Friday, November 22nd, 2024Posted by Jim ThackerEpic Games releases RealityCapture 1.5html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"Epic Games has released RealityCapture 1.5, the latest version of the photogrammetry software.Its a major update, making it possible to export 3D models in USD format for use in VFX and animation pipelines, and to export Digital Terrain Models as 16-bit height maps for use in games.The release also improves texture generation, particularly when scanning humans or generating in-game assets, and makes a number of significant workflow improvements.Converts large mixed data sets into clean production assetsFirst released in 2016, RealityCapture generates accurate triangle-based meshes of real-world objects, from people and props to environments.It is capable of tackling very large mixed data sets, even on laptops and low-end hardware.The software includes functionality aimed at aerial surveying and urban planning, but is also used in the entertainment industry to generate assets for use in games and VFX projects.RealityCapture was acquired by Epic Games in 2021, which made the software available free to artists and studios with revenue under $1 million/year earlier this year.RealityCapture 1.5: USD support for VFX and animation pipelinesFor entertainment artists, a key change in RealityCapture 1.5 will be USD support.Users can export scans in USD format, now a staple of pipelines in VFX and feature animation, and supported in most key DCC apps, including Blender, Houdini, Maya and Unreal Engine.It is also possible to export in USDZ format, for use in augmented reality projects.Export 16-bit height maps and COLMAP text data for use in NeRFsUsers can also now export Digital Surface Models (DSM) and Digital Terrain Models (DTM) as 16-bit PNG files, as well as 8-bit images.That makes it possible to export more detailed height maps for use in DCC applications and game engines, including Epic Games own Twinmotion and Unreal Engine.In addition, it is now possible to export RealityCapture components in the COLMAP text format.COLMAP data is used by many new 3D scanning tools based around Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs) or 3D Gaussian Splatting.Users can also export Radiance Fields Transforms in JSON format again, for use in NeRF tools like Nerfstudio and Instant NGP. Better texture generation, particularly for entertainment workThe update also improves texture generation, which now respects masked areas, making it possible to exclude elements from source images from the final textured model.In addition, it is now possible to use 16- and 32-bit images for Photoconsistency texturing.Photoconsistency texturing is slower than the alternative Visibility and Mosaicing methods, but can give better results when scanning people, or scanning translucent objects.For games work, it is now possible to defragment textures on export.By default, RealityCaptures UV unwrapping algorithm generates a lot of small UV islands, which minimizes texture stretching, but reduces real-time performance.Performance improvements include better use of the CPU when generating textures: according to Epic, texturing is up to 2x faster than RealityCapture 1.4.Other workflow improvementsOther workflow improvements include the option to disable watertight meshing.Watertight meshes still generated by default are required for 3D printing, but can have higher file sizes and require more manual clean-up than non-watertight meshes.It is also now possible to use relative file paths as sources in RealityCapture projects, making it easier to use the software in production, particularly across a studio network.Users running RealityCapture from the command line get a number of new commands, making it easier to automate tasks.Price and system requirementsRealityCapture 1.5 is available for Windows 7+ and Windows Server 2008+. Its CUDA-based, so you will need a CUDA 3.0-capable Nvidia GPU.The software is free to artists and studios with revenue under $1 million/year. For larger studios, subscriptions cost $1,250/seat/year.Read a full list of changes in RealityCapture 1.5 in the online changelogHave your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we dont post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.Latest NewsEpic Games releases RealityCapture 1.5Big update to the photogrammetry app adds USD export and new options aimed at games and VFX. Free to indie artists and studios.Friday, November 22nd, 2024KeenTools releases FaceTracker for BlenderMuch-anticipated facial mocap plugin for Blender gets its official release. Now supports animation retargeting to Rigify rigs.Friday, November 22nd, 2024Check out Blender crowd animation add-on Population 2Promising lightweight add-on for creating 3D crowds for animation or visualization now lets you paint crowd characters into the scene.Thursday, November 21st, 2024Download SideFX's free Project Greylight toolkit for HoudiniFree tools help artists and studios set up collaborative USD-based workflows without the need for a custom production pipeline.Thursday, November 21st, 2024Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Holiday 2024 deals for CG artistsUpdated 22 November: Discover over 70 seasonal offers on CG tools and hardware, now including Affinity, JangaFX and FaceTrackerWednesday, November 20th, 2024Adobe releases Photoshop 26.1Update to the image editing and digital painting app makes it possible to edit color gradients from the contextual task bar.Wednesday, November 20th, 2024More NewsChaos ships Corona 12 Update 1 for 3ds Max and Cinema 4D5 key features in Blender 4.3BiteTheBytes releases World Creator 2024.3Free tool: Reallusion's Blender Auto Setup pluginDownload VFX Assets' free 2D Cloud Textures PackCreate perfect topology for animated charactersEphere releases Ornatrix 3 for Cinema 4DMaxon releases Red Giant 2025.2 and Universe 2025.1Nekki releases Cascadeur MobileUnreal Engine 5.5: discover 10 key features for CG artistsBlackmagic Design releases Fusion Studio 19.1Blackmagic Design releases DaVinci Resolve 19.1Older Posts

Friday, November 22nd, 2024Posted by Jim ThackerKeenTools releases FaceTracker for Blenderhtml PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"KeenTools has officially released FaceTracker for Blender, the new Blender edition of its markerless facial motion-capture tool.The add-on, previously available in open beta, can extract an actors facial movements from video footage and export the animation or FACS data for use in Blender or other DCC software.It was released as part of KeenTools 2024.3, the latest version of KeenTools suite of plugins, which also includes 3D head-generation tool FaceBuilder and tracking add-on GeoTracker.An intuitive markerless facial tracking add-on for BlenderFirst released six years ago as a Nuke plugin, FaceTracker is a markerless facial tracking tool for animation, visual effects or motion graphics work.It works by matching a 3D head model generated by KeenTools FaceBuilder technology, which is built into FaceTracker, to the motion of the actors head.FaceTracker automatically extracts the actors facial performance from the video footage. along with either the motion of their head or the camera itself.Users can improve the accuracy of the solve by using the built-in stabilization tools, or by masking out objects obscuring the actors face in the source video, like hair, hats and props.The resulting facial animation can be exported in Alembic (ABC), Collada (DAE), FBX or glTF/GLB format for use in other DCC applications, or as FACS animation data in CSV format.For visual effects work, it is also possible to texture the 3D head model from the video, generating a 3D reconstruction of the actors face for use in de-ageing or digital makeup work.Now a paid-for plugin, with support for animation retargetingThe Blender edition was released free in open beta with KeenTools 2024.2 in August, but gets a stable and paid-for release with KeenTools 2024.3.As well as paying for FaceTracker for Blender itself, users now need an active subscription to FaceBuilder to use the built-in FaceBuilder module.The stable release also introduces animation retargeting, making it possible to transfer facial motion from an actor to a 3D character with different facial proportions.The facial track can be transferred either to a Blender Rigify rig or to ARKit blendshapes, supported in a number of other DCC applications.Other changes in KeenTools 2024.3KeenTools plugins are also available for Nuke, and the KeenTools 2024.3 update makes those editions compatible with Nuke 15.0+ on RHEL 9 Linux.FaceTracker and GeoTracker both get workflow improvements, including a new Export tab.Pricing and system requirementsFaceTracker for Blender is available for Blender 2.80+ on Windows, Linux and macOS. The software is available rental-only.Individual FaceTracker subscriptions include both Blender and Nuke editions of the plugin, and cost $18/month or $179/year for individuals, or $499/year for studios.The software is also available as a product bundle with FaceBuilder, which costs $27/month or $269/year for individuals, or $749/year for studios.Read an overview of FaceTracker for Blender on KeenTools websiteRead more about how FaceTracker for Blender works in the online documentationRead a full changelog for KeenTools pluginsHave your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we dont post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.Latest NewsEpic Games releases RealityCapture 1.5Big update to the photogrammetry app adds USD export and new options aimed at games and VFX. Free to indie artists and studios.Friday, November 22nd, 2024KeenTools releases FaceTracker for BlenderMuch-anticipated facial mocap plugin for Blender gets its official release. Now supports animation retargeting to Rigify rigs.Friday, November 22nd, 2024Check out Blender crowd animation add-on Population 2Promising lightweight add-on for creating 3D crowds for animation or visualization now lets you paint crowd characters into the scene.Thursday, November 21st, 2024Download SideFX's free Project Greylight toolkit for HoudiniFree tools help artists and studios set up collaborative USD-based workflows without the need for a custom production pipeline.Thursday, November 21st, 2024Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Holiday 2024 deals for CG artistsUpdated 22 November: Discover over 70 seasonal offers on CG tools and hardware, now including Affinity, JangaFX and FaceTrackerWednesday, November 20th, 2024Adobe releases Photoshop 26.1Update to the image editing and digital painting app makes it possible to edit color gradients from the contextual task bar.Wednesday, November 20th, 2024More NewsChaos ships Corona 12 Update 1 for 3ds Max and Cinema 4D5 key features in Blender 4.3BiteTheBytes releases World Creator 2024.3Free tool: Reallusion's Blender Auto Setup pluginDownload VFX Assets' free 2D Cloud Textures PackCreate perfect topology for animated charactersEphere releases Ornatrix 3 for Cinema 4DMaxon releases Red Giant 2025.2 and Universe 2025.1Nekki releases Cascadeur MobileUnreal Engine 5.5: discover 10 key features for CG artistsBlackmagic Design releases Fusion Studio 19.1Blackmagic Design releases DaVinci Resolve 19.1Older Posts

Nov 25 - 29 #CreateWithMaxon workshops are live streaming twice a day - all week long! This coming Monday, Nov 25th, dive into the world of 3D, and get familiar with the #Cinema4D interface and navigation. Learn how to create and change geometric shapes with Deformers and explore the importance of clean topology. Discover how Generators can add more organic or complex details to your mesh. https://maxonvfx.com/3Zhts9F

LIVE NOW on #VFXandChill Reimagine classic animated characters as live-action versions, inspired by the new #HowToTrainYourDragon teaser. Watch as we use VFX to bring these characters to life in a realistic style everyone loves, breaking down the techniques and creative choices along the way.This week on VFX and Chill, were reimagining classic animated characters as live-action versions, inspired by the new How to Train Your Dragon teaser that n...

Can Europe Win the Age of AI? | Thomas Dohmke | TED

Astronomers Discover a Newborn World, the Youngest Known Transiting ExoplanetAt nearly three million years old, the exoplanet is about the age of a two-week-old baby in planet-yearsOlatunji Osho-WilliamsStaff ContributorNovember 22, 2024 4:54 p.m. An artist's interpretation of the newly discovered planet and a warped debris disk NASA / JPL-CaltechA recent discovery of a newborn exoplanet could help scientists explain how our own home world came to be.In a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, astronomers describe the youngest transiting planet ever found. Its about three million years olda baby, in cosmic terms. If you imagine Earth as a 50-year-old adult, this world would be a two-week-old infant, in comparison.The discovery was made by Madyson Barber, a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and lead author of the study. The new find marks Barbers third planet discovery.While its not her first, this is definitely our biggest one, because its the youngest transiting system, she tells ABC News Julia Jacobo. Theres so much we can learn by looking outwards to learn more about our own home and where we come from and where we might be going.The planetnamed both IRAS 04125+2902 band TIDYE-1borbits what will likely become an orange dwarf star, about 520 light-years from Earth, and circles its host every 8.8 days. Reuters Will Dunham writes that its mass is between that of Earth and Neptuneless dense than our home planet but holding a diameter about 11 times greater.UNC graduate student discovers planet orbiting around nearby star, astronomers sayWatch on Barber spotted evidence of the distant world during atransit, when a planet passes between a star and its observer. Most exoplanets are discovered through transits, where scientists measure a decrease in the brightness of a star due to a planet passing in front of it. Sure enough, Barber noticed little dips in starlight coming from the system, indicating the transit of a planet, per ABC News. But this seemed odd, given the young age of the star.According to the study, while astronomers have found more than a dozen planets transiting stars that range from 10 million to 40 million years old, younger transiting planets have remained elusive. Thats because nascent solar systems contain a protoplanetary disk circling around the young host stara ring of material that eventually coalesces to create other celestial bodies.Typically, this disk surrounds the star for its first five million to ten million years and blocks astronomers from viewing younger planets.But in the star system withWe dont really know how long it takes for planets to form, study co-author Andrew Mann, an astronomer at UNC Chapel Hill, tells Reuters. We know that giant planets must form faster than their disk dissipates, because they need a lot of gas from the disk. But disks take five to ten million years to dissipate. So do planets form in one million years? Five? Ten?Barber tells Reuters the discovery confirms planets can reach a cohesive form within three million years. Earth took 10 million to 20 million years to form, she adds, so this new finding helps add information about early planets.We try to extrapolate from these other worlds how quickly planet formation might have taken hold in the early solar system, Melinda Soares-Furtado, an astrophysicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was not involved with the research, tells New Scientists Jonathan OCallaghan.The researchers are currently 95 percent confident in their measurements of TIDYE-1bs upper mass limit and believe it could be a precursor of the super-Earth and sub-Neptune planets that are frequently found orbiting main sequence stars, ABC News writes. Main sequence stars, like the sun, compose nearly 90 percent of the stars in the known universe and fuse hydrogen atoms to form helium in their cores.Because we dont have a ton of these young transiting systems that we know of, its really important that we look for more so that we can have a better picture of what that formation and evolution looks like, so we can better understand how our own home formed and evolved, Barber tellsABC News.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: Astronomers, Astronomy, Discoveries, Outer Space, Planets

The clay cylinders were found in a tomb containing six skeletons. Glenn Schwartz / Johns Hopkins UniversityA few decades ago, researchers discovered four small clay cylinders marked with strange symbols at an ancient tomb in Syria. Theyve now concluded that those symbols are lettersand they may be the worlds oldest known evidence of alphabetic writing.The tomb is located inTell Umm-el Marra, an ancient city some 35 miles east of Aleppo. Researchers fromJohns Hopkins University and theUniversity of Amsterdam found the marked cylinders in 2004, and Johns Hopkins archaeologistGlenn Schwartz described them in apaper in 2021. But according to Scientific Americans Stephanie Pappas, the research didnt attract widespread attention until this week, when Schwartz presented it at the annual meeting of the American Society of Overseas Research.Before the invention of alphabets, early writing systemslikehieroglyphs and cuneiformused symbols representing objects or phonetic sounds. Eventually,Proto-Sinaitic script, which transformed some hieroglyphs into alphabetic letters, emerged in the Sinai Peninsula around 1900 B.C.E.Scholars have long thought that this was when the alphabet was invented, as Schwartz says in astatement. But our artifacts are older and from a different area on the map, suggesting the alphabet may have an entirely different origin story than we thought.Using radiocarbon dating, the researchers determined that the cylinders were made around 2400 B.C.E., which would make them about 500 years older than other known alphabetic scripts. If the cylinders markings are alphabetic letters, they represent a pivotal shift in humans development of language.As Schwartz tellsMcClatchys Irene Wright, older writing systems could feature thousands of characters or symbols representing full words, syllables or combinations of phonemesthe smallest sound segments that languages have. Alphabetic systems are much simpler: They contain only 20 to 30 characters, since thats the usual maximum number of phonemes a language will use.Alphabets revolutionized writing by making it accessible to people beyond royalty and the socially elite, says Schwartz in the statement. Alphabetic writing changed the way people lived, how they thought, how they communicated. Researchers think the cylinders could have been labels. Glenn Schwartz / Johns Hopkins UniversityThe tomb in Tell Umm-el Marra contained six skeletonslikely members of a wealthy and powerful family. It also held cookware, jewelry, a spearhead and pottery vessels. The clay cylinders were found alongside these artifacts. Each cylinder sports a small hole, which may have been used to attach them to something.Im imagining a string tethering them to another object to act as a label, says Schwartz in the statement. Maybe they detail the contents of a vessel, or maybe where the vessel came from, or who it belonged to.Schwartz tells Scientific American that one of the clay cylinders is marked with the word Silanu, which he thinks may be a name: Perhaps Silanu was the sender or recipient of the grave goods, and the clay cylinder might have been attached to a vessel like a gift tag. But without a way to translate the writing, researchers can only guess.Schwartz says that several prominent scholars have also agreed that the characters are part of an alphabet, according to Newsweeks Aristos Georgiou. However, this conclusion is not universally accepted. Some researchers say theyre still hoping for more evidence that the symbols arent from another kind of old writing system.When you only have a few very short inscriptions, it can be difficult to tell how many signs the system has, as Philippa Steele, a classicist at theUniversity of Cambridge, tells Scientific American. She cant be sure the engravings match Proto-Sinaitic writing rather than just resemble it. I think we have to hope for more finds.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: Ancient Civilizations, Ancient Egypt, Archaeology, Artifacts, Cool Finds, History, Language, linguistics , New Research

Welcome to this week's episode of CGaNews, where we bring you the latest and greatest from the world of architectural visualization! Here's what you can expect in this episode:- "Viz Pro of the Week" - Blender or 3DS max: Which is the Best for Archviz in 2025? - Custom HDRI Dome Integration Setup: A Step Beyond V-Rays Native Tools - V-Ray Luminaires: dramatically faster, more accurate rendering of complex light fixtures- NAG ALL V.3.1: A New Update for 3D Library Organization- Chaos Releases Corona 12 Update 1: Enhancements for 3ds Max and Cinema 4D- 2024 Archviz Industry Salary Survey Results- Best of the WeekWatch it here: https://youtu.be/xYNE8I-ZQPMDon't forget to connect with us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and join our growing community on Discord to stay up to date with all things archviz. We can't wait to see you there!LinkedIn: CGArchitectInstagram: @CGArchitectDiscord: Join our communityDont forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more updates!Enjoyed this episode? Make sure to like, subscribe, and share to help us continue bringing you the latest archviz news.#CGarchitect #CGaNews #ArchViz #3DVisualization #Vray7 #CoronaRenderer #NAGAll #Blender #BestOfTheWeek #ArchVizCommunity #ArchitecturalRendering #salarysurvey

Ai2 released Tlu 3, a model that makes fine-tuning open-source LLMs easier and get its performance closer to closed LLMs like GPT-4o.Read More

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