Epic wants to make sure you haven’t missed all of the great art dumps. Really good stuff, go check it out

If you voraciously consume Epic art dumps you might have already seen some of this, but in case you missed some of the awesome art dumps, Epic gathered up a few links for you, check them out HERE

Over the past couple weeks we were having issues with uploading large images to our news system, but now that it’s fixed, it’s time to bring back the recap. And to make sure you didn’t miss out on any gems during that period, we’re going all the way back to mid December. Enjoy.

What Are You Working On?

Gav

grantthompson

Anuxinamoon

Arthur Ramazanov

Bart

choco

CodeFather

Dado Almeida

Dan!

danitchu

dannedadon

Ferg

FirstKeeper

FirstKeeper

Froyok

fusedgore

g2000

Haiasi

itismario

Jackwhat

jeremiah_bigley

Jessica Dinh

JFletcher

Josh_Singh

Josh_Singh

larolaro

ledyr

Lonewolf

Miche

Millenia

Mrskullface

Nick Carver

odium

onelunglewis

pantsyuu

papagersi

pixelherder

Pope Adam

Ravenslayer

Rayph

Rayph

Sayanora

Sean VanGorder

Shad0wForce

Skyerzz

spitty

suburbbum

Super

Superfail

tacit math

teaandcigarettes

toxic_h20

Vorge

xvampire

yeman

zxcman

Makkon

Threads To Check Out

Rift Art Dump

Hazardous shows off some of his character work from Rift

[Portfolio] – Manuel Virks, (Senior Environment Artist, Crysis 2)

katzeimsack pimps his updated portfolio, including work from Crysis 2

Gears of War: Raam’s Shadow Environment Work

Check out some of paulsvoboda’s work from the Gears of War 3 DLC

An exercise in modular textures – Scifi lab UDK

Snefer updated his thread with even more impressive work

Inspiration website for artists! new

luke has recently gone live with a brand new website for finding concept art

My big list of portfolios

AlecMoody and others share their collections of inspirational portfolios

Explosions & Rainbows

Lee3dee has launched a new site dedicated to FX tutorials

That’s it for this recap, and my apologies if I missed anything that deserves some recognition, there was quite a bit to go through. Remember, if you come across anything you feel is spotlight worthy, feel free to let us know via the “Contact Us” button.

Epic has released the UDK Beta for January 2012.

And as always, this newest version is filled with improvements. Some of the more notable additions include the Simplygon Mesh Proxy Tool, the ability to create holes in landscape, and the new pivot painter. Head over to UDK news page to read up on all of the additions and improvements.

We’re talking about it HERE.

Marius “obliviboy” Silaghi released another MaxScript called Projection Painter

“Projection Painter is a script for 3DS Max which allows you to send a view of your model in your favorite painting application to paint its textures then project them back on to your model.”

• You have the benefit of working in your familiar painting environment with your favorite brushes at the speed you are used to.
• Don’t have to fear ruining your existing texture by projecting on a new layer and have the ability to edit, move and do anything you want with the projected paint.
• The very good representation of your shading, lighting and normal map in in your painting application will help you paint more accurately, no more guess work.
• You can paint on any map, diffuse, specular, bump, opacity etc.

So instead of projection painting on the 3D model in the viewport, you use photoshop and send it back to your model where it figures out the behinds the scenes voodoo and updates your texture. I also like how it allows you to work around the UV distortion in a model.

It does look very promising and his other scripts are very well written and have some amazing functionality, if you try it out let us know how it goes.

The downside to all the scripts Marius’s writes is that they aren’t free. But with the insane amount of witchcraft that had to go into creating scripts like these, hopefully you understand that all those frog beaks aren’t cheap.

Related Links:

• Official site for the script is HERE.
• We are talking about it HERE.

Exis Interactive offers outsource and games financing

Towson, MD — January 12, 2012 —Exis, in conjunction with their financial partners, is now offering the games industry financing for outsource art. This is a first in the industry, allowing developers and publishers alike to improve cash flow and seek alternative methods for outsource funding.

Whereas typical financing revolves around hardware, Exis is offering low interest options for outsourcing art, audio, and development. Companies can seek anywhere from $25k to $30 million or more for outsourcing. Exis will offer revolving lines of credit, among other solutions to qualified companies. According to Peter Kojesta, founder of Exis, “We’ve seen too many developers settle for 3rd rate outsourcing because of perceived cost benefits that just aren’t realized. Often they’ll end up redoing the work in-house, costing them not only time, but money as well. We’ve been delivering quality artwork to our clients for years, and these new options are another way to show them how deeply we’re committed to their success. Our unique financing model allows them to get great quality and maintain control over their budgets. The industry should have done this a long time ago”.

“This initiative by Exis not only opens new funding avenues to game developers across the country, but expands local business opportunities as well.  It has the potential to strengthen the industry and to bring more jobs to Maryland, and it shows how competitive and forward thinking our local game development studios are,” says Clay Hickson, Director of TowsonGlobal Business Incubator at Towson University.

Exis is an art outsourcing and  game development studio founded in 2003 and creates AAA products for partner studios and publishers. The company is made up of Ex Sony, Breakaway Games, and Day 1 Studios employees. Exis has been securely delivering content to its clients for over 8 years. The company is located in Towson, Maryland, directly across the street from Towson University.

For further information see http://www.exisinteractive.com/financing/ , or contact Peter Kojesta at information@exisinteractive.com or 410-769-6454.

*Taken from Exis Interactive press release

So what does that mean for our industry? Well it’s still too early to tell but if it works like I think it would then this is very exciting. Hopefully it will lead to more jobs for fellow Polycounters and in return companies should get some really nice quality outsourcing.

Hit the link below for the full announcement and details.

http://www.exisinteractive.com/financing/

Two more free tutorials from Eat 3D.

In case you missed it, our friends over at Eat 3D have put together two more short tutorials, free of charge.

In the first video, Tor Frick (aka Snefer on Polycount) goes over the basics of setting up vertex painting inside of UDK.

See the video here: http://eat3d.com/free/vertex_painting

In the second video, Markus Hammarstedt demonstrates how to retarget and clean motion capture in MotionBuilder.

See the video here: http://eat3d.com/free/mocap_cleanup

A thanks goes out to Eat 3D and the instructors for putting these together.

The JIST (Japan Institute for Science and Technology) created a real world Wipe’out track based on Quantum Levitation (or did they?)

“Here is a short footage on our recent work on quantum levitation. We were inspired by the game Wipe’out to do our work. With this new technology, we hope to revolutionize the world of motor transport; Maybe in a near future we could assist to a real Wipe’out race.”

That sounds amazing and would be a major scientific break through. But not so fast… It turns out this was a project by 3rd year students at Montreal’s Centre Nad.

Here is an excerpt from a montreal.openfile.ca blog post that explains the motivation behind the hoax.

” It all started with an assignment from professor Robin Tremblay’s third-year class in the media effects concentration at the school for animation and design.

“The assignment was to create a believable prank or hoax using CGI elements over a camera shoot they had to do,” Tremblay explained to OpenFile Montreal. “Once the project completed, they had put the result online and promote it through their social networks. To create CGI effects that are totally oblivious to acute viewer is still a big challenge for most post-production companies, and is a even bigger hurdle for students.”

One group of students decided to incorporate the popularity of a video game with the science of controlled quantum levitation.

“When they submitted the idea, I was very excited of the viral potential,” Tremblay said. “The Wipeout video game is in the gaming community since the inception of Sony (Playstation) console and was always very popular. A recent scientific experiment involving superconductors, liquid nitrogen and levitation largely viewed on the Internet was the spark that gave the idea to my students.”

But the hoax fell victim to its own popularity. With 2million+ views worth of attention, someone was bound to call them on it.

Until real scientist figure it out, you’ll have to settle for this, which is still amazingly cool and probably partially responsible for idea…

Pixologic launched ZBrush 4R2b yesterday and it has a shopping list of cool new features and a cure for baldness.

If you haven’t been following much of the sneak peak videos from Pixologic lately about the R42b update, now is your chance to check it our yourself first hand. I received my update e-mail last night and will be spending a good portion of today playing around with the new FiberMesh feature. So is this truly the end of 3D bald heads in ZBrush?

List of updates in ZBrush 4R2b:

• New set of dedicated FiberMesh “Groom” brushes and corresponding Brush settings.
• MicroMesh support to render fibers or single polygons as another 3D object.
• New set of BPR filters and operators to greatly improve your final ZBrush renders.
• BPR Global Shadow and Ambient Occlusion settings which simplify shadow management.
• New Cavity Mixer which to define different material shaders based on the mesh cavities.
• Improved small details creation through Alpha and Mask. Alphas may be placed using TransPose.
• Surface Smoothness feature detects mesh curvature for Mask creation.
• New global deformation with Transpose Curve deformation and UnClip.
• Improved Mask operations with Shrink and Extend.
• Topology editing additions: Group Mask and Edgeloop Mask Border.
• New JPEG Exporter with Crop, Preview and adjustment settings.
• Numerous improvements such as storing shadow information based on the camera point of view, preview of mesh Extraction, Auto Adjust Mode for perspective… and a lot more.

If you’re not the reading type, check out this page with videos, pretty pictures and overview of the new features in ZBrush 4R2b.

So check your e-mails for the update installer link.

Related Links:

• ZBrushCentral – FiberMesh Preview
• Pixologic – ZBrush 4R2b Launched! post
• Pixologic – ZBrush 4R2b Features Overview