This is an incredibly awe worthy DVD course with award winning character artist Richard Smith, who has worked on titles such as Star Wars Battlefront 3, Time Splitters 4, Without Warning and Haze.

In this DVD, he takes you through modelling a Next-Gen game character, starting with a rough concept design and evolving it into a low-res base mesh. Then ZBrush is used to create further detail, specially those pesky clothing folds. With all this detail in, the sculpture is modified using a plugin for Maya called Nex. Finally, XNormal produces a normal map and is ready to bring into Maya.

This DVD is aimed at artists with a basic understanding of polygon modelling in Maya, but the techniques demonstrated can be applied using almost any other 3D modelling software.

Noise Industries, developer of visual effects tools for the postproduction and broadcast markets, announced that new development partner, Storek Studio, has released an update to its widely popular nVeil video plug-in exclusively for the FxFactory platform. nVeil creates unique kaleidoscopic visual effects by filtering source imagery through vector graphic veils. nVeil’s expanding library comes preloaded with custom-designed veils and keyframeable parameters for user customisation. FxFactory® powered plug-ins extend the visual effects capabilities of Adobe® After Effects® CS3 / CS4, Apple® Final Cut Studio®, Apple Motion® and Apple Final Cut® Express applications.

“The FxFactory effects engine and its connection to the creative motion graphics world is a perfect fit for us,” said Rich Storek, chief architect, Storek Studio.

MAXON just unveiled the release 11.5 of CINEMA 4D.

They have added lots of new features such as improved workflow, accelerated render engine and an enhanced picture viewer, which lets you compare test renders so you can see the result of your picture adjustments. C4D now takes full advantage ot Snow Leopard in Mac and Windows 7 in PC.

Their very popular MoGraph module has had a major revamp as well, with integrated dynamics engine and several great additions. MoGraph counts with the support of MoDynamics, which is based on the proven Bullet physics library and gives you a simple way to create realistic motion. Now, as well as controlling cloned objects in all kinds of ways using MoGraph’s powerful effectors, you can add dynamics for a more convincing realism.

Di-O-Matic has released Voice-O-Matic v3 for use as a lip synchronization plug-in for Autodesk 3DS Max.

Voice-O-Matic is a powerful, easy-to-use plug-in which automates the lip synchronization process for your animated CG characters directly in 3ds max. Simply feed a recorded audio file to the plugin and it will automatically generate timing and lip position data for your characters. Voice-O-Matic analyses the phonemes within an audio file and creates standard keyframes, allowing you to quickly tweak results.

Rob Bredow, CTO of Sony Pictures Imageworks’ has announced 5 applications to be released as open source: ” This software can be freely used by large and small studios around the world. We’ve intentionally chosen popular non-restrictive licensing models to help ensure you have lots of options.

Each of these projects have passionate people behind them who are interested in seeing the code widely used. We’re into the idea of building small development communities around this code. If you’re interested in contributing, join the respective mailing lists and introduce yourself.

Take a moment to familiarize yourself with Imageworks’ open source offerings. I hope you find something useful.”