I’m a subD addict – I use them all the time. I model with them, rig low-density cages and apply displacement maps that apply on subdivision surfaces – the advantages over straight up polygons and nurbs surfaces is just stellar. Pixar has made this technology open source and aside from Autodesk, has worked with Luxology, the makers of my modeler of choice, so it’s in my hands, right? Pixar! Dudes!

Well, that’s what I thought. Like most cg artists I know, I was sure that I was profiting from this technology. Truth is… not fully.  At FMX2013, Bill Polson made a great playdoyer for why the industry as a whole will profit from subdiv technology becoming a standard. And that’s subdiv technology, not subd… respect the authors: Ed Catmull, Mark Meyer, Tony DeRose (Pixar), Charles Loop (Microsoft Research) and Matthias Niessner (Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg).

The advantages over polys and nurbs are well-accepted, and AlexK wrote them up in his review, so I’ll point to the bigger deal that had escaped me… computational efficiency.

Before you tune out, my artistic friends, let me rephrase that into 1) near-realtime feedback of dense, sculpted meshes that hold up under extreme deformation and 2) consistently transfer across various applications, including games engines.

There is no 100% implementation now available that allows all this (Maya and mudbox present the closest thing right now), but the promise is there – in the form OpenSubdiv. Bill talked about the choice to use the Microsoft public license because it includes the patents behind this technology (!!!) but also causes some legal issues which are preventing the Blender foundation from full implementation. A glitch which – Bill assured us – is being addressed.

Another key word is hierarchical layering – meaning that each subdivision level that is sent to the gpu for rendering can be processed. So things like displacement can be calculated in on the GPU while the low-density base mesh is being deformed on the CPU – in iterations. The importance of this can be summed up as efficient level-of-detail processing. For further technical advantages, I point you to this autodesk video highlighting their cooperation.

I’d like to sum the advantages from the POV of us artists, because we need to be vocal about getting this implemented across the board… from CAD software to games to film and vfx software. A world of play-nice toolsets and immediate artistic feedback that you can trust to hold up across pipelines is just too necessary.

1) model clean, lean meshes that subdivide according to defined creasing values (or edge-weighting) and send these meshes from one tool to another with consistent results (go to 26:50 in the video above)
2) get rapid feedback of detailed surface displacement not only while sculpting, but while animating and and lighting
3) manage large scenes efficiently via level-of-detail controls that optimize hardware usage. This applies to distance-from-camera controls as well as to localized displacement effects such as Merida’s horse Angus plodding through snow.
4) know that your work is compatible with further feature sets like ptex texturing

SubDivs? You know you want ‘em!

Artists are often the most intent observers of natural phenomena, and so it’s little surprise that the work behind digital characters such as Gollum or Gandalf’s horse is as intense as scientific research and indeed, relies heavily on the science. The latest fxguide podcast features Simon Clutterbuck and James Jacobs and gives a fairly potent glimpse into said intensity. The toolsets for simulating muscle, sinews, skin and fat are approaching a detail that must make scientists listen up and think “how can I get my hands on that?” Click the ape to listen in on a very interesting podcast.

I remember when they did this with a TRex and it cost millions.

Check it out here.
Joeri… Ulven… and the rest of the team… hoT!

Yes, I should be working. I should be working with one of these!

Edit:
video won’t link directly, go see it here
Or read the splash page here.

Houdini 12 is out. In the video above, the human characters are a bit stiff, but look great! LoL! Okay – those are the script-reading team from SideFX. Congratulations, guys! Impressive optimizations and feature set. Available for smaller budgets via their apprentice program. Hot!

Okay… it’s Friday… I’ve seen Dolphins do this before, but never to the degree that this guy does: he makes subset after subset of toroidal bubble and pushes it about his pen. Followed by other toroidal phenomena.

The PAP developers have decided to give out 4.0 for free. (They’ve had free offers all along, but this is their full software.) I fully recommend this… it’s on of the best for pencil roughs. Thanks to Fabio Manucci for the heads up.

Interested in animation? Interested in being interested in animation? No matter, at $10 you can buy a license for a fairly powerful piece of animation software. $40 gets you the pro version. Thing is, enough people have to buy licenses before any of the purchases are honored. I’ve been using this software since its days as a lightwave plug-in, I vouch for it for character and creature animation purposes. Its the only software I’ve experienced that made rigging fun. Click the image and check it out… the community forum has lots of learning videos, there are loads more if you become a member.

Bring it on!

I stumbled upon this dedicated medical simulation software while checking out the open source dynamics engine Bullet. This is cool for a number of reasons… first, its a great example of the current tendency for animation technologies to target specific markets and second, its a wonderful example of the degree to which visualization must take temporal concerns into account. The leap from illustration to animation demands that we tackle an object’s movement as well as its static visual representation – and the quality of these two elements need to be synched with each other. All too often, the visuals are pushed to an extreme and the movements lag behind, resulting in a disconnect within the viewer. Click the heart to visit physigenics.

CEO Bruce Robet Dell says “Unlimited Detail is basically a 3 dimensional search algorithm.” And the search query is your render resolution. Makes sense. Its a good thing when something reminds you how young and potentially unripe our current processes are, and how important the use of metaphor is in conveying this. Dell compares the poly race with the colors race, where an initial 2 colors were replaced by 4, then 16,  256 then finally 16bit and 32bit color – with the exception that the human vision system can’t perceive many colors beyond 32bit whereas it is much more finely tuned to registering contour and surface details. So whether this technology will grow to be the solution or not, Dell makes a very convincing case for this alternative approach.
Edit: here’s another point cloud approach, apparently an optimized voxel developed by atomontage:

Thoughts?

Sachform – makers of hi-quality HDR libraries – has now released their HDR viewer for free. Its a great app for perusing your hdrs and now at an unbeatable price.

Here’s another sculpting application, following in the innovative footsteps of the game-changer zBrush, competitor mudbox and the indy 3Dcoat. (sculpt by onim) What is very impressive is the haptic feel of the interface – this feels much less technical than artistic. Of course – its an early test version, but already very impressive. Kudos to Tomas Pettersson, from Sweden. I suspect we owe a lot to the long, dark winters up north. Check out his other, equally impressive projects and let him know you appreciate his openness!

By the way, I praised the aritistic feel that this interfacce conveys, but there’s no lack of impressive technical implementation in there. Check out the real-time mesh tesselation going on here, and the brush’s topology awareness: