Summer 3d Animation Courses in Czech Republic

As title says the most important, here`s more details about tutors from Pixar and other places and classes they will teach

http://www.anomalia.eu/

ImageMoversDigital shut down!

Finish Mars needs Mums! and close the doors (from outside). That`s the plan as it seems now for IMD according to LA Times. It`s shame as IMD facial capture productions were quite interesting for evolvement of digital acting and stereo 3D (that is similar with George Lucas and his last Star Wars movies which is good projects to build up robust 3d pipeline). Also there`s 450 jobs to be lost :-(

What`s New In Maya 2011

Autodesk just announced upcoming release of Maya 2011 with features like completely new PyQt interface, better skinning tools including Dual Quaternion deformer. It all looks really cool!

Dual Quaternion will reduce number of influences needed for basic skinning. There`s also a weight map to combine linear and dualQuad interpolation which can be handy if we need to loose volume a bit. Nice thing about new toolset is bringing some favourite features from custom tools (Michael Comet Tools, David Walden Skinning Tools etc.) into standard Maya installation, like Select Affected Points or Copy/Paste weights. Paint Smooth Weights as they show now maybe works properly.

http://area.autodesk.com/maya2011

detail list of features (I don`t think it`s final) is here:
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/cory/what_s_new_in_2011

Front Line Assembley unplugged

...so again, czech people are the first, but noone knows about it :) this is UNPLUGGED song "Millenium" from Front Line Assembley (if you don`t know it`s legend of world electro music and they are still active from 1983)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyysusOKSks&NR=1

I wish Leeb or Fulber tried this too. Maybe they did, but I haven`t seen it. Like when BJORK has live concerts and studio electro goes replaced by violins. JARRE does it as well with different world/ethno musicians.

how to rig "balls"

ever needed to rig human testicles? if you`re using Cinema4D you`re lucky then... ;) watch this tutorial:
http://vimeo.com/9869813

dog boy animation

I don`t check animation shorts lately, but I saw this one and it`s actually pretty good and funny. It feels almost real with the voiceover if it had bit more skin/muscle motion detail around the neck and jaw and maybe better skin shading (or is it Avatar alien skin parody?). The movement looks like mocap/animation mix, but could have more clavicle motion. Hands/arms also need more detail. But overall it`s film quality if it was more far from camera. Forehead seems to have animated displacement, nice touch. T-shirt is simmed very well. Good stuff mysterious cg artist!! :)