Really cool video I found this morning, made by David O'Reilly. 

This video got a Golden Bear during last Berlinale.

I was trying not to do that, but I finally did :) I've joined Facebook and created motionVFX Group, so please everybody, join us ! :)

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=60569906623

I've paid for full version of Vue 6 last year a lot of money and boy, you can create a lot of 3D landscapes with it. It works on a Mac and PC and can integrate with many different 3D packages like 3dsmax.

Now, E-Onsoftware offers Vue 7 Pioneer.... for FREE. How can it be free? E-On explains:

For the time being, the full license of Vue 7 Pioneer is available for free. Vue 7 Pioneer is derived from the research e-on software makes for the high-end products it sells to large special effects studios. By offering a product of such great quality as Pioneer for free, we (E-On Software) are hoping to attract new users to the fun world of Vue. Because we know you'll love Pioneer, we (E-On Software) expect that some of you will buy content from Cornucopia3D, or even decide to expand the product with the optional modules.

Get Vue 7 here: http://www.cornucopia3d.com/products/vue/vue_7_pioneer/

See Vue in action in this great movie:

If you remember, VisualHub and AudialHub were the best, not expensive packages for converting video and audio to many formats available. I did buy a copy of VisualHub myself before and I'm still using as it's great piece of software. Well, the software has been discontinued, so you cannot buy it, BUT... you can download it for free.

Here is the link to geekmeetsgirl.net where you can still get it (of course, the software is Mac only):

http://www.geekmeetsgirl.net/visualhub_tools.php

Unity. I've never heard that name before, even it flashed few times before my eyes while loading few games on iPhone. Well, "Unity is a multiplatform game development tool, designed from the start to ease creation. A fully integrated professional application, Unity just happens to contain the most powerful engine this side of a million dollars."

What can you do with Unity? A game. For web, Wii and... iPhone. Take a look at these great demos at their website. They also have some good pricing schema.

More info: http://unity3d.com/

You can also read interesting interview with David Helgason, CEO of Unity Technologies here: 

http://area.autodesk.com/index.php/stories_bts/bts_detail/unity_ceo_david_helgason/

Take a look at this rad movie showing City Scape product by Pixel Active Inc. The software (Windows only) allows to build you a city within just minutes and even drive of fly in it. It's pretty awesome.

http://www.pixelactive3d.com/Products/CityScape/

Take a look at this fantastic combination of CG and live action. Production of Bruce Branit was shot it one day and followed by 2 years of CG production. Bruce is well known for his funny "405" short movie done few years ago.

Enjoy.

I've been working in the game industry some time ago and I have only nice memories about these days. I was always proud of my programmers team even I didn't understand what's written in the code :) Now, even you don't have coding knowledge, but have some artistic strength, you can write a game by your own thanks to StoneTrip's ShiVa technology. Basically, this is a software which allows you to create your own games without much hassle. It's unfortunately Windows only based app, but you can use it under VMware with your beloved Mac.

More than that, guys at StoneTrip have iPhone exporter which will make your games flying on your iPhone or iPod touch. We should write a game then, shall we?

Check it out at their website: http://www.stonetrip.com/shiva/shiva-3d-game-engine.html 

It's self explaining :) Just watch it.

"San Francisco-based Caustic Graphics has developed a new patent pending technology that can actually bring ray-tracing that generates highly realistic accurate three-dimensional images to computer gaming. Ray-tracing is currently really only used in high budget Hollywood productions and is a rather tedious process where a short scene can take months to generate with ray-tracing." business2press.com reports.

Read this interesting article here: http://business2press.com/2009/03/09/caustic-graphics-makes-ray-tracing-realistic-for-gaming/