Categories
Pages

Stutter Edit (Review)

Posted by on Jun 4, 2012 in News | 0 comments

Stutter Edit will appeal to filmmakers of all backgrounds. The intricacies of the plugin will entertain the music enthusiast for hours upon hours while the presets will give the filmmaker with little to no musical background the tools needed to create a mood, emphasize a key moment, or produce highly creative Foley in the background. While the specific nature of this plugin may prevent some from purchasing it immediately, this plugin is a great value for filmmakers and sound engineers alike!

Read More

MentalCore (Review)

Posted by on May 31, 2012 in News | 0 comments

MentalCore is a competitively priced product that could save you more in long run when you consider the alternatives. The other popular renderers on the market today cost over a thousand dollars and have their own workflows that take time to get used to. But for users that are already familiar with working with Mental Ray, you get an inexpensive solution that not only fixes technical issues, it releases features that lay latent within the software you already owned. Small learning curve and low-cost entry makes choosing MentalCore over something unknown extremely compelling.

Read More

iPi Soft Desktop Motion Capture (Interview)

Posted by on May 23, 2012 in News | 0 comments

Interview with Michael Nikonov

Michael Nikonov, founder and developer of iPi Soft Desktop Motion Capture

I was very fortunate to talk with iPi Soft founder and software developer Michael Nikonov before testing out their new motion capture software.

Michael Muwanguzi: Can you tell me a little bit about your background and what led to the trackerless motion capture system?

Michael Nikonov: I don’t actually have a background in animation or movie making. Before designing this system I was a software developer in business. This is my first experience in the animation industry.

This project grew out of my hobby. I was trying to make a video game, and was surprised how difficult it was to create an animation. I wanted to use a motion capture system, but found the available options extremely expensive. So my logic was: I have a video camera, why can’t I do motion capture? Eventually I designed a system that works with off the shelf video cameras.

Now we have a system that supports several popular cameras, including the PlayStation Eye Camera, which is a very inexpensive $30 camera, and you can use up to 6 of them. Or you have a choice of using one or two Kinect cameras. read more

Read More

CS6: San Jose Reviewer’s Workshop Early Insights

Posted by on May 12, 2012 in Articles, Behind-the-Scenes, Event Coverage, Industry, News, Trade Shows | 2 comments

Training in the Adobe Headquarters in San Jose

San Jose:
CS6 Reviewer’s Workshop

Training in the Adobe Headquarters in San Jose

This past week, I had a chance to check out some pretty incredible new features from Adobe’s new CS6 release along with Flash reviewer Mike Muwanguzi and Photoshop reviewer, Nate Eckelbarger.

While I’ve had a chance to receive training from Adobe on their new products for a number of years now, this is the first time the training has happened when we weren’t under a Non-Disclosure Agreement. Normally, a select group of press representatives is invited to explore the new software at either Adobe’s headquarters in San Jose or at a special event in NYC 6-8 weeks before the release of the new software. In the past, this time barrier between exposure and ability to share has resulted in a loss of overall excitement as even the most cutting edge improvements become simply accepted shortly after exposure! Since the NDA usually lasts until they start releasing the actual software, the fact that the software launched the Friday before the training in San Jose meant that the NDA had expired by this past Tuesday when we began. read more

Read More

Powerful New Adobe CS6 Release at Heart of Transformative Creative Cloud Initiative

Posted by on Apr 23, 2012 in Articles, Industry, MicroFilmmaking, News | 1 comment

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced Adobe® Creative Cloud™, a radical new way of providing tools and services* that will change the game for creatives worldwide. A subscription-based offering, Adobe Creative Cloud is a hub for making, sharing and delivering creative work and it is centered around a powerful release of Adobe Creative Suite® 6 software, packed with innovation across its industry-defining design, Web, video and digital imaging tools.

Read More