Pixar open source subdivisions

Pixar studios joined ILM and Sony Imageworks (Alembic, Autodesk Alembic) in sharing some technology as open source. Pixar has already been demonstrating algorithms from some of their CGI technology (see link below),

graphics.pixar.com/

however this first time I believe when they put the code online. Below is link to offical Pixar github:

https://github.com/PixarAnimationStudios

Here is a video with Pixar developer showing what is exactly their Open Subdiv project

forgotten gameplay points

I just played old Quake and it made me think that there are few things I was missing in Rage and also a bit in Doom3. Which is a surprise, but let`s take it from the beginning. As Quakecon was approaching, Steam was selling id games very cheap, so I bought Quake I and Quake II (I played them long time ago, but those burnt CDs are long gone ;). It was actualy £7 for both.

So when I played few levels of Quake (GL Quake, hires, 16bit colors), apart from seeing that the game is still very fresh and fun, there were few things I would really like to see in id games again:

• different ways to go through the level, swimming under water to get to different parts or simply jumping to neighbouring or lower floors, simply if you could jump or crawl there - you could go there
• various traps triggered by player being in line of fire (vertical from wall, horizontal from ceiling) or stepping on certain parts of the floor - the enemies also could get hit (and die) by traps missiles!
• enemies could start fight between themselfs if they accidentally hit each other (this was already in Doom), which considering low AI was very realistic feature and lot of fun to watch this random event
• at the end of each level, camera would show some level area from bird`s view and give the score, which is more old Doom/Quake style, but it gave you nice break from the first person POV
• another cool Quake idea was at the very beginning of the game - choosing difficulty and "world" you preferred to play by walking into a different teleports with different decorations, which made the whole Quake world look like layers and gave it more dimensions (also reference to various sci-fi/fantasy novels)

Especially with Rage, the game levels were very linear, restricting player to go through one pre-baked path. Then on the main "story level" there were side missions like Job Board and Racing, but this was not moving game anywhere forward and you had to go back to last story point X to continue to the next one.

Generally it feels like quite a few cool things that id themselfs invented, were forgotten or ditched maybe by influence from current trends, trying to be "more modern", who knows. It is definitely not easy if certaint product is sucessfull, to know what made it sucessfull, which things to throw away and what to add for the next title.

Total Recall talk

Czech:
V zari budu mit v Praze na Get Splashed (byvaly Maxcon) prednasku o Rigging v Total Recall. Je to jedinecna prilezitost dozvedet se neco o tom, jak se delal film se stovkami efektovych zaberu jen mesic po jeho premiere. Termin je 8.9.2012. Prednaska je s oficialni podporou Prime Focus Film London.


http://www.get-splashed.cz/program.html


English:
I will have a talk about Rigging in Total Recall at Get Splashed CG Conference in september in Prague. Important note, this conference is czech/slovak language only.

Minimo VFX

A new visual effects studio Minimo VFX was founded in Barcelona, Spain by a couple of industry veterans. Their focus is building 3d character assets up to film quality level and also external supervision, pipeline design and previz. One of the most recent projects of the founders was big budget movie John Carter, featuring numbers of full CG characters interacting with real actors.


The focus of the company is similar to recently founded California based studio Creature Art and Mechanics.  This type of bussiness model is fairly new as it only offers part of the product and it might become new trend if succesull, opposed to full service of the most studios. Afterall, cars building factories also use service of other vendors, getting front panels built in one country, while electronic board made in another and then assembling it all together ;)


Btw. did you know, if you shuffle few letters, you get "MIMINO", which in czech means little baby ;)

Quake V

This is Carmack on Quake V:

"Nothing is scheduled here, people are not building this," Carmack said. "We went from the Quake 2 and the Quake 4 Strogg universe. We are at least tossing around the possibilities of going back to the bizarre, mixed up Cthulhu-ish Quake 1 world and rebooting that direction. "We think that would be a more interesting direction than doing more Strogg stuff after Quake 4. We certainly have strong factions internally that want to go do this."

Accidentally this is what I would vote for as well. My most favourite was Quake 1, because it has this unique mix of dark fantasy cover and atmosphere of medival times with sort of cyber mutation in it. This made it stand somewhere in completely different universe. Not military future, not ancient past. Simply unique.
The only thing needed is to save up enough to pay Trent Reznor to come back with his sound design and ambient music once again. His Ghosts I-IV actually recall that Quake 1 spirit sometimes.