Electric Rain released today the new version of Swift3D, the 3D modeling and animation tool of choice for Flash designers. The new Swif3d v6 features new boolean operations for merging and punching objects out of each other, enhanced speed and performance, support for Papervision3D 2.0 to create real time 3D Flash graphics, and other new features.

I was personally not impressed at all with the implementation of Papervision3D in the previous version of Swif3D, so I hope the implementation of Papervision3D 2.0 is better.

v6 is instantly available for purchase for both the Mac and Windows at the price of $250. Trial versions are not out yet. You can learn more about Swift3D from the official website of Electric Rain.

Papervision – Augmented Reality (extended) from Boffswana on Vimeo.

Some smart guys in Australia managed to create a Flash application that makes use a printed sheet of paper to manipulate a 3D character in a Flash movie using a webcam. It is unbelievably awesome, you can print out the sheet from their website and try the trick yourself. I tried it and works, the image below is of my desk with creature alive on the screen.

You can get the image and the Flash movie from this page. The source files are also available for download from the same page.

[via TechCrunch]

 Looks like we will not have to wait for the 23rd of September (or the 24th of September if you are on this side of the world) to see Adobe’s CS4 Event because all the information on the new Crative Suite is now available on Adobe’s website! CS4 has new version of Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Fireworks, After Effects, InDesign, and other members of the Creative Suite. New features of the suite include 3D painting in Photoshop and Bones and Inverse Kinematics in Flash. The demos of the applications are still not available nor are the actual release dates but they are expected to ship next month. The Suite is available in the same Design, Web, and Production bundles (Premium and Standard) that were introduced in the last release. Check out all the details on Adobe’s website.

Autodesk announced its new version of Mudbox, a digital sculpting and texture painting tool. The new release is bundled with new features and a new redesigned artist-friendly user interface. One of the major enhancements in Mudbox 2009 is Texture paining, which enables the user to paint directly on the 3D model. To read more about the new features of Mudbox 2009, and download a 3D day fully functional trial visit the official website by clicking here.

 The latest issue of Adobe Edge has a detailed article on the new features of the next edition of the Flash Player codenamed Astro. Major additions to the player include the ability to create custom filters and blend modes using a new technology called Adobe Pixel Bender, native 3D engine, and a new text engine that allows device fonts to be anti-aliased, rotated, and styled. Astro also features many performance improvements and new ActionScript API made in response to community requests.

You can learn more about these new features by reading the article on Adobe Edge. You can also download the Flash Player 10 Beta 2 and check out demos of the technology over at Adobe Labs.

 Local Omani design house Albaha Designs is looking for a full time 3D modeler to be based in Oman. Candidates must be capable of using Maya, Photoshop, and Illustrator. CVs are to be emailed to saleh_alrizeiqi@hotmail.com. You can call 00968-2353 8038 or 00968-9230 0505 for more info.

The award winning morphing and assistant in complex morph setups and animations plug-in for 3Ds Max has released its second version with major updates in its features. Morph-O-Matic v2 features, Faster morphing calculation speed, Enhanced user interface, Displaying 20 morph channels at all time, Static poses preset, etc. Check the full list of v2 features here. Morph-O-Matic is avalible for sale at a retail price of $249 USD. A demo trail is also avalible for download here.SD

Some dude with loads of free time on his hands has decided to create a mobile application for modeling 3D objects by plotting NURBS curves on tiny mobile screens. Objects modeled using the Maya On-The-Go Java application can then be saved and imported onto Maya and Softimage | XSI to be used in *bigger* projects. I cannot think of a reason why anybody would want to spend time away from a computer modeling little 3D boxes, but you can try it out if you have the time just for the novelty of this free mobile application. Check out Maya On-The-Go to learn more about it and download the mobile application for free (Compatible only with Nokia phones).

[via CGIndia]

Softimage announced the release of its 3D character facial animation technology, SOFTIMAGE Face Robot 1.9. Face Robot lets 3D artists create realistic human facial animations without the need for complex rigging steps. This edition of Face Robot introduces exporter for Autodesk Maya to facilitate moving completed facial rigs and animation data from Face Robot into Maya. You can learn more about Face Robot from here.

The powerful 3D modelling, rendering and animation solution for Apple Mac OS X has released a new update that increases MacOS X 10.5 (Leopard) compatibility and fixes many bugs. Cheetah 4.5 also highly improves the memory efficiency of the render manager which allows the render manager to recover the results of finished rendering jobs if Cheetah3D should crash. Cheetah 4.5.1 was announced the next day due to two bugs introduced in Cheetah3D 4.5 that could cause a crash. You can read about the major updates in this new version of Cheetah 3D here. You can download and try out the demo version of Cheetah3D 4.5 for free here.