This award recognises the best new content creation applications that have been released over the past year, which provide stable, useful and useable tools for the CG artist. CAST YOUR VOTE NOW!

We’ve been at the heart of the CG industry for over a decade. Now we are proud to lead a celebration of the artistry and technology that continues to wow audiences the world over.

The 3D World CG Awards recognises the work of the entire CG entertainment industry: from software and hardware developers who give us the tools and engines to drive creativity, to the artists and technicians involved in pushing the boundaries of CG illustration, animation, visual effects and arch-viz.

Here’s your chance to find out more about the software up for the New Application Award in the Technology Awards category.

Forger – Javier Edo

The app’s welcome screen provides you with one-touch access to base meshes and last saved files

Forger – a powerful, portable digital sculpting app for the iPad – is the brainchild of Javier Edo, a Pipeline TD at Double Negative.

By day he works writing tools for various departments for upcoming films, by night he enjoys sculpting characters and working on his own projects. We talk to Javier about his slick, sculpting app for the iPad.
Read the interview with Javier Edo.

If you’ve ever wished you could dive into ZBrush or Mudbox to do a quick sculpt on the go then this is the tool for you.
Read the review of Forger 1.0

Hiero – The Foundry

Senior product designer for The Foundry, Matt Plec comments, “Nuke is already a powerful compositing tool, but it’s missing a component many artists need. Hiero provides the missing link functionality currently dealt with either by expensive tools, in-house scripting or a cumbersome manual process. Hiero’s the bridge tool our customers have been asking for.”
Read more about Hiero here.

Photoshop Touch – Adobe

Photoshop Touch is an excellent all-round package that makes working on the go a joy. Newcomers may take a short while to get to grips with the tool locations, but it’s an enticing app, especially for the price.
Read the review of Photoshop Touch.

Vote now for your favourite via the CG Awards site!

The closing date for voting is Tuesday 31 July.

We will announce the winners on Wednesday 5 September, and you’ll be able to discover the winners’ responses in the November issue of 3D World, on sale from Tuesday 11 September.

After more than 20 years, Adobe continues to rethink the jewel in its crown. Lance Evans looks at the latest iteration of Photoshop

PRICE: £794 / $999 / €1,149 | UPGRADE FROM: £309 / $399 / €399
PLATFORM: Windows / Mac OS X
MAIN FEATURES:

• Powerful image editing toolset
• Customisable user interface
• Separate 3D workspace
• Actions for repetitive tasks
• Good support for tablet input devices
• Mini bridge for access to assets

DEVELOPER: Adobe

Photoshop CS6 Extended offers a much wider range of tools than the Photoshop your dad would have used, and with its new dark grey (customisable) interface, and new tools and workflows, it certainly feels like a different program from just a few years ago.

The program continues to build upon both its 3D and video capabilities – tools that some users previously found confusing and slow. But new hardware and software improvements are solving most issues, making this an easier and more productive solution for more users.

Photoshop Extended has always offered different benefits to different types of users. Traditional image creation tools used for mapping are second to none. For the more modest 3D aficionado, Photoshop has been an increasingly attractive option to the steeper cost/learning curve of the medium-weight contenders.

Most users probably already own at least the standard version of Photoshop and can upgrade at a reasonable cost, and are comfortable with the Adobe interface.
The list of new features includes a host of full-screen interface enhancements to many toolsets, a reinvention of many long-existing tools such as the Crop tool, more enhancements to the 3D toolset, a streamlining of the video section, a host of enhancements to perspective corrective controls, and the speed benefits of Adobe’s Mercury Graphics Engine.

The user interface has been redesigned with options to make 3D navigation much more intuitive

Let’s first take a look at 2D image production, which will be likely to have an impact on most 3D World readers. We all need to generate a wide range of images, from backgrounds to texture maps and projection maps, and so on.

Increasingly, image work originates with captured digital camera and video content, so the host of new tools aimed at capture and image corrections can be very useful. For example, the improved Camera Raw 7 boasts an improved engine and enhanced tools.

With a flat image (background), a 3D plane (table), and two imported 3D models, Photoshop Extended handles a wide range of media. © 2012 Lance Evans

In limited testing, we did see some images looking better than they did in older versions of this tool. But the new slider options in the main tab – Blacks, Whites, Shadows, and Highlights – seem confusing, and lacking in mid-range controls. The Auto function in Camera Raw is repeatedly way off the mark too, leaving images looking washed out.

NEW ADAPTIVE WIDE ANGLE FILTER

Once captured images are imported, Photoshop now allows far greater control of perspective distortions and lens issues. These new capabilities are available in the new Adaptive Wide Angle Filter, which offers both auto correction of image distortions based on XML file data, and the ability to create constraining lines that tell the interpreter how to correctly warp the image. This tool can also be used to correct stitched panoramic images from Photomerge, which is impressive.

Photoshop offers an improved video editing interface with After Effects-like controls and simplified editing

The other new perspective control is a new tool hidden under the Crop tool, called the Perspective Crop tool, used to ‘square off’ images that are at an angle. It’s very intuitive to use – draw a crop box as normal, then move the corners as necessary and hit [Return] to square the skewed element.

This brings us to CS6’s complete reworking of an old tool that most thought was fine as it was: the venerable Crop tool is now many times more powerful – and useful – than ever before. Now when cropping, the image moves/scales behind the cropping tool’s frame, thus keeping your image – the part you care about – centred. Similarly, when crop/rotating, it’s the image behind the crop tool’s frame that rotates; no more head tilting!

NEW TEXT MENU AND VECTOR LAYERS

Many sections of the application have been beefed up, including many new text controls that borrow from InDesign and allow more designer-like controls of larger blocks of type. It even includes a brand new Text drop-down menu.

New Vector Layers allow easier creation of lines, shapes and objects, including the long-elusive ability to create a dashed line. Both of these tools can play a role in streamlining a range of motion/broadcast graphics work. Another improvement, which at first seems deceptively simple, is the addition of search and filtering of items in the Layers palette based on name, type and other criteria.

If you need the gamut of multimedia tools on offer, and have the hardware to run it, CS6 is unsurpassed

IT’S A KIND OF MAGIC

Now for some magic. The content aware features introduced in previous versions have had their core technology improved, and two new tools have been added to the toolset. The new Content Aware Move tool allows selected items to be moved, and all the elements to be automatically reblended into their new locations.

See the Photoshop CS6 Content-Aware Patch Tool in action

The Content Aware Patch tool puts a different twist on things by allowing items to be removed from a scene by selecting a target area to be cloned from and then blended. While not perfect, these features all help to get you where you want to be, and are a boon for retouching and image correction of all sorts.
Adobe wants Photoshop Extended to be the go-to app for every 3D designer.

Our feeling is that if you do heavy design and light 3D work, it might be a perfect match. Virtually no other 3D application offers the design and graphics tools that Photoshop Extended does, and in that arena it’s the hands-down winner. But even with the formidable additions to this release there will always be a capabilities cap in 3D, so as your needs increase you may quickly outgrow these tools.

Standout new tools include alternate ortho views, easier 3D model control using a ‘cage control’, a simplified Context Aware Move tool, the addition of extrusion modelling with bevels, and the ability to control lighting placement by moving not just the lights but also the shadows. All of these improvements and more attest to Adobe’s continuing commitment to 3D.

Most impressive is the integration of 3D with 2D – the ability to create a perspective grid in the Vanishing Point filter, and have 3D models snap to it for improved placement, is a perfect example.

USER-FRIENDLY VIDEO

The video section of the application has also undergone an overhaul, in this case to simplify it and make it easier to use. Generally speaking, the users for these features will not be Final Cut or Premiere users, so Adobe felt that the interface had to be kept simple.

It still feels odd seeing 3D and video in Photoshop, but their development firmly solidifies it as the world’s best multimedia tool.

It’s hard not to like what Adobe has done here, because so much has been done. Aside from a few glitches, the only downside to this upgrade is going to be the need for more hardware commitment.

In previous versions you could get away without a Mercury Graphics Engine and still run 3D and other tools.

As of this version, many tools – 3D and others – won’t run without at least 512MB of video RAM, and a Mercury-enabled video card.

VERDICT

PROS

• Contemporary new interface
• Facelift to many toolsets
• The ultimate multimedia tool

CONS

• Ever-increasing learning curve
• Increased hardware needs
• Overkill for many users

Although not a 3D powerhouse, the additional tools have uses. Along with the new interface and extra tool options, Photoshop Extended CS6 is a powerful and usable image editor

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lance Evans is creative director of Graphlink Media and has created 3D for top agencies and clients such as Miller Beer, Trojan Condoms and Absolut Vodka. He has written numerous books and tutorials on 3D

Now check out this great selection of free Photoshop brushes at our sister site Creative Bloq.

Adobe is hosting its first Creative Week in July. Find out what’s coming up online and find out how you can take part in this celebration of creativity…

Adobe’s Creative Week – from 9-13 July – will consist of a series of daily debates, creative challenges, exclusive demos and inspirational case studies covering a wide range of creative issues.

3D World will mainly be involved in Wednesday’s session that will focus on film and video, but there’s plenty going on across our sister sites – Computer Arts, .net, Practical Photoshop and Creative BloQ are all going to be involved.

So whatever your creative discipline might be, you’ll find loads of activities online.

What you can expect to find online during Creative Week

Monday 9 July – Creative Industry Overview
The week-long event kicks off with a general look at the creative industry. The discussion will be driven by the following questions: Is our creative industry in good health? Is the talent pool growing or shrinking? And what strategies are needed to ensure the industry prospers in the future?

Tuesday 10 July – Design & Publishing
On Tuesday, the hot topic of print versus digital will be debated. With the rise of digital publishing and the popularity of tablets and mobile devices, the way that we publish has changed. These sessions will focus on the opportunities digital publishing brings and how the strength of the designer can be employed for publishing via tablets.

Wednesday 11 July – Film & Video
The market for both national broadcasting and cinematography has contracted, leading to declining revenues and reduced production budgets for programmes and movies. Now the pressure is on to deliver more for less.

Although technical advances make improved image quality a reality, is content quality being enhanced in the same way and are standards dropping as a result? The Wednesday session will attempt to answer this and other questions such as, can small production budgets really make just as big an impact? Is the situation leading to greater originality and creativity in terms of the content, as well as new job opportunities for young people with much-needed multimedia skills?

Thursday 12 July – Web & Mobile
Thursday’s session will ask: Should developers be a Jack of all Trades, or the Master of One? The question of specialism within the digital media industry is more relevant now than ever before. As an industry, how can workers future-proof their careers, by understanding multiple web and mobile technologies? Sessions today will look at how innovations in web and mobile are disrupting the industry and creating demand for new skills and multi-specialist workers.

Friday 13 July – Photography & Digital Imaging
Has digital technology ‘dumbed down’ the photography industry or is it in fact opening new doors for creativity and artistic expression? Is traditional photography king or is digital claiming the crown? This and other key issues in the world of photography and digital imaging will be driving the discussion on the closing day of Creative Week.

Each day’s events will involve luminaries from the creative world, Adobe evangelists and members of the creative community, including Rufus Deuchler, Jason Levine, Paul Trani and Julieanne Kost, with more still to be announced.

For more details on the event and to sign up for updates, visit the Creative Week website.

Find out how this epic animated short about monsters vs robots was created using a combination of Autodesk’s Maya, Adobe’s After Effects and Photoshop. Watch the film here too

As Indie Film Week continues, we catch up with Hillary Yeo, director of the short film Godaizer, to find out how he managed to fund his ambitious project.

• Find out more about how Hillary Yeo funded his project in issue 155 of 3D World

At 19-minutes long, Godaizer is not your average animated short. It tells the story of a young boy names Ah Seng, who lives and works with his elderly grandfather. Together they run a storage warehouse, which houses all kinds of robots in various states of repair.

As the pair go about their daily routine, an experiment in a nearby secret government facility goes wrong and a giant monster escape. With the military unable to destroy the creature, Ah Seng and his grandfather use their robot Godaizer to stop it.

“The film started out when I quit from Lucasfilm Singapore in 2007,” Yeo says. “I always wanted to do a 3D fight scene between a robot and giant monsters, so I tried to build a decent story around that.”

This led to the introduction of the film’s two human characters, which were inspired by actors in old Kung Fu movies.

“I am always drawn to the relationship between an old grandfather and his grandson,” Yeo explains. “A mentor-student relationship. And it’s kind of based on Mr Miyagi and Alfredo from Cinema Paradiso and a Hong Kong actor called Law Yar Ying. I was keen to explore the different types of relationship dynamics within this construct.”

Early sketches were made of the film's environments in order to finalise the overall style and mood. The designs were heavily influenced by Yeo's love of artists Kazuo Oga and Yoshiyuki Takani

Characters and environments set, the next thing for the director to decide was the overall style of the film, which was heavily inspired by the background paintings that feature in Studio Ghilbi movies. “Kazuo Oga, who painted many of these, was a huge influence on me visually. To me his work always triggers an emotional reaction and I desperately wanted to capture that.

“Another inspirational source was Yoshiyuki Takani whose cover art feature prominently on the old Japanese toy box covers. Something about his paintings evoke a sense of awe and believeability of those robots. Absolutely brilliant.”

Click Next to read more

Get the lowdown on Photoshop CS6, After Effects CS6, Premiere Pro CS6 and all the key reviews from Adobe’s latest design, video and web suite. Watch new features videos here too…

With the fab tagline of ‘Creativity Will Be Set Free on April 23′, yesterday Adobe launched Creative Suite CS6.

We’ve teamed up with CreativeBloq (our sister site) to bring you all the reviews from Adobe’s suite of graphic design, web development and video editing applications.

In this post, we’ll be highlighting the software packages that are the most relevant to CG artists – namely After Effects, Photoshop, and Premiere, but we’ve got links to other key CS6 too.

Four versions of Adobe’s Creative Suite CS6 suite are available. Find out what’s in each version below.

And find out more about the Creative Cloud further on, too.

Read the Creative Suite 6 reviews from 3D World and CreativeBloq

Let’s start with Photoshop, with its fabulous new content-aware feature. Does it really work? Let’s see it in action…

And Photoshop now has video editing too? So it would seem…

Adobe Photoshop CS6 review

A new version of Photoshop is always a highlight in the designer’s calendar, and CS6 is no exception. Those looking for the much-heralded Deblur filter, however, will be disappointed: it’s far too early for inclusion this time around. In fact, those looking for big splashy show-off features will also be looking in vain.

What’s new in Premiere Pro CS6? (Watch the NAB preview video)

Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 review

When Apple released Final Cut Pro X last year, many veterans were up in arms as it wasn’t just an update to the program they’d come to know, love and rely on, it was a complete departure from what they were used to. You either loved it or hated it. Those who fell into the latter category started to shop around, and Adobe was only too pleased to welcome new clients to their platform. With the release of the latest version, part of their major CS6 update, Adobe is working very hard to make sure their clientele stays put.

What’s new in After Effects CS6? (NAB preview video)

Adobe After Effects CS6 review

Adobe After Effects has a huge user base in the motion graphics and animation sectors, so any update to the power of this venerable compositing workhorse will be eagerly scrutinised by those working in broadcast and cross-media applications. Luckily for those artists (and Adobe), After Effects CS6 will do nothing to tarnish its status and appeal.

Adobe Illustrator CS6 review

Adobe Illustrator is the industry standard tool for vector drawing and illustration, used by a wide variety of creative professionals including editorial illustrators, identity designers, textile and pattern designers, UI designers, motion artists and many others. It’s always been an incredibly versatile tool, thanks to a broad feature set, and of course the fact that vector graphics are infinitely scaleable and in most cases relatively lightweight.

Adobe Dreamweaver CS6 review

The web doesn’t stay still, and new browsers and new technologies mean changes to your sites. With the explosion in mobile browsing, those changes are now bigger than ever before. Dreamweaver CS6 has added new tools for working with sites that scale from desktop, to tablet, to phone, using some of the latest CSS features.

Adobe Flash Pro CS6 review

Welcome to the new version of Adobe Flash Pro – Flash Pro CS6 (or 12 if you want to keep count). Over the last 24 months web development has seen a change in focus. Where rich content was the bastion of Flash and Flex, now HTML5 and various JavaScript libraries have taken on some of that responsibility. However, Flash has always had the luxury of being ahead of the curve when it comes to new features and new areas to expand and extend into.

Adobe InDesign CS6 review

The launch of any new iteration of the Creative Suite is hyped to the extreme by Adobe, which knows that there’s an army of fanatics out there eager to lap up every new whizz-bang feature, tweak and addition regardless of how subtle some of them may seem to the slightly more jaded reviewer. Amidst all this hoopla, Photoshop, without exception, takes the lion’s share of the limelight, followed by Illustrator and After Effects, leaving InDesign languishing in fourth place in the attention and column inches stakes.

What’s in each version of CS6?

• Design Standard CS6: Acrobat X Pro, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, InDesign and Photoshop
• Web Premium CS6: Acrobat X Pro, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash Pro, Flash Builder, InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop Extended
• Production Premium CS6: After Effects, Audition, InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop Extended, Premiere Pro, Prelude, SpeedGrade and Adobe Story
• Master Collection CS6: Acrobat X Pro, After Effects, Audition, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash Pro, Flash Builder, InDesign, Illustrator, Lightroom, Photoshop Extended, and Premiere Pro

Adobe’s Creative Cloud

CS6 is the first suite that Adobe is offering as part of a new subscription package called Adobe Creative Cloud.

Creative Cloud subscriptions cost $74.99 per month, or $49.99 per month based on annual membership.

Existing users of CS3 or more recent products get an introductory trial rate of $29.99 per month.

While monthly subs make sense if you’ll need access to other Adobe tools for a specific job, our guess is that most CG artists only use the apps in the Production Premium bundle, and use them most of the time.

The Creative Cloud is set to be released on 7 May 2012. Are you thinking of switching? Let us know what you think of the Creative Cloud and of the pricing! And of the new software.

Also check out CreativeBloq’s guide to Adobe CS6 System Requirements

Adobe has released a beta version of Photoshop CS6, so grab the digital editing tool now and get trialling

From the sheer number of ‘sneak peeks’ Adobe has posted, it’s obvious that the company is very excited by Photoshop CS6, and now it’s available in beta.

Photoshop CS6 beta includes all the features in Photoshop CS6 and Photoshop CS6 Extended, so you can now experiement with the new features of the extended version.

According to the Adobe Photoshop blog: “Photoshop CS6 is not the culmination, but the beginning of a journey to further improve, modernize and transform Photoshop for the future.”

Photoshop CS6 highlights

Content-Aware Patch: Patch images with greater control using the newest member of the Content-Aware family of technologies. Choose the sample area you want to use to create your patch, and then watch Content-Aware Patch magically blend pixels for a stunning result

Blazingly fast performance and a modern UI: Experience unprecedented performance with the Mercury Graphics Engine, which gives you near-instant results when you edit with key tools such as Liquify, Puppet Warp, and Crop. Plus, a refined, fresh, and elegant Photoshop interface features dark background options that make your images pop.

New and re-engineered design tools: Create superior designs fast. Get consistent formatting with type styles, create and apply custom strokes and dashed lines to shapes, quickly search layers, and much more.

Below, Russell Brown, Senior Creative Director, walks through his six favourite features in Photoshop CS6 beta.

Learn more about the new capabilities of Adobe Camera Raw 7.0, the new adaptive Wide Angle feature, Field Blur, Iris Blur and Tilt-Shift.

Also take a look at Content-Aware Move and Patch, the all-new Crop tool and incredible new possibilities with video.

Watch Russell Brown’s six favourite Photoshop CS6 beta features

Find out more at www.photoshop.com blog

Download the beta from Adobe Labs. (It requires an Adobe ID and internet connection for licensing.)

With Photoshop CS6 expected to be released this spring, Adobe’s started posting weekly sneak peeks of Photoshop CS6′s new features. Check out all the videos here

Check out the videos embedded below to catch a glimpse of what Photoshop will be like in the future. We’ll be adding more sneak peek videos to this page as they become available, so remember to check back.

Watch Photoshop CS6 sneak peek video #6

Here’s a peek from Photoshop Product Manager Stephen Nielsen of a tool that will add blur to any image without masks, layers or depth maps.

Watch Photoshop CS6 sneak peek video #5

Stephen Nielson, Photoshop Product Manager, gives us a look at the improvements Adobe has been working on, including migrating presets to some of the JDIs (Just Do Its) that have been most requested by the Photoshop community – think brush improvements and better printer settings.

Watch Photoshop CS6 sneak peek video #4

See more advanced features of Photoshop Content-Aware technology. Straight from Photoshop Senior Product Manager Bryan O’Neil Hughes, this video shares how to seamlessly move or remove an object from an image.

Watch Photoshop CS6 sneak peek video #3

Product Manager, Zorana Gee, gives a hint at what’s to come – creating dashed and dotted lines with just one click in Photoshop. A top-requested feature brought to life!

Watch Photoshop CS6 sneak peek video #2

Get an early look at a popular Facebook fan request – background save and the most powerful liquify tool ever, from Photoshop Product Manager, Zorana Gee.

Watch Photoshop CS6 sneak peek video #1

In this video taken straight from the laptop of Adobe’s Senior Product Manager, Bryan O’Neil Hughes, get an early look at some of the things the Photoshop team is working on for Camera Raw.

You can submit your feedback via the Photoshop feedback page

Tell us what you’d like to see in CS6 and let us know what you think of the features so far here, on Facebook or Twitter.

Adobe has released the first version of Photoshop for the iPad 2, called Photoshop Touch. Now you can create layered images, make essential edits, apply pro-style effects, touch up photos and more on the move

Adobe has made its PhotoShop Touch application for Apple’s iPad available. The app is richly featured and includes much of what you’d expect from Photoshop: it comes with full layer support, editing features, over 20 filters, and many of the standard selection tools and brushes that make Photoshop so powerful to use.

Photoshop Touch also comes with some interesting features, such as a built-in Google image search feature, which makes finding images to edit a cinch, and then there’s social-sharing functionality, so you can showcase your creations.

Photoshop Touch is the first in a series of touch-based apps from Adobe inspired by the Creative Suite on the desktop. Adobe Collage, Adobe Debut, Adobe Ideas, Adobe Kuler and Adobe Proto are all due to hit Android (and we’re assuming, the iPad) later this year.

Photoshop Touch requires at least an iPad 2 or newer and iOS 5 or later to use.

Check out a video of Photoshop Touch in action below

Photoshop Touch is available to download from the App Store for $9.99

Photoshop Touch is available to download from iTunes for £6.99

Now check out the best iPad apps – as chosen by designers – on our sister site Creative Bloq.

For years, it was an industry standard. But will recent changes in upgrade pricing and new alternatives prompt the VFX community to abandon Adobe’s image-editing software?

Adobe’s decision to restrict the upgrade path to the upcoming Photoshop CS6 sent shockwaves through the software’s user community when it was announced last November.

The move will confine upgrades to users of CS5, forcing those with earlier versions to buy the software again outright ­- an extra cost of $500, if current pricing is maintained.

According to Scott Kelby, president of the US National Association of Photoshop Professionals, the new policy will leave a significant number of [Adobe] customers with no affordable upgrade path to Photoshop CS6 or the Creative Suite.

NEWS UPDATE 9 February 2012

Since this article was written, Adobe has made a new announcement:
“With regards to the Adobe Creative Suite Upgrade Policy, we’ll be offering CS3 and CS4 users special introductory pricing on the upcoming new CS6 when it is released later this year. The special introductory offer will last until 31st December 2012,” says Adobe.
Read more information about the Creative Suite Upgrade Offer on the Adobe website

The decision is part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud initiative, and the issue of whether the new policy is unfair to users – or, in contrast, whether its previous upgrade policy was unduly lenient – has been debated at length online.

But it does raise the question of what other options its users have, particularly in an industry like visual effects, in which Photoshop has been a de facto standard since the early 1990s.

In a recent thread on CGTalk, Mari product manager Jack Greasley pointed out that The Foundry’s 3D paint package already contains many of the core components needed to build a 2D image-processing application. His comments prompted a story on CG news site Max Underground headlined ‘Photoshop competition on the horizon?’

The Frost Beast from Thor. For large studios such as Digital Domain, Mari is increasingly replacing Photoshop in the texture pipeline

Do you really need Photoshop?

So could the VFX industry ever move away from Adobe? And is there a Photoshop killer currently in development? We spoke to a number of major London studios and found that the answer is ‘yes’ but not necessarily in the way you might think.

Our first port of call was The Foundry itself, where co-founder and chief scientist Simon Robinson squashed speculation that the company is actively developing a 2D image-editing package. “There’s nothing in the immediate roadmap,” he said. “But it’s not the first time this has been brought up, and we’re fascinated by what people might want us to do.”

“We could drop things and build [a direct competitor to Photoshop] tomorrow, but I think it would be a mistake,” he continued. “Photoshop is a very tough target because it’s so pervasive. It’s on so many desks in so many industries, and has such a long history.”

This isn’t the first time that the idea of a dedicated alternative to Photoshop has been proposed. In the 1990s, Adobe’s decision to discontinue support for the application for the then-standard SGI workstations prompted VFX house Rhythm & Hues and software developer Silicon Grail to fund work on an open-source image-editing tool originally created by students at UC Berkeley.

This branch of the code was used internally within Hollywood studios, only coming to wider attention through a story written in Linux Journal by Robin Rowe. Following its public release, Rowe was contacted by studios including Sony Pictures Imageworks and ILM to contribute further source code they had generated internally, SPI even temporarily dedicated a staff member to development work.

Talk of a VFX-specific alternative to Photoshop goes back a decade. Although on hiatus since, open- source tool CinePaint was used on movies such as 2003's The Last Samurai

Lessons from CinePaint

Although the application, now known as CinePaint, went on to be used on The Last Samurai and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, development again slowed, and the project effectively went into hiatus until Rowe’s announcement of an official 1.0 build late last year. The GUI may now look dated, but he points out that the software’s ability to handle the 32-bit floating-point images necessary for visual effects work makes it “a bit like a DeSoto with a turbo-charged V8 engine underneath”.

But for studios unwilling to devote their own staff to the CinePaint project, the unpredictable pace of community-led development is likely to prove a stumbling block.

Such companies are more likely to turn to existing commercial software. Major VFX companies typically ask for fairly small tweaks to The Foundry’s exisiting products: Mari and the compositing package Nuke.

According to Elliot Newman, head of assets at London VFX house MPC, Mari and Nuke “have all the features we need [in a texturing pipeline] already. The issue for me is more about getting them to flow nicely together.”

Textured in Mari: part of BlueBolt's work from Game of Thrones. Although Photoshop's filters are faster for batch operations, The Foundry's software replicates most of its key features

At present, MPC artists have to open Photoshop, ZBrush, Mari, Nuke and Maya to navigate from one end of its’ texturing and shading pipeline to another: that means five separate applications, running on two different operating systems, each one with its own unique workflow.

“That’s a lot of software to learn,” Newman says. “If we could get something that has the paint [capabilities] and fast layering functionality of Mari, but with the powerful image-editing tools of Nuke, with strong integration to our renderer, I think it would be a winner.”

Teaming Mari with Nuke

Double Negative, another leading London VFX house and MPC’s near neighbour, has gone even further towards eliminating Photoshop from its texturing pipeline. “Mari hasn’t completely replaced it, but it’s close,” says Alwyn Hunt, senior texture artist at the studio. “For character work, I hardly use Photoshop at all. It’s just that some of [Mari's] filters are slow, so we find for batch-processing stuff, we still go into Photoshop and quickly manipulate maps, especially if we’re dealing with a lot of maps.”

On recent movies, Double Negative has even dispensed with this step, using custom scripts to generate the secondary texture maps within Nuke. “Rather than going from Mari back into Photoshop, we’re using Nuke, which reads sequence-named images to set up fast workflows for outputting secondary maps. This enables us to easily adjust complete sets of texture maps. From a production point of view this saves a lot of time,” Hunt says.

For recent movies like Captain America, VFX house Double Negative has increasingly teamed Mari with compositing package Nuke, reducing its use of Photoshop

The issue, he believes, is not that Photoshop lacked the tools necessary for visual effects but that cross-platform workflow forced artists to spend so much time opening and closing large files. “When you have files with 100 layers, managing them eats up a lot of your time,” he says. “Whereas in Mari, you just paint – which is where a texture artist wants to be.”

Although for smaller facilities, the combined cost of Mari and Nuke – currently $6,880, as opposed to $1,699 for Adobe’s Production Premium product bundle – may still be an insurmountable hurdle, Adobe’s new upgrade pricing has begun to eat away at that price differential.

According to Hunt, this increase in operating cost, combined with the efficiencies in workflow made possible by eliminating an extra software package from a pipeline, could soon lead to the end of Photoshop’s 20-year run as an industry-standard visual effects tool.

Your ‘Photoshop for VFX’

What would you like to see in a dedicated VFX image-editing package? Have your say in our poll

We’d also like to hear your thoughts on the subject. Alwyn Hunt, co-ordinator of the LinkedIn Texture Artists group, is hosting a poll on the site to coincide with the publication of this story. Visit the LinkedIn Texture poll to have your say.

Read the article in full in the latest issue of 3D World magazine, now on sale. In the full article we also disclose what our interviewees would like to see in a hypothetical new 2D image-editing application.

Read Adobe’s official statement on its upgrade pricing and Creative Cloud initiative

View information on The Foundry’s products

View information on CinePaint

State Sets and Adobe interoperability bring workflow optimisations to 3ds Max 2012. Lee Johnson gives them a test run…

PRICE

Annual subscription
• $495

DEVELOPER

Autodesk

PLATFORM

Windows

MAIN FEATURES

• State Sets render asset manager
• Node-based render output manager
• Bi-directional interoperability with After Effects
• ActiveShade support for iray renderer

The Subscription Advantage Pack (SAP) for 3ds Max 2012 includes some new features to improve your workflow. It offers the State Sets render pass system, Photoshop/After Effects interoperability, and iray ActiveShade support. These tools are available for download to subscription customers, and will be accessible to all users in the next full release of 3ds Max.

With State Sets, Autodesk attempts to simplify the render set-up workflow. It contains features similar to the Batch Render and Scene States tools, and it works like recording Actions in Photoshop. The idea is that these features enable a single file to contain all the information necessary to launch an entire project’s worth of renders. Set up your file for the base render, and from there, each render pass will be a new state. Click Add State and turn on Record. From there, make changes such as altering cameras, turning lights and layers on and off, making material assignments and even switching render engines. Then you can submit directly from the State Sets window, even to Backburner.
This process is significantly improved from the mish-mash of using Scene States in conjunction with the Batch Render tool and saved Render Preset files – and it’s more stable, too. However, there are some drawbacks. If you use the Xref Scene tool, State Sets won’t properly save changes made to layer visibility, nor turning Xrefs on and off. To hide and unhide geometry, it must be native to the scene. Also, if one state has multiple render elements set up, they’ll all go to the output path defined in the State Sets window, not the Render Elements panel. Send your render elements from the main render panel instead of the State Sets window.

The Autodesk Link feature included in this SAP enables artists to make changes in either package and then have them update with one click

In the State Sets window, click Composite View. A node-based output flow is created. Click Composite View RE and all of your render elements from the base render are loaded as well. Adjust their layer order, blending mode and opacity all in 3ds Max. You even have a preview of the composite in the window. Choose Link To Compositor and save to the SOF format. In After Effects, use the Open Compositor Link (Autodesk) function and a prebuilt composite with all your footage opens right in front of you.

State Sets work like Actions in Photoshop: hit Record, make your changes and stop recording

The iray renderer also now works in the ActiveShade window. You can take advantage of the speed and accuracy of iray more interactively by leaving the ActiveShade window open as you work. Watch your updates take shape in real time as you manipulate the scene.

For me, setting up renders with multiple files to get all the plates I need has been a way of life for many years – and the State Sets tool in this SAP provides a welcome opportunity to change to a more intuitive setup. Also, the connection with After Effects (as well as other compositing solutions down the road) promises to smooth further the workflows of all positions in your pipeline.

VERDICT

PROS

• Offers bi-directional workflow with After Effects
• Minimises the number of files needed for rendering
• Ability to prebuild composite

CONS

• State Sets have some limitations dealing with Xrefs
• Record On/Off feature has potential for mistakes

An update that helps to streamline and organise, the SAP is definitely worth installing and getting into production

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lee Johnson has a degree in architecture and has worked in architectural rendering for seven years. He also has small-scale pipeline management and VFX experience. Lee currently works as a one-man shop in Fort Worth, Texas
www.jtwo.com

Find out more about 3ds Max at www.autodesk.com