UI Design: BumpTop 3D Desktop Prototype

Could this make file management tasks enjoyable? They just need to throw in some batch renaming tools and pretty much anything that ACDSee does, and it'll be purrrrrfect.

Devices: "Soap" pointing device

Any research into improving our user interface devices is good research. Sharing how to make your own, that's bonus points. Thanks to Chainsaw for this link.

Checkout Soap.

Paint overs

Steven Stahlberg's paintover thread on CGTalk. Tons of pages here for me to checkout yet. Comparisons are definitely teaching me a trick or two about lighting. He's really making the characters pop out.

Tools: Nima (AGEIA's PhysX)

Some coworkers have been playing around with this game physics engine in Maya. This engine blows Maya's built-physics away. Looks like they have it working in Maya 8, although on CGTalk.com, I heard that the cloth is a little buggy. I'm going to have to set aside some time to checkout Nima Beta 6.

Here's a pretty slick link to someone's stress test. and a product demo on YouTube

Tools: Natural Motion

An "animation synth". Have yet to play with this one, but I hear it's worth noting.
Check it out at naturalmotion.com

Tools: Facial Animation

Timothy Albee's Facial Animation system looks pretty slick. Maybe I should play around with it and post a review. For now, this is just a bookmark and a fowarding of a recommendation by an ol coworker, Tom Roth.

Open Source: Orange Project & Blender3D

Haven't had the chance to really dig into Blender3D but it looks quite impressive, especially for an open source 3D application. Currently, there is a team of very talented artists in Amsterdam who are making a movie using all open source applications. The Orange Project is funding this project through the sale of DVDs. I believe this is the first "open movie". It will have an open license so that it can be displayed publically without paying any royalties. The DVD will contain the movie and all tools and files used in the creation of the film. I'm very excited about this. This minimizes the overhead costs. Truely ANYONE can make a film nowadays. I can't fully express how important this step is for the movie industry. You combine this with the internet and... well, I suppose that's a whole nother entry.

SUPPORT THEM!!

More on this later.

Apps: Plastic Animation Paper

Finally gave Plastic Animation Paper a try and HOT DAMN is it fun and simple to use. The free version functional enough to have fun with although it doesn't include the blue sketch pencil or the ability to import sound. The app run in 8 bit mode I hear, which is probably why sketching runs so smoothly. Also, no prerendering is neccessary to view your animations. Currently I'm using it for my gesture sketches. I have a slideshow running in ACDSee and I sketch in PAP, hitting with every new image that pops up. Haven't tried this on a single monitor setup yet.

It's like a life drawing class, cept I can undo and flip to a clean slate quickly, while keeping prior sketches and using very little system resources.

Animation: Carlos Baena Interview

Carlos has been animating for 8 years now and most of my coworkers are quite familiar with his work. CGTalk has an "Meet the Artist" thread where he's doing a little Q&A. I find his responses quite inspiring and would recommend checking it out. He's also got a short flic where he's showing off his other hobby, fingerboarding.

CGTalk's Meet the Artist

The Fingerboarder