SIGGRAPH REPORT - Blender

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Aug 23, 2011 ... CLO3D is based in Korea and they have developed tools for creating 3D fash- ions on models that correspond to 2D patterns. In the demos we ...
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JON PEDDIE’S TECH WATCH

SIGGRAPH REPORT

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■ AMD is certified; 47 times At Siggraph AMD announced that their latest generations of ATI FirePro AIBs have received 47 application certifications from ISVs. In addition, a soon to be released beta driver is expected to deliver considerable performance gains on popular CAD and DCC applications over the previous generation. AMD also demonstrated an ecosystem of software partners and customers to bring to life superior realism, workflow productivity and application performance. The new driver will offer users across the board performance increases for the latest generation ATI FirePro graphics on the LightWave 3D subset of the new SPECviewperf 11 benchmark. And AMD claims their entry-level ATI FirePro V3800 achieves a 62 percent performance gain and the ultra high-end ATI FirePro V8800 gets an 81 percent gain, compared to the previous driver2. Also at AMD was Chaos Group CTO, Vladimir Koylazov, who spoke about “Interactive ray tracing for accelerated visualization and decision making” at AMD’s theater.

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■ Autodesk announces Advantage Packs for 2012 Entertainment Software Autodesk has been adding sweeteners to its subscription deals in order to encourage people to buy subscriptions and to keep customers committed to the subscription model. At Siggraph the company announced the latest round. These new bits of code and plug-ins may be early feature previews or niceto-haves that Autodesk can test out with its most active users. And, who better to trouble shoot and find the best usage models. In the announcement, Autodesk senior vice president, Marc Petit says “subscription Advantage Packs allow us to get new functionality out to our subscription customers much sooner than would otherwise be possible.” Since the strategy was announced a couple of Autodesk Universities ago, the goodies have proliferated. Of course, it’s also a swell way of doing stuff that Autodesk was going to do anyway. For instance, the Advantage Pack for Maya 2012 will include support for the Alembic point cache format that enables compact file exchange. Autodesk is supporting the open source Bullet Physics engine from AMD, which enables soft and rigid body simulations. And the Maya 2012 Advantage Pack will include a new Node Editor that will help people working with complex node networks keep track and back track. The additions to Autodesk 3ds Max 2012 adds a new render pass system to segment scenes for downstream comVOLUME 11, NUMBER 17 AUGUST 23, 2011

positing and ActiveShade rendering for the Iray renderer from Nvidia. Autodesk is adding interoperability with After Effects and Photoshop and it’s enabling .Net access within the 3ds Max SDK to expand the ability of developers to customize 3ds Max. The Softimage 2012 Advantage Pack offers new modeling tools and Softimage’s Interactive Creative Environment (ICE) is getting rigid body dynamics. Also, the SDK is being extended. The Mudbox 2012 Advantage Pack has a new Gigatexel engine for adding detail—the Gigatexel engine scales with the users’ hardware. None of which means anything, does it? Product manager Andrew Camenisch created a YouTube demo of the Gigatexel engine in action on a GeForce gaming laptop – nothing super special. The demo shows the Gigatexel engine enabling painting with 1200 2K maps with total interactive feedback. Seeing the demo helps make it more clear. And finally, we get to Creative Finishing in Flame Premium 2012, Flare 2012 and Smoke 2012 for Mac OS X. The Advantage Packs offer new stereoscopic viewing modes that let artists scan for differences between left and right eye clips. And, enhanced creative tools for stylized graphics effects. In addition Flame Premium now gets HDRx support, MXF export, and AVCHD codec import. Smoke for Mac gets support for Apple ProRes QuickTime, IM, and MXF P-1a export, RD Epic HDRx support, AVCHD codec import, and Avid DNxHD export in a QuickTime wrapper. The new tools will be available to subscription customers in late-September 2011.

What do we think? We think that was probably a lot more than you wanted to know about the Advantage Packs if you’re not an actual user of these products but it does suggest several interesting directions for Autodesk and content creation tools in general. There are a lot of tools here for developers, which bodes well for future Advantage Packs. Throughout this issue we’ve talked about new tools for rendering, physics, texturing, as well as new character creation tools. All those capabilities are represented in the Advantage Packs. – K.M.

■ Blender Foundation Blender has come a long way from its early days as an open 3D modeling

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JON PEDDIE’S TECH WATCH

SIGGRAPH REPORT Blender tools. The 2.5 series has completely revamped the Blender interface, added new animation tools -- making everything animatable with a system of layers. And it has added volume rendering and ray tracing features in the product. It even has sculpting tools. The emphasis is on ease of use, and improved GUI, but Blender 2.5 BLENDER 2.59 CSJOHTUIFWFOFSBCMFPQFOTPVSDFNPEFMJOHBOE looks like a seriously BOJNBUJPOUPPMJOUPUIFTUDFOUVSZXJUIOFXGFBUVSFTBOE revamped product. In FBTFPGVTF fact, it looks like a toy shop window for 3D and animation tool. The change has modelers and animators. come with the growth of the Blender What do we think? Foundation, formed in 2002 after the Blender helps the 3D modeling and parent company Not A Number (NaN) animation industry by providing a free shut its doors. At his Siggraph presentatraining ground and community for tion, Blender founder Ton Roosendaal would-be 3D artists. The organization said Blender now has three staff develsays that 3.4 million copies of Blender opers and is also supported by a comare downloaded a year. The product is munity of 60-70 active developers and getting more attention and is becomeven more irregular contributors. This ing broadly used professionally and the year’s Blender Conference in Amsterbooth was flat-out hopping through dam attracted 250 attendees. the whole show. Blender also provides At Siggraph this year, the Blender a serious prod to the tools vendors. Foundation presented their latest reBlender’s new features were not so diflease, Blender 2.59. The ongoing 2.5x ferent from those being proudly showed version of Blender was started in 2007 by the commercial vendors and Blender as a major overhaul of Blender. The is unique in offering so much in one Foundation, led by Roosendahl, has depackage. veloped a strategy of producing major Roosendaal says that at this year’s projects under the auspices of the BlendSiggraph, Blender was getting serious ater Institute. The list of movies is growtention from Intel, Nvidia, and AMD as ing Elephant’s Dream was the first a platform for testing and development and Big Buck Bunny is widely shown and “especially to get OpenCL to work to demonstrate the 3D capabilities of decently all over.” Roosendaal says he hardware. Most recently the Institute took Autodesk’s slohas released Sintel, a fantasy quest film, gan at the show: “Don’t and the Institute has developed a game, blend in, stand out!” as "Yo Frankie!." Like Blender, the cona personal complement. tent is open, it may be freely shared – K.M. and displayed on a non-commercial basis. At Siggraph this year, Roosendaal announced plans for the next movie Mango, which will be directed by Ian Hubert. It’s a science fiction film and the ambition is to explore special effects, motion tracking, keying, compositing and color correction. The schedule Low cost video editing calls for the movie to be finished by July 2012. system is impressive The projects show off Blender’s caBOXX Technologies long known for pabilities but also in the process of their post- production systems announced developing these projects, the Blender at Siggraph. their cleverly named new Foundation has been able to develop mediaBOXX. A new series of turnkey some prioritization around updating the

■ BOXX Partners with Intel on New Motion Media box

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motion media solutions for hobbyists and aspiring professionals (AKA Prosumers) that Boxx developed in concert with Intel’s Platform Marketing & Software and Services Groups. Boxx showed off their wares in Intel's booth. The highlight of the series is mediaBOXX Xtreme, a performance-enhanced, liquid-cooled system capable of reaching 4.5GHz—32% faster than standard speed. Available with 2nd generation Intel Core i5-2500K or i7-2600K processors, IntelTurbo Boost Technology 2.0, and the Intel Z68 chipset, mediaBOXX includes a host of additional Intel technologies such as Quick Sync Video for transcoding, and Smart Response Technology which allows users to store frequently accessed files on the solid state drives. As a turnkey solution, mediaBOXX includes Cyberlink PowerDirector 9, a 64-bit video editing product with CyberLink’s TrueVelocity Technology for faster editing, previewing, and rendering. The software enables filmmakers to directly upload HD quality videos to Facebook or YouTube, and features MediaEspresso, a media converter that can transcode video, photos, and music files and then output them to iPad, iPhone, iPod, BlackBerry, and other mobile devices. All that at a starting price of $1698.

■ CLO Virtual Fashion, Inc. Suddenly, CAD is fashionable. No, never mind, CAD is being used in fashion. We noticed the CLO Virtual Fashion booth along the edges of the Siggraph Show floor. The company, CLO3D is based in Korea and they have developed tools for creating 3D fashions on models that correspond to 2D patterns. In the demos we saw, patterns can be chosen, fitted to a model, further adjusted and then the adjustments translate to the 2D patterns. The company was at Siggraph to help promote a coming English version of CLO3D. It will be competing directly with Optitex. Optitex is an Israeli company that builds clothing design software for the apparel industry. In addition CLO3D has a tool called Marvelous Designer, which enables users to create, drape, and design clothing and create animations, but it doesn’t allow the clothing to be imported and exported in transferrabe formats like DXF. DXF-AAMA is a standard in the apparel industry for pattern creation