Vue 7 is shipping

The day has finaly come when vue7 is hitting the streets running in full speed.
No need to say much else then vue7 being a nice improvement over vue6 in terms of render quality, render speed and stability and alot of other core improvements.

Ecosystems has hit generation 3, spectral clouds has reach generation 2 and scenes can be viewed as graphs, terrains now accepts 16bit and ecopaint has reached even higher levels then seen in vue6.

Vue7

Back to school bash 2008

Örnsköldsvik.net, Moyo, Area 1 and some other companies is all set for next weekend´s back to school bash 2008 in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden.

Extreme sport athletes from all around Sweden will meet up to battle it out as the back to school bash 2008 champion in Örnsköldsvik on August 30.

The place is called strandparken and it´s located right next to Swedbank arena, the home arena of Modo Hockey, last years elitserien champions.

You can read more about back to school bash 2008 over at the örnsköldsvik.net website.

www

Örnsköldsvik.net is covering back to school bash 2008

Vue commercial movie usage during 2008

E.on has announced that vue was used amongst others in the following 2008 movies.

Indiana Jones And the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Ilm artist Yanick Dusseault which is the Digital Matte Supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic had this to say.

"Creating entire vistas was a first in my playbook and that's just been wonderful. Vue was my only option and it turned out to be the best option!"



©LucasFilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved. Photo Credits: Industrial Light & Magic, Used Under Permission.

Kung Fu Panda

The following is an excerpt from an online Interview from Markus Manninen, VFX Supervisor on KungFu Panda, made by CGSociety. Republished under Dreamworks exclusive permission

"A lot of our large locations went through a process where the world was created roughly in Vue by our matte painting lead Scott Brisbane. Then the renders out of that were painted on by our matte painters to define the finished detail and push the look and lighting further. The final matte paintings were then projected back on geometry by our matte painting compositors and rendered on the farm. […]

The matte paintings on our film were the most advanced and the most shots that we'd done to date. Even larger than some of the live action films that depend heavily on them. I was truly inspired by their work. The Production Designer and I had planned to rely heavily on matte painting on the film, and we were extatic when the process worked out so well."

And Skycrawlers, a movie by Polygon Pictures.

New English article @ örnsköldsvik.net

Örnsköldsvik.net has awoken from it´s english slumber, well to be honest, we´ve just been more then busy adding new content to the Swedish main website and we´ve added tons of Swedish articles in the past month´s and we´ve also updated the website, it´s navigation and even the blogg has seen quite a few enhancements during the summer, so yeah we know, we´ve neglected the English part of the site, neglected but not forgotten about it tho :)

So it´s time to start churning out some articles in English and the first one out is an article about Skuleberget and High Coast Center, a company managing three very lovely via ferrata routes at skuleberget.

Besides some textual content there´s a hefty bunch of lovely looking photos from Skuleberget which we took earlier this summer for the Swedish version of the article.

So if you´re in the mood for experiencing the lovely Swedish archipelago and the world heritage high coast and Skuleberget then why not start out by reading our article and looking at our photos, and if you´re one of the thousands of tourists visiting Örnsköldsvik for Star wars the exhebition, well then make sure you do not miss out on visiting Skuleberget before you head on back home.

www

Örnsköldsvik.net article - Skuleberget, High Coast Center

Vue7 drawing closer

E.on´s going to show off vue7 @ siggraph so in other words, one can expect vue7 to hit the streets before or around christmas, unless it´s alot more stable in it´s current form then vue6 was at the same during it´s development.

www

Official pressrelease

More news from Caligari founder

In a follow up to the news posted below this post here´s a link to the Caligari founder, featuring videos and images from the new and free of charge 7.6 version of caligari and some textual information.

www

Captains thread

Truespace 7.6 free of charge

Yeah that´s right and a bit crazy, truespace, formerly a 599us$ app is from now on available free of charge.

It all comes down to Microsoft acquiring Caligari, the true space developers some time ago, and Microsoft are now doing a Google thingy and simply releasing the app for free, trying to boost their Live earth service just like google did with sketchup and their earth app.

So let´s see, that means you have seriously capable free apps like Sketchup, Caligari, Daz Studio and gimp and Houdini 9.5 HD available for 99us$, has it ever been so affordable getting your hands on so many and capable tools.

Great times for newcomers of course.

Read more

Virtual earth on the true space for free deal

Opera 9.5 has been released

We usualy dont care about Opera to be honest, part from having to design for it.
But Opera 9.5 is blistering fast, actually it´s so fast that i´m now going cold turkey with firefox 3 and Opera 9.5 also works smooth as pie with web compliant websites.

Great update and until IE 8.0 get´s released my new pet fav browser.

www

Opera 9.5

MGS 4, review and images

Lot´s of spoilers so beware tho, but the keypoint is that it´s written by a non MGS fan, who´s prior history was limited to playing mgs 2 on pc, however he claims that for aslong as he can count to 10 and remember 10 games Metal gear solid 4 will be amongst those 10 games and that´s simply put how good this game is.

Anyway, i have to confess that we havent preordered this game, but after reading this review that´s exactly what we´ll do.

hit the link for the scanned magazine pages.

Mgsforums.com

Streaming and free Vue video tutorials.

Ivan Barbarich is one of the many talented vue users that´s contributing his time and knowledge for others to benefit from.

Actually, more then one Vue user will testify that Ivans free of charge tutorials eclips commercial dvd´s like Asilefx´s.

www: Ivan, flv videotutorials

Blender 2.46

New features 2.46

What a nice improvement over previous Blender versions and in all honesty, Blender is now seriously on the verge of rendering quite a few commercial packages obsolete and in fact, Blender is one app which i would love to see vue7 Extreme and Infinite support out of the box.

One more Resistance 2 screen

This one was posted over at ps3 fanboy.

ps3 fanboy, resistance 2 images

Resistance 2 looking sharp

Psu has a few more screens and it´s pretty obvious that Resistance 2 has come along way since it´s older brother and if it´s gameplay improvements and refinements can match it´s new looks it will for sure be a nice ride.

In all honesty, we never felt that the first game was that great, it had a nice atmosphere and story but that was all there was to it since the graphics and linear maps were alittle last century, but with Resistance 2 things look like they´ve been heavily improved upon and it´s 8 player co.op for sure is something we´re looking forward to.

Psu

Baltic sea tour 2008 - East indiaman Göthenborg

Örnsköldsvik.net added a new English section today, the Baltic sea tour 2008, East Indiaman ship Göthenborg which will be touring the baltic sea during the summer.

Göthenborg will amongst other visit Örnsköldsvik July 27 to 29 smack in the middle of the Star wars the exhibition event.

Lot´s of high profile events in Örnsköldsvik this summer in other word.
Göthenborg is a real life replica of a ship that sank just outside of Sweden 1745, it was authenticly rebuilt and is now sailing the seas of the world and has even visited china.

Websites

Baltic sea tour website section

Playboy, voted - sexiest gamer of the year

Well, in all honesty she was elected, the sexiest cybergirl of the year, but since she loves pc and console games we rephrased the title.

Besides, one thing we dont get is why is it so weird when females and especialy good looking females enjoy a good console or computer game, hell, sexy looking girls are allowed to have fun aswell, or? If not, dont tell my girlfriend since she both enjoys playing games and have the looks to match playboys choice and that´s a combination i enjoy alot :).

Europe´s the main Sony territory

Well no, not if you look at pricepoint, release dates and such, but it might be if you look at quality since we usualy have both the US and Japan beta testing early consoles and other hardware.

However, Europe realy is the main Sony territory if you look at revenue and sales, yep that´s right, Eu is now the nr.1 income and sales territory for Sony, and that´s not just talking about the lovely Ps3.

Other media

Sony operating income article

Carrara 6 pro, Mimic plugin and C6.2 update

Daz continues to churn out new Carrara 6 updates, this time the Pro lineup is recieving a 6.2 update which fixes alot of bugs and smaller issues + adding support for the Mimic Pro plugin which recently got released.

That combined with it´s stellar C6pro sale should make for quite alot of new c6pro users, if you´re into 3d and digital media it´s more then worth looking into even tho i prefer vue6 Infinite over C6pro for landscape and scenery Carrara has alot to offer when it comes to modelling, posing, Hair and Fur creation, rendering and animation, my personal opinion is that there´s room for both apps in your pipeline atleast for the current c6pro sales price.

C6Pro 6.2 update

Nin.New and free of charge cd - The slip

Yeap, Nin´s doing it again, last time it was Ghosts and now they are back, releasing their new cd on their website, free of charge before the cd hit stores later this summer.

A great initiative and aparently it´s working just great for them seeing it´s the second album in a row that they are releasing like this.

Hopefully, more artists will follow suit and who knows, perhaps Metallica will be the next one.
ne
http://www.nin.com/

Freezing issues with GTA IV? Easy fix

No need for that 12 step program which R* posted, just log off PSN before you start GTA IV, tht will solve your problem and if you fancy playing some multiplayer, just log back in from inside of the game.

We cant confirm that last bit since we´re still enjoying playing by our own, but loging off PSN do cure the freezing issue, and we know it because GTA IV used to freeze every single time we tried to play it before loging out of PSN.

Ulvön and Veckefjärden Golf club - UK sections

Time has come for the weekly UK update over at örnsköldsvik.net and this time it´s not just one section but two.

One is featuring Veckefjärdens Pro Golf Club, which will amongst other, hold the very first yearly Pensum Invitational by Peter Forsberg this autumn and the other new section is all about Ulvön, an Island just marking the southern boarder of Örnsköldsvik and part of the high coast world heritage.

As always there´s both images and textual content.

Örnsköldsvik.net, UK sections

Ulvön - The high coast pearl
Veckefjärden Golf club

Spiderwick chronicles making use of vue

Did you know that ilm once again (quite common recent years) used vue in one of their movies, this particular case was spiderwich, the chronicles.



Even the official trailer shows off some vue loving, fancy a read from one of the ilm artists, it might not be that exciting and it´s realy more an advert but still there´s a recent article about vue and ilm and spiderwick the chronicles

E.on talks to ilm about vue

Örnsköldsvik.net, English sections

Star Wars - the exhibition was the first Swedish Örnsköldsvik.net section to get fully translated.

Örnsköldsvik.net, starting may 2008, has commited to translating one section per week so if you´re looking for information and images regarding the lovely coastalcity Örnsköldsvik in Sweden, Örnsköldsvik.net is the place to visit.

The first section was as mentioned, Star wars the exhibition, you´ll find contact information, links to purchasing tickets, links to the official star wars - the exhibition website, images from the very atmospheric museum where the exhibition will take place and general up to date information and come may, you´ll get more sections with tons more images and information about places in and nearby Örnsköldsvik and the high coast (which is a world heritage), where to do what, where to shop, go, what to see and, how to and where to go clubing, sport´s, events and what not.

Great resource for potential tourists in other words, there´s alot of content and images in Swedish, but so far, and as announced, only one proper english section.

Website
xn--rnskldsvik-dcbe.net

Oh, in case you´re wondering, that´s how the url örnsköldsvik.net looks like in firefox.

Star wars, Launch of Swedish invasion

And so it begins, today, 18 April, marked the start of the Imperial invasion in Sweden, it´s of course a marketing stunt, showing off the comming Star Wars - The exhibition that´s taking place in Sweden this summer in the lovely little town called Örnsköldsvik .

Arlanda, Promotion
Read more, text and images from 18 April

Images from outside the Museum of Örnsköldsvik where Star Wars the exhibition will be hosted
Swedish article regarding Örnsköldsvik and Star Wars - the exhibition

Curling sm.Örnsköldsvik

Idag börjar damernas final i Curling sm som går av stapeln i skrivande stund på skyttis här i Örnsköldsvik och imorgon, den 18 mars är det dags för herrarnas final.

Förutom äran i att vara Sveriges bästa curling lag så fungerar även sm som ett kval inför curling em som i december kommer att hållas här i Örnsköldsvik.

Curlingkanalen vet mer och har även live webb tv från tävlingarna.

Curlingkanalen

Vue6 render settings explained by Peggy walters

Tutorial number two from Peggy walters, this time focusing on vue6, since the previously posted tutorial was for vue5.

Vue6 render settings, explained

Warhawk, broken arrow + new vehicle

We´re not just getting 1.3 in a not to distant future and a new map with the new expansion entitled, broken arrow, we´re also going to recieve a new vehicle.

This time it´s the soldiers getting beefed up royalo, first 1.3 will bring wrenches and other enhancements to the ground troops and then once broken arrow arrives with it´s new map it will also reveal a new apc vehicle, the new apc is a ground vehicle, armored personal carrier, and as the name suggests it´s capable of taking on 6 ground troops, allowing them to shoot while being protected.

The apc is heavily armoured in warhawk and will smash through other vehicles, with the one exception being the tank, it will also allow players to spawn inside of it! and even get a random weapon.

Wow, talk about changing tactics in this fast paced game that is warhawk.
Well it looks like the best online multiplayer game will just get better, cant wait for this to hit.

ign knows even more

Warhawk rocking home

Aparently Warhawk wont just let you launch a session from within home and chat with your warhawk friends, it will enable a virtual sandbox of warhawk´s levels, letting you and 7 others chat up and in real time move around troops over the "true to life" properly scaled warhawk room to create proper tactics.

Great stuff and well, this is something that will elevate clan warfare in warhawk and soon you´ll hear gamers all over the world pestering their game dev´s to implement such a feature, but warhawk was first with it, great move and a feature the e game sports world will pure and simply love.

Kotaku showing some warhawk love

Vue render settings explained

Cortesy of Peggy walters from cornucopia3d here´s a pdf document going over vue´s render settings, what they mean and how they affect your render, a nice read for sure.

Peggy walters, vue render settings

Elitserien efter jul

Om man för att roa sig själv tar en titt på elitserien efter jul så ser man att Modo hockey inte bara slåss om en top 4 placering och framförallt en andra plats efter hv71, Modo hockey är faktiskt ohotad 1:a i elitserien efter jul.

På 16 matcher har det blivit hela 36 poäng och på andra plats hittar man Hv71 på 29 poäng, Färjestad är trea med 26 poäng, än mer intressant är faktiskt att Modo hockeyy även har elitseriens bästa målskillnad efter jul.

Läsare med gott minne kan därmed dra paraleller till tidigare Modo säsonger med Harald Lückner där laget varit som bäst perioden efter jul och om man skall vara helt ärlig är det ju perioden efter jul som är viktigast.

Läs mer på sportplock.se

Warhawk 1.3 details + new dlc

Major updates for ground troops and tight integration with home and improvements to communication and servers, + the new dlc, broken mirror isnt to far off, end of march is the current date being tossed around for broken mirror, which looks to be set in a snow covered map.

Btw, did you know that we the people playing warhawk has played more then 7.3 million hours on the official servers since warhawk launched last autum, great numbers and quite telling to how popular warhawk is and why there´s always a ton of people playing it online.

1. weapon 1, the field mechanic wrench, it´s both a tool to repair friendly vehicles (great stuff) but it´s also a one hit kill weapon against other ground troops, just like the knife, but even better it can destroy enemy vehicles, just swing away baby :).

2. bio field generator, just like the wrench its a doublesided sword, a: it will heal groundtroops, just tos it like a mine and then make sure you stand inside of it´s field of range, but if you´re a enemy soldier, well the oposite happens, your health get drained damned fast.

Great tweaks to further enhance gameply and teamplay, which warhawk btw already has alot more of then most online shooters we´ve ever played.

More tweaks are improvements to voip, which we dont realy care for when it comes to casual gaming, it´s more annoying then good, but for clan wars, well then it´s a very welcome improvement.

A very welcome tweak tho is that you can now mute players that dont understand the concept of maturity.

Read more in the official playstation blog post

Blu-ray: I am legend details

Warner Home Video has revealed the specifications and extra features for the Blu-ray release of 'I Am Legend', which is set to be released March 18th.

The disc will contain two versions of the film - the theatrical cut and an alternate theatrical version with a controversial alternate ending.
Video´s in 2.40:1 1080p VC-1 and features a 5.1 Dolby TrueHD soundtrack.

Extras include the Blu-ray exclusive "Creating I Am Legend Minidocumentary Gallery" and "Cautionary Tale: The Science of I Am Legend", both in high definition, also included will be the four animated comics 'Death As A Gift', 'Isolation', 'Sacrificing the Few for the Many' and 'Shelter', all presented exclusively in high definition on the Blu-ray release.

Netflix has gone blu-ray only

The popular online video rental service Netflix has announced that they have decided to support Blu-ray exclusively for high definition movie rentals.

Netflix will no longer purchase movies in the rival HD DVD format, and once the life cycle for those discs has ended, they will no longer stock the format for rent.

Attila the hun - Creative process

Very impressive work behind the soon to be aired attila the hun feature, courtesy of BBC and the Discovery channel.

The most impressive thing tho is that it was virtualy a one man creation, which is realy hard to believe when seeing the preview clip over at fxguide.

A must see if you´re into cgi and movies, digital design, 3d, fx, games and so forth.

Hardware sales, week ending jan 26

DSL: 429,727
Wii: 354,359
PSP: 186,922
PS3: 146,742
360: 128,878
PS2: 115,625

Impressive numbers over all, considering we´re talking about Januari, the month where the normal living, breathing human being, have zero amount of money over :)

National geographics is pure blu-ray

Joining ranks with warner, National geographics will now only release it´s movies on the Blu-ray hd medium.

Astonishing to see some people still buying hd-dvd in US of a while here in Europe people even get money when they trade in their useless hd.dvd players and instead pick up a blu-ray player.

Eu driving playstation 3

With big sales, outselling x360 week in, week out in Europe and an ever increasing sales %, Italy + 70%, Australia + 45% (not that i count australia as an European country, but they are included in PAL regions) and the ps3 outselling the x360 by a 3:1 ratio in EU last week, Europe is for sure once again driving the success of a Playstation generation.

And finaly it´s paying off with Sony focusing more energy on Europe and releasing stuff for Europe first and secondly US of A, PlayTV is bound for release in key Eu regions by the end of April, and even tho we already have dvr built into our plasma tv it´s nice to see Sony widening the apeal of the ps3, making it even more the premium media center solution for any high end household, well with the latest pricedrops ps3 is affordable for any kind of household, so high end should more be read as households looking for the best entertainment solutions for their own pleasure and fun today and tomorrow.

Resistance 2 looking realy good, highres image

Have to say i´m starting to look forward to this game, great graphics and it´s just pre alpha, 8 player co.op and what not, i wasnt that big of a fan of the first game even tho we sometimes play it in co.op in our family, but against warhawk and the likes it´s just not that popular with us, great story and atmosphere tho and with the increase in graphical quality and 8 player co.op resistance 2 is starting to look realy interesting.

top 250 sales chart @ amazon.com

sales chart for HD movies since warner went Blu-ray

It´s a chart from amazon.com showcasing how hd-dvd sales on amazon has rocketed downwards while Blu-ray has remained in the top ranks.

Sony will distribute it´s movies online in divx

Sony Pictures Television announced today that online retailers will soon be able to offer Sony content for download in DivX format. The news came as part of a partnership with DivX, Inc. that will also let those files be playable on DivX Certified devices. "We are dedicated to finding legitimate outlets for our content and to that end are excited to be working with DivX to provide retailers with an expanded ecosystem for the digital distribution and playback of our digital media," said Sony Pictures executive VP of Digital Distribution & Mobile Entertainment, Michael Arrieta.

Related StoriesDivX support coming to PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 support in the works
DivX Pro for Mac free again (for some odd reason)
SanDisk Sansa to support DivX video
A spokesperson for DivX, Kristina Weise, told Ars that this would offer consumers high-quality Hollywood content in DivX for the first time ever, and that the deal would cover "all titles in the Sony Pictures Television library." She also said that all titles would be download-to-own, but that there will be some type of unspecified DRM. Tracking down those DivX Sony movies might be a challenge, though. "We have no announcements with retailers at this time," she told us.

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Great news for both users and Sony, one more step in the right direction for Sony whom seems to have been on fire lately and the last few weeks Sony seems to have been doing everything right.

First and last hd.dvd from New line cinema

And the answer is Pan´s labyrinth, it was released by the end of 2007 and it will mark history as the first and last hd.dvd release by New line cinema, all their other movies, past and future ones will only see the light of day on Blu-ray and good ol dvd.

I cant wait for lotr to hit blu-ray and later on the two new hobbit movies, great times ahead for hd movie lovers.

Besides, has anyone noticed that sony demoed that you´ll be able to backup your blu-ray movies on your ps3 and further take that backup with you on your psp or a memory card, great news and times indeed for movie lovers, legal and easy to do backups is great.

worldwide sales december

Total Worldwide Sales for the Month of December:

Wii 3,869,926
PS3 2,081,432
PSP 2,399,757
PS2 1,958,444
Xbox360 1,894,335

alot of consoles got sold during dec 9 to dec 30 and one has to start realising that current gen is about the 7 year old ps2 aswell and not just wii, ps3 and x360, the 360 got last in line again, but the most impressive one is ps2, whom could have imagine ps2 outselling x360 seven years after it´s launch.

Nice totals for Sony btw.