Great news Softimage users out there… the line-up for the launch Softimage Creatives user group meeting has been released. And for those of you who are hoping to attend, I think you’ll agree this is a programme to get excited about.

Here’s the list of speakers and  topics for May 29^th 2012:

Special effects with computer graphics are all the rage recently. There are very few films produced these days without jaw dropping stunts courtesy of the digital department. But a lot of directors still prefer to shoot the real thing if they can as it nearly always looks better than the CG equivalent.

The fifth week of the Maya Core evening course is equivalent to day five of the intensive day time class, so we have now covered one week of the comparable daytime course. The advantage of the evening course is you have more time to soak in the deluge of information showered onto you, but the daytime class are constantly thinking in Maya so perhaps absorb it more thoroughly.

I was sitting in the front row, next to Rodrigo from Brazil, on Monday night, as our class made an effort to complete the exercise of modelling fruit in NURBS, before we moved on to making a chair in Polygons. I felt a little more confident, after practicing my Primitive Man Online tutorial last weekend, and I looked forward to shading and texturing my wonky apple. But before I got to that moment there was a NURB banana skin, waiting for me to slip on.

“What have I got myself into?…” was the worrying thought running through my mind, as my second class in Maya Core reached the half-way point. This was the less than confident start to my personal experiment, where I’m hoping to demonstrate how Escape Studios can instruct a complete 3D newbie, and turn me into a (hopefully) competent Maya operator.

Digital artist Kelly Richardson recently completed an artist’s residency at the Pixel Palace, a new digital media arts programme of the Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle upon Tyne. During her time there, she began initial research and production into an ambitious new three projection video installation entitled ‘Mariner 9’. During her residency, the Pixel Palace commissioned a short film about the work being developed where she explains some of her processes and ideas behind the new installation.

Arthur Christmas is a must for any child wanting to get into the Christmas spirit this year. I know this as both of my children loved it and my test was to see whether or not I actually stay awake!

It's just fun. The CG is not meant to be ground-breaking - it simply is not Tintin - but that really wasn't the point. If you just want to go see a feel good children's movie then there is nothing better. It also has a great cast and some of my personal favourites actors: Hugh Laurie, Jim Broadbent and Bill Nighy (who continually makes me smile whatever he appears in or talks over).

Aardman have done a great job and they should be very happy with it, it has their stamp all over it. 

Enjoy!

As a creative professional, we hope you’re going to find the information below as exciting as we do. Last week, 14^th November 2011, NVIDIA announced the arrival of NVIDIA Maximus, a technology that is set to revolutionise the way we all work. Delivering significantly increased speed and productivity to any pipeline with a single system that allows you to achieve a range of compute-intensive and graphics-intensive tasks simultaneously, you may start to wonder how you ever managed without it.

When Wemo Media launched theblu.com a few weeks ago they quickly attracted a lot of attention. But what exactly is it?

A few months back FX Guide released an article on The Science of Fluid Sims. If you didn’t manage to catch it at the time, you should definitely check it out now. It is a great read for anyone looking to know a little more about the science and evolution of fluid simulation and what the future holds for its craft. The article should also set you up nicely to understand the importance of what the company Exotic Matter are working towards with their new product Naiad.