Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 PC Demo

Here you can download a Pro Evolution Socceer 2009 (PES 2009) Demo for PC.

Has written on the website, the demo includes:
"Players are able to select fully licensed Manchester United, Liverpool, Real Madrid, and Barcelona club teams, or the licensed Italian or French national sides. All new visuals with completely remodeled players and animations, and new physics routines to ensure the ball behaves more realistically have been included, while the AI of the CPU sides has been enhanced to provide an ever evolving challenge."

Demo size: 1 Gb circa.
I'm awaintg this new PES 2009... :P

Softimage XSI 7 on 30 Sept 2008

(Via CGSociety) Softimage has announced SOFTIMAGE|XSI 7, the latest version of its professional 3D animation software for games, film and television.
XSI 7 introduces ICE (Interactive Creative Environment), a groundbreaking technology that transforms XSI from just another 3D product into a powerful and flexible open platform.

ICE greatly improves collaboration between artists and technical directors, allowing them to create custom tools and effects visually, see the results interactively, and do it all without scripting, or writing a line of code. Effects built or modified in ICE are performance tuned and multi-threaded, so they perform at maximum efficiency across all available processors.

XSI 7 will be available before September 30, 2008.

CGSociety Softimage XSI 7 Article

Lively: Second Life by Google

Google releases Lively, a 3d multichat social network.
In Lively, you'll have an experience in which you can communicate and express yourself using avatars in your very own space.



Lively requires Windows Vista/XP with Internet Explorer or Firefox.

Kunfu Fu Panda, CGSociety article

Kung Fu Panda is the new Dreamworks 3d animation movie (in theaters june 6, 2008).

CG Society publish an intersting article about Kung Fu Panda production focus (article by Renee Dunlop).
The article starts:
"A journey of a billion frames begins with talent, characters and a whole lot of effort by the team at DreamWorks."...

"A wash with color and technical complexities, DreamWorks brings us their next animated film, Kung Fu Panda. In production since 2003, the film introduces a cast of clothed and furry or feathery animals that never completely sit still, languishing, dreaming, learning, and battling throughout a collection of expansive environments." ...

Continue reading this article about Kung Fu Panda

Other links:

CG Society

Kung Fu Panda official website

Dreamworks website

Explore Disneyworld in 3d with Google Earth

Google Earth adds new 3d models to have a fantastic virtual journey to Disney World in Orlando (Florida).


Here a Youtube video taken from Google Earth Blog:

Street Fighter IV for Ps3, Xbox360 and PC

Capcom is working for a sequel of one of most played coin-op: Street Fighter IV
Graphics will be completely revised and made in 3d: above you can see a screenshot with Ryu... really not bad! :)
Street Fighter IV will be available for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.
Below an interesting Street Fighter IV video:




Other resources:

Official Sites:
Street Fighter IV (Japanese) - http://www.capcom.co.jp/sf4/
Street Fighter IV (American) - http://streetfighterworld.com/

Screenshots:
The orginal 8 plus Crimson Viper revealed (Japanese Text)
http://www.famitsu.com/game/news/1213478_1124.html


VIDEOS

http://www.gametrailers.com/game/5667.html
http://www.youtube.com/Arxinal

NewTek Announces Free LightWave 3D Trial Edition Available for Download

Great News from Newtek!

NewTek Announces Free LightWave 3D Trial Edition Available for Download.

New LightWave Trial Edition features 24 hours of free online training


The software is fully functional with no restrictions or watermarks for a full 30-day period and has 24 hours of video training on many topics to enable quick use of LightWave's powerful tools.

In addition, the complete manuals in PDF format are available for download, allowing users to reference tools and features. 130 MB of royalty-free content is also provided, which can continue to be loaded and studied even after the 30-day trial period is over.

Pricing and Availability

The LightWave Trial Edition is available for free download immediately. LightWave® v9 is available now at suggested retail price of $895US. LightWave v9.5 will be available as a free update to registered LightWave v9 owners. Registered owners of LightWave 3D® [8] or earlier are eligible to purchase an upgrade to LightWave v9 for $395US.
For more information or to purchase, please visit www.lightwave3d.com or call NewTek Sales at 1-800-368-5441, for international inquiries dial +1-210-370-8000.

Isometric games : 3d character animation test

In the past week I produced a simple animation to test with an isometric style game. My goal is replace my static characters in Metalwarriors with those that includes animations.
But I'm not really sure to do this mainly with for these reasons...
- creating animations for each character means spending lot of time: and how many actions I will do animate? Only a simple walk, or other actions, as fight, death, and so on? Creating each action means create "n" frames for 4 different directions.
- how many Kb these animations will take? This can be really slow downloading times...

However, some descriptions about this simple animation...
I created this animation with Lightwave 3d starting from a 3d character, created as described in my 3d Tutorial: Modeling your first Anime Robot in 3d (italian translation here), then I animated with a simple walk cycle, rendered as separated frames in BMP file format. For a better result, I choose a 17 frames sequence (see preview).
Creating characters in 3d also for 2d bitmap based games has a great advantage: after created animation cycles for a single character, I can create the same cycles for all other characters, simply substituing the 3d models. Additionally, I can create separate animation frames and, by saving in 32bit color depth, I can have each single frame with a transparent background. This can be an advantage for test purposes, to check the optimal size of my bitmaps frames, to have good animations but not a wasting movieclips sizes...

After this process, I can import my bitmap sequences directly into Adobe Flash (name each frame as "animationCyle_001.bmp", "animationCyle_002.bmp"): Flash converts the frame sequence directly into the timeline, each bitmap into a separate frame.
So I can create a single movieclip for my character, and naming each first frame of each sequence into Flash timeline, I can access and play my animation cycles via actionscript.

FPrime updated to version 3.2

via Flay: FPrime, an external rendering engine for Lightwave 3d, has been updated to version 3.2. A number of fixes and updates are in there including better LW 9.3.1 compatability, reversed motion blur, voxel support and a host of others improvements.

Ratatouille Oscar winner!

The Academy Awards 2008 confirms the popular voices who said Ratatouille the Oscar winner as Best Animated Feature Film.

I agree, great movie! :)

Newtek announces Lightwave 9.5 !

Publishing this press release on its website, NewTek Announces Fourth Major Update to LightWave 3D® v9.

LightWave v9.5 Update Includes:

Character Animation Enhancements
New Hair and Fur System
Enhanced IK and Animation Systems

• New Collada, FBX and OBJ I/O
• New IK Calculation Options for Faster Performance
• New Bone Type - Joints
• New Objective Options for IK
• IK/FK blending
• Multi-threaded Mesh Deformation Evaluation

Modeler

• UV Unwrap/UV Relax
• Symmetry Tolerance

Lighting, Rendering and Surfacing Enhancements
All New Lighting System

• New Light API
• IES Lights
• New Spherical Light
• Area and Linear Lights Enhanced

Renderer

• Faster Sampling System for GI
• Improved GI Quality
• New GI Controls to Customize the Render
• Disk-Based GI Cache

Node Editor Enhancements

• Interpolated Soft Reflections/Refractions
• Support for New Light API Functions
• Oren-Nayar Shading Option for Many Materials
• Optimizations for Materials and Shaders

SDK and LScript Improvements

• New Light Plug-in Class for third Party Lights and Light Plug-ins
• SDK Support for New GI Functions and Disk Cache
• SDK Support for New IK and Animation Capabilities
• Set Surface Properties Through the Surface Global

UI and Workflow Enhancements

• Enhanced Scene Limits
• Updated Scene File Format
• EXIF Metadata Support
• OpenGL GLSL Enhanced for New Lighting System
• Image Viewer Consolidation

Pricing and Availability
LightWave® v9 is available now at suggested retail price of $895US. LightWave v9.5 will be available as a free update to registered LightWave v9 owners. Registered owners of LightWave 3D® [8] or earlier are eligible to purchase an upgrade to LightWave v9 for $395US. For more information or to purchase, please visit www.lightwave3d.com or call NewTek Sales at 1-800-368-5441, for international inquiries dial +1-210-370-8000.

Call of Duty 4: best videogame of 2008

During the 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences has nominated the best videogames of 2008 in various categories.

Here's the complete list:

Game of the Year: Call of Duty 4
Console Game of the Year: Call of Duty 4
Computer Game of the Year: The Orange Box
Outstanding Innovation in Gaming: Rock Band
Handheld Game of the Year: The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
Massively Multiplayer Game of the Year: World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade
Cellular Game of the Year: Skate
Role-Playing Game of the Year: Mass Effect
Racing Game of the Year: Motorstorm
Outstanding Achievement in Game Design: Portal
Adventure Game of the Year: Super Mario Galaxy
Sports Game of the Year: Skate
Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year: Command and Conquer 3
Action Game of the Year: Call of Duty 4
Family Game of the Year: Rock Band
Outstanding Achievement in Animation: Assassin's Creed
Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction: BioShock
Outstanding Achievement in Visual Engineering: Crysis
Outstanding Character Performance: Portal
Outstanding Achievement in Story Development: BioShock
Outstanding Achievement in Game Play Engineering: Portal
Outstanding Achievement in Online Game Play: Call of Duty 4
Downloadable Game of the Year: Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition: BioShock
Outstanding Achievement in Soundtrack: Rock Band
Outstanding Achievement in Sound Design: BioShock

More info at official website

News found via Punto-Informatico.

Transformers: Rig Demo

During my latest session on Cgtalk.com website I encountered this great post by Mattias Jervill about rigging and animating a special Optimus Prime character from Transformer's movie / tv series. Mattias is an advanced user and works for many hollywood movies as character TD.

In this post you can download a great video (65Mb) and see how Mattias has rigged his character, and see from the software interface how he can transform it (Robot> car > helicopter) in a realistic mode using sliders, values, and understanding in each great 3d work - before starting with modeling and rigging - we must plan our work deeply.

For more info about Mattias Jervill, see his personal website.

Iron Man Movie Trailer

Via Youtube, an interesting movie trailer about Iron Man, the newest superhero (marvel side) movie coming soon in cinemas around the world.
Obviously, great special effects are guarantee! :)

New week, new Lightwave Tutorials (part 5)

Another week, another set of (very good) videos by William Vaughan for Newtek's Lightwave3d modeler and layout. This week William published 35 new video tutorials! WOW!

Modeling and animating a basketball net

Introduction to the Surfaces Tab in the Scene Editor

Introduction to the Items Tab in the Scene Editor:

Introduction to Motion Blur

Introduction to the Limited Region and Mask options

How to create custom shadows or have surfaces not cast shadows at all

Introduction to the Standard Material Node

Introduction to the BRDF shader

Introduction to the Surface Mixer shader

Introduction to the Weave shader

Introduction to the Occlusion shaders in the Node Editor

Introduction to FX MetaLink Morph

Introduction to Dynamics Effect and Record Motion

Introduction to the Text tool

Maintaining proportions when creating a UV map

Introduction to Bone Split, Bone Connect, Bone Fuse and UnParent Bone

Introduction to Sticky and Sticky Surface

Creating a Slug using Hypervoxels

Introduction to Make UVs

Creating a UV map for a Head

Customizing Modeler's Workspace Viewports

Creating an eye setup for animating eyes with ease

Introducing the 4 point triangle

Adding thickness to single-sided geometry

Creating an animation of a crowd of people

Introduction to the UV Spider command

Introduction to the Jolt Motion Modifier

Creating a 2D Cel Shade look with the Node Editor

Introduction to Edit Skelegons

Introduction to the Weld, Unweld and Weld Average commands

Introduction to the Set Value command
Note: Not to be confused with the Set Map Value command

Animating a basic walk cycle:
Note:If your new to animation and setting key frames this could be a good quick start for you.

These 3 new videos pushes the collection over 19 hours now:

Introduction to the Schematic View

Introduction to the Target Item option

Introduction to the power of Powergons:

Voodoo Camera Tracking

In these weeks I'm working hard, It's time to improve my skills and back to all my old passions.
So, searching about newer versions for some 3d Camera Tracking softwares, I found this very interesting 3d camera tracker: Voodoo.

Voodoo Camera Tracker is a FREE software and seems to works very well. It can export for most 3d applications. Taken from Vodoo website:

"The Voodoo Camera Tracker estimates camera parameters and reconstructs a 3D scene from image sequences. The estimation algorithm offers a full automatic and robust solution to estimate camera parameters for video sequences. The results are useful for many applications like film production, 3D reconstruction, or video coding. The estimated parameters can be exported to the 3D animation packages: 3D Studio Max, Blender, Lightwave, Maya, and Softimage.

The Voodoo Camera Tracker works very alike to commercial available camera trackers (also called match movers), e.g. 3D-Equalizer by Science-D-Visions, boujou by 2d3, Matchmover by RealViz , PFTrack by The Pixel Farm, SynthEyes by Andersson Technologies. Please consider buying a commercial product, if you need a camera tracker with professional support."

Voodoo Camera is available for Windows and Linux systems; actually you can download the release 0.9.4 beta.

New Lightwave 3d tutorials (post #4)

William Vaughan continues his great work publishing lots of video tutorials for Newtek's Lightwave3d.
I hope my posts in this blog don't disturb Newtek neither William... I just want publish this great work and support the entire Lightwave3d community...

So, these are the newer videotutorials, enjoy! ... :)

Introduction to the Bevel Tool

Introduction to the Pivot Tool and Center Pivot Command

Introduction to Proxy Pick

Introduction to Sketch Color

Introduction to the Rail Bevel Tool

Introduction to the Hide options

Introduction to Color Selection

Randomly placing surface voxels on an object

Introduction to the Julienne tool

Introduction to the Make Pole tool

Introduction to the Helix tool

Introduction to the Sea Shell tool

Introduction to the Triple Tools (Triple, Fast Triple Fan and Fast Triple Traverse)

Introduction to the Collapse Polygons command

Introduction to the Image Control Panel for the Image Viewer

Introduction to the Scale and Rotate Morph Tools

Introduction to the Grid and Grid Square Size

*Creating a Clothespin*
This two part video tutorial walks through the creation of an everyday
clothespin while exploring various techniques and tools along the way.

*Part 01*

*Part 02

*Reference Images*

Introduction to the Reduce Points and Polygons commands

Taking a closer look at Input Fields
*Using LightWave's input fields to calculate and convert units of measure.

Introduction to the Absolute Measure tool

Introduction to the Use Global option

Introduction to Bones and Character Rigging

Introduction to IK: Inverse Kinematics

Building a Reverse Foot Rig

Introduction to Remove Polygons and Remove Vertices from Polygons Commands

Creating a cartoon elbow joint

Check it out in action here

Introduction to Band Glue

Introduction to the Band Saw and Band Saw Pro Tools

Introduction to Fix 3-5

Introduction to Align Polygons

Introduction to Magic Bevel

Introduction to Add Edges

Introduction to Light Exclusion

Introduction to working with Foreground Images in the Compositing tab

Introduction to the RIG format

Flash 3d programming: Sandy3d

In this post I want to introduce Sandy 3d for Flash developers.

I know, this is not a real news, because this projects has started some years ago. But now (and in next weeks) I want start to study newer implementations, interfaces and possibilities given by my knowledges in flash developing and 3d modeling, rendering and animations, and use these skills together. So, browsing the web I chosed to try these APIs (they seems to be the best for flash developing). Above, some informations taken from Sandy 3d website :

Sandy is an intuitive and user-friendly 3D open-source library developed in Actionscript 2.0 and now Actionscript 3.0 for Adobe Flash.

The idea came in 2005 from the lack of possibilities to run 3D in Flash. It was also a way to solve the major problems of the other 3D engines available at that time :

- Lack of documentation or support.
- Abandoned projects.
- Exclusive and limited engine.

Sandy is now one of the possibilities to create some 3D content in Flash. Other projects came out since Sandy first releases, giving more choice to users.

This 3D engine main features are :

• Flash player 7 to 9 compatibility.
• Both MTASC and Macromedia compilers compliant for AS2 and Flash CS3 and FlexBuilder for AS3 versions.
• Several 3D primitives, allowing fast and parameterized object creation without any 3D modelisation knowledge.
• Advanced and easy object management allowing some fantastic possibilities during your creations (scaling, rotation, translation, tween, etc.)
• Advanced camera management ( rotation, motion on linear or bezier-curve path, movements, etc.)
• Complex object loading thanks to the .ASE and .WRL files parser , but also Collada and 3DS files for AS3, (files generated by several 3D object modeling packages such as 3D Studio Max or Blender)
• Material system to easily change your objects appearance. Several material are available allowing to create transparent faces, bitmap texture and video texture as webcam video stream.
• Managment of Flash filters bringing some very nice visual effects

Lightwave Plugins: Sumatra

Sumatra is a new very interesting plugin for Lightwave 3d, designed by LWToolbox to help the user quickly create vegetations.
Currently the package consists of four plugins working in 32 and 64bit, two for layout, and two for modeler.

It seems to be really easy to use: you can "paint" vegetations directly on your models.
This plugin also includes a objects with different LOD (level of detail) so you can set it to place low polygon version instead of those in high details, depending by the distance between camera-objects.

Regarding vegetations, objects aren't clip maps as Archvison's plugins and libraries, but effective 3d models with polygons.

Sumatra is a commercial plugin, but its cost is so cheap (only 65 EUR for the PRO version) to be your perfect plugin - for example - for architecture rendering and animations.

You can also test the plugin, download the LITE version.

Limitations of the Light Version:
most additional options inactive, painting reduced to 50 polygons.

Sumatra is available for both Windows and Macintosh systems.

Updated my curriculum...

Finally in these days I updated my curriculum vitae. I uploaded them in my website panebianco3d.com where you can connect to download.

There are 2 languages available:

MY CURRICULUM IN ITALIAN and MY CURRICULUM IN ENGLISH

Can I help you? ;-)