We are really close to opening our Online Store,
In there we will have items that will be available for purchasing, rental and products that will be able to download from this very same site.

Come back soon to check it out.

3-D TRIAL DRESS, originally uploaded by OhWorley.

First Modo 302 trial dress. Modo 302 isn’t perfect running on Mac OS X but definitely an enormous improve from version 301.

MAYA TRIAL DRESS, originally uploaded by OhWorley.

Back in December I was using Maya as my primary software for modeling and this was my first trial dress.

“It’s all illusion, but the prize goes to those who make the fantasy the most real, the most visceral, the most involving. This sensation of truthfulness is vastly enhanced by the stereoscopic illusion”
From an interview with James Cameron about shooting “Avatar” in 3d.
Mr. Cameron is talking about 3d visuals. This is also true for 3d, binaural audio, a recording technique we have been experimenting with. Its weakness is that it requires headphones. Seems like we’re more willing to deal with 3d glasses than asking viewers to don headphones.

Our cinematography team at WorleyWorks uses the SI-2K. The camera is great, and even better is the workflow that’s forming around the digital raw files. We’re excited to read this new today that IRIDAS is directly supporting and improving our workflow:

News: IRIDAS to Introduce SpeedGrade XR at NAB 2008

New Application for Digital Cinema RAW Workflows

(Munich, Germany–April 8, 2008) IRIDAS, the industry leader in RAW playback technologies, has announced the release of SpeedGrade XR and will introduce the new application at NAB April 14 - 17.

Designed as a companion product for RAW camera workflows, SpeedGrade XR features IRIDAS’ new RealTime RAW 2.0 technology providing superb image quality for review, grading and finishing of unrendered RAW formats at any resolution. The ability to stay in RAW for postproduction offers filmmakers considerable advantages: RAW files provide more image data than RGB formats, yet are just one third the size.

Along with realtime interpolation of RAW formats, SpeedGrade XR can play video formats (QuickTime and AVI) at HD, 2K, and 4K resolutions. The application offers powerful primary and secondary grading tools, refined conform capabilities, animated masks, pan & scan, and numerous FX shaders such as bleach bypass, Technicolor 3-Strip, and more for creating stylized looks. In addition, IRIDAS DualStream technology for realtime stereo playback and grading is now offered standard. For final output SpeedGrade XR renders to any standard video or file format.

“We are using SpeedGrade XR with DualStream for dailies and pre-grading on production for ‘Dark Country,’ a new stereo feature film,” said Jim Hays, Digital Workflow Supervisor at Paradise FX. “When people see the 3D dailies they are blown away. With this system we can really see exactly what we are doing.”

For most of the shooting, Paradise FX used the Silicon Imaging 2K camera recording in CineForm RAW. “With the SI camera we can apply SpeedGrade .Looks right in the viewfinder,” explained Jim Hays, “it just makes sense to stay with the same system for our dailies.” SpeedGrade’s realtime RAW capabilities mean that CineForm RAW files can be loaded straight from the camera into SpeedGrade XR for review and pre-grading.

“The IRIDAS software has greatly changed the way we work with stereo,” said Tim Thomas, president of Paradise FX. “We had been making do with other solutions for a few years but now we are able to work at five times the speed, which means quicker feedback, much more efficient post work, and a happy client.”

“SpeedGrade XR provides the key for enabling RAW digital cinema workflows,” said IRIDAS CEO, Lin Kayser. “Staying in RAW makes so much sense, but until recently it was only a theoretical possibility. Now filmmakers have a practical way of keeping the pipeline in RAW through production and post - all the way to final rendering.”

IRIDAS is the only developer offering live deBayering of all available RAW formats. Currently the IRIDAS SpeedGrade and FrameCycler applications support ARRI D20 RAW, CineForm RAW (used by Silicon Imaging and others), DALSA 4K RAW, Phantom RAW, and WEISSCAM RAW. Support for additional RAW formats will be added as soon as these become available.

Good from Silicon Imaging - the camera system we use - and the camera used in Bjork’s Wanderlust:

News: Silicon Imaging Announces Integrated 3D Technology Preview

Some of the most exciting news! Houdini on OS X. We love OS X and we love Houdini. We’re still using Maya, but we’re increasingly migrating everything to Houdini.

March 31, 2008 - Side Effects Software is pleased to announce the Houdini for Mac beta program. With the recent redesign of the Houdini UI, Houdini has become much more artist-friendly, making it a great fit for the Mac. At the same time, Apple’s switch to Intel processors provides Houdini artists with a wealth of processing power.

When Houdini for Mac is released, it will sync up with the Windows and Linux versions, allowing customers to move between platforms with ease. Performance on the Mac is proving to be on par with similarly equipped Windows and Linux systems and all versions will share the same feature set.

Modo 302 was just released. Hoping that we can use this on leopard 10.5. Minah’s been modeling with Modo but hasn’t been able to use 301 in either OS X or XP, as it’s always crashing, but the 301 sculpting tools are really cool, the most relevant to us is:

Modeling Improvements

modo’s selection tools are further simplified with a Select Close Loop option that intuitively selects polygons based on the first two polygons selected.

• New Flex tool streamlines posing of tentacles, fingers and antennae or similar organic mesh edits

• o Tool positioning is made more flexible and automatic via a new Selection Border action center and the new Selection Falloff

• o Interpolated strokes make modo sculpting and painting even smoother

• The Edge Extend tool now includes a customizable tool that lets you move, rotate and scale

• New Join Edge, Join Edge Average and Split Edge options provide new edge editing control

• A new Set Vertex Normals command lets you create a new vertex normals vertex map (prior to file export for example)