M3

Google has finally released a design guide for developing android applications.  This is a much needed tool and will hopefully unify the look and feel of applications from here on out.

Taking the time to measure and calculate pixel heights and other elements was a pain. I say this as a fan of Android,  it is no surprise many of the Android applications are ugly. It was too hard to know what elements were available and how they are intended to use. People love eye candy and now there is more information on how to make some.

This is a welcome addition to the Android Developers tools.  Check it out Android Developers Style Guide

Sintel is the latest incarnation from the Blender foundation set to make movie magic using the open source 3D modeling suite Blender. No longer do 3D modeling enthusiast have to fork over thousands of dollars to purchase Maya to produce high quality 3D animation. Thanks to the open source suit, Blender 3D, high quality 3D animation can be produced completely free to the developer. Users who wish to start “blending” can start now, by downloading blender, at blender.org. As you can see from the Sintel trailer below, Blender is no slouch when it comes to 3D animation. Often free open source software sometimes comes across to the public as cheap or inferior to products put out by big corporations such as Microsoft or Cisco. However, it is becoming more and more clear that open source software can be a better cheaper alternative then spending thousands and thousands of dollars on name brand products. Also new to the film industry, users can now download all the source files from the Sintel movie, including audio mixes, 3D meshes, blender project files, textures, everything, completely free!

Check out the trailer below! And start your blending today!

QuD Desktop Air App Screenshot

Our project managment application website has been launched. It doesn’t have much information on it yet, but as the project progresses more information will be posted.

Qud Software Site

Project Orange

Blender is an free open source 3D animation tool created by The Blender Foundation. For years a lot of 3D industry artists placed Blender the category of “beginner animation software” and I was one of them. This was due to the low quality samples on the blender.com gallery. They have updated the gallery with some impressive images now.  The Blender Foundation set out to prove its software can produce a movie and the open movie project was born.

One of the  open movie’s rules is to use only free and open source tools to produce the movie. The goal of these projects is to test the limits of the Blender software and improve it along the way. After the movie is completed the Blender Foundation releases all the movie production files for the Blender community to learn and create their own movies.

They fund the movies projects by taking pre-orders for a DVD Box set of the production files and movie. Oh yeah, they also allow you to download the movie and production files free of charge at each Open Movie website.

They admit they cannot do everything with open source software  since they need to encode Dolby Digital sound.

Project Peach

Project Durian has been announced so be sure to check out the production progress. The production team keeps the community informed pretty well without ruining the surprise of the movie. As with the past projects, Durian is community funded and they will be selling DVD Box sets again.

These projects are something I think all animators should check out even if you are not a Blender user. M3 doesn’t use Blender at this time but every time these projects come out it get make me want to try. Blender is available for free for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X and can be downloaded here if you want to give it a try.

This was said to be in-game footage of UBISOFT’s game Beyond Good & Evil 2. If so, I will say that the statement made by Pixar years ago saying “Games of the future will look like our current movies.” is true.  If this is in-game footage then the game engine they are using is just awesome. The use of Depth of Field in Gears of War 2 and a few other games was a good thing, but real-time motion blur is something I have been waiting for since I first viewed Project Offsets engine demos. I do not think they are using the Offset engine. In my opinion the lack of motion blur is a quick sign of in-game footage.

Anyway, in-game or not, the combination of the motion blur and shaky cam gives the entire video an organic feel. The the lighting of the scene, and especially the the specular highlight on  the rooftops is something to pay attention to. Make sure you check out her subtle shadow being caste on the buildings as she she jumps from one to the other . I am not talking about the obvious “here is my shadow from the sun”, I’m talking about the shadow from environmentally bounced light. The texture and the scope of the roof top view was a nice ending.

After viewing this serveral times I do not believe this is in-game, but in the end it is still animation goodness.

A British Robert Downey Jr.?

A client asked if Adobe Flash was indexed by Google and just out of habit the answer was “I don’t think so.” To make sure things have not changed, I searched and ran across a few articles claiming that Google is able to index and navigate flash content. So, as an experiment M3 will be working on some flash content to see if Google can index it. We will be using the Flash SEO best practice rules to test how well they work.

I would like to recommend Flash on websites, but I need to be sure it is indexable by Google and other search engines.

Check back for the results

I was emailed the link to the new Philips Cinema TV, but I was more interested in the video itself and wondered how they did it.

If you have not seen the site check it out here

M3 is planning a new strategy for 2009 and bringing back one of it’s old habits. When M3 was first formed it was a tradition to launch a new website every September. We will bring that tradition back along with the project gallery and a few new things. Here is to September!

Over the years we have created tools for our clients to manage their web sites, but M3 rarely has used its own tools. Brikerbrak ™ our internal CMS will be getting a large update along with our project management application QuD ™.
Check back and see what we have cooking.

This spot is a winner in my book. It is not so obvious who it is for and it tells a great story in 30 seconds.

I, like many other people these days watch TV and work in front of the computer at the same time. The music of this spot made me look up and pay attention. Although the video above has a link to the website, which is very cool as well, the TV spot revealed it was for Frito-Lay chips and dip.

I really enjoyed the style and colors, but what really caught my eye was the “star” field in the background and the use of depth of field.

I am working on a commercial right now and this was an inspirational spot.