characters generated through the Species system are portable and do not require additional plug-ins to operate normally. The synoptic can be localized to the current project and can then be packaged with the model file for inter studio transfer or for sending to artists off site.
If the users so chooses, they may generate an armature with no controls from the proportional rig and then add a control system themselves.

emNewton2 (version 2.0) announced

emNewton2 v.2.0 (beta) - "Celestial Chaos" from Eric Mootz on Vimeo.

Interesting new XSI plugin from Mootzoid called emNewton2:

"A two minute long release video showing four simulations done with emNewton2.
This plugin is an implementation of Sir Isaac Newton's "Law of universal Gravity". The main difficulty of the implementation was to achieve reasonable simulation times even though each particle attracts each other particle (that's the evil O(n^2) thing).
The entire simulation and rendering was done on a single workstation with 1 x Intel i7.
At the end of the animation is a little more information concerning the amount of particles, the simulation times and the memory usage."

emNewton2 is an implementation of Sir Isaac Newton's Law of universal Gravity, which roughly goes like this:
"Each particle attracts each other particle with a force that is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them." This plugin for Softimage's ICE can be used to create simulations that are driven by gravity, such as solar systems or stars with an accretion disc. Furthermore this plugin has a "fusion" functionality meaning that intersecting particles melt together.
emNewton2 is well integrated into ICE and works nicely with the built-in compounds such as forces, obstacles, subframe sampling and other effects.

STASIS

I like adventure games. And I like Science Research facilities (that should at least be obvious :) ). Especially, if they either go hideously wrong (Half Life/Black Mesa), or become abandoned (Aliens). It gets even better if, I get the opportunity to awake inside one, alone, in the grim darkness... wondering what the hell went wrong...

The number of games and movies that play off this premise easily stretches into double figures by now (Alien, System Shock, Bioshock, Half Life...) but I don't care, its a timeless setup.

Anyway, this post is up to introduce anyone who hasn't heard of and would like to hear about a new adventure game called STASIS. It's done completely (as far as I can tell) by Christopher Bischoff, using the Visionaire Studio game engine. It's unfunded (last time I looked) and as a result all the more impressive. I think it's starting to look very promising in spite of it wearing its inspirations on its sleeve. They are good inspirations to have after all.

Also, take a look at the WIP thread at CGTalk over here, it's pretty interesting to watch this project develop and get an opportunity to speak to the developer.

Random Control's LIVE Softimage plugin for Arion Render

A completely new line of plugins is coming: The RandomControl LIVE plugins.

RandomControl LIVE is a line of products that fully integrate our technology in the modeling package.

The first modeling package that we are proud to support is Autodesk Softimage. Our plugin supports Render Region, native rendering of animations, native Softimage frame buffer as well as a cool RandomControl LIVE viewport with realtime feedback.

We also have fully integrated our material system into Softimage interface, with nodal support for BSDF layers, bitmaps etc. Everything is Softimage-like and straightforward to use!

Pricing and licensing policies will be presented when the LIVE plugins are released. Owners of an Arion or fryrender license, will be offered the LIVE plugin of their choice for free.

More info about Arion Render can be found here and in their latest news letter.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

Farewell Steve. RIP.

ndo2 public beta

The awesome normal map generating Photoshop plugin has just entered public beta for version 2.

Quixel's website is here.

Thread a CGTalk with a direct download link to the beta can be found here.

The Ürban PAD ShareIt! Special ends tonight!

Gamr7 are currently doing an Ürban PAD ShareIt! Special. For two weeks, they are offering their Ürban PAD modeling suite for just $29 (normally $700). Unlocking this offer depends on enough people buying enough copies at the discounted rate to send the counter to the end before October 3rd, a similar scheme to that recently done by the makers of Messiah. If they reach their goal, everyone will receive a copy of Ürban PAD at this special one-time price.

Ürban PAD is a smart modeler for creating 3D buildings and cities. Ürban PAD has been used to build cities in next-generation game production pipelines, game prototypes , industrial simulations, and architectural visualization.

With Ürban PAD, you can:

• Create lots of buildings fast and sell them online.
• Make them look great with the top-notch texturing system or enhance them with Allegorithmic’s Substances (10 free Substances included).
• Fire up the city generator and build entire city scapes
• Export your buildings or city to your favorite game engine (UDK/Unity 3D) or 3D software (Autodesk Suite).

Today is the last day this offer is running and there are a barely more than a few pixels width of sales remaining to be made on their promotion counter.

So please, help make this a bargain purchase!

V-Ray for Softimage

Yep. You read right. Chaosgroup announces Vray for Softimage beta. You can sign up for the beta here.


Audi R8 Spec Commercial from LemonGood on Vimeo.

The V-Ray for Softimage Public Beta Program will run for a period of approximately 2 months, starting on September 28th.

Softimage supported features

• ICE support support - render geometry produced by the award-winning Softimage ICE system, including particles, strands, hair, ICE-managed color arithmetic, all fully animated.
• Animated parameters - V-Ray will efficiently render Softimage objects with animated parameters and an arbitrary number of keyframes. All geometry modifications and many color-oriented animatable parameters are supported.
• Strong render tree support - V-Ray supports dozens of the procedural shader node types for the Softimage render tree, and new ones are added on a regular basis and made available through service packs.
• Weightmaps - apply transformations to geometry or color attributes of a scene on a per-vertex basis with full support for Softimage weightmaps.
• V-Ray Sun and Sky - create realistic outdoor scenes with physically accurate lighting and atmosphere effects, while maintaining control over rendering times.

V-Ray supported features

Shading

• Support for efficient material layering.
• VRayCarPaintMtl.
• Support for PTex textures.
• V-RayToon shader.
• Support for dispersion in refractions for VRayMtl.

Lights

• Physically accurate lights.
• Efficient illumination from HDR environments.

Camera

• Lens distortion through Nuke displacement maps.
• Option to turn off camera motion blur.
• Shutter efficiency for motion blur.

Render output

• Support for additional render elements.
• Output of multi-channel scanline OpenEXR files with data-window.

Effects

• Depth of field with bokeh effects.
• Accurate motion blur.

Scene translator

• Support for .vrscene output for rendering with V-Ray Standalone.

Supported platforms

Softimage 7.0
Softimage 7.5
Softimage 2010
Softimage 2011
Softimage 2011 ASP
Softimage 2012
(64-bit supported on all platforms)

Exocortex Momentum 3.0 Trailer

Exocortex Momentum 3.0 Release Trailer from helge mathee on Vimeo.

Momentum is finally maturing into something really special now.

Exocortex Technologies and Helge Mathee are pleased to announce that Exocortex Momentum 3, the latest iteration of the high speed multiphysics simulator, is now immediately available for Autodesk Softimage 2010, 2011 and 2012 for both Windows and Linux.

Building upon the Bullet -based broad feature set of Momentum 2, Momentum 3 adds massive new features in the area of fracturing , simulation control , quality rendering and workflow.

Flexible Fracturing
Exocortex Momentum 3 introduces fracturing to its already extensive multiphysics engine. The fracture engine, developed from the ground up by Helge Mathee, is designed around providing Softimage artists and TD's with full control over where and when objects will fracture. Thus, the fracturing engine supports dynamic collision-based fracturing, static user-specified pre-fracturing, real-time shatter filtering as well as self-shattering. The process of fracturing as well as its results is both controlled and queryable via ICE nodes, thus providing a familiar and powerful interface for the deep customizations often demanded during production.
Simulation Control
Momentum 3 provides four new means of controlling your simulations, providing Momentum 3 users even better control over their multiphysics solutions. All of these features come out of user feedback.

1. ICE Controls for all Simulation Elements. It is now possible to provide ICE-based per element live control via ICE trees over all Momentum 3 simulations elements, thus letting artists most easily realize their creative potential.
2. "Force Sculpting." Developed by Fabricio Chamon, force sculpting is an easy and intuitive way to direct explosions through ICE. The key concept is that forces can be sculpted via the specification of a deformed mesh whose dimensions represents the various forces in each direction. One can simply modify the mesh’s deformation the area you want to change the explosion’s forces in that direction.
3. "Copy Motion." The copy motion modifier allows for one to copy the motion of one object, usually an explicitly animated object, onto portions of a simulated object. This allows artists and TDs to quickly and easily drive portions of a simulation when needed.
4. Time Warping. It is now possible to rapidly editing the playback timeline for a plotting simulation simplifying the creation of slow motion “Bullet Time”-like effects, or even allowing for time to run backwards.

Quality UVs, Normals and Motion Blur Having great fracture simulations is nothing if it is a pain to render them. Momentum 3 has been designed so that its simulation results, even the fracturing results with changing topologies, are easily rendered. This is achieved first via robust support for flexible UV generation on newly created interior faces during fracturing. Secondly, Momentum 3 provides quality user normals that accurately capture the original object's surface, while crisply transitioning to the interior face normals. Lastly, Momentum 3 provides 3D and 2D motion blur even in situations of changing topology.

Revamped Plotting One of the most oft-used features of Momentum 2 was its ability to plot out simulation results for later use. Momentum 3's plotting engine has been completely revamped to be more robust and to support plotting to file. Having the ability to plot to files means that even if you have complex changing topology or tens of thousands of objects, you will only be limited by the disk space you have on your servers. Plotting to files also is very useful in large VFX studios where simulation is done in a separately separate division from rendering.

 Get more info here.

Music Track 1

Memories of Something Good by jasonio

Something I made over the last few days. Delicate but melancolic, I hope.

Made with Reaktor and Reaper.fm.

Shiva <> Kinect Plugin Test

Quite a cool plugin for Shiva being developed by luizpestana on the Shiva Forums.

Discuss the plugin here: http://www.stonetrip.com/developer/forum/viewtopic.php?f=76&t=23597&p=37954#p37954

Source code available here: http://shivakinect.sourceforge.net

Softimage 2012.5

It's September time again which means Softimage is getting its point 5 update. In fact it's probably out already. Essentially, it looks like the modelling toolset is being brought up to date now that ICE encompasses all the main fields in general 3d.

New features list below:


Selection

• Quick Loop – double-click or shift+double-click on an edge, point, or polygon to define a loop or range.
• Double-click on a polygon to select the polygon island
• Polygon Selection to Outline - converts the selection to edges surrounding the polygons
• Loops from Selection – creates loops (not rings) from existing selection
• Loop from Selection (around corners) - this can be used to easily select Border Edges for example
• Grow Loops
• Shrink Loops
• Island from Selection – selects all the components in the island
• Selection Preferences now exposed in the MCP>Selection menu

Modeling

• Apply Thickness
  • With bevel options
• Cap Hole
• Extrude Along Normal
• Add Smooth Edge Loop Tool (uses the tool SDK)
  • This interactive tool adds edges while continuing the contoured shape of the object
  • Move edges while adding
  • Use MMB for 50% insertion
• Spin Edges
• Apply Slice Between Two Vertices

Navigation

• Zoom on cursor (Prefs>Tools>Camera)
  • For all 3D and 2D views
  • Includes Scroll Wheel preference

ICE

• Bullet Physics
  • New “Simulate Bullet Rigid Bodies” node (now the default in the ICE module)
  • Same options as Simulate Rigid Bodies Node with added option to collide using exact shape of obstacle.
  • Support for “cone” native shape
  • Instance Shape node now support Convex Hull (Bullet only)
• Rigid Bodies
  • Supports sub-frame sampling (PhysX and Bullet)
  • Faster simulation when using constant reference shapes
• PPG logic
  • RMB>Compound Properties>PPG Logic
  • OnInit and value changes can be trapped inside compounds with PPG logic script
  • Only available for non-private compounds
• Add Group section
  • Inside compound - RMB on exposed input port name>properties. You can specify a group name instead of adding in XML file
• Compounds
  • Create Extrusion Along Strands.2.0
  • Deform Strand Extrsuion (together these can make for fast simulated hairs)
  • Cap Hole
  • Apply Thickness
  • Apply Slice Between Two Vertices

Model Meshes

• Human male, car, T. rex, bull, fish, lizard, horse
  • These come we predefined UVs

 
ICE Modeling Sample Scenes

• Modeling Building Grids
• Modeling Cylinder
• Modeling Materials
• Modeling Simple Copy Merge
• Modeling Texture Projection

Animation

• Viewport Autokey Border
  • When turning on Autokey there is now more visible feedback. The active viewport shows a color – which can be changed in
  • Prefs>Animation to turn on/off or change color
• Ability to include animation layers when creating mixer clips
• New option for non-normalized weight painting

Scene Management

• Annotation objects
  • Get>Annotation creates a null like object which shows a speech bubble in the viewport
• Get/Set memo cams access in the SDK

Rendering

• RTS - Added support for automatic RTS shader updates

Snapping

• Prefs>Tools>Snapping - New preference to control display of snap targets

FBX:

• Integrated new drop of FBX SDK

Changes:

• Selection:
  • Rectangle raycast respects XRay settings etc.
  • Raycast backfacing enabled by default (fixed issues with accidentally selecting backfaces on silhouette edges)
• ICE:
  • Default value for GetTopology changed to "No Transform"

Feature videos can be found here:
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/marks/good_grief_has_it_been_a_year_already_softimage_2012_5_is_here

Damn I wish I still had subscription!

Kinemocap

KINEMOCAP from gianlu73 on Vimeo.

http://www.kinemocap.com/

Using ICE and a XBOX360 Kinect, you can use Kinemocap to record body-based motion capture directly inside Softimage. The video above shows the process. Currently priced at 99 euros.

Modern Alchemists release In-App Purchase & Open Feint plugins for Shiva3d

Modern Alchemists (of Aeon Racer fame) have just made two new ShiVa3d plugins available. Modern Alchemists ShiVa Libs are a bundle of custom written addons which are designed to work with ShiVa 1.9 and UAT 1.2 beta 7. 

Currently featured libs:-

MASS: In-App-Purchase for iOS and Android
MAOF: OpenFeint for iOS and Android

You can get all the files/code either from the download section or via SVN here: http://code.google.com/p/ma-sh/

Next up: Mortar, automated AdMob for Android integration.

All code is under LGPL License.

Thread at the Stonetrip forums can be found here.

emPolygoniser 3

emPolygonizer3 3.00 - Walk Through the New Features from Eric Mootz on Vimeo.

emPolygonizer 3: A few of the main new features:

# multithreaded meshing.
# multithreaded octree.
# liquid filaments.
# motion plotting.
# support of Lagoa topology.
# advanced mesh smoothing.
# support of RealFlow .bin file format.
# enhanced workflow for large setups.
# handles millions of input points and creates polygon meshes with millions of polygons without problems.
# support of multiple custom properties per input object.
# capability of meshing a single point cloud with several emPolygonizer3 operators.
# direct memory-to-memory meshing of the internal emFluid4 3D grids.

Samsung Galaxy S II (S2) Review

It came out in the UK on Monday (2nd May 2011).

I was going to wait for all the remaining dual core phones to arrive in June/July but after seeing some benchmarks I decided to make the bold (rash) assumption that it would be the fastest Android phone on the market this year. (Plus 200,000 korean's can't be wrong!)

Hardware
Looks gorgeous, however, like most phones it's going to get scratched and worn without protection. Something the designers of smartphones have yet to resolve. I don't think it would fair too well from a drop onto a hard surface either.

SDcard slot is under the battery which isn't the best place to have it. And playing demanding games (like PES2011) on it will noticeably heat the back and screen. Like to a level that makes you worry about playing much longer.)

Performance
It's a belter of a phone. I did sunspider java test and got a final score of 3417.1 ( +/- 1.5%). This is significant because when you compare it to all the initial benchmarks released by Anandtech for most of the new dual core phones it comes out on top. Anandtech's results still show the original scores for the 1ghz version of the Exynos and you can see how much of a difference the CPU's 0.2 ghz extra (and upgrade to Android 2.3.3) has made: a 25% increase in performance. Although the heat issue makes me wonder if they haven't just over-clocked the original chip.

Quadrant came in at 3174 today. Anandtech also benchmarked a Qualcomm 1.5ghz development phone (MDP) and it came in at 2851. So I tentatively suggest that the Exynos 1.2ghz may be faster than the Qualcomm dual 1.5ghz which doesn't bode to well for the HTC Sensation, which is approaching its release date in the UK.(May 16th). Also you can compare further results here.

Rightware BrowserMark came in at 53938, just passing the Atrix in Browser performance. Ipad2 scored 69,032 here.

UI
Touchwiz 4 is an excellent UI. It is fast, responsive and very customisable. Only thing I found so far needing work is the widget selector. It's better on stock android where the list is categorised. If you don't like it for whatever reason, LauncherPro will work perfectly well in its place.

A decent, fully featured power control widget is missing so getting something like Extended Controls can really help with extending the battery life as this isn't amazing. But what do you expect? The screen is 4.3 inches.

Software
I never had a Galaxy S, so much of the software that puts a big wide grin on my face may not be breaking news.

What I disliked about the HTC Hero was the lack of office suite. Polaris Office comes with the S2. It's fast, very well featured and saves MS Word compatible files, reads PDFs. I've yet to delve in very deeply, but it looks like my game design docs could be fully created on my mobile.

iPlayer runs very well too (over Wifi at least), a tiny bit jumpy but otherwise excellent. Also, as far as I could tell, you don't get access to everything available on the desktop version.

The S2 to has several built in apps that are pretty much impossible to live without on any android phone:
Task Manager (task killer), My Files (explorer-type app), Swype (alternative keyboard), various voice based applications, Video and Photo editors, decent music player that'll happily play away lag-free while you play a game or surf the web.

Games
A downside that some people will find off-putting is that many 3d games available now either don't run at all or have major problems graphically which render them unplayable. Several threads on forums have popped up listing which games work and which don't.

I can confirm PES 2011 does work; very well. But I'm not sure of the quality of game itself just yet (although the pad and one-touch passing is the least frustrating, but why they couldn't have copied the directional passing from the Wii version of PES is beyond me it would have worked well with the touchscreen). And a word of advice (at the time of writing this), don't waste your time downloading the 650mb behemoth that is Dungeon Defenders, you won't be able to play it because the menus are missing.

Run's my own game (developing with ShiVa3d) pretty well too.

Apps
AutoCAD WS, Autodesk Sketchbook and the Caustic music sequencer demo (best music making app on the market right now?) all run very smoothly.

Connectivity
Wifi access to internet is lightning fast. Apps less than 10mb will download and install in seconds and the more you download the more pages appear in the Apps tray ready to be filled up into the sizeable RAM. I've yet to try the plethora of other wireless connection options and will update this as and when I do.

Summary of Cons
- The home button should double as a slider for moving text cursor back and forth
- Apps screen can't be resorted into alphabetical order
- microSD card location
- not easy to hold without a cover (very little grip)
- many games do not work at time of writing this
- battery life is poor but is slowly being improved by regular system updates
- need to install Samsung Kies (for drivers) to install compiled apps directly to phone with ShiVa 3D Authoring Tool.

Summary
Only scratched the surface but so far.. me like ..a lot.