CG artists can get numerous Plant Species through Plant Factory Nursery launched by Cornucopia3D

Cornucopia3D, a part  & parcel of e-on software and the most recognized online VUE community designed for CG artists just declared the availability of the Plant Factory Nursery, the one stop online shop for 3D Vegetation.

Presently the Plant Factory Nursery consists of more than 100 plant species, and it is developing quickly.

Lots of the Plant Factory content are completely animated (wind and breeze), and contains automatic age and health settings.

The users can get direct access to all Plant Factory content that Cornucopia3D hosts, free or paid for, from: tpf.cornucopia3d.com

Existing TPF well-suited products involve the complete Plant Factory product lines, and all VUE 11 and VUE 2014 products (well matched with other e-on software applications).

The Users of other leading 3D modeling programs like 3ds Max, Maya, Cinema 4D, Lightwave, Modo etc can get advantages from TPF content by applying Plant Factory Converter, an user-friendly and cost effective application to transform TPF content to standard 3D formats.

For getting more updates, visit at www.cornucopia3d.com

Brief overview of Plant Factory: Plant Factory is a ground-breaking 3D plant formation technology, catering to the CG, SFX, Architecture and Gaming communities. It provides custom-centric solutions for all audiences.

Plant Factory provides the following benefits to the users:-

• Produce various types of vegetation, from plain grass to highly decorated hero trees
• Generate vegetation by painting it, accumulating simple building blocks, or entirely graphing all plant properties
• Create procedural geometry and materials of unrestricted detail
• Animate all plant characteristics with specific wind and breeze algorithms
• Export 3D vegetation to any 3D application like standard .OBJ, .3DS or animated .FBX
• Render stills and animations for compositing jobs or to be applied as billboards
• Extend their plant library via a committed 3D plant model library

For getting more information, go through www.plantfactory-tech.com

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Published By

Tuhin Maity

www.sketchup4architect.com

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Autodesk Reveals 2015 Versions of Its 3D Animation Tools

Autodesk unveiled 2015 release of its major 3D animation tools that include 3ds Max, Mudbox, MotionBuilder, Softimage, Maya, and Maya LT. Maya LT, which is the newest addition to the lineup is a cost-effective 3D animation and modeling tool for professional indie game makers. Maya LT 2015:

• Offers cloud integration through the Maya LT interface
• Unfold 3D for creation of UV maps from 3D models
• Substance material integration for applying materials generated in the Allegorithmic Substance Designer procedural texture creation tool to 3D models

Autodesk also declared the accessibility of the 2015 Entertainment Creation Suite for 3D animation and visual effects. 3ds Max, Maya, Entertainment Creation Suites, and Maya LT can be obtained in two configurations: as a perpetual license or desktop subscription.

With innovative new tools like Bifrost, redesigned core parts of the applications focusing on performance and user friendly features, the 2015 releases simplifies complex tasks and allows artists to use their creative power.

The new features in 3ds Max 2015 are mentioned below:

• ShaderFX
• Point cloud dataset support for reality-capture workflows
• New viewport performance optimizations
• A redesigned scene explorer so artists can manage large scenes
• ActiveShade support for the Nvidia Mental Ray renderer
• New Python scripting support

Mudbox 2015 includes streamlined mesh refinement for retopologizing and new Sculpt Layer and Paint Layer groups for organizing and identifying specific layers in complex scenes. Softimage 2015 is the last release of Softimage and helps in:

• Alembic caching
• Allowing enhancements to the ICE platform
• Animatable weight maps in Syflex cloth

MotionBuilder 2015 highlights on motion-capture workflow that includes:

• A new plug-in for Microsoft Kinect to capture body movements.
• Animatable Depth of Field and Follow Focus camera options that supports in re-creating real-world cinematography elements.
• A library with 100 commonly required character animations in FBXformat.

Maya 2015 has the Bifrost procedural effects platform that supports an artist-friendly workflow for complex simulation and rendering tasks and is applied to:

• Near-photorealistic liquids
• XGen Arbitrary Primitive Generator for easily creating highly detailed geometry, like hair, fur, and foliage
• Geodesic Voxel Binding for skinning characters
• ShaderFX, a new node-based visual interface for shader programming
• Support for Pixar’s OpenSubdiv libraries
• Enhanced polygon modeling tools
• Expanded UV options

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Published By

Tuhin Maity

www.sketchup4architect.com

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Brigade offers the Game Developers to experience next-generation cloud gaming

OTOY Inc. just released brigade. Brigade refers to an influential graphics API that is useful to substitute Microsoft DirectX or OpenGL graphics inside most recognized game engines like Epic Games' Unreal Engine or Unity, performing as a backend for high quality graphics devoid of affecting the game logic.

With Brigade, the game developers will be able to utilize the power cloud computing for producing the next-generation games.

Brigade offers real-time ray tracing and path tracing of game environments through its high-tech technology. It can simulate light to be visible in the real world for bringing in-game interactive graphics which are result in providing best movie effects.

Now Game Developer can render amazingly complicated 3D scenes, materials, lighting and objects in OctaneRender™ and load these into Brigade for gaming and other interactive usages. Brigade is now well versed with 15 of the most recognizable modeling programs through OctaneRender™ plugins.

Later on OTOY will transform Brigade to Amazon Machine Instances (AMIs). The game developers can access it through Amazon EC2 for performing testing and development of next-generation games.

For getting more updates on Brigade visit http://brigade3.com/. If any Game Developers want to test it, please send mail to OTOY at info@otoy.com.

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Published By

Tuhin Maity

www.sketckup4architect.com

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Sefaira is organizing PER/FORM Live Design Competition for building designer

Sefaira is going to conduct the PER/FORM Live Design Competition, a building design contest for expert designers to present their skills in Performance Based Design by integrating their superior talents with state-of-the art building design software.

The competition is arranged in two parts an online round supported with an unmatched live, in-person design competition to be held at the Pratt Institute in Manhattan on Saturday, May 17th. The prospective attendees can apply for registration during April 2. Winners will be selected in each of the two rounds.

In cooperation with platform sponsor SketchUp; architectural partner BKSK Architects; design partner, The Public Society; media partner Metropolis Magazine; and academic partner, Pratt Institute; Sefaira encourages architecture professionals and students based in United States and Canada to produce and present designs that follows the utmost standards concerning artistic form and building performance.

Participants can get free access to Sefaira's real-time performance analysis software and the intuitive 3D design tool SketchUp so that they quickly generate as well as iterate superior quality design concepts.

There will be experts who will provide the proper guidance to the participants for creating top most performance designs.

The winner will be chosen amid top 30 designs from the online round at the live event in NYC. Besides, thirty contestants from the online round will be eligible to participate head-to-head in the live contest.

Register for the event online

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Published By

Tuhin maity

www.sketchup4architect.com

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How to utilize various toolbars with Sketchup 2014

Choose ‘Toolbars’ which is available in View menu. A new window will be visible and the users can check or uncheck the toolbars that are associated with SketchUp. The users will be capable of drawing the toolbars to the top or side of their screen and imbed them. One of the buttons situated at the right side is tagged with “New” and the users click on it, an empty toolbar will be visible. The users will be able to draw respective tool buttons from the bars they live on to their new toolbar.

The users can also eliminate unused buttons by dragging them off a toolbar and into their modeling arena. But this can alter the look of the supplied toolbars. But if the users want to preserve them, select the ‘Reset All’ button. It returns the buttons to their original position devoid of changing the custom toolbar.

The “Large Tool Set” toolbar was quite peculiar in SketchUp 2013, but in 2014 it now performs itself and will put on view as a double column when put in the left side to the screen.

Some of the drawing tools (through “Getting Started” toolbar) come up with black arrows that point down close to the icons. Select the arrow and a drop down menu will be visible through which the users can avail some tools. The Circle and Polygon tools are now positioned at the back of the Rectangle tool and the Freehand tool is now afterwards the Pencil.

This feature will reorganizes the toolbars by the tools currently utilized up front and ready to perform. The newbie sketchup users become disoriented in the large quantity of icons available on screen. But customizing the toolbars, the users can keep track of their used icons and fulfill their requirements.

The Arc tool also contains a drop down, providing new techniques to sketch arcs which are very useful for newbie sketchup users. In order to get more updates on sketchup 2014, visit Bob Lang’swebsite

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Published By

Tuhin Maity

www.sketchup4architect.com

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Thea Presto2 Edition v1.3 is just launched

Thea Render is an intuitive GPU renderer having a strong material system and its own sophisticated studio to deliver spectacular 3d rendering design.

Now the users can avail the most updated version, Thea Presto2 Edition v1.3. This latest edition is known as Presto Square (code name) and contains some exclusive features as well as significant enhancements for Presto engine.

The available new features:-

• Presto will now perform on both GPU and CPU concurrently.
• Presto is updated with complete instancing support. Now the users can render unlimited instanced polygons without any difficulties. Presto can now deal with all the geometric complications as per your requirements.
• Presto is now totally revamped regarding algorithmic design. Several sampling enhancements like for scenes with area lights, image-based lighting, subsurface scattering, scenes in the presence of many light sources and antialiasing filtering, are included with presto.
• Now Presto supports subsurface scattering and volumetrics for producing quick, accurately pragmatic rendering, devoid of any approximations.
• Now the users can perform perfect spectral rendering with the new improved Physical Sky. It gives in superior results in greater values of turbidity.
• In nature, a common observation for very smooth objects is that their reflections fluctuate from blurred to sharp progressively while the viewing angle transform from normal to shallow. With the inclusion of Micro Roughness, the users can easily deal with this situation.
• The users will get the ability to slice and render the geometry ahead of a near and far distance and view inside objects and constructions

Downloadable link
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Published By
Tuhin Maity
www.sketchup4architect.com
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Next Limit Technologies unveils Maxwell for Sketchup 2013

Next Limit together with Maxwell render team just introduced the availability of Maxwell for sketchup 2013.

It is a plugin that has been intended for creating stunning rendering in sketchup with Maxwell's superior rendering technology.

Maxwell for SketchUp consists of an in-built render engine that does not require any other applications or programs. The users don't have to export the scenes in any place as it can be performed from the SketchUp's own interface.

This new plug-in is well versed with both the Maxwell Render Suite and Maxwell for SketchUp packages and the customers can acquire it at free of cost. The plugin has been modified so that it can fully perform with Sketchup 2013.

The plugin contains the following features :-

• Supplementary support for SketchUp 2013
• The plug-in is now distributed as an RBZ file
• The color picker now includes both RGB and HSV modes
• Added support for setting per-channel output formats
• The Environment page performs same as Maxwell Studio

Download both free, demo and paid version www.maxwellrender.com

Read more info

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Published By
Tuhin Maity
www.sketchup4architect.com
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OTOY Inc launched OctaneRender and OctaneRender plugins for artists, animators & designers

OTOY Inc just released some exclusive 3d rendering software alias OctaneRender together with OctaneRender plugins. OctaneRender plugins are compatible with a wide array of top 3D modeling programs like Sketchup, GRAPHISOFT's ArchiCAD, Blender, Daz 3D's DAZ Studio, NewTek's LightWave, SmithMicro Software's Poser, Robert McNeel & Associates' Rhinocerus (or Rhino), The Foundry's MODO, Maxon's CINEMA 4D, and a host of Autodesk software including 3ds MAX, AutoCAD, Inventor, Maya, Revit, and Softimage as well as Daz 3D's Carrara. The students can avail the plugins for Blender and Autodesk's 3ds MAX at free of cost.

OctaneRender is ideal for professional artists, animators, and designers to provide stunning visual effects as well as produce real-time digital characters and surroundings.

The plugin contains the following exclusive features:

• Wonderful simulations of reality with impartial rendering: OctaneRender simulates like an electromagnetic wave. With OctaneRender, the 3d artists can maintain scene accuracy completely as the plugin is based on the physics of light, confining all light interactions in the scene and simulating them perfectly depicting the accurate representations of real life.

• Unparalleled performance through parallel processing: OctaneRender is based on the most updated graphics processors or GPUs to make the rendering process & time 10 to 50 times

• Unflinching flexibility with results in real-time: OctaneRender comes up with a authentic WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) rendering setting that facilitates the artists to modify the materials and lighting in real-time. OctaneRender provides support for some of the superior material and lighting simulations which result in transforming the process light interacts with objects in the real world perfectly. It can perform well with any complicated scene and any alterations are quickly updated on screen involving a Regardless of the complexity of the scene, changes are instantly updated on screen, involving an insightful workflow.

The students can download a demo version

Buy all the plugins for other leading 3d modeling programs.

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Published By

Tuhin Maity

www.sketchup4architect.com

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EdgeInspector version 1.1 for Sketchup

EdgeInspector for sketchup is developed by Fredo. It is a useful sketchup plugin. It contains a standardize script that is used to examine and resolve on some edge deformities like overlaps, tiny edges, tiny gaps, split edges, coplanar edges in any models. These deformities may arise after DXF imports and Intersections. Presently the plugin supports five edge faults.

EdgeInspector for sketchup contains a Geometrical Magnifier Glass having capability for scrutinizing details ahead of the indigenous zoom aptitude of Sketchup (2x – 5000x).

This sketchup plugin is free and can be utilized for commercial and individual application. The plugin is compatible with sketchup version SU6, SU7, SU8, SU13. It performs better with SU8 M1 and above. It is available in English and French Version.

In order to avail it visit sketchucation plugin store and select Tools>Fredo Tools where it is installed by default.

The plugin contains the following exclusive features:- Selection of edges and faces (through clic, double-clic, triple-clic, by modifiers Shift and Ctrl) Tape Measure involving inferencing (point to point or parallel from an edge) Move Vertex, Edges or Faces with inferencing Edge Eraser - Erase selected edges and faces with “DEL key” Repair Now, to resolve deformities separately Ignore Repair, mark a defect so that it is ignored by the global repairing of EdgeInspector

The latest version of EdgeInspector comes up with managing of 2 new defects:

• lost junctions in contours
• needle-eyes, i.e. interlacing of contours

Downloadable link

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Published By

Tuhin Maity

www.sketchup4architect.com

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GKWare Door Maker plugin for Sketchup

Gary Kernan, having huge experience over 15 years for creating cabinet and curved staircase building, has developed Door Maker plugin for sketchup. The plugin is compatible with SketchUp 7, SketchUp 8, SketchUp 2013 and available in Chinese, English, French, Russian.

Door Maker plugin for sketchup facilitates the sketchup users to produce parametrically dialed cabinet door components for various types of cabinets containing diversified sizes, styles and textures. The supplementary textures can also be added. The users can effortlessly settle these components inside their design.

There exist 7 types of styles that range from plain, shaker, square, arch, cathedral, double arch and double cathedral.

The users can select 15 types of wood grain textures. There prevails an Image folder having textures as well as a texture.txt file. With the help of the proper naming conventions, just include both a horizontal and a vertical texture in jpg format. As for example maple_hor.jpg and maple_ver.jpg and provide a single entry in the textures.txt file. The users will also be able to reschedule the order of the textures in the textures.txt file.

Follow the below mentioned steps for generating doors:

• One is European style cabinets. The users can apply it with a single click. Put up the size concerning the door and door gap as per your requirements. The door is included and placed to the right by the gap amount.
• The second step is click and drag or click and type in the width. For this purpose, the lower left hand corner of the door is placed accurately where you click.

Downloadable link

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Published By
Tuhin Maity
www.sketchup4architect.com
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