“Doing the assembly line work” - Arch-Factory Contest

After a couple of months life, the new Arch-Factory website launched a fresh new CG contest, starting on September 2011 and finishing on November 2011. 


Here the Rules and Guidelines:

1. The competition begins on September 2011 and will run till November 2011 GMT +1.
2. The subject of this competition is creation of Product visualizations.
3. We don’t suggest any kind of product/object. We have only one condition – the visualization must be REALISTIC.
4. The minimum requirement is to submit an image for each of these milestones – Concept Sketch or reference photo, Modeling, Texturing, Lighting and Rendering Post Effects and Composting, Final Image.
5. You can use every 3D software you want, post processing inside Photoshop or other 2D software are allowed. We require information about software you used.
6. You can post up to three different camera angles for one scene (closeups for example).
7. The work you submit to this Competition must be your own personal work, groups and companies are not allowed.
8. Final submission resolution should be not lower then 1200px for 720px

We are still contacting our sponsors for prizes, so check for news on Arch-Factory.com
I'm gonna be one of the judges for this competition and I hope to see a lot of entries :)
Good luck to all !!


EDIT (07-09-2011) : model+model is gonna be the main sponsor! Prizes set and registration form up !! 

PhoenixFD 2.0 beta test

After receiving the beta access to latest PhoenixFD release, I decided to make some tests and see how powerful is this effects simulator :)
First one, a simple burning cylinder:

Second one, a campfire :)

Third...a burning tire is coming!! Watch out!

Last one...this time i switched to fluid simulation, and played a little bit with materials to achieve a, I hope, good result :)

See on next update ;)

Autodesk 3ds max 2012 - Hotfix2

The 3ds max update process give us a new set of fixes for max 2012; not so impressive, but it's always well-accepted ;)


Release notes :
- Fixes multiple CAT problems
- Fixes an initialRollupState Type error in MAXScript
- The MAXScript Return statement now properly migrates the return value to the heap
- Fixes sub-objects being displayed at an offset to the parent geometry
- Point Helpers can now have modifiers assigned to them once more
- Fixes a program error when opening Slate
- XRef Scene now respects the Layer visibility flag


Download : 3dsmax - 3dsmaxdesign


Have a nice day!

SplineLand

Yesterday evening a new section called "SplineLand" appeared on R&D Group forum...the 3 images inside this section are simply amazing !! Modelling a complex terrain with only CAD splines is going to be so funny with that work in progress plugin :)
LINK
Here first images from developpers...

I've a good experience with multiscatter plugin, so I think that this one will be a great one too !

No release date or roadmap leaked, just wait for news.

Have a nice day! 

NOX Render - TEST

I made a first test with NOX, using an interior scene converted from lightwave. The interface is really good and simple, and if you know maxwell, NOX is a lot similar especially the material section. 


Speed isn't a good thing now, but i'm sure they're working on it and in the next releases there will be some improvements. A good thing is that it's really stable and after 5h working i've haven't had any crash.


This is the first test after 1h 30min rendering on my laptop (i7-720qm) :

There's still a lot of noise, but the light is really good ;)

Stay tuned for updates!

Update: a second test, 10h calculation on a i7-2600. It's hard to remove that noise...