We are all looking forward to the UGM tonight with our very technical friends at Pixar! Over 200 people in attendance... should be a great night and plenty of Escape $ behind the bar!

Hello world!

We nerds are back to get deeper into storage and the various options and solutions out there. We're starting a multi-part blog series to try and help people get a better technical grasp over storage for media and entertainment. There's a vast majority out there that see storage as a mystic and cryptic situation; and we aim to help change that and aid normal people in their battles on the subject. We get a large number of enquiries about this at Escape Studios - and for too long, too many people have been purchasing the wrong hardware and software for the right purpose.

We have some exciting news for aspiring modo artists wanting to learn modo straight from the experts. Luxology's very own expert trainer, Andy Brown will be delivering an introductory two-day course at Escape Studios in June. This course is ideal for artists who are new to modo and want to learn more about the interface and efficient modelling and shading workflows. You will also discover how to accelerate the production process by utilising time-saving modo features like presets, assemblies and kits.

Our friends at Chaos have developed a new product called Phoenix Fluid Dynamics which is designed to simulate fluids in a quicker and more realistic way.  Apparently, it simplifies and speeds up the process of simulating things like fire, smoke and haze.

We're pleased to announce that we’re running a ‘3D for Visual Effects’ classroom course, which runs for 12 weeks and includes hands-on practical training using the latest industry standard software and techniques.

On Wednesday we were at the Apollo cinema in Picadilly, for our CG Workflows event with Framestore, looking at some of the extremely difficult shots they were asked to tackle on Avatar.

Massive Software, developer of the Academy Award®-winning 3D animation software for AI-driven characters, has released Massive 4.0.

This 3D reconstruction of ancient Pompeii is quite neat. Generated with Procedural’s CityEngine, it shows how quickly a 3D city can be created using a plug-in, and eliminate the time-consuming tasks of manual modeling and design often required in games, post-production and architectural visualisation. It is also up to 10 times more efficient at creating urban environments than existing packages. It is completely brand new to Escape Studios – no need to say we are quite excited about it.

Our friends at Autodesk have released the first service pack for Mudbox 2010.

Very recently there has been a release of two games engines that you can use at home.