BREAKING NEWS
LATEST POSTS
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Bennett Waisbren – ChatGPT 4 video generation
1. Rankin/Bass – That nostalgic stop-motion look like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Cozy and janky.
2. Don Bluth – Lavish hand-drawn fantasy. Lush lighting, expressive eyes, dramatic weight.
3. Fleischer Studios – 1930s rubber-hose style, like Betty Boop and Popeye. Surreal, bouncy, jazz-age energy.
4. Pixar – Clean, subtle facial animation, warm lighting, and impeccable shot composition.
5. Toei Animation (Classic Era) – Foundation of mainstream anime. Big eyes, clean lines, iconic nostalgia.
6. Cow and Chicken / Cartoon Network Gross-Out – Elastic, grotesque, hyper-exaggerated. Ugly-cute characters, zoom-ins on feet and meat, lowbrow chaos.
7. Max Fleischer’s Superman – Retro-futurist noir from the ’40s, bold shadows and heroic lighting.
8. Sylvain Chomet – French surrealist like The Triplets of Belleville. Slender, elongated, moody weirdness. -
GIMP 3.0 review – 20 years on from 2.0, has GIMP kept up with the times?
https://www.gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-3.0.html
Highlights
- Need to tweak a filter you applied hours ago? New in GIMP 3.0 is non-destructive editing for most commonly-used filters. See the changes in real time with on-canvas preview.
- Exchange files with more applications, including BC7 DDS files as well as better PSD export and many new formats.
- Don’t know how big to make your drawing? Simply set your paint tool to expand layers automatically as needed.
- Making pro-quality text got easier, too. Style your text, apply outlines, shadows, bevels, and more, and you can still edit your text, change font and size, and even tweak the style settings.
- Organizing your layers has become much easier with the ability to select multiple items at once, move them or transform them all together!
- Color Management was again improved, as our long-term project to make GIMP an advanced image editor for all usages.
- Updated graphical toolkit (GTK3) for modern desktop usage.
- New Wilber logo!
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Reve Image 1.0 Halfmoon – A new model trained from the ground up to excel at prompt adherence, aesthetics, and typography
A little-known AI image generator called Reve Image 1.0 is trying to make a name in the text-to-image space, potentially outperforming established tools like Midjourney, Flux, and Ideogram. Users receive 100 free credits to test the service after signing up, with additional credits available at $5 for 500 generations—pretty cheap when compared to options like MidJourney or Ideogram, which start at $8 per month and can reach $120 per month, depending on the usage. It also offers 20 free generations per day.
FEATURED POSTS
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DocRes – Document and scans Image Restoration
DocRes is a new model that simplifies document image restoration by handling five tasks: dewarping, deshadowing, appearance enhancement, deblurring, and binarization within a single system.
https://github.com/zzzhang-jx/docres
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AnimationXpress.com interviews Daniele Tosti for TheCgCareer.com channel
You’ve been in the VFX Industry for over a decade. Tell us about your journey.
It all started with my older brother giving me a Commodore64 personal computer as a gift back in the late 80′. I realised then I could create something directly from my imagination using this new digital media format. And, eventually, make a living in the process.
That led me to start my professional career in 1990. From live TV to games to animation. All the way to live action VFX in the recent years.I really never stopped to crave to create art since those early days. And I have been incredibly fortunate to work with really great talent along the way, which made my journey so much more effective.
What inspired you to pursue VFX as a career?
An incredible combination of opportunities, really. The opportunity to express myself as an artist and earn money in the process. The opportunity to learn about how the world around us works and how best solve problems. The opportunity to share my time with other talented people with similar passions. The opportunity to grow and adapt to new challenges. The opportunity to develop something that was never done before. A perfect storm of creativity that fed my continuous curiosity about life and genuinely drove my inspiration.
Tell us about the projects you’ve particularly enjoyed working on in your career
(more…)
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VFX pipeline – Render Wall Farm management topics
1: Introduction Title: Managing a VFX Facility’s Render Wall
- Briefly introduce the importance of managing a VFX facility’s render wall.
- Highlight how efficient management contributes to project timelines and overall productivity.
2: Daily Overview Title: Daily Management Routine
- Monitor Queues: Begin each day by reviewing render queues to assess workload and priorities.
- Resource Allocation: Allocate resources based on project demands and available hardware.
- Job Prioritization: Set rendering priorities according to project deadlines and importance.
- Queue Optimization: Adjust queue settings to maximize rendering efficiency.
3: Resource Allocation Title: Efficient Resource Management
- Hardware Utilization: Distribute rendering tasks across available machines for optimal resource usage.
- Balance Workloads: Avoid overloading specific machines while others remain underutilized.
- Consider Off-Peak Times: Schedule resource-intensive tasks during off-peak hours to enhance overall performance.
4: Job Prioritization Title: Prioritizing Rendering Tasks
- Deadline Sensitivity: Give higher priority to tasks with imminent deadlines to ensure timely delivery.
- Critical Shots: Identify shots crucial to the project’s narrative or visual impact for prioritization.
- Dependent Shots: Sequence shots that depend on others should be prioritized together.
5: Queue Optimization and Reporting Title: Streamlining Render Queues
- Dependency Management: Set up dependencies to ensure shots are rendered in the correct order.
- Error Handling: Implement automated error detection and requeueing mechanisms.
- Progress Tracking: Regularly monitor rendering progress and update stakeholders.
- Data Management: Archive completed renders and remove redundant data to free up storage.
- Reporting: Provide daily reports on rendering status, resource usage, and potential bottlenecks.
6: Conclusion Title: Enhancing VFX Workflow
- Effective management of a VFX facility’s render wall is essential for project success.
- Daily monitoring, resource allocation, job prioritization, queue optimization, and reporting are key components.
- A well-managed render wall ensures efficient production, timely delivery, and overall project success.
