Intel will pay the company an aggregate of $1.5 billion in licensing fees payable in five annual installments, beginning January 17. Nvidia and Intel have also agreed to drop all outstanding legal disputes between them.

Nvidia will retain use of Intel’s patents, consistent with its existing agreement with the company, excluding Intel’s proprietary processors, flash memory or certain chipsets for the Intel platform.

Our HDRI Vaults are ideal for the CG design visualiser who requires a complete library of HDRI lighting environments for product designs, renders and 3D showcases.

HDRI Vaults provide an affordable way to quickly obtain a comprehensive studio lighting tool kit, complete with a wide variety of commercial grade HDRi’s and matching studio backplates.

Our Studio collections empower 3D professionals to quickly explore different lighting situations and scenarios, ensuring the highest quality renders possible.

Our HDRI Vaults offer amazing value and with a saving of over 66% compared to if buying each map and back plate separately, at an average cost of below £2.50 per hdr map!

Click here to buy now

Our Studio HDRI Vault Vol 1 contains the following 49 .hdr maps and 20 backplate images. Available instantly for download upon payment.

** Limited Time Offer – Get 21 FREE HDRI Sky Maps with First 250 HDRI Vault Vol 1 Orders!**

For a limited time, with every purchase of ‘HDRI Vault Vol 1′ we’ll also include 14 .hdr sky maps as well as 7 of our .hdr panoramic sky maps at a value of £225 for absolutely FREE! But hurry this offer is only valid for the first 250 purchases of the ‘HDRI Vault Vol 1′

Click here to buy now and guarantee you free hdri skies.

• Interview with Jason Seiler
• Photoshop: Lovers, 9 sqrm Production, Train your Creature
• Cinema 4D: Home in the Desert 66
• ZBrush: Smoke in the Eyes
• Gallery – Showcase of latest 3D inspiring art

To read more and to download, please visit cgarena.com

MAXON Computer, a leading developer of professional 3D modeling, painting, animation and rendering solutions, is pleased to announce the immediate availability of an updated CINEMA 4D exchange plugin for Adobe After Effects CS5. The plugin features 64-bit native compatibility for Windows and Mac OS X to allow users of CINEMA 4D to take full advantage of available hardware operating system performance for improved rendering and workflow efficiency directly inside the After Effects application.

The new After Effects CS5 plugin is available free of charge in the download section of www.maxon.net.

Vue 8.5 Personal Learning Edition

Vue Infinite and Vue xStream offers CG professionals the premiere solution for creating exceptionally rich and realistic Digital Nature environments with seamless integration into any production workflow.

While Vue Infinite is a standalone application, Vue xStream operates seamlessly inside of 3ds Max, Maya, LightWave, Cinema4D and Softimage.

Key new technologies available in the Vue 8.5 PLE:

• Global Gamma Control: the ability to fully control the gamma in Vue ensures perfect coherence all along the user’s pipeline and will result in much higher fidelity of color and light in the final images. Users can fully control input and output gammas as well as the gamma used for displaying textures and colors inside the application.
• Interactive Cloud Control: cloud layers can be manipulated, rotated or resized interactively using the standard manipulation gizmos. They can also be animated using standard animation tools.
• Animated Planetary Cloud Density Maps: users can define animated maps to control the density of cloud layers on a planetary scale (e.g. to create animated hurricane shots).
• Diagnosis Render Passes: users can easily detect rendering bottlenecks and optimize render times by using the diagnosis render passes. For each pixel in the image Vue can indicate total render time of the pixel, number of anti-aliasing rays, number of texture anti-aliasing samples, total number of sub-rays in the pixel, total number of shadow rays, max recursion depth reached by a sub-ray, and number of final gather samples for that pixel.
• Unlimited Material Painting: the material painting tool allows painting distribution maps with any arbitrary number of materials. These painted materials can also be used as paint masks to constrain painting of other materials inside existing distribution maps.
• Zone Extraction: specific areas of a procedural terrain can be extracted by simply selecting a zone and converting it to a separate procedural terrain. This is ideal to create customized textures on specific areas for instance.
• New Terrain Sculpting Tools: Vue 8.5 introduces 4 powerful new sculpting brushes: Pinch, Flatten, Plateau and UniSlope. Also new in Vue 8.5 is the ability to use a bitmap for reference when sculpting in the terrain editor.
• Advanced EcoSystem Control: with Vue 8.5, artists can easily control the influence of the color variations on EcoSystem populations, drag multiple objects or plants from a browser into the EcoSystem population list, EcoSystem painting can be constrained using the underlying EcoSystem material rules (for instance, using influence of slope and altitude or the coloring rules) and more…
• Improved OpenGL Engine and Viewport Display: auto-exposure is now reflected in OpenGL views, terrain maps can be viewed directly in the terrain editor, the display quality of EcoSystem instances can be changed on individual population elements, OpenGL preview displays normal mapped surfaces, the EcoPainter brush size is now displayed in xStream for 3ds Max and C4D.
• Other improvements: the Z-Depth buffer can now be (optionally) anti-aliased, preview a Dynamic EcoSystem anytime by clicking the Preview button in the EcoSystem material, the user may define his own shortcuts in editors (panning, rotating, etc – for instance to match settings of other applications) together with many other improvements.

More information on the new features of Vue 8.5 is available at www.e-onsoftware.com/professional.

PLE Requirements and Restrictions:

The Vue 8.5 PLE is a fully functional version of Vue 8.5 xStream/Infinite. With the PLE, users can:

• Create complete projects,
• Save their work and export to other applications,
• Render stills and animations without size/length limit,
• Experience Vue’s power directly inside Max/Maya/Softimage/LightWave/Cinema4D,
• Learn at their own pace (the PLE never expires)!

The Personal Learning Edition ships with a wide selection of Vue presets, as well as the complete PDF Reference manual.

Users can download the Vue 8.5 PLE at no charge from www.vue8.com/ple.

The Vue 8.5 Personal Learning Edition performs under all versions of Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 (32 and 64 bit), and is Mac Intel 32bit only for Macintosh OSX (10.5 to 10.6). The Vue 8.5 PLE is not yet optimized for Cocoa 64.

The PLE is for personal, non-commercial use only. Network rendering is disabled, and renders may be watermarked and carry a logo. Files created and saved with the PLE cannot be exchanged with other PLE users and are not compatible with other versions of Vue.

About e-on software

E-on software is the leading developer of solutions for the creation, animation, rendering and integration of natural 3D environments. Offering a wide array of Digital Nature products and applications, e-on software provides solutions adapted to every project and budget. E-on software products are used worldwide by the film, television, architecture, game, science, educational and entertainment industries.

E-on software products were used in features film such as “Avatar”, “Clash of The Titans”, “The Wolf Man”, “2012”, “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus”, “GI Joe – The Rise of The Cobra”, “The Proposal”, “Land Of The Lost”, “Terminator 4, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, “Indiana Jones 4″, “Monster Vs Aliens”, “Australia”, “The Spiderwick Chronicles”, “KungFu Panda”, “Pirates of the Caribbean 2″ and TV series such as “Battlestar Gallactica”, “Stargate Atlantis” and more. Read more on these stories in e-on software’s Spotlights section: www.e-onsoftware.com/spotlight.

E-on software was founded on the premise that powerful graphics tools should never get in the way of the designer’s creativity. By investing significant resources into research and development, e-on software is able to deliver cutting-edge, user friendly technologies that produce stunning Digital Nature scenery.

E-on software is based in Beaverton, Oregon with a European office in Paris, France.

Visit their website at http://www.e-onsoftware.com.

The context-sensitive CINEMA 4D Help already makes finding information regarding specific commands easy with its cross-referencing capability and useful search function. The new tutorials, however, take this one step farther by leading you step-by-step through entire project phases. In more than 500 pages, well-known CINEMA 4D experts such as Arndt von Königsmark and Sébastien Florand offer detailed and easy-to-follow explanations of real-world projects.

MAXON product manager Marco Tillmann:

“We are very happy to be able to offer our users this comprehensive and easy-to-use instructional material. We worked with the most established CINEMA 4D authors and trainers to create these tutorials and to offer insight into their knowledge and experience.”

To maximize the instructional value of these tutorials, numerous movies and the complete scene files themselves are included and can be opened directly from the tutorial itself. After working through these tutorials you will be able to easily master complex projects and apply this knowledge in real-world projects.

The new tutorials are available free of charge and can be downloaded via the Online Updater or online from the MAXON web site.

Minimum requirement is CINEMA 4D R11.5.

Check them out here at look3D.

“We’ve been blown away by the quality of the suppliers and how enthusiastic they are about this. We have people from all over the world registered on the system – the full spectrum of suppliers- ranging from some the best internationally to smaller boutique studios.” according to David McAvinue, CEO of Tender3D.com. “We know from working in the industry for years that it can be very hard to source needed skills like 3D artists and animators – especially in niche areas like landscape modelling. Seeing the range of specialists sign up is very exciting for us”.

The software enables purchasers of 3D services to place their projects online to tender, where quality 3D suppliers are able to bid on them. Once a project has been awarded, the custom-built production management software facilitates the management of the workflow, breaking it into milestones that are prepaid by the purchaser. The system is built around a tool that allows images to be easily marked up to show where changes should be made to scenes and objects.

Hosted on the cloud, Tender3D enables large files to be uploaded without using third party upload sites. Setting up an account on the site is easy, free and can be done within minutes, giving suppliers access to create a portfolio to showcase their best work. To learn more about Tender3D visit www.tender3d.com.

The official word from the Autodesk’s site is:

Access over 25 free* downloads of the same design software used by professionals worldwide.

Now you can push the boundaries of design with Autodesk® software. Download the same, full version software that over 9 million designers, engineers and digital artists are using at 100 percent of Fortune 100 companies in over 183 countries around the world. Experience the newest editions of 2D and 3D products, such as Autodesk® Inventor®, Autodesk® Revit®, Autodesk® 3ds Max®, Autodesk® Maya®, and AutoCAD®.

If your a student and would like to register, head over to the Autodesk Education Community.

If you experience any of the following symptoms, immediately stop watching 3D pictures and consult a medical specialist: (1) altered vision; (2) lightheadedness; (3) dizziness; (4) involuntary movements such as eye or muscle twitching; (5) confusion; (6) nausea; (7) loss of awareness; (8) convulsions; (9) cramps; and/or (10) disorientation. Parents should monitor and ask their children about the above symptoms as children and teenagers may be more likely to experience these symptoms than adults.

The full 3D TV warning can be read here