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Art, Motion Design, AI, Tech & Freelance Digest - Ep3

Art, Motion Design, AI, Tech & Freelance Digest - Ep3

Your Nexus for the Latest Trends, Tools, and Tales in Creative Technology and Independent Work

Mario Domingos
November 10, 2023

Welcome to the Motion Magnet Ep2.

This week was crazy with new things coming out, so here you go!

Houdini 20 hit the scene with a bang, complete with insightful tutorials on their YouTube channel. Blender 4.0 also launched, stirring up discussions about its growing impact in the VFX industry. In a significant leap for motion capture technology, Reallusion unveiled ACCU Face, a groundbreaking AI facial tracker. Meanwhile, Stability AI's latest offerings, including Stable 3D and advanced image enhancement APIs, are poised to transform the landscape of image processing and 3D model generation.

Enjoy!

The Latest in CG & Motion Design

Houdini 20 is out!

Don’t forget to check their YT Channel for a bunch of new tuts.

Discover the key features of Houdini 20 | CG Channel

Read our run-down of the key changes in the largest ever update to Houdini, from character animation to rendering and machine learning.

www.cgchannel.com/2023/11/discover-the-key-features-of-houdini-20

Blender 4.0!!!

Blender in the VFX Industry: Niche Player or Emerging Contender?

This article discusses Blender's place in the visual effects (VFX) industry. While Blender has become increasingly popular among artists, it is not yet widely used in large VFX studios. According to industry professionals, Blender is not taken seriously at these studios because it lacks the reliability and specific features of other industry-standard software. However, Blender is being used more and more in VFX for smaller or specialized tasks, such as modeling and rendering. Blender is also being adopted quickly for game asset creation because of its modeling speed and high-quality real-time interactive previews.

Blender vs. the VFX Industry

Is Blender going to take over the VFX industry? Henning and Morten from FlippedNormals tell us why that's not likely to happen.

cgcookie.com/posts/blender-vs-the-vfx-industry

Reallusionreleased ACCU Face.

AccuFACE is an AI facial tracker that can capture facial expressions from both webcams and conventional video files. It is powered by NVIDIA RTX GPU and can synchronize facial movements with voice input.

AccuFACE - Video-based AI Facial Mocap | iClone

iClone AccuFACE, a video-based AI facial tracker enabling precise, real-time facial motion capture from webcams or recorded video files.

mocap.reallusion.com/iclone-motion-live-mocap/accuface.html

The Latest Tuts

Great overview of the new Quad Remesh tool in HD20 by Inside the Mind.

Inflate the rubber!

New Insydium XParticles Top Tip Tuesday!

Character Creator Pipeline

It’s Houdini time! - Soft Peak Node

Houdini 20 is here!!!!!! But... This is not one of the cool new nodes, whoops... #houdini
— Paul Esteves (@PaulEsteves28)
2:51 PM • Nov 9, 2023

Tools and Plugins

Today's MOPs Plus update adds full compatibility for Houdini 20 and Python 3.10. View the full changelog here: motionoperators.com/changelog/
— MOPs (@motionoperators)
12:14 AM • Nov 10, 2023

Check all Super Photo Real’s Houdini tools here 👇

Super Photo Real

3D content for Visual Effects and Games

superphotoreal.gumroad.com

AI Corner

Create your own Assistent!

Runway Gen-2 Motion Brush!

Introducing, Motion Brush.
A new way to add controlled movement to your generations.
Coming soon to Gen-2.
— Runway (@runwayml)
5:41 PM • Nov 10, 2023

Stabiliti.ai announced Stable 3D Private Preview.

Stability AI, a GenAI company, has announced new image enhancement capabilities and enterprise-grade APIs for businesses. The company has introduced Sky Replacer, a tool that allows users to replace the color and aesthetic of the sky in their original photos with a selection of nine alternatives to improve the overall look and feel of the image. Stability AI has also introduced Stable 3D, an automatic process to generate concept-quality textured 3D objects that eliminates much of the complexity and allows a non-expert to generate a draft-quality 3D model in minutes. Stable FineTuning provides enterprises and developers the ability to fine-tune pictures, objects, and styles at record speed, all with the ease of a turnkey integration for their applications. The company has also integrated Content Credentials and invisible watermarking for images generated via the Stability AI API.

Stability AI Previews Enhanced Image Offerings: APIs for Business & New Product Features — Stability AI

Stability AI is excited to share updates regarding our next generation text-to-image products, featuring private previews of upcoming business offerings, including enterprise-grade APIs and new image enhancement capabilities.

stability.ai/news/stability-ai-enhanced-image-apis-for-business-features

Elon Musk & UK Prime Minister Discuss AI’s Global Risk

An AI just negotiated a contract for the first time ever.

British AI firm Luminance has developed an AI system called Autopilot that can autonomously negotiate a contract with another AI without human involvement.

An AI just negotiated a contract for the first time ever — and no human was involved

Jaeger Glucina, chief of staff and managing director of Luminance, said its new AI aimed to eliminate much of the paperwork that lawyers need to complete.

www.cnbc.com/2023/11/07/ai-negotiates-legal-contract-without-humans-involved-for-first-time.html

AI Tools come to the rescue.

3DFY Prompt

3DFY Prompt uses artificial intelligence to create high-quality 3D models from just a text prompt. Now anyone can quickly create compelling 3D assets for their industry at scale.

app.3dfy.ai

3D Animation and Automated Rigging | Anything World

3D Animation and Automated Rigging platform powered by Machine Learning. Unlimited 3D models for games, apps and the metaverse.

anything.world

AI-Powered Mocap Tool for High-Quality Facial Animation in Real-Time

Reallusion revealed iClone AccuFACE, an AI-powered facial tracker that offers high-quality results.

80.lv/articles/a-new-ai-powered-mocap-tool-for-high-quality-facial-animation-in-real-time

MotionGPT™ by DeepMotion | Sign Up For The Beta | Text to 3d Animations

Transform words into 3D animations with MotionGPT™ by DeepMotion. Join our MotionGPT Beta today.

www.deepmotion.com/motiongpt

Tech Coolness

The Humane AI Pin

Humane, a five-year-old artificial intelligence startup founded by former Apple designers Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, announced its first product on Thursday.

Orders begin 11.16

hu.ma.ne

Utree Technology is a world-renowned robotics company, one of the first globally to publicly retail high-performance quadruped robots and to achieve commercialization in the quadruped robot industry. The company specializes in the independent research and development, production, and sales of consumer-grade and industrial-grade high-performance quadruped robots and agile robotic arms, and has been a global leader in sales over the years.

Utree Technology - Pioneer of the Global Quadruped Robot Industry

Utree Technology is a world-renowned robotics company, one of the first globally to publicly retail high-performance quadruped robots and to achieve commercialization in the quadruped robot industry.

Review of the Space Black M3 Max MacBook Pro by Marques Brownlee

3D Tutorials for Every Taste

Compositing for 3D artists

The tutorial covers various topics such as setting up the project in Fusion, using different passes to recreate the beauty, tweaking shadows and replacing textures on a shoe using the UV pass. This is ep4 of a series by Tim van Helsdingen so don’t forget to check the other episodes.

Cinema 4D 2023 Pyro

Houdini Unwrapping Techniques

Down the Houdini Rabbit Hole

Oldie Goldies

X

Runway’s second annual AI Film Festival is fully underway. Submissions are open.
With @YouTube @nvidia@GoldmanSachs@ACEFilmEditors@CocaCola and @GIFF_ch as official festival partners.
aiff.com
— Cristóbal Valenzuela (@c_valenzuelab)
5:44 PM • Nov 10, 2023

GPTs can save a lot of effort:
— Sam Altman (@sama)
12:01 AM • Nov 10, 2023

At some point you get fed up using a calculator to count how long your #c4d render will take and you make a little xpresso setup :)
Obviously only works if you frames take the same amount of time to render.
It's free :)
ace5.gumroad.com/l/rendercalc
— Aleksey - Ace5 (@ace5c4d)
5:54 PM • Nov 9, 2023

If you work with C4D and AE, transferring camera and other data, then you should be using AEC4D PRO.
It just works.. shift-click to add your objects to selected comp.. or update existing layers / camera.
Try it, it's a life saver!
From @lasse_lauch
— helloluxx (@helloluxx)
11:37 PM • Nov 9, 2023

But wait, there's more! You can bring textures you've generated using #AdobeFirefly straight into @Substance3D Sampler to create editable 3D materials! 🤯
— Howard Pinsky (@Pinsky)
9:14 PM • Nov 9, 2023

Painting with a live AI transformation of my work is pretty crazy.. even if doing so in full 3d with Dreams feels a bit more sci-fi :D Been talking about this kind of workflow for years now and to see it happening now is mind-bending!
#art#ai
— Martin Nebelong (@MartinNebelong)
10:39 PM • Nov 9, 2023

Shaping AI image gen through fast, gestural, and painterly 3D turns out to be pretty powerful.. And Dreams is perfect for this! The sculpt in the upper left corner is a 3D sculpt I made in 2 minutes of 3D sketching on my PS5. The video feed from my Playstation was passed… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
— Martin Nebelong (@MartinNebelong)
3:54 PM • Nov 2, 2023

Made with #animatediff, the stability of diff allows many things, I still have a lot of ideas that I want to try by rendering only parts of the video
Based on the dance of the fantastic @nonaAvantgardey 🩷 #ai #stablediffusion
#midjourney#animation#aiar#generativeart
— Mrboofy (@Mrboofyy)
1:24 PM • Nov 9, 2023

Experimenting with Blender to create a random head generator, using around 40 male head scans. It's a work in progress, but it's showing promise. #Blender
— 3D Scanstore (@Ten_24)
5:34 PM • Nov 8, 2023

yet another river flowmap test #geometrynodes . Tried some differend idea with ShortestPath node. #b3d fun little memory training.
— Miettinen Jesse - Blenderesse (@JesseMiettinen)
5:45 PM • Nov 9, 2023

Blender 4.0 will have vastly improved handling of saturated highlights, as "Filmic" is being replaced by "Agx" as the default View Transform.
Sounds minor but it means more realistic renders without the artist needing to know or do anything.
Excited for November 💪 #b3d
— Andrew Price (@andrewpprice)
2:17 AM • Aug 23, 2023

Jacket Formation Test #b3d#geometrynodes
— Cartesian Caramel🔸 (@Bbbn192)
4:58 PM • Nov 1, 2023

Many thanks to:

Emanuel Raimundo (@Manoo_77_) for sending the Blender content for this episode.

If you want to collaborate feel free to send your links to: [email protected]

As we close this edition of Motion Magnet, I want to extend a heartfelt thank you for your curiosity and your time. Your enthusiasm for the worlds of art, motion, AI, tech, and freelance is what makes this journey so enriching and worthwhile.

If you've enjoyed the content and feel inspired, I encourage you to follow me on social media and visit my website for a deeper dive who I am and get to know my work as a 3D Designer.

Check out my website: mariosundays.com

And if you've stumbled upon something incredible that I should cover, or have work of your own that's waiting for the spotlight, don't hesitate to reach out. I’m always on the lookout for remarkable contributions to this digest.

Thank you once again for being an essential part of this adventure. Until the next issue, keep creating, keep exploring, and keep curious.