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Thursday, April 17, 2008

Craft Director Tools ServicePack


+ Craft Animations has completed a major overhaul of the way Craft Director Tools function within the host environments of 3ds Max and – especially – Maya. After a long dialogue with several customers we began to implement a long list of change-requests and suggestions. This has resulted in a new and more robust Craft Maya Adaptor and Craft 3ds Max Adaptor. If you have Craft Director Tools installed on your computer you should automatically be prompted to update your software when you start up 3ds Max or Maya. Otherwise download our new software bundle – including the ServicePack - here.
The ServicePack is guaranteed to bring the user experience leaps and bounds beyond the excellent standard you already have come to expect. This is worth looking into, even if you are not currently using Craft Director Tools. Craft Director Tools now support merging and X-ref. That means you can create and rig your Craft Director Tools plug-ins in one scene and then use them in another. If you currently have saved files with Craft Director Tools and you plan to begin using the merge/x-ref function right away remember to save your files using the new version of Craft Director Tools before you merge them - otherwise the dummies that you merge will be disconnected from the Craft controllers. There were a number of known stability issues in Maya especially. The ServicePack adds an extra level of performance and stability that mean the user experience in Maya is now very different.

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Tuesday, April 01, 2008

UVAutoRatio - Maya plugin*



+ RenderHeads has released "UVAutoRatio 2.0 Pro," an UV-mapping Plugin for Maya. UVAutoRatio 2.0 Pro is a tool for Maya artists to save them from the hours of work they often have to do when scaling UV coordinates manually to try get textures to be in proportion to the shape they're mapped to. Artists in the film and games industry spend hours manually scaling the texture coordinates of models to get them in the right proportion. This is not a particularly fun job. Wouldn't it be great if this tiresome task was automated? Enter UVAutoRatio Pro: the UV-mapping Plugin tool for Maya that automates all texture ratio tasks while still keeping the artist fully in control. UVAutoRatio 2.0 Pro has been designed by artists, for artists. This new version is a huge improvement over the first release and it's thanks to the support and ideas of all the users. The most requested feature: support for UV shells is now supported, allowing the tool to operate across multiple objects and multiple UV shells. The new faster algorithm means even extremely high polygon scenes can be processed within seconds. The compact user interface keeps the artist in control, while providing a smooth and intuitive workflow. For more information and download, please visit www.uvautoratio.com

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Saturday, February 23, 2008

finalRender Stage-2 for Maya SP4a Released


+ (PR) cebas Computer, maker of finalRender®, today announces the release of Service Pack 4a for finalRender Stage-2 for Maya. All users should download SP4a and install it today!
Service Pack 4a for Maya
Welcome to Service Pack 4a for finalRender Stage-2 for Maya. In our ongoing desire to serve the needs and expectations of our customers, cebas Computer will periodically release Service Packs to enhance features and stability for your production usage. It is strongly recommended that you always keep your software up to date with these Service Packs. Please be aware that all of the prior Service Packfixes are included within this latest version of the software and you do NOT need to install all of the patches in order to become current. Simply installing the SP4a build will give you all of the updates and fixes. SP4a is a free download and can be acquired by registered users at the cebas Shop

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Tuesday, February 05, 2008

DWG Export Plug-in for Maya 2008


+ DWG Export Plug-in for Maya 2008, is new utility plugin under development at Autodesk lab and a preview version of plugin is currently available for download. The DWG Plug-in for Maya 2008 enables users to export complex conceptual building designs from Maya for further design development and documentation in Autodesk Revit Architecture 2008. For additional information including a how-to overview of the technology, please see BIM: Maya 2008 for Complex Conceptual Design. PDF which accompanies the install file in the ZIP download. The utility plugin is available for Maya in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. If you are an Autodesk Maya 2008 user and have a need to export conceptual design data to AutoCAD and/or Revit Architecture, than you may download the plugin utility by: Clicking Here

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Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Npower Power Translators for Autodesk® Maya®



+ nPower Software (a division of IntegrityWare) announces the release of its popular Power Translators product on the Autodesk® Maya® / Autodesk® AliasStudio™ platform. Power Translators for Autodesk® 3ds Max® / Autodesk® Viz® has become the premier tool for design visualization. Now that popular tool is available for Autodesk® Maya® / Studio Tools®. Rendering CAD data in Autodesk® Maya® just became easier and more effective. Power Translators Maya is the most accurate and efficient solution for importing CAD data into Autodesk® Maya®. Power Translators Maya imports precise NURBS data into Maya instead of transferring imprecise polygonal representations. The result is that you get a more accurate representation, and beautiful, precise renderings. Autodesk® Maya® users no longer have to spend days or weeks translating their high quality surface and solids models into imprecise polygonal models, and then struggling to generate high quality renderings. Power Translators Maya leverages IntegrityWare's SOLIDS++ precise geometric representation to generate extraordinarily smooth, crack free mesh and produce renderings without polygonal artifacts. If you want to get the most accurate CAD data translation, and produce the highest quality renderings, Power Translators Maya is the solution. For more information on nPower Software, visit www.nPowerSoftware.com.

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Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Voice-O-Matic For Autodesks Maya



+ Di-O-Matic, a leading developer in user friendly character animation software, is proud to launch today Voice-O-Matic (Maya Edition).After five years of expertise in automating lip synchronization for thousands of CG characters, Voice-O-Matic is now available to the Autodesk Maya community. Di-O-Matic made a commitment to 3D animators, and from now on animators using Maya can also count on Voice-O-Matic to speed up their animations creation process. Di-O-Matic heard the call from animators that spending hours creating lip synch for CG characters can be tiring, and that manually generating every lip movement can be a long and tedious task. That’s why Voice-O-Matic was designed to combine a user friendly interface with a highly efficient and time saving system. Some of the most admired CG characters including Batman, Spider-man and Superman sport what Voice-O-Matic can achieve.
Being designed for animators by animators, Voice-O-Matic only requires an audio file to automatically produce accurate lip synch. Afterwards, the results can be easily tweaked to match perfectly any style of animation. Voice-O-Matic works with any type of character setup and with virtually every language. Combining these features has earned Voice-O-Matic the reputation of being the animators’ best friend when it comes to lip synch projects. Voice-O-Matic has also already earned its stripes with its use in leading feature films, popular television shows, commercials and award winning video games. And if you need to process thousands of audio files, vomBatch is the extension that you need. vomBatch is an exclusive tool available only in the yearly Di-O-Matic VIP membership that allows you to automatically process an unlimited amount of audio files without any user interaction. Including this plug-in in your pipeline could easily save you hundreds of working hours. To learn more about Voice-O-Matic or to download a trial version visit: www.voice-o-matic.com

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Saturday, January 05, 2008

finalRender Stage-2 SP4 for Maya


+ cebas Computer, maker of finalRender®, today announces the release of Service Pack 4 for finalRender Stage-2 for Maya. All users should download SP4 and install it today! It is strongly recommended that you always keep your software up to date with these Service Packs. Please be aware that all of the prior Service Pack fixes are included within this latest version of the software and you do NOT need to install all of the patches in order to become current. Simply installing the SP4 build will give you all of the updates, fixes and enhancements. finalRender Stage-2 for Maya is now compatibile with Maya 2008 and contains many fixes and improvements. SP4 is a free download and can be acquired by registered users at the cebas Shop. finalRender Stage-2 SP4 is a full install and you should completely remove any previous install from add/remove programs, Before installing.

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Saturday, December 15, 2007

Plug-in for Animating Tanks


+ Craft Animations is releasing two plugins for animating tanks and other track-driven vehicles directly in Maya and 3ds Max. Craft Crawler Extended and Craft CrawlerTracks are a revolution for animators everywhere since the physical interaction of a tank's tracks is so complex. Along with Craft Crawler Extended and Craft Crawler Tracks, there are two more Pre-Rigged Solutions for sale: Pre-Rigged M1-Abrams Tank and Pre-Rigged AMX-30 Roland. Customers can purchase these solutions and literally start animating a tank within a few minutes. For more information, please visit www.craftanimations.com

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Monday, October 22, 2007

AutoDesk cMuscleSystem


Breaking News: Autodesk, Inc. acquires "cMuscleSystem" from Comet Digital LLC
+ Autodesk on buying spree; just one1/2 months after acquiring skymatters MudBox 3d, Autodesk has acquired cMuscleSystem, a Maya plugin suite by Comet Digital, LLC. Just Got an confirmation from "Michael Comet," President of Comet Digital LLC stating ; " We are very happy to announce that Autodesk, Inc. has acquired the cMuscleSystem plug-in and technology. We feel this transaction is in the best interest of our customers and the long term development of the technology." Existing cMuscleSystem customers with Autodesk Maya Gold Subscription, formerly Platinum Membership, will now be supported by Autodesk Product Support. For product support requests please use the online form, or login into Autodesk Subscription Center on, autodesk website.

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Monday, August 13, 2007

Holomatix Rendition | Maya Plugin


+ Interactive Raytracing is new Mantra, in ever-changing and performance-driven rendering technology. Holomatix Rendition is a very fast, interactive, production-quality raytracer. It is designed to render your scenes up to 10 times faster than alternative ray tracing solutions, at extremely high quality. Holomatix Rendition implements support for Maya and mental ray shaders and renders directly from .mi files, as well as raytracing scenes from directly within Maya using the supplied Maya Plug-in. Holomatix Rendition supports Maya and mental ray shaders, so there is no need to learn a new set of shaders. Rendition will raytrace your existing Maya/mental ray scenes without modification, but generally much faster and with a high level of interactivity.
>> Holomatix Rendition for Maya

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Monday, July 30, 2007

glu3D Demo Available for Maya 8.5


+ 3Dalien's glu3D demo version for Maya 8.5, is available for download. Glu3D is a complete plugin system that makes easy animating liquids in Maya. Glu3D uses particles to simulate the liquid behavior, and a multi-resolution polygonal surface is also generated to display the liquid surface. Recently 3Daliens has also released a demo version of PWrapper for 3ds Max 9. PWrapper is a surface blobMesh generator for any kind of particle system. Create a new instance of pwrapper. Then select any particle system through pwrapper command panel and its particles will be wrapped with a poly surface mesh. Modify pwrapper parameters to change surface look. Both Glu3D and PWrapper demo can be download from - Here (link) !

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Friday, July 13, 2007

Voice-O-Matic for Autodesk Maya and Softimage | XSI


Voice-o-matic XSI maya
+ Di-O-Matic, a leading character animation software developer, is pleased to announce the upcoming release of Voice-O-Matic for Autodesk Maya and Softimage XSI. Di-O-Matic boast Voice-O-Matic has been the leading lip synchronization extension for Autodesk 3ds max for over four years, providing clients with a simple yet powerful approach to getting some of the most well known CG characters—including Spiderman, Batman, Superman and Sonic—to talk and entertain audiences worldwide.
Based on the same underlying technology as the award winning extension for 3ds max, Di-O-Matic is currently engineering Voice-O-Matic to operate in Autodesk Maya and Softimage XSI workflow environments. Voice-O-Matic is the leading solution for creating believable lip synchronization animation in games development. Clients currently use Voice-O-Matic for CG feature film production, visual effects and television commercials. Many consider this truly unique application as their virtual lip synchronization assistant as one can easily tweak results with standard curve controls.
Maya and XSI users will soon be able to automate the lip sync process of their productions with ease. Voice-O-Matic takes lip synchronization to the next level by using an intelligent phonetic engine to cleanly break down audio files. Voice-O-Matic automatically assigns the correct phonemes to give voices to your characters in no time.
To learn more about Voice-O-Matic for Maya - Click Here
To learn more about Voice-O-Matic for XSI - Click Here

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Monday, July 02, 2007

NimbleTools 1.1 For AutoDesk Maya


+ NimbleTools are useful and free plugin scripts for AutoDesk's Maya (maya 7, 8 and 8.5), developed by Nimble Studios Inc. HyperVeil - The HyperVeil hides complex shading networks from the HyperGraph and HyperShade and wraps them in a streamlined, customizable interface to ease tweaking. You can then add attributes from the hidden nodes to the HyperVeil's interface - exposing them through the HyperVeil's Attribute Editor. Double-clicking a HyperVeil node in the HyperShade or HyperGraph will hide and show all of the veiled nodes. Uninstancer for Maya - The Uninstancer allows you to bake particle instances into geometry, animation, and blendshapes that can be modified and updated without messing around with dynamics and expressions.

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Thursday, June 28, 2007

RenderMan Studio 1.0 and RenderMan for Maya 2.0



+ Pixar Animation Studios (NYSE: DIS), today announced two major releases of its Academy Award® winning RenderMan software, RenderMan Studio 1.0 and RenderMan for Maya 2.0, together with a new licensing policy delivering major performance increases on multi-core computers.
RenderMan Studio is a major expansion of Pixar's next generation render tool suite for the advanced professional, including a "pro" version of the RenderMan for Maya plug-in, major enhancements to the Slim graphical RenderMan shader editor, the Alfred dispatcher for managing network rendering, the "it" image compositing tool, and unrestricted RIB generation. RenderMan Studio 1.0 directly interfaces with Pixar's RenderMan Pro Server 13.0, and an optional floating internal RenderMan Embedded Renderer is also available for either render preview or final output. In a major upgrade, RenderMan for Maya 2.0, Pixar's advanced rendering plug-in for Maya, introduces powerful multi-threading, substantial increases in ray-tracing performance, improved fur, new camera effects, caustics, point based global illumination, and compatibility with Maya 8.5. Additionally, both RenderMan Studio 1.0 and RenderMan for Maya 2.0 incorporate a new licensing policy permitting up to 4 threads or 4 parallel renders per host machine, potentially quadrupling performance or more on a per frame basis. "While developing RenderMan Studio the Pixar team was highly responsive to our requests" said Alain Xerri, Head of R&D at Sparx-FX, "Fur especially is so much more memory efficient and flexible. If you need to customize RenderMan Studio to accommodate your special needs there are no limits for your development skills." "One of the things that blew me away about RenderMan for Maya 2.0 is the massively increased speed" said Ryan Bird of Bluebird Digital LLC, "In fact, it was so much faster that I thought something was broken. After carefully looking over my final rendered image and seeing all that great quality my excitement jumped through the roof." Together with RenderMan Pro Server, RenderMan for Maya and RenderMan Studio complete a family of RenderMan products built on a common technology base providing entry points and upgrade paths suitable for every level of user.
Pricing and Availability:
RenderMan for Maya 2.0 is available on Windows XP and Mac OS X for US $995 per license. Pricing for RenderMan Studio 1.0 starts at US $2,000 per license and is available on Windows XP, Mac OS X, and Linux. Upgrades from RenderMan Artist Tools 6.5 to RenderMan Studio 1.0 are free to all RenderMan Artist Tools customers on current maintenance. For additional information regarding upgrades and optional components visit http://www.pixar.com/

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Monday, May 21, 2007

Advanced Skeleton 2.0 For Maya



+ Another very handy tool for character Rigging, developed by Animation Studios Australia, and its now made totally free. AdvancedSkeleton Pro is a collection of Autodesk's Maya tools for doing character setup. Creating a Skeleton Setup for characters that works well, is a cumbersome job that includes: animation constraints, expressions and driven keys as well as fitting of the skeleton joints to the character. AdvancedSkeleton was designed to do most of this, so you can get your character setup done much faster. AdvancedSkeleton creates a complex motion system called AdvancedSkeleton from a simple joint chain called FitSkeleton. You can download the latest free version of AdvancedSkeleton from Highend3d.com.
Download Adv. Skeleton

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Friday, May 11, 2007

PELTING TOOLS 1.5.4 Beta ***


+ we have featured PELTING Tools; a useful Maya plugins scripts before, but recently someone asked me about UV Pelting in Maya, so we decided to feature this very handy script for Maya once again. UV Pelting is the process of quickly unwrapping geometry and generate texture coordinates for a 3d surface. UV Pelting significantly reduces the time required to compute texture UV's because; instead of stitching various patches together to create maps, the modelers can easily select the "pelting" edge path and generate the connected map automatically. PELTING Tools is developed by sunit parekh, who also explained how-to work with pelting tools quite nicely on his website. The Pelting Tools version 1.5.4 for Maya 6.x-8.x is available for download and it is compatible with Linux, windows as well as Mac.
Pelting Tools Features:
- Linux, Mac, Windows Compatible
- Mesh and Component Part based pelting
- Multiple pelt groups in one scene
- Direct connection to original, uncut mesh
- Two different pelting frame algorithms
- Per vertex spring controls
- Multiple model views
- checker, baked