SOFTWARE
Digital Characters
Personalized 3D
Daz 3D and Gizmoz have partnered to create an online marketplace for high-quality, inter-compatible digital characters and accessories. The new company will deliver digital goods with lifelike characteristics for use by artists of any level working on social networks, cross-platform gaming, 3D animation, and development. Gizmoz’s photorealistic head reconstruction and online personalization service combines with Daz 3D’s full-figure content, desktop software tools, and community to provide creative professionals, gamers, and consumers with a virtual goods design center and marketplace. The custom avatars can be managed and seamlessly transported to virtual environments or production pipelines. In fact, all characters and technologies can be used in PC and console games, social networks, video clips, and mobile applications, as well as in professional modeling, animation, and illustration projects. The merged company plans to unveil its first new products this quarter.Daz 3D;
www.daz3d.com Gizmoz;
www.gizmoz.com
Rotoscoping
Mocha Upgrades
Imagineer Systems has upgraded its planar tracking and rotoscoping software,?Mocha?and?Mocha for After Effects. Mocha Version 1.6?and?mocha for After Effects?Version 2?newly support tracking data export directly to Red Giant Software’s Warp plug-in for After Effects, enabling a simplified workflow.?Mocha for After Effects, a stand-alone 2D tracking tool based on Imagineer Systems’ 2.5D Planar Tracking technology, helps artists generate solid tracks; produce position-, scale-, rotation-, shear-, and perspective-matched tracks; and export data to After Effects. Now available, Mocha Version 1.6?is priced at $1095. Mocha for After Effects 2.1.0?is now available for $210. An upgrade to Version 2 from Adobe After Effects CS4 is priced at $110. Imagineer Systems;
www.imagineersystems.com
Sculpting and
Modeling
Virtual Clay
Tactus Technologies has unveiled Protean, a 3D virtual clay sculpting and modeling software for producing fast, early-stage designs for engineering, animation, and other applications. Protean is designed to simplify real-time 3D volumetric modeling, resulting in efficient, freeform shape and model creation. The easy-to-use, tool-based modeling structure enables rapid design and prototyping, delivering design and modeling capabilities to industrial designers, engineers, creative artists, sculptors, architects, animators, game designers, marketers, bioengineers, and others. Protean emulates clay modeling and enables users to deform models by pushing, pulling, twisting, and stretching the virtual clay material. Protean-created 3D models can be imported into popular software such as Autodesk’s 3ds Max, for use in larger-scale animation or product design projects. Tactus Technologies;
www.proteanclay.com,
www.tactustech.com