E-on software, the leader in digital nature technologies and the maker of Vue and LumenRT, announced the prepared release of their new revolutionary plant modelling and rendering technology called The Plant Factory. The Plant Factory represents the culmination of e-on software's decades of expertise in the field of digital nature and delivers unsurpassed realism and performance. The Plant Factory can work as a standalone system or can be integrated into other CG application such as e-on software Vue. The integration of TPF and Vue is seamlessly and expand the software bringing new options and tools for controlling and editing vegetation. Specific parameters from the plant graph can be extracted to the Plant Editor to create simplified high-level controls and facilitate your plant editing process. Furthermore, when used inside of Vue,
Software
The Blender Foundation has released Blender 2.66. This release contains long awaited features like rigid body physics simulation, dynamic topology sculpting and matcap display. Other new features include Cycles hair rendering, support for high pixel density displays, much better handling of premultiplied and straight alpha transparency, a vertex bevel tool, a mesh cache modifier and a new SPH particle fluid dynamics solver.
In addition to the new features, over 250 bugs that existed in previous releases have been fixed. Blender 2.66 is available now on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and FreeBSD.
Autodesk has launched 123D Creature, the latest in its family of consumer iPad apps. The tool enables users to sculpt and pose 3D characters using a basic skeletal system, paint the models and export them for 3D printing.
Making original characters with Autodesk 123D Creature starts with a simple skeleton creator where users lay out the basic anatomy of their creature in digital clay. Multi-Touch gestures allow users to thicken, stretch and sculpt their creature with many of the tools familiar to users of the popular 123D Sculpt app. Once finished sculpting and shaping, a creature can be airbrushed or adorned with decals and textures imported from the user’s iPad photo library. To show off a finished creation, users can bring the creature into the render room where they can customize lighting and shadows, apply filters, and import background photos to generate amazing images to share with their friends.
Lightmap has released HDR Light Studio 4.1, a free update to its real-time image-based lighting tool, adding a new Live link to 3ds Max and V-Ray.
Artists can now light their scenes with real-time feedback using V-Ray RT as the ActiveShade renderer and HDR Light Studio’s innovative interactive HDR canvas. Sophisticated lighting environments can be created in moments to perfectly light and reflect in your shot. It’s an amazing new approach to light V-Ray scenes, seeing the lighting interact with your materials in your final shot.
NewTek announced that LightWave 11.5, the newest version of its award-winning 3D modeling, animation and rendering software for artists and designers, is now available.
LightWave 11.5 includes new features and functionality that enhance creativity and streamline productivity for everyone—from individual artists and designers to large animation or visual effects studios. Some of the many new features in LightWave 11.5 include the Genoma character rigging system with modular presets, predator and prey Flocking capabilities, per-object Instancing control, and soft-body Bullet Dynamics with support for FiberFX. Also included are Interchange Tools supporting Adobe After Effects cameras and Pixologic’s Zbrush, stereoscopic and depth-of-field motion blur in the Viewport Preview Renderer (VPR), major workflow enhancements, and more.