3D total is coming out with its Digital Arts Masters, Vol.2 book. The book is a collection of 60 of the most eye popping computer generated imagery. 58 artists have contributed in total. The book also describes how the artists went about creating their masterpieces. The book can be ordered online by following this link. But for those of us who would like to have a preview, follow the same link to find a cool interactive book. You can turn the pages of this interactive book as you would any physical book, and feast your eyes on the artwork.

Hi!, If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Ratatataaa…what? Ratatouille (pronounced rat-a-tooey) is the next movie from Pixar. If you haven’t heard of it, lets get acquainted with it!

Ratatouille is the story of a rat named Remy, who wants to be a chef. He tries hard, but finds himself chased out of kitchens, hanging for his dear life. That’s when he meets a scullery guy named Linguini. Even though Linguine cannot understand what the rat says, he gets the point that the rat understands him. Slowly they become good friends, and with Linguini’s help, Remy is on the path to realise his dream.

And if that is not charming enough, have a look at the trailers here. The Pixar people have taken great pains to make the food look edible. The animation, I heard, is supposed to be great too, considering that the lad and the rat don’t talk to each other, but just communicate through nods and frowns.

You can view the latest trailer here. You can also read a great article in Time magazine here, which goes into more detail about the work done behind this and other Pixar movies. The movie is releasing on the 29th of June, atleast here in Canada. Can’t wait…

Via : 3Dtotal

Now that Spidey’s been swinging around for a while, let me show you glimpses of how the amazing shots in the movie were made. It all looks so simple, but you will be startled to know what the team over at Imageworks and others did to get it all on screen – its just mind boggling!

The visual effects of spiderman 3 were primarily done at Sony Pictures Imageworks, with help from BUF, Evil Eye Pictures, Furious FX, Gentle Giant Studios, Giant Killer Robots, Halon Entertainment, Tweak Films and X1fx. Let us start with the swinging scenes. Swinging scenes were a mixture of live-action and Computer Generated (CG) elements. Like one such breakup shown here, Toby Maguire was shot against a blue-screen, which was replaced by the background. In the last part of the scene, the actor was fully replaced by a digital model, which gets violently wedged into the wall.

You can see the performance-capture methodology here, where the photos of the actor are used to digitally reconstruct them in 3D, which was in turn used for their performances in scenes which were too dangerous for the actual actors. A similar methodology was used for capturing performances in the Matrix films (2 and 3).

But the biggest challenge that faced the good people over at Imageworks was the sandman. It is never easy to do stuff like sand and water in CG. They are composed of millions of small particles, which have to interact with each other, and the environment around them. As you can see here, a basic shape was first animated, and then sand was added to the character. The motion of the sand was calculated by a combination of rigid-body dynamics and fluid-simulations. Basically, stacking was calculated as small spheres, like stacking up oranges, and then, smaller particles were simulated in each sphere to give a believable sand-like feel.

For the black-goo, they used a combination of hand-animation (hard-work) and simulations. You can see it here.

If you want to get more details, you can read the wonderful article at CGSociety here.

Yeah, the videos take their time to load, but are worth it. If you get an urge to see the movie after knowing how it was made, well, it is natural, don’t be alarmed.

After releasing Shrek 3 into the wild, what is Dreamworks upto these days? They are doing what they are good at, making another animated movie. This time, its about bees!

So, what’s so special about this movie, aptly titled the ‘The Bee Movie’? Well, for starters, it signals the return of Jerry Seinfeld. Yup, the same guy who disappeared after wrapping up his outrageously popular TV series. From what I’ve heard, Seinfeld wrote the movie and pitched it to Dreamworks animation. They loved it, and the rest is history (in the making).

Check out the trailers of the movie here. See them in sequence. They are hilarious. One even has Spielberg explaining how he made the E.T!! Also checkout Cartoon Brew’s take on the movie here. The comments are quite enlightening.

The cast includes Renée Zellweger, Matthew Broderick, John Goodman, Chris Rock and of course, Jerry Seinfeld.

Here is some great News! The people behind Ubuntu, the free Linux distro, have launched Ubuntu Studio.

Ubuntu Studio is a multimedia creation flavor of Ubuntu, aimed at both hobbyists and professionals alike. It comes pre-loaded with a suite of open-source applications used for creation of audio, video and graphic design. So, people waiting to record that dream song, or just wanting to prep-up that holiday video, can head straight to the download section.

Audio applications include Ardour 2 – A multitrack recorder/editor geared toward people familiar with Pro-Tools. For graphic design, there are The GIMP, Inkscape and Blender, along with plugins like dcraw to help with RAW camera files and wacom-tools for people with Wacom drawing tablets. PiTiVi, Kino, Cinepaint are included for video creation.

All the above applications are open-source and don’t cost a penny. Ubuntu has done the hard work of assembling all these together into one delicious distribution. For those who don’t know, Ubuntu is a free Linux distribution, which is gaining a lot of popularity. It satisfies both hardcore Linux users and newbies alike. Dell has even started to pre-load some of its machines with Ubuntu.

In the world of 3D animation and games, modeling is the process of creating 3D assets using the computer. Traditionally, modeling was done by starting off with primitives such as cubes, spheres and cones and pushing and pulling the vertices (or points) until the desired shape was reached. This was a very tedious and time consuming process, and was by no means, intuitive. Few artists found this enjoyable, until ZBrush arrived.

ZBrush is a modeling software, brought out by a company called pixologic. So, what is so different about ZBrush? ZBrush makes digital modeling more like sculpting clay. Instead of having to push and pull each point seperately, ZBrush allows the artist to sculpt models using a set of brushes. This also allows the artist to give textures to the models right away, instead of having to map textures, as in other software.

ZBrush also allows the artist to pose models. Posing in other software involves a complex process called rigging, where a network of bones have to be built and skinned to the character. ZBrush makes this simpler by automating the entire procedure. The models are also lit with a subtle glow, which gives the artist immediate feedback on how the model looks. All this has become possible because of the increased processing power of today’s hardware.

So what does all this mean? Have a look at some of the images created using ZBrush here. As you can see, the models are all insanely detailed, and dripping with life. ZBrush has also been used extensively in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies (second and third part), for sculpting Davy Jones and his fellow buccaneers.

ZBrush adoption does pose a challenge for many studios, as all studios have a well established pipelines, and integrating such a software takes time. ZBrush is also known to give heavy models (lots of detail, lots of trouble). But that is all changing now. So, the next time you see that amazing beast in the movies, you know whom to thank.

Animation, the art-form of the Silicon age, the culmination of almost every field, recreation of the world around us, I could go on… The possibilities are endless. Anything can be created and the only limiting factor is our imagination (and maybe hardware). Let me get you started on this wild journey. Here are some websites and forums that introduce us to the world of animation and visual effects.

3dtotal: An excellent website with the latest news and happenings in this field. This is the first website that I open in the morning. It also has a gallery with some outstanding work. For people more serious about animation, there are free stuff in the website, such as 3d models, tutorials, textures and a lot more. 3D total mainly started out as provider of textures and their texture CDs are used widely.

CartoonBrew: More of an animation blog. They post some interesting stuff here like views, commentaries, and of course, news. It is widely read and respected. It is funny too. Suitable for people who want to get their history right.

CGSociety: A great forum for people wanting to get into animation/CG (Computer Graphics). Their galleries are amazing. I head to CGSociety whenever I am in need of any inspiration. The forums discuss almost all aspects of animation and visual effects. All the good work find their way into the gallery. CGSociety also hosts portfolios of its members, connecting them to the job market.

CGTantra: A CGSociety-like forum for Indian CG enthusiasts. The quality of work here is on par with other international forums. They are quite active, and also hold gatherings in various cities.

AWN (Animation World Network): As the name suggests, you can find everything on animation here. News, job listings, events, school info and links to other great websites. Even Pixar suggests AWN as a good place to get started.

That was just a small list, a starting point. There are more sites such as cgarena, highend3d and so on, which you will come across when you get more into CG.