design
Graphic and 3D design for cross-media publishing. This entails creating illustrations and imagery for printed publications as well as the web, and mobile devices. The section mainly discusses software that helps with the design process.
After a long period of silence the journalists that received the pre-release from e-on Software could finally run their story on the new Vue 6. Vue 6 Infinite, xStream, and all the other versions of this 3D application have now been released, and for me the nail biting is finally over: I can tell you how thrilled I was and still am to see what this program has evolved into. A couple of years ago I wrote that I wasn’t impressed with Vue 4’s animation time line.
Today, I can’t say I’m not impressed with any of the features. This program simply knocks you off your socks. Vue 6 Infinite was the version I could test. I asked for Vue 6 xStream, but when the e-on Software marketing manager told me it will only run on Windows, the choice was easy: let’s get our hands on Infinite and see how it goes. I had a pre-release copy of Vue 6 Infinite since December 2006. In its pre-release state, it was already a fairly robust program, but I couldn’t write about it as I had promised not to.
Bonnie Roskes wrote a manual for Piranesi, the painting program that is naturally associated with SketchUp. The book is crammed with detailed screenshots and step-by-step explanations of how to achieve specific effects with materials, textures and paint.
Digital Carvers Guild developed a nice set of shaders for Carrara Pro 5.x. Called “Eovia ShaderStyle”, the set is a powerful bundle of plug-ins comprised of Anything Goos, Shader Plus, Toon Pro and Wireframe Pro. This collection of shaders, lighting models and rendering tools enables Carrara users to enhance their creations quickly and easily. Each plug-in is tightly integrated within the framework of Carrara, so you’ll have a seamless working experience as you access these powerful add-ons.
Color Schemer Studio 1.5 is an application that helps you create colour schemes which are pleasant to the eye. The software is built in Cocoa, has everything colour professionals could ever wish, and more. Color Schemer Studio is indispensable regardless of whether you are a web designer, a desktop publisher, or even a graphic designer. It makes selecting colours fun and has a feature built-in that will compensate for colour-blindness. Color Schemer Studio is availabel for Mac OS X and Windows XP.
Pfeiffer Research recently released a new report on the differences between Mac and Windows productivity, TCO (Total Cost of Ownership), and user interface efficiency. IT-Enquirer was given the opportunity to study the complete € 2,399.00 report and run the below story on it. The results of the comparison has more nuances to it than most of us would expect.
Real World books are my favourites, and Mordy Golding’s Real World Adobe Illustrator CS2 is no exception. This book explains everything you could possibly want to know about Illustrator CS2, including why you would use it instead of, for example, Photoshop, what you use it for, and of course, how to make the best use of its many features. Every graphic designer should have this book.
The Spyder2Pro is a colorimeter, or monitor calibrator. It will perform measurements and will calibrate your monitor so that colours are correctly and consistently represented. The Spyder2Pro can calibrate CRTs, LCDs, and projectors. There’s even a version that will calibrate a TV set.
Eovia Corporation, developer and publisher of leading 3D animation, modeling and rendering solutions, today introduces Hexagon 2.
Avenza Systems’ MAPublisher 6.2 is a GIS environment that works as a plug-in for Adobe Illustrator CS2 (and other vector drawing applications like Freehand). MAPublisher focuses on the map graphics first with the right GIS data management tools to facilitate the map rpoduction process.
MAPublisher’s approach is in direct contrast with most GIS software that are designed and written for the analysis of data, with desktop publishing of map data coming second. This means that as powerful as most GIS systems are for analysis, they were not designed for cartographic or publication quality mapping. Cartographers on the other hand, need tools such as Bezier curves and CMYk colour separation for publication quality output. MAPublisher provides just that.
e-on software and Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), announced that Vue 5 Infinite, e-on software’s natural 3D environment solution is currently being used by ILM for the production of some of the special effects in upcoming movie projects.
In Adobe Illustrator, you have the mesh gradient tool. This tool can be very powerful, for example to create web buttons that don’t look “perfect”. Plastic buttons rarely look perfect. They are often somewhat bumpy with asymmetric reflections when looked at from different angles.
The mesh gradient tool enables you to re-create that natural look better than what you can do with ordinary gradients and embossing. Here’s how it is done.
Dyson has won several awards worldwide for innovation and design. James Dyson himself has earned about a dozen honorary doctorates for his products’ design, his way of doing business and his inventions overall. Dyson, a Royal College of Art graduate, started the company with his name because of his aggravation with vacuum cleaners’ many technological design flaws.
Dyson is one of those rare designers who are changing the ways of an entire industry --the Dyson Cyclone vacuum cleaner is now being copied by a number of vacuum cleaner manufacturers.
Owning a Dyson vacuum cleaner myself, I was particularly interested in how Dyson designs his products. What I learnt was rather surprising. It turns out Dyson’s design successes depend far less on digital tools than one would imagine by looking at the innovations throughout the Dyson product range.
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