SIGGRAPH and SPORE ... Perfect Together.

Breaking News: Will Wright Selected as a SIGGRAPH 2009 Keynote Speaker

SIGGRAPH keynote speakers represent a variety of prominent industry luminaries and technology experts, who present on different aspects of the multi-dimensional computer graphics and interactive techniques industries. SIGGRAPH 2009 is proud to announce the selection of two of this year's keynote presenters:

Will Wright. Photo courtesy of Electronic Arts.

Famed video game designer Will Wright, creator of the popular Spore™ and The Sims series, was selected as part of the SIGGRAPH 2009 expanded focus to integrate gaming as part of the conference program.

Wright rose to prominence when he invented SimCity, the widely acclaimed, non-violent, open-ended simulation video game. Since its release 20 years ago, Wright has expanded his simulation realm with the introduction of The Sims series, and several other follow-ups that include, SimEarth: The Living Planet, and SimAnt: The Electronic Ant Colony. In all, the franchise has sold more than 58 million games and was the best selling PC game for five consecutive years.

In 2008, Wright unveiled his latest achievement: Spore™, an internet-based game that allows users to create a species of creatures and share their evolutions with other players interactively worldwide. The game garnered immediate praise including being named by Time Magazine as one of the "50 Best Inventions of 2008."

Export Spore to Maya, or your favorite 3D app ??

I love SPORE. I think it's a monumental acheivement in programming. After the SPORE Creature Creator was released last summer, and prior to the release of the full SPORE game, there were rumors that the package would include a Maya exporter. This never seemed to materialize.

Necessity being the mother of hacking as it were there are/have been attempts to export the SPORE models into other 3D apps. I have included a link to a tool Called SpView which will do just that. It requires a bit of hoop jumping but it will work. Check it out Here

It's SIGGRAPH time again !

Ahh Spring... when a young animators fancy turns to SIGGRAPH

Registration for SIGGRAPH 2009 is now open! There are several registration options available to help you customize your experience at SIGGRAPH in New Orleans.

Full Conference Access Pass: Includes admission to ALL conference programs and events, including the Exhibition, Computer Animation Festival, and Reception. Also includes the Full Conference DVD-ROM.

Full Conference One Day Pass: Admission to ALL conference programs and events for one day of SIGGRAPH 2009 and the Computer Animation Festival. Includes access to the Exhibition (Tuesday-Thursday) for the entire week.

Basic Conference Access Pass: Includes admission all days of the Exhibition and all Galleries & Experiences, Contests & Competitions, Performances & Special Events, and Community activities, as well as the Keynote Speakers and Exhibitor Tech Talks.

Basic Conference One-Day Pass: One-day admission to all Galleries & Experiences, Contests & Competitions, Performances & Special Events, Community activities, Keynote Speakers and Exhibitor Tech Talk on the day of attendance. Also includes access to the Exhibition (Tuesday-Thursday) for the entire week.

Computer Animation Festival Only: Includes admission to the Computer Animation Festival for days(s) attending and Exhibition for the full week.

Additional registration categories for Guests, Co-located Events, and Computer Animation Festival Day passes are also available. Visit the SIGGRAPH 2009 Registration page for all the up-to-date details on how to register for this year's inspiring conference.

Feversoft becomes RandomControl with updates

RandomControl - (formerly Feversoft) has updated several of it's products. They include:

1- fryrender one SP2
2- SWAP v1.1
3- frybench.com

fryrender

fryrender is the unbiased spectral renderer developed by RandomControl.

All the elements involved in the render (materials, lights, cameras, ...) are based on physically accurate models up to the point that when you hit render a simulation of the real behavior of light happens inside.

Moreover, fryrender is the first engine of its kind capable of transforming scenes into a format that can be navigated in real-time with the aid of our Virtual Reality technology RC5.

fryrender SWAP

SWAP is similar to the Multilight functions of Next Limits Maxwell Render both of these products in Maya Plugin Power

fryrender SWAP is a revolutionary product based on our proprietary physically-based render technology. Sharing a base concept similar to fryrender's Layer-Blending: "render once and get as many images as you need", SWAP enables you to change materials in your scene while keeping the photorealistic quality of the original image, in real-time.

frybench.com

Many customers and DEMO users have asked us which computer architecture would help them render faster. This recurring question led us to think that it would be a great idea to set up a public benchmarking chart that could provide a definitive answer...

...so we started the frybench initiative.

frybench is a minimal version of fryrender, with all the UI trimmed away, and restricted to just one demo scene provided by us. Anyone can download it, run it, and see how the performance of his machine compares to the results posted by other users.

We have strong reasons to believe that fryrender is in fact an extraordinary tool to determine the raw power of a CPU. Such a tremendous effort has been put into optimizing the rendering core at all levels that we are sure that it leaves no room for the CPU to breathe during a single cycle.

The frybench initiative is open to everyone, not just fryrender customers or DEMO users. Anyone, from hardware builders or reviewers to die-hard gamers can download the kit, run it, and see how good their computers are, and even post results in our public chart.

You will find the public ranking, the downloadable kit and an F.A.Q. at www.frybench.com

VFXWORLD features Maya Plugin Power

This month, VFXWorld begins a series of six excerpts of the Thomson Course Technology book Maya Plugin Power, which will give VFXWorld readers to learn how to take advantage of the myriad of plugins available to Maya users.

The first in the series deals with Syflex cloth simulation for Maya.

For my money the best way to get cloth animation from Maya is the cloth simulation plugin Syflex. It has great advantages over Autodesk nCloth. It is flexible and easy to use and is very useful for other softbody simulations. Here is an easy way to make a skirt in Syflex.