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Cool Stuff

How a boy became an artist

When Jarrett J. Krosoczka was a kid, he didn’t play sports, but he loved art. He paints the funny and touching story of a little boy who pursued a simple passion: to draw and write stories. With the help of a supporting cast of family and teachers, our protagonist grew up to become the successful creator of beloved children’s book characters, and a vocal advocate for arts education. (Filmed at TEDxHampshireCollege.)

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Autodesk® 3ds Max® 2015 software. Extension 1

utodesk® 3ds Max® 2015 software. Extension 1

If you are a 3ds Max customer with Autodesk® Subscription you now have exclusive access to the new tools in Extension 1 for Autodesk® 3ds Max® 2015 software. Extension 1 delivers powerful OpenSubdiv modeling workflows - the top feature request on User Voice - support for the Alembic interchange format, and enhancements to the ShaderFX visual shader editor that helps you more easily create and exchange the complex assets today’s demanding productions require.

New features

OpenSubdiv Support

Efficiently represent subdivision surfaces using OpenSubdiv libraries, open-sourced by Pixar and incorporating technology from Microsoft Research.

  • Visualize your model interactively without the need to render for a better WYSIWYG experience, greater productivity, and more accurate realization of creative intent.
  • Get faster in-viewport performance for meshes with high subdivision levels by taking advantage of both parallel CPU and GPU architectures.
  • Reduce the guesswork when animating models and help shorten production times, with efficient smooth surface representation.
  • Create complex topology in less time, by taking advantage of efficient crease modeling workflows with CreaseSet modifier and Crease Explorer.
  • Easily transfer your models to and from certain other packages that support OpenSubdiv using Autodesk® FBX® asset exchange technology and achieve a consistent appearance.

Alembic Support

View massive datasets in the Nitrous Viewport, and transfer them more easily through your production pipeline with new Alembic support.

  • Work with production-proven technology, co-developed by Sony Pictures Imageworks Inc. and Lucasfilm Ltd.
  • Move complex data through a pipeline in a manageable form: complex animated and simulated data is distilled into a non-procedural, application-independent set of baked geometric results.
  • Get more from your workstation, with highly efficient use of memory and disk space.
  • Enjoy faster data transfer and load times, with the ability to export and load only selected geometry.

Enhanced ShaderFX

Get more shading options and better shader interoperability between 3ds Max, Autodesk® Maya® software, and Autodesk® Maya LT TM software.

  • Create a wider range of procedural materials with new node patterns—wavelines, voronoi, simplex noise, and brick.
  • Create normal maps from 2D grayscale images with a new bump utility node.
  • Get faster access to the shaders you need, with a searchable node browser.

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Oculus Rift Development Kit 2

Oculus Rift Development Kit 2

The Oculus Rift Development Kit 2 is the latest development kit for the Oculus Rift with a low-persistence OLED display and low-latency positional head tracking.

Oculus Rift is a game changer for architectural visualization.  The experience of walking into a design concept in virtual reality in a Rift can’t be described with words. Everyone who experiences it for the first time is totally blown away, and there’s never any doubt that this technology has far-reaching potential for visualizing buildings and cities.

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Serious Productivity with the Core i7 Surface Pro 3

Surface Pro 3

Andrew Hill, Director of Mechanical Engineering on the Surface team shows how the power of Surface Pro 3 with a 4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7 processor allows Surface Pro to be designed on a Surface Pro. The team can run computationally intensive 3D modeling software on a device that is thin and light and highly portable. They use the pen and OneNote to capture images for later collaboration and are able to seamlessly go from an office setting with multiple displays to work on the go.

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PipeDream - 3DSMAX

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Pipe Dream is a script for 3ds Max that generates random sci-fi pipes.

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Desktop-sized Supercomputers by 2020

There is an unending demand for increasing computer processing capabilities, especially for "heavy lifting" tasks such as creating engineering and scientific simulations and finding patterns in "Big Data". Optalysys is revolutionising this area by using light rather than electricity to perform processor intensive mathematical functions at speeds well in excess of what can be achieved with electronics, and at a fraction of the cost and power consumption.

Professor Heinz Wolff is a highly respected scientist and public figure. He is probably best known in the science world as 'inventor' of Bioengineering and to the public for his television and radio work over the years, including such series as BBC's 'The Great Egg Race'. During his career he has worked to make complex science easier to understand.

For more information please visit http://www.optalysys.com 
Follow us on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/optalysys
Sign-up for our newsletter http://www.optalysys.com/follow

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3D Object Manipulation

Abstract
Photo-editing software restricts the control of objects in a photograph to the 2D image plane. We present a method that enables users to perform the full range of 3D manipulations, including scaling, rotation, translation, and nonrigid deformations, to an object in a photograph. As 3D manipulations often reveal parts of the object that are hidden in the original photograph, our approach uses publicly available 3D models to guide the completion of the geometry and appearance of the revealed areas of the object. The completion process leverages the structure and symmetry in the stock 3D model to factor out the effects of illumination, and to complete the appearance of the object. We demonstrate our system by producing object manipulations that would be impossible in traditional 2D photo-editing programs, such as turning a car over, making a paper-crane flap its wings, or manipulating airplanes in a historical photograph to change its story.

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Procedural Geometry Creation Tool for 3dsMax

Debris Maker 2.0 Release!

Debris Maker 2.0 Release!

The DebrisMaker2 is the completely free procedural geometry creation tool for 3ds Max, that lets you quickly create objects for your 3D scenes.

With the DebrisMaker2 you can create brick, corrugated metal, crystals, gemstones, snowflakes, grass, gravel, leaves, logs, splinters, meteors, obsidian, pigeons, planks, twigs, river stones, sandstone, shrapnel and slate! You can input parameters to customize the style of your debris, to match your desires.
 

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A&G DomeLight Pro™ for V-Ray

The A&G DomeLight Pro™ for V-Ray is a powerful V-Ray dome light that acts like a traditional photography light box with full controls over front, back, left, right, top, and bottom. Each side can be mapped with any of the shipping 15 HDRI maps. DomeLight Pro™ can be manipulated to achieve infinite combinations. It also ships with a library of 10 presets to help you get your lighting on point. You also have the ability to save and share your own presets, so you never have to start from scratch again. If that’s not enough, you also get a look development material library and example scenes to help get you started. One light, to rule them all.

Only compatible with 3dsMax 2014 (and above) and V-Ray 2.4 and above. You must have applied ALL Service Packs and/or Product Updates from Autodesk prior to installing the A&G DomeLight Pro™. ALL licenses are node locked. Floating Licenses are not available at this time. For network rendering, run the regular installer (no license necessary) on all network machines. This applies to all expansion packs as well. The A&G DomeLight Pro™ was born from a production environment to make setting up great lighting fast and easy. For V-Ray RT compatibility, please see Chaos groups support page

Introducing the DomeLight Pro for V-Ray! One light. Infinite possibilities. Click HERE to start your download!

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Southern California Headquarters Building.

Oakley CEO Colin Baden was the chief architect on Oakley's spectacular Southern California headquarters building. Watch him recount the Beyond Reason experience of designing a landmark.
 

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