Update to the image editing and digital painting app makes it possible to edit color gradients from the contextual task bar.

Enjoy our SIGGRAPH 2024 playlist, featuring presentations from world-renowned and award-winning artists. Dive into cutting-edge workflows showcased with #MaxonOne, including #Cinema4D, #Redshift, #RedGiant, and #ZBrush. Don't miss this opportunity to elevate your creative skills and be inspired by industry leaders! Watch Now maxonvfx.com/SIGGRAPH2024

LIVE NOW on #VFXandChill!Learn how to use #MovesByMaxon to drive a 3D character's facial performance in 90 minutes or less. Hashi and Seth do a casual stream, some prep, some learning, and some face animating. Learn to use Moves by Maxon to drive a 3d character's facial performance in 90 minutes or less. Hashi and Seth do a casual stream, some prep, some learning...

A Menu of Foods We Might Lose Forever | Sam Kass | TED

Deepening understanding about transmisogynyPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter4 min read9 hours ago-- Welcome back to the Medium NewsletterIssue #211: your thoughts on raw milk + how to persevereToday is Transgender Day of Remembrance, a time to mourn and pay tribute to those murdered for just living as who they are. 350 trans people have been murdered globally in 2024, 29 more than in 2023. Here are just a few of them.Often, their deaths go underreported and underinvestigated, and their murderers are unpunished. Most of them are Black and migrant trans women.On Medium, social psychologist Devon Price unpacks a study that tries to figure out why this is happening. Whats the root of this bigotry? NYU psychology professor Jaime Napier analyzed the results of a 23-country, 16,000-person survey. She found that people tend to be more vocally prejudiced against trans women than trans men.Why?Prejudice is layered. Author and trans activist Julia Serano coined the term transmisogyny in 2007 to name the intersection between transphobia and misogyny. Shes since written on Medium about how the term has been used in ways she didnt anticipate and why we need better, more specific language for how humans express gender and sexuality.But whats happening here, according to Napier, goes deeper than the fact that trans women are marginalized in two ways at once. Napier finds that people may be more biased against trans women than trans men because they view trans women as gay men, and most cultures punish men more aggressively than women for going against gender norms. Women are punished for transgressing, too, but in more insidious ways usually by people who doubt their sexuality or gender in the first place, think its a phase, or a cover.Thats why, Price writes, Napiers study is so important: Its a piece of carefully collected evidence that trans women and their allies can point to as proof that bias against trans femmes really is a societal problem, and it doesnt stop asking why?A few more survey results deepened and complicated my understanding like the fact that when controlling for anti-gay bias, highly religious people were actually less biased against trans folks than the non-religious were. You can read Prices full summary here. Harris SockelYour thoughts on raw milkOn Monday, we sent out a newsletter about raw milk. Many of you have vehement feelings on this topic! If you told us why you disagree with us (and cited your sources), thank you. We love smart disagreement. Here are a few of your responses:I just read the Medium Newsletter on raw milk. While I do not disagree with anything in it, I do feel it omitted a legitimate use case: cheese making. The commercial pasteurization processes diminish the quality of the curd to varying degrees. One may pasteurize their milk at home using a low-heat method that doesnt cause the same problems. It takes much longer, which is why its not done commercially.So, while having raw milk on the shelves in the health food section may not be a great idea, making it legal and marketing it as cheese milk 3.5% or something that isnt attractive to people who wouldnt know how to handle it is something that amateur cheese makers would appreciate. Trevor Fink, via email to tips@medium.comModern research, specifically the 2022 Frontiers in Microbiology study Screening and evaluation of lactic acid bacteria with probiotic potential from local Holstein raw milk (Zhang et al), shows that raw milks microbiological properties are far more complex than previously understood. The need to rely on older studies suggests either incomplete research on your part or a deliberate choice to ignore newer findings that might complicate your narrative. Either way, it undermines your credibility when discussing this topic. Andy AcelWhen I did my Masters, I focused on a specific infection from raw milk: brucellosis. Brucellosis is the most common zoonotic disease worldwide but few know about it because there is a long delay from exposure to symptoms.The case fatality rate from brucellosis is meager. 1 to 2%. The primary symptoms of brucellosis get dismissed as the flu recurring fever. Nanette Lai, MAAnd heres my favorite response (thank you Aardvark Infinity, whoever you are):A top highlight on Medium this weekI shall not quit something with great long-term potential just because I cant deal with the stress of the moment. Diana C.

Hi everyone, Im thrilled to finally share my short film, Rally. After making its rounds at a few festivals, its now available online. Created in Unreal, its currently featured on Short of the Week. T

Playing with Niagara systems and blending 2D animations with 3D meshes. Bringing back MapleStory and Fiesta Online nostalgia :maple_leaf::tada: Would love to hear your thoughts! :orange_heart: Music by: Alex Laszlo -

Song-sharking companies sometimes began by offering free consultations for everyday poetsas in this 1921 advertisement in Film Fun magazine. Film Fun MagazineAs popular music grew into a mass industry in the early 20th century, a murky assortment of companies popped up and began a practice that came to be known as song-sharking. Advertisements enjoined ordinary Americans to send in their original poems and lyrics, which the company would set to music for a rather large feea few hundred dollars, depending on the year.Early song-sharking companies in the 1910s merely set customers lyrics to sheet music and mailed the sheaves to the customer as a collectors item. In later decades, sharking companies enlisted whole teams of session musicians to give peoples submissions the full-blown studio treatment and put them on records. And while many Americans were no doubt satisfied with the novelty of hearing someone on the gramophone singing their lyrics, many song-sharking advertisements dangled a further enticement: the seductive proposition that fame and success in the music business might be just a cashiers check and a postage stamp away.The advertisements, typically nestled inside popular magazines and supermarket tabloids, tended to address readers with the smarmy cadence of a door-to-door salesman, hinting at the possibility of a big payday. Mail your song-poem on love, peace, victory or any other subject to us today, announces an emblematic example from a 1922 issue of Illustrated World. We revise song-poems, compose music for them and guarantee to secure publication on a royalty basis by a New York music publisher. A 1962 ad. Some poems were quite whimsical:Yellow submarines / Corn on the cob and tangerines / I like yellow things.Radio / TV magazineOf course, most of these song-poems had no life beyond the LPs that companies mailed to paying customers. Of an estimated 200,000 songs that companies produced from the lyrics of would-be folk lyricists between 1900 and the early 2000s, when the practice petered out, not one ever became a hit. Still, the enterprise struck at a deeply rooted American desire to win fame and fortune instantly, based on ones own exquisite originality.As poetry, the lyrics could run the gamut from generic and derivative to just plain weird. But buoyed by the musicianship of studio professionals, and sharpened by the formal conventions of popular songwriting, the effect could be earnest, whimsical, even charming, and plenty of paying customers seem to have been quite happy with the results. In the 1990s, song-poems thus acquired a cult following among Americana collectors and now enjoy a second life thanks to various compilations, perhaps most notably the 2003 CD The American Song-Poem Anthologya testament to their status as an unfiltered, radically democratic form of outsider art.I love pop music, Phil Milstein, who produced that album, remarked in an NPR interview shortly after its release. But Im aware that for great pop songwriters theres always some mediation between life experience and the craft of the finished work. With song-poem music there is no such mediation. Its a much purer expression of human thought.Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine now for just $19.99This article is a selection from the December 2024 issue of Smithsonian magazineGet the latest Travel & Culture stories in your inbox.Filed Under: Business, Music, Musical History, Musicians, Songs

L'empire des Lumires,Ren Magritte, 1954 Christie's Images LTD. 2024A 1954 painting by Ren Magritte, Lempire des lumires,has just sold for $121.2 million. The painting surpassed its $95 million estimate at Christies New York this week, making it the first Magritte work ever to sell for nine figures.Magritte is known for his Surrealist style, often placing everyday objects or figures in strange scenes and scenarios.Lempire des lumires depicts a house near a pond, enveloped in the dark of night with only a street lamp and interior windows illuminating it. The treetops above the house, untouched by the light, are entirely black. However, the sky above the house is bright blue and filled with fluffy white clouds, as if it were the middle of the day.In 1966, Magritte explained the concept, per Christies:After I had painted Lempire des lumires, I got the idea that night and day exist together, that they are one. This is reasonable, or at the very least its in keeping with our knowledge: in the world night always exists at the same time as day. (Just as sadness always exists in some people at the same time as happiness in others.) But such ideas are not poetic. What is poetic is the visible image of the picture.The artist became somewhat fixated on this idea. He created 27 different versions of Lempire des lumires, and each shows the same scene: a dark house (or houses) with a bright blue sky above.The high price of this sale comes at a time when many have been fretting over a sluggish global art market. Artnets Katya Kazakinareports thattwo telephone bidders went head-to-head via Christies staffers Alex Rotter and Xin Li-Cohen.You could have heard a pin drop, Kazakina reports. Almost ten minutes into the proceeding, Rotter was on top with a $105 million bid, and Li-Cohen signaled that her client was bowing out. The room erupted in applause. The buyers premium brought the total to $121.2 million.Brett Gorvy, a founder of the art galleryLvy Gorvy Dayan, tells the New York Times Scott Reyburn that the large number could be influenced by the current political climate.The election has definitely had an immediate impact on the marketplace, Gorvy says. The stock market has made people richer. We saw in our gallery the day after the election that deals were done by clients who had hesitated before.But, Gorvy notes, it could be a honeymoon period.Two other Magritte works went up for sale at the auction. Those paintings,La cour damour(1960) and La Mmoire(1945), sold for $10.53 million and $3.68 million respectively. The impressive number forLempire des lumires stole the show and further cemented Magrittes legacy as a painter.The motif is one of the few truly iconic images in 20th-century art, Max Carter, Christies vice chairman of 20th- to 21st-century art, tells CNNs Karina Tsui.Carter adds, When icons appear on the market, they create their own market dynamic.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: Artists, Auctions, Painters, Painting, Surrealism

Scientists Finally Identified This Glowing, Transparent Mystery Mollusk After Nearly 25 Years of PuzzlingThe newly described species of sea slug dwells in darkness in the oceans midnight zone, using a hood to capture prey with a Venus flytrap-like technique The creature lives in the midnight zone," an area of the ocean so deep that sunlight never reaches it. Monterey Bay Aquarium Research InstituteIn February 2000, scientists spotted an unusual, glowing creature swimming 8,576 feet beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean. They were using a remotely operated underwater vehicle to explore the midnight zone off the coast of central California, an area so deep that sunlight never reaches it. The bioluminescent animal didnt match up with anything theyd seen before, so they nicknamed it the mystery mollusk.It sort of looks like it was made up from spare parts left over from making a bunch of other animals, says Bruce H. Robison, an ecologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, to NPRs Short Wave.Now, more than two decades later, researchers say theyve identified the elusive creature. Its a new species of sea slug that theyve named Bathydevius caudactylus, they report this week in the journal Deep-Sea Research Part I.After that first encounter in 2000, researchers went looking for more B. caudactylus specimens to get a better idea of what they had found. They returned to the same spot they saw the first one, called Monterey Submarine Canyon, but also explored new areas off the coast of California. The team ventured up to Oregon, and they even spotted a few of the mystery mollusks in the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific. In the end, they observed 157 individuals.Most of the creatures they found were between about 3,300 and 10,700 feet deep, where water temperatures were around 36 degrees Fahrenheit. But a handful lived even deeper, in habitats up to 13,150 feet below the surface. Many B. caudactylus were alone, but a few were found swimming near each other.To better understand the animals identity, the team collected a few B. caudactylus specimens and sequenced their DNA. This analysis showed the creature was a new species that belonged to a previously unknown family of nudibranch, or sea slug. And that, researchers say, was astounding.The deep water column is maybe the last place youd expect to find a nudibranch, Robison tells CNNs Ashley Strickland. Its sort of like finding hummingbirds near the peak of Mt. Everest. Still, he adds, almost every aspect of Bathydevius reflects an adaptation to this habitat: anatomy, physiology, reproduction, feeding, behavior; its unique.MBARI researchers discover remarkable new swimming sea slug in the deep seaWatch on B. caudactylus is an ethereal-looking creature with a gelatinous, transparent body. It has a large, bell-shaped hood atop its head; a fringed tail with between 9 and 16 finger-like appendages; and a short, cylindrical foot protruding from its middle. Its red stomach and orangish-brown digestive gland are visible within its see-through body.The creatures use their hoods to trap preyprimarily shrimpwith a technique akin to how a Venus flytrap captures bugs. To move through the water, they either drift on the current or flex their bodies up and down.Most of the time, B. caudactylus simply relies on its transparent body to avoid being seen by predators. But, if necessary, it can startle predators by lighting up with bioluminescence. In some instances, it can even shed one of its finger-like tail appendages as a distraction.Those dactyls fall off like a lizard dropping its tail, Robison tells the East Bay Times Rita Aksenfeld. If they turn off the lights in the rest of the body, and just that glowing, wiggling dactyl is visible, then the predator may go for the decoy rather than the animal itself.When it needs to make a speedy escape, B. caudactylus can shut its hood quickly to propel itself out of harms way.In another adaptation to its deep-sea environment, B. caudactylus has both male and female sex organs, though researchers never observed the species mating. When its time to release eggs, the mollusk floats down to the seafloor, where it anchors itself with its foot.In the habitat where they live, opportunities to find a potential mate are few and far between, Robison tells the East Bay Times. But you double your chances of success if both individuals carry both sets of sex organs.The roughly 3,000 known species of nudibranchs come in a variety of shapes, sizes and colors. Since the animals lack shells to protect themselves, they use their coloring to either warn predators to stay away or to camouflage against their surroundings. Some have evolved the ability to steal stinging cells from their prey and reuse them.Nudibranchs primarily eat jellyfish, anemones, sponges and other aquatic invertebratesbut some are cannibalistic. Two other nudibranchs use hoods to trap their prey, but they are only distantly related to B. caudactylus. This indicates that the mystery mollusks feeding method probably evolved independently several times.Though nudibranchs live in oceans all over the world, researchers say B. caudactylus is the first known to live in the deep water column.More broadly, the discovery of B. caudactylus demonstrates just how little scientists know about the oceanand the deep ocean, in particular.For there to be a relatively large, unique and glowing animal that is in a previously unknown family really underscores the importance of using new technology to catalog this vast environment, study co-author Steven H.D. Haddock, a marine biologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, says in a statement. The more we learn about deep-sea communities, the better we will be at ocean decision-making and stewardship.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: Animals, Biology, Mollusks, Worms, Sponges, Starfish, New Research, Oceans, Pacific Ocean, Water, Weird Animals, wildlife