Software

Autodesk knitting together the Construction Cloud

Since its debut in 2019, the Autodesk Construction Cloud has been growing and a structure has been developing. The company has been adding on to its Construction portfolio with small affordable basic capabilities and complex management tools. This month, the company announces the availability of several new tools and services after last month’s rollout of BIM Collaborate and BIM Build … Read more

Maxon acquires Forger 3D sculpting tool

Maxon made me spit my coffee this morning. The company announced the acquisition of Forger, a digital 3D sculpting and texture painting application developed by Javier Edo Meseguer. Did not see that coming, at all. Maxon announced the acquisition of Forger, a 3D sculpting tool developed by Javier Edo Meseguer.    Forger was developed by Javier Edo. The Maxon people … Read more

Forces gather to ensure to protect the integrity of images

There’s new information on the Content Authenticity Initiative. If you’ll remember, Adobe, Microsoft, The New York Times, and Twitter announced the formation of the Content Authenticity Initiative at Adobe Max in 2019. Obviously, they’re tackling a complex problem that along the way seeks to build a pipeline from content capture to content consumption with documentation that attests to the authenticity … Read more

DMP applies its AI smarts to Yamaha Motors

Last summer, we reported about DMP Inc. and Basemark's announcement of smart mirrors for vehicles using AI. However, that was just the tip of the iceberg for DMP’s AI efforts. In May 2019, Yamaha Motor ($16 billion revenue) took a 10% stake in DMP Inc. In coming years, Yamaha Motors will ship 50 million motorcycles, boat motors, golf carts, etc., … Read more

Painter Essentials 8 gets updated features from parent product Painter 2021

Painter Essentials 8, the latest addition to Corel’s Painter family, has arrived. Painter Essentials is essentially a slimmed-down version of Corel’s high-end painting tool Painter for digital artists which sells for $429 on the Corel site. The Painter Essentials tool is $49.99.  Slimming down Painter isn’t a bad idea for artists and hobbyists who like the idea of using photos … Read more

Dassault advances Solidworks capabilities with cloud-based 3DExperience Works

Everyone is a creator: The 3DExperience Grand Challenge this year enlisted the Solidworks employee community to pick 3DExperience Works tools and participate in the design of a space station with teams given the responsibility to design a 100 m × 72 m × 68 m module using 3D Creator, 3D Sculptor for whatever they wanted—life support, recreation, food support, waste … Read more

Meshing around with shaders coming with DirectX Ultimate

In late 2019 Microsoft announced it would make a major upgrade to its Windows API DirectX12. The company said it would add two new shader stages: the Mesh Shader and the Amplification Shader. Mesh shaders incorporate most aspects of Vertex (VS) and Geometry shaders (GS) into one shader stage by processing batches of vertices and primitives before the rasterizer. The … Read more

Lightmap introduces the Xenon Drop 2 update for HDR Light Studio

The HDR Light Studio interface offers multiple controls for adding, adjusting, and finetuning a variety of lights in a scene. (Source: Lightmap) Rendering is one thing, but lighting can be another. Lightmap, based in Nottingham, England has been helping artists, engineers, and designers fine-tune their lighting since 2009. The company’s product HDR Light Studio works with the leading 3D modeling … Read more

Pushing processors to the limit: Siemens NX incorporates new design paradigms

Siemens has achieved some milestones with their latest release of NX. The company has gone to a continuous release in which changes are rolled out regularly. The company expects a cadence of every 6 months or so. The company is taking more advantage of AI/ML with every release and says it has further defined its interpretation of the model-based definition. … Read more

The gaming market is huge and takes no prisoners

As the headlines and some investors' money slowly fades, and the echoes of share price surge from the GameStop revolt bubble continue to reverberate, the PC gaming market is worth about $35 billion and growing at about 5%, while the mobile gaming market has lower ASPs, but orders of magnitude more players and is projected to grow 20% and reach $120 billion by the … Read more

Giant Steps: Adobe Substance 2021.1 updates

Sebastien Deguy heads the 3D & Immersive team at Adobe and introduced the Livestream update for Substance 2021. (Source: Adobe)   Adobe’s Substance team is an integral part of Adobe’s 3D strategy, or more correctly, the Substance team is Adobe’s 3D & Immersive group. Sebastien Deguy, formerly the CEO of Allegorithmic, is an Adobe Vice President and leads the 3D … Read more

Expanding the universe for Unity Reflect and models

In 2017, Autodesk announced plans to collaborate with Unity to create a link between Unity and Revit’s BIM models.  The first result of that collaboration was Unity Reflect, which started shipping in November 2019. Unity Reflect creates a link between Revit and Unity enabling the creation of 3D visualizations of Revit projects in Unity Reflect. Users could define what information … Read more