Create Compelling Entertainment Content With Autodesk Creative Suite 2013

Reach new levels of creativity with a powerful set of 3D animation tools.

Autodesk Entertainment Creation Suite

Experience Creative Freedom with Industry-Leading 3D Tools

Included Softwares

Autodesk Maya

Autodesk® Maya® 3D animation software delivers a comprehensive creative feature set with tools for animation, modeling, simulation, rendering, matchmoving, and compositing on a highly extensible production platform. For visual effects, game development, post production, or other 3D animation projects, Maya offers toolsets to help meet demanding production requirements. Maya 2013 adds tools that help facilitate parallel workflows and complexity handling; powerful new creative toolsets; and productivity enhancements to help you create higher quality content quickly.

Autodesk 3ds Max

Autodesk® 3ds Max® and Autodesk® 3ds Max® Design software provide powerful, integrated 3D modeling, animation, and rendering tools that enable artists and designers to focus more energy on creative, rather than technical challenges. The products share core technology, but offer specialized toolsets for game developers, visual effects artists, and motion graphics artists along with other creative professionals working in the media design industry on one hand; and architects, designers, engineers, and visualization specialists on the other.

Autodesk MotionBuilder

Experience a new nonlinear editing paradigm for virtual production that moves beyond video and audio. Autodesk® MotionBuilder® real-time 3D character animation software builds on emerging techniques embraced by some of the entertainment industry’s most successful studios. You can acquire, aggregate, and refine data with greater reliability and precision; create, edit, and play back complex character animation in a highly responsive, interactive environment; and work with a display optimized for the individual requirements of both animators and directors. These capabilities make MotionBuilder ideal for high-volume film and game animation, previsualization, motion capture, and performance animation.

• Real-time engine—A real-time 3D engine makes it one of the industry’s fastest animation tools.
• Productivity-geared workflows—Workflow features enable you to take on demanding, high-volume projects:
• Unified nondestructive, nonlinear editing environment
• Live device support and live data recording to disk
• Full-body inverse kinematics character technology with animation retargeting
• Motion capture editing and data cleanup—A production-proven toolset enables manipulation of motion capture data.
• Stereoscopic toolsets—Capitalize on the current trend for stereoscopic 3D (S3D) content.
• Smooth interoperability—With its software development kit, support for Autodesk® FBX® technology, and Python® scripting capabilities, MotionBuilder interoperates with other products in theAutodesk® Entertainment Creation Suites—Autodesk® Maya®,Autodesk® 3ds Max®, and Autodesk® Softimage® software—and with Autodesk® HumanIK® middleware.

Autodesk Mudbox

3D Digital Sculpting & Digital Painting Software

Autodesk® Mudbox® 3D digital sculpting and digital painting software gives you the freedom to create production-ready 3D digital artwork. Designed for professional artists working in game development, visual effects, post-production, and product design, Mudbox combines an intuitive user interface with a powerful creative toolset of stencils and brushes. The robust feature set and high-performance environment help you create highly realistic 3D characters, engaging environments, detailed props, and compelling concept designs in less time. Available for Mac®, Microsoft® Windows®, and Linux® operating systems.

• Professional 3D sculpting toolset—Fast, smooth, and accurate results.
• Paint directly onto high-resolution 3D models—See results immediately.
• Paint multiple material channels—Powerful toolset for painting and viewing textures across multiple high-resolution maps.
• Texture baking—Create accurate normal, displacement, and ambient occlusion maps.
• Interactive display—Render quality results directly in the viewport.
• 3D layers—Experiment with design concepts and easily make revisions.
• Smooth integration—Round-trip data with products in theAutodesk® Entertainment Creation Suites 2013, and enhanced compatibility with Adobe® Photoshop® software.

Autodesk SketchBook Pro

Sketching, Painting, and Drawing App

The award-winning application for everyone who loves to draw! Sketch, paint, and draw with a professional-grade app that is easy-to-use for every artist.

Autodesk® SketchBook® Pro sketching software for Windows or Mac computers is a fun and intuitive paint and drawing app, and can transform your computer into an ideal artist’s toolkit. With tools designed for professional artists, illustrators, and designers, the easy-to-use interface can help unlock the artist in everyone. SketchBook Pro is specifically designed to work with pen tablets, such as Wacom® Bamboo™, Intuos®, and Cintq® products, or with Windows® tablet devices to deliver an authentic drawing experience.

• Free up the sketching process with ultra-responsive digital pencils, pens, markers, paintbrushes, and airbrushes. Even customize your own brushes.
• Draw Styles & Guide tools, like French curves, help you create clean and nearly precise strokes.
• Layers let you build up and organize a drawing.
• Incorporate your own images by dragging and dropping, or import into layers.
• Familiar tools, like pencils, paintbrushes, markers, airbrushes, erasers, flood fill tools, and smudge brushes make it easier to get started.
• Easy access to tools and commands in the intuitive and customizable menus.
• Annotate images quickly by importing images and adding comments on top.

What's New in SketchBook Pro 6?

• Streamlined interface delivers an unobstructed and discoverable environment, keeping you in the creative zone.
• Multitouch navigation support on the latest Wacom devices.
• Synthetic paintbrushes that behave more like traditional paint mediums.
• Smudge brushes for blending colors.
• Even more brush controls to customize.

Autodesk Softimage

Autodesk® Softimage® software is a high-performance 3D character animation and visual effectsapplication. Intuitive, nondestructive workflows, together with the innovative ICE (Interactive Creative Environment) and Autodesk® Face Robot® facial animation toolset, extend Autodesk® Maya® orAutodesk® 3ds Max® software pipelines. With new creative tools, a new high-fidelity interactive environment, and extended customizability, Autodesk Softimage enables you to meet the evolving challenges in visual effects, post-production, and 3D game development.

KeepVid.com (Download and Keep YouTube, MP4 and other media)

KeepVid.com is a little gem that I need to share. I have tried plenty of freeware programmes in the past for downloading YouTube videos, but KeepVid.com really is the best.

And it is totally FREE!!

It's pretty simple:

(1) Go to keepvid.com

(2) Type in the URL of the video you want to download (or you can search within the same box). It might ask you permission to load the Java application, in which case allow it yo do so.

(3) Choose the format which you want to download it in

(4) Click on it and off you go!

You will need to have Java installed (which you can get via your browser or at java.com) but it's cross-platform (works on Windows, OSX, whatever).

You download a program should you wish to, and thus contribute to the site, and if you use it a lot it might be nice to "give something back" via this route. I personally prefer the web service route, and perhaps the authors will consider putting a donate button on the front page?

They list all the sites they currently in their FAQ and it is pretty comprehensive.

So ditch the freeware, that might well be more malware than anything else, and use this excellent free service.

Xolo launches Intel-powered smartphone

Xolo announced the launch of its new Android smartphone 'Xolo 1000' powered by Intel's atom processor at a price of Rs 19,999 a piece.

Xolo 1000 has 2 gigahertz Intel atom processor which can process at least two applications simultaneously like a phone with dual core processor. We have tested this phone against top models of international brands and have found it to be the fastest," Xolo Business.

He claimed that during the test Xolo 1000 showed two times high processing speed in linpack test which is done to validate browsing speed.

Xolo 1000 will be available on e-commerce portals from March 20 and at retail stores from March 21.

Xolo 1000 loaded web pages with more speed compared to others. Nearest competitor loaded web page in 922 millisecond and Xolo loaded same pages at in 917 millisecond .

The phone has 4.7 inch screen, 8Gb internal memory, 8 megapixel rear and 1.3 megapixel front camera.

Xolo's co-founder and Director Vishal Sehgal said that Xolo 1000 battery back supports talk time of up to 9.5 hours both on 2G and 3G networks.

The battery will last after 38 hours if a person runs only music on it. An user can run high definition video on it for 6 hours.

Xolo is first in Asia and second globally, after Motorola in Europe to launch smartphone built on this 2ghz Intel chipset.

How To Create Virtual Makeup In Photoshop

This tutorial will teach you how you can quickly and effectively modify an image where too much makeup’s were applied making the skin look fake. Makeup always not the case,
the picture can be a magazine scan creating excessive noise on the picture. You can also do this to an old photographs that was scanned. Basically to any picture that has excessive amount of noise.
Using this quick dirty secret, you can make your models look glamour’s in no time! For this tutorial purpose, we will use this photograph of Indian celebrity, Riya Sen, that I found on the net. You can
save this picture and open with photoshop to follow through the tutorial.

Step 1: I’ll assume you already have selected your models picture, using the above picture or the picture you would like to enhance. Now, look over at your layers menu, right click over your image layer and select “Duplicate Layer”.
It should look something like this:

Step 2: Make sure your new duplicated layer is selected on the layers menu then from the top menu, go to FILTER -> NOISE -> REDUCE NOISE.

Step 3: You’ll get a popup dialogue box with many options and sample of your picture on the left. The menu on the right would look like the screen below. Strength is how powerful the noise reduction will be, I have set this to maximum.
In your case, it may not be necessary so make sure you slide it left and right until the preview looks like the kind of skin you want for your picture.
I set the ‘Preserve Details’ to 1% as at this point I do not care how much details are being shown, my only concern is that I want the skin to look really good and smooth. Set the other two option to zero as we do not need them.



Once the REDUCE NOISE filter is applied on the top duplicated layer, your picture would look something like this..

Notice that noise is removed from all part of the image including the lips, eyes and hair.. thus making the picture look as if it has been photoshoped.

Step 4: Remember, you have our original picture intact on the bottom of this layer. At this point our goal is to bring the original eyes, hair and lips back as if they
were vivid and not blurry photoshoped version. From the Navigator menu, select the Eraser tool.

Step 5: Now, right click anywhere in the picture and you will get this popup menu.


You’ll see many different brush size, the first half set of brushes are regular brushes which we will not use. The second half set of brushes are smooth edge like spray painting like brushes. For my image
I’ve selected Soft Mechanical 9 Pixel size. You can see it more clearly in the above dialogue box. The purpose here is to carefully erase the eyeballs, eyebrows, lips and hair. As you erase them
in this layer, you’ll notice the original version is coming out replacing the newer one. This way it looks more authentic and real. Go ahead and carefully finish up erasing only inside of the eyes and other
element you would like to keep as authentic. If the model have any jewelry, it is strongly suggested you erase them as well as any other details you want to preserve from the original keeping the skin intact.
Once you are finished, it should look something like this:

Change Lipstick Colour In a Photo

Step 1: First thing you want to do is create a new empty layer from the layers menu.

Stpe 2: Now, from the Navigator menu, select the Brush tool.

Step 3: Now, right click anywhere in the picture and you will get this popup menu.


You’ll see many different brush size, the first half set of brushes are regular brushes which we will not use. The second half set of brushes are smooth edge like spray painting like brushes. For my image
I’ve selected Soft Mechanical 18 Pixel size.

Step 4: From the Tools menu, set the foreground color to the color of the lipstick that you would like to apply on the model. I selected a shade of red.

Step 5: Now you are ready to apply the lipstick, using the mouse tooltip, paint over the lips. Do not worry if it is not perfectly done. After all, you do not have to be a makeup artist
to create perfect lipstick… hence we have photoshop! Once you are done, it should look somthing like this:

Step 6: Now from the layers menu, change the blending mode for the layer. If you click on the drop down menu for the blending mode, you’ll see lots of option, I advise you
go through all of them and find the one that suits the best blending for your color. In my case, I found ‘Darken’ to give me exactly the shade I wanted.

Step 7: Set the opacity to about 50% that way when you are erasing the excess lipstick from the outside of lips are or even teeth, you can see half way trhough the layer so you know what
to keep and what to erase.

Step 8: Select eraser tool from the Tools menu.

Right click on somewhere in the picture and you should get a popup dialgoue that looks like the one below.

Scroll down half way through the list and find the Soft Mechanical brush (see step 3 for more details). I selected the Soft Mechanical 9 Pixel size brush tip.

Step 9: Now using your mouse tooltip, go ahead and erase carefuly the edge of the lips where excessive lipstick are applied. As the layer opacity is set to 50% (see step 7), you should be
able to see the real lips below visible slightly and that will give you the hint as to how your lipstick should look on this layer. Once you delete the areas around the lips and the teeth (if they are showing)..
then play around the Opacity of the layer and set your desire number (see step 7.) This completes this tutorial, here is how mine came out:

HOW TO REMOVE BLEMISHES IN PHOTOSHOP

ROLLOVER IMAGE

With the image open, drag the Background layer over the New Layer icon to duplicate it.

A Background copy layer is added, but the screen does not change.

Click the Zoom tool.

Click Resize Windows To Fit.

Click and drag over the blemish areas to zoom in.

The image is enlarged and fills the screen.

Click the New Layer icon to add a new blank layer.

A new layer is added in the Layers palette, but the screen does not change.

Click the Spot Healing Brush.

Click Sample All Layers.

Click here to open the Brush Picker.

Click and drag the Diameter slider to adjust the brush size.

Note: The brush size should be just larger than the blemish that you want to remove.

Click each of the worst blemishes of a similar size first.

Photoshop removes the blemishes and blends the surrounding skin area.

Click the New Layer icon to add another blank layer.

Repeat steps 8 to 10, clicking the other blemishes.

Layer 2 should be highlighted in the Layers palette.

Click here and drag the Opacity slider for Layer 2 to the left until the skin looks natural.

Press the ALT key and click the New Layer icon.

The New Layer dialog box appears.

Type a name such as Skin Tone in the Name field.

Click here and select Overlay for the mode.

Click Fill with Overlay-Neutral Color (50% Gray).

Click OK.

A gray layer in Overlay mode appears in the Layers palette.

Click the Brush tool.

Click here and select a small soft-edged brush.

Click here and reduce the brush opacity to about 5%.

Click here to reset the default colors to black and white.

Click here to reverse the colors, making white the foreground color.

Paint over any dark spots in the image to smooth the skin.

The skin tone appears smoother. Continue painting over any dark areas, adjusting the size of the brush tool as necessary.

Click here and drag the Layer Opacity slider to the left to reduce the effect for a more natural look.

Click the Visibility icon for the gray layer off and on to compare the image before and after the adjustment.

The skin tone is smoothed and appears natural rather than over-corrected.

Select all the layers except the original layer by holding down The Shift Key and clicking on all the layers, than go to Layers Merge Visibles or hit CTRL-E.

Now click and drag the Merged layers to the Create New Layer button to make a copy of the layer.

Select the copied layer and go to Filter-Blur-Gaussian Blur enter 1 pixel for the radius.

Click OK.

Select the Eraser Tool.

In the brush option select a soft edge brush.

Start erasing the important areas of the images so the viewer’s attention is drawn to the spots.

Lower the opacity to 30% now the image looks more natural.

Click the Levels Button.

Play with the settings until you get the desired result.