Panebianco3d

Saturday, February 2, 2008

2007 Flash Lite Game Contest

via Biskero, I remember 2007 Flash Lite game contest , sponsored by Playyoo, Adobe and O'Reilly. Prizes for this year are:

1st Prize - A prize of chosen by the winner up to US$ 5,000 and sponsored by Playyoo.
2nd Prize - Adobe software licenses
3rd Prize - O’Reilly books

For more info, visit the contest website

Monday, January 28, 2008

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.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

New Lightwave 3d tutorials (post #4)

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

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

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.

Industrial Design by Art. Lebedev Studio

Browsing the web I visited this interesting website: Lebedev Studio from Russia (but with offices also in Latvia and Ukraine), that produces lots of industrial desing objects and projects.
You can buy them online!
One of most interesting is this keyboard named Optimus Tacticus Keyboard, without keys, a concept keyboard:

Optimus Tactus does not have physical keys, which means there are no restrictions on their shape and size.
Any part of the keyboard surface can be programmed to perform any function or to display any images.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Romantic Prague and Super deformed Jeeg screensavers and wallpapers for mobile

I updated my website with 2 new screensavers and wallpapers for mobiles with Flashlite player:

Romantic Prague Screensaver Wallpaper
An amazing slideshow with 29 beautiful Prague photos: you can use it as screensaver or wallpaper for your mobile phone. For devices with Flashlite player 1.1 or better.
You can buy it from panebianco3d.com Store for only EUR 2.39

SuperDeformed Jeeg Screensaver Wallpaper
A funny (but also simple) screensaver / wallpaper for devices with Flashlite player 1.1 or better

Vision Racer for new game experiences

A new interesting accessory for your race and driving games experience is made by Vision Racer International who have created this structure who includes:

- lightweight alloy frame
-race bred performance seat
- pedals
- height & tilt adjustable seat
- fore and aft seat adjustment
- gear shifter
- disassembles for storage

More info on Vision Racer website

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? ;-)

Asus EEE: the best micro PC now also in Italy!

Finally the Asus EEE is available in Italy: since january 17 we can be buy it in many shop.
One of those, Mediaworld sell it a 512 ram and 4gb version for 299 euros. Good! :)

But what's Asus EEE?

It's a really small notebook (see photo!), with many features to use it in a couple of situations.
With a 7" display, it also has wifi and lan connectivity, expandible memory, USB ports, stereo speakers, Microphone, webcam (not in all versions!) and Linux as OS.

It's also XP compatible (many users have installed windows xp and it works fine).

Software preinstalled includes many office automation solutions, with a word, excel and powerpoint style software compatible, an internet browser, an email client, Skype (!).

There are 4 different configurations: the cheapest cost only 199 USD! (in italy, I dont' know :P)

Other informations about Asus EEE: http://eeepc.asus.com/

Image taken from slashgear blog