Tuesday, November 27, 2007

3ds Max 2008


Model efficiently, animate easily, and achieve stunning
results in less time with Autodesk 3ds Max 2008 software.

3ds Max is a full-featured 3D graphics application developed by Autodesk Media and Entertainment. It runs on the Win32 and Win64 platforms. As of October 2007, 3ds Max is in its tenth version, named 3ds Max 2008, which was announced during SIGGRAPH 2007. 3ds Max adds enhanced support for complex pipelines and workflows.

Overview
Accelerate your creative workflow and increase your pipeline efficiency. Autodesk® 3ds Max® 2008 3d modeling, animation, and rendering software helps design visualization professionals, game developers, and visual effects artists maximize productivity by streamlining the process of working with complex scenes.

Easily View and Handle Large, Complex Scenes 3ds Max 2008 software delivers new viewport technology and optimizations that result in vastly improved interaction with even the largest, most complex scenes. Common tasks and operations—selection, material assignment, transform, grouping, cloning, and many more—are now significantly faster, making 3ds Max 2008 the most streamlined version of the software ever. Plus, a new Scene Explorer makes managing large scenes—and interacting with hundreds, or even thousands of objects—far more intuitive.

Streamline Your Rendering Workflows With 3ds Max 2008 software, Autodesk introduces Review—a powerful new toolset that supports
interactive rendering workflows by delivering interactive previewing of shadows, the 3ds Max sun/sky environment, and mental ray® Architectural and Design material settings. This release also provides many new, timesaving 3ds Max/mental ray workflow features, including Sky Portal lighting options, a camera-based interface for exposure settings, and more.

Rapidly Automate and Customize Your Workflows 3ds Max 2008 marks the debut of MAXScript ProEditor. This new MAXScript editor provides script-writers with a professional, intelligent interface for working with MAXScript that streamlines the scripting workflow—making it easier to author scripts that automate and customize 3ds Max. Import Data Quickly and Accurately Deeper support for the DWG™ file format results in faster, more accurate importing of data from other popular Autodesk applications such as AutoCAD®
2008, AutoCAD® Architecture 2008, and Revit® Architecture 2008 software. New features, such as Select Similar, also facilitate working with imported data.

Viewing and Handling of Large, Complex Scenes
3ds Max 2008 software delivers new viewport technology and optimizations that result in vastly improved interactivity of even the largest, most complex scenes. Common tasks and operations—selection, material assignment, transform, grouping, cloning, and many more—are now significantly faster, making 3ds Max 2008 the most streamlined version of the software ever. Plus, a new Scene Explorer makes managing large scenes—and interacting with hundreds or even thousands of objects—far more intuitive.

Review Rendering
Produce stunning photo-real imagery, faster. With the release of 3ds Max 2008, Autodesk unveils Review. This powerful new toolset supports iterative rendering workflows by delivering interactive previewing of shadows, the 3ds Max sun/sky environment, and mental ray® Architectural and Design material settings. Based on the latest game engine technology, Review gives you the instant visual feedback you need to iterate rapidly.

Support for Complex Pipelines and Workflows
Quickly extend 3ds Max or streamline multi-application workflows. The new MAXScript ProEditor provides you with an intuitive interface for working with MAXScript that will streamline the scripting workflow, making it easier to author scripts that automate and customize 3ds Max. Deeper support for the DWG™ and FBX® file formats results in faster, more accurate importing of data from other popular Autodesk applications; plus, new features facilitate working with this imported data.

Artist-Friendly Modeling Enjoy a less menu-dependent modeling experience. 3ds Max 2008 gives you a more streamlined, artist-friendly modeling workflow through a collection of hands-on modeling UI options that let you focus more on the creative process.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Design for KKSY Kayu Manis Restaurant & Vanilla Cafe Lorry

Graphic Designer: Mohd. Faishal Abd. Kudus
Layout for Lorry & Logo/Corporate Identity
Software: Adobe Illustrator CS

Monday, November 5, 2007

Exaggeration



Exaggeration is a very important principle in animation - after all, we're trying to caricature and distill life to it's clearest essence, not reproduce it verbatim. But many students often misunderstand the meaning of exaggeration; they think it always means "bigger" or "faster" or "broader". Not so! It can also mean "smaller", "slower" or "subtler". The key is the "-er": figure out the adjectives that describe the attitudes and actions in your shot, then try to make them "more" like that by adding "er" to the end of the adjectives.

If every pose and action in a performance is extreme then none of them are - the texture becomes even and the audience gets bored. It's important to have big moves AND small moves, fast ones AND slow ones. By varying these elements you give variety to your scene and place emphasis where it needs to be. If you've got three big changes and one small change, the small one will stand out.

The late Chuck Jones was a master of exaggeration. He could achieve more impact with a single eyebrow raise than a lot of animators could with a full-body take. Just look at his work on How The Grinch Stole Christmas and his later Warner Brothers shorts. He knew that less could be much more. He could exaggerate the stillness of a character's pose, so that a change would be isolated to a single small part of the character; perhaps a single muscle. He made a trademark of having a character hold a pose and just glance at the camera with his eyes, as if to say, "what the...?"


So the next time your planning and animating a character, think of ways to make it "er"!

Friday, November 2, 2007

Animation Info

TITLE: Hold the Line
DIRECTOR: Sem Assink
STATUS: Finished
RELEASE DATE: JUN 2005

LENGTH: 6:30
WEBSITE:
www.holdtheline.nl

Sem Assink's Hold the Line is a fun little animated short about four soldiers marching through the remains of a ruined world. Only discipline keeps them together, but when they are ambushed by an invisible foe, the men come up with the ultimate tactic to take him out.

Sem keeps the palette muted and the pace quick. The soldiers speak the hilarious, non-specific, and universal language of action movie gibberish as the conflict plays out to its logical conclusion. The film subtly makes a point that is all too accurate, yet never loses its sense of humor.



TITLE: Kiwi
DIRECTOR: Dony Permedi

STATUS: released
RELEASE DATE: 2006
LENGTH: 5 min.
WEBSITE: www.donysanimation.com/Kiwi.htm

"What is he doing?" If animator Dony Permedi's intention was to get the audience to ask that question, he succeeded. For most of the director's animated short, "Kiwi!", Permedi leaves the audience just at the edge of understanding as the little tan blob of a character toils away on some incomprehensible cliffside project. But when the time is right, all is finally revealed. Like the titular character, the audience's perspective changes and the bird's dream of a lifetime takes flight.



TITLE: Batman Chapter One: Help Me!!!
DIRECTOR: Isaak Fernandez Rodriguez
STATUS: Finished
RELEASE DATE: 2007
LENGTH: 1:50

WEBSITE: www.isaakfernandez.com
Isaak Fernandez Rodriguez has created a monster. This talented animator made a quirky little film, just a labor of love, that has set the internet on fire. Everyone wants to know more about him, and about his film.
And what of the film? An exercise in limited color, it gives every impression of an old black and white film. But there are subtle, and not-so-subtle colors present that Rodriguez uses to great effect. And the visual style is so addictive and original, somewhere between a Marc Craste dream mixed with some Russian Constructivist nightmare.

Rodriguez has a whole series of shorts planned, though currently he's not saying how many. Meanwhile, his public impatiently awaits the next installment of his Batman series, though it seems we'll all be waiting a bit longer than we might have preferred. His full time job at Ilion Animation Studios keeps him busy happily animating on their first film, Planet One. And he would like to take a breather before launching into production just now.















Animation News



















TITLE: The Itch
DIRECTOR:
Joe Green
STATUS:
Completed
RELEASE DATE:
JUL 2006
LENGTH:
1:40min

WEBSITE: www.the-itch.co.uk

Joe Green completed The Itch for his degree in computer animation at the National Centre for Computer Animation in Bournemouth, England. The 22-year-old artist, originally from St. Albans, now lives in London, where he works on film visual effects at Double Negative.

The Itch is a fun little piece that puts across a simple idea in a simple way that actually resonates at a deeper level. The Itch is an Annoying Persistent Presence, standing equally well for an obnoxious acquaintance that won't go away, or a sickness you can't shake, or a compulsive behavior or addiction, or even age. I think that's the beauty of the film's approach, both visually and thematically. Green didn't concern himself with modelling every pebble in his world, and he didn't concern himself with tying his story up in a neat little bow. It's one of those films the audience can relate to on a variety of levels.

This is Green's first and only film although, as he says, "I have a few ideas for another film when I can find some time." Let's hope he finds the time.


This film was in production over the course of roughly 7 months although due to other course commitments and projects most of the work was done during a hectic 3 month period at the end. The initial idea stemmed from a desire to create a humourous piece but without resorting to slapstick or re-hashed jokes. I have always enjoyed quirky, off-beat films so I wanted to come up with a ridiculous situation for my own short. I deliberately didn't wrap everthing up neatly at the end, leaving space for the viewer to interpret the film for themselves.

I chose to tell the story using a narration as I had seen a few other films that used this device very effectively and it allowed me to tell a larger story in a shorter space of time. I tried out a number of people to try to find the right voice for the main character but ended up having to do the voice myself.

The inspiration for the design of the characters and environments comes from a wide variety of artists that I admire such as Tim Burton. Whilst trying to develop my story I filled a sketchbook with doodles of numerous characters and locales. I tried to retain my favorite parts from these small designs for the final animation but due to time restrictions many concepts for background details had to be abandoned.

In terms of the films production I had help from my university tutor Phill Allen to refine the story and cinematography. The sound was produced by Katie Faulk, a sound design student from Bournemouth University and my coursemates were always there to offer their opinions on how things were working (or not) and to help keep me motivated. Everything else was completed on my own.

From the start I knew the overall look of the piece was going to be my focus along with an interesting story. I wanted interesting designs and the main technical focus was on the lighting and rendering. We were very lucky to have access to full Pixar Renderman licenses at university but in order to take advantage of this a lot of time was spent learning how to make use of some of its advanced features. Having never used Renderman before, initially it was quite a step to write sub-surface scattering and occlusion shaders but it was a very enjoyable learning experience.

Aside from having never made my own film before there quite a few other jobs that had to be done during the production which were totally new to me. I learnt so much from the whole project and am pretty sure I could do the whole thing a lot faster and to a higher standard knowing what I do now.

I definitely feel that the actual character animation is the weakest part of the finished piece but as it was never my focus and I had such a limited time period to complete it in I am not too dissapointed. Aside from the character animation and a few other small issues i am very pleased with the film.

-- Joe Green, November, 2007






Thursday, November 1, 2007

ROBO INOREKA

Pertandingan INOREKA telah menyatukan para ROBOTER dari seluruh Kolej Komuniti yang menawarkan Kursus Multimedia Kreatif [Animasi] seperti K.K Kepala Batas, K.K Kuantan, K.K Teluk Intan dan K.K Selayang.

Acara ini m
emupuk semangat kerjasama dan mencungkil bakat serta kreativiti pelajar sebagai pereka muda. Kehebatan mereka memang tidak dinafikan.

Media utama untuk penghasilan robot ialah mounting board..terpulanglah pada kreativiti pereka muda untuk mengolah hingga menjadi robot yang mengkagumkan..



Poster edisi khas yang menggambarkan keakraban dan nilai-nilai positif yang diperolehi dari INOREKA.
Scene yang menyentuh hati. ROBO KKSY sedang memangku ROBO KKKUA sebagai tanda persaudaraan..suatu komposisi menarik dari para peserta.