Category: Visual Effects

A few years ago, 3D animator Justin Leach shared his experiences in Japan at Production I.G with AWN. That was prior to his involvement on the recently released GHOST IN THE SHELL 2: INNOCENCE. Now he returns with excerpts from his personal production diary about working on the acclaimed anime, which VFXWORLD is pleased to bring its readers.

Taking a page out of THE MATRIX and THE LORD OF THE RINGS, Columbia TriStar Home Ent. intends to release a SPIDER-MAN 2.5 DVD in 2005 with additional vfx and action scenes, director Sam Raimi told Website IGN.com. He indicated that it was a financial decision and not an artistic one on his part.

Craft Animations releases its first commercial plug-in suite for 3ds max, Craft Camera Tools, which will be publicly presented at the official release of 3ds max 7, Oct. 14, in Stockholm, Sweden. Craft Camera Tools is used by animators in realtime to steer cameras with a joystick or keyboard in the 3ds max viewport. Four types of cameras and two help tools, are available:

One of last summers most widely watched and discussed disaster flicks with Oscar Bake-Off contending vfx, THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, hits DVD shelves on Oct. 12, 2004, (Fox Home Ent., $29.98).

Electric Rain Inc. announced the upcoming release of Swift 3D Xpress for Mac OS X. Swift 3D Xpress is a 3D extension accessible directly from within the Macromedia Flash MX 2004 interface. Swift 3D Xpress allows Flash MX 2004 users to select any vector object on the stage in Flash, open it into the Xpress editing interface, customize their 3D scene by extruding, rotating, lighting and animating the vector object, and then render it out to a self-contained Movie Clip in either vector or raster form.

SGI workstations running ART VPS' accelerated ray tracing chip sets were demonstrated publicly for the first time at the SGI Technology Forum in Paris. The AR350 chips, configured in sets of eight and 16, are expected to be available in SGI workstations within the next two months.

Toon Boom Animation announced the release of Symphony. With features such as morphing, basic inverse kinematics and "glue" (automatic joint connecting) that enhance the paperless animation production process, Symphony enables studios to produce high quality digital animation. Advanced drawing and asset management tools combined with a seamless, integrated workflow saves significant overhead costs while adding value to their animations. Symphony also building on the advanced features provided by Opus and Concerto.

Eden FX (STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE) is integrating modo, the new subdivision surface and polygonal modeling platform, into its production pipeline. Eden FX chose modo for its speed, advanced toolset and intuitive workflow.