Thundering Thursday : Realistic Sun Effects with Optical Flares in AfterEffects

It's time for the Thundering Thursday! This week we are going to show you how to create realistic Sun effects with Optical Flares in AfterEffects. This is although a basic tutorial but atleast a proficient level of knowledge in AfterEffects is required. Big thanks to Blake Zebo for this video.



Enjoy the video and keep your eyes on this blog for more updates!

Wow Wednesday! : Papercraft Text Effect in Photoshop CS5

Hi and welcome to our first new edition of Wow Wednesday! In this edition we are showing a text effect tutorial in Photoshop CS5. In this tutorial you'll learn how to create a Papercraft Text effect. Now the tutorial is about for 15 minutes, so I recommend a cup of coffee with this tutorial. Jokes apart, this tutorial is done by ChChCheckItsClan (weird username, isn't it?). So sit back with a cup of coffee and enjoy the tutorial.

 

Monday Feast : Corel Draw X6 Preview

Hello and welcome to the first episode of Monday Feast. This edition we are going to present the preview of all new Corel Draw X6. This version has much exciting features compared to other previous versions of Corel. Advanced web designing tools, revamped PowerClip feature and friendly user-interface are the few features of the Corel Draw X6.

 Check this preview video of Corel Draw X6 by Corel Australia.

Part I

Part II

 More tutorials coming soon of Corel Draw. Watch the space regularly. Till then enjoy the videos.

Congratulations Kolkata Knight Riders for winning DLF IPL 2012

 Today we start off with congratulating Kolkata Knight Riders for clinching their maiden IPL title at Chennai against Chennai Super Kings. The team's successful fight against the Dhoni & Co. reflected the fighting spirit of Bengal. Well done KKR!

Saturday Showdown : Introducing Adobe AfterEffects CS6

Welcome to the first episode of Saturday Showdown. In this episode we are going to introduce to you the latest Adobe AfterEffects CS6. Now as you know that Adobe has stopped support of AfterEffects and Premiere Pro for the 32 bit (x86) machines from CS5, this version of AE will work on 64 bit (x64) only. So first check your PC to make sure that you are using a 64 bit version.

Here is the demo video from Adobe TV.

Along with this, a small industrial review of AfterEffects CS6 by 3D World:

Nuke, Fusion and Motion (the latter available only as part of Final Cut Studio) are all capable of turning in a great job, but it’s generally agreed that After Effects holds the title of industry leading compositor.

And with its Adobe CS integration, it is just as suited for use by 3D animators as it is by video pros, 2D animators and multimedia producers.

As with most incremental upgrades, After Effects CS5.5 does a lot to shore up the application as a whole, and thus limits the new features to a short list we’ll look at in a moment.

Under the hood, 5.5 builds on CS5’s transition to a true 64-bit workflow.

A vastly improved disk caching system ups the default from just 2GB to a whopping 20GB – more than capableof dealing with today’s huge HD files.

We weren’t able to do a direct comparison test, but Adobe claims this provides significant playback gains.

After Effects CS5.5 also now displays each layer’s caching individually, enabling you to know just what content is in the cache.

The most-touted new feature is the Warp Stabilizer, an advanced stabilisation toolset that not only automates target creation, but also synthesises image content to avoid heavy cropping (stealing some technology from Photoshop’s Content-Aware Fill).

It’s a genuinely useful tool for film and video work, but will be of less use to the 3D animator.

After Effects’s stereoscopic workflow now streamlines the entire process to make it a bit less complex and a lot more functional.

The stereoscopic process is still challenging, but is becoming more mainstream every year.

It’s also a natural opportunity for 3D animators who use software that likely already has stereoscopic-aware toolsets.

Lights in After Effects’ 2.5D world finally allow a natural fall-off. While it’s no replacement for 3D applications, 2.5D can save loads of production time, and Adobe keeps making it more and more usable.

Hope you enjoy this edition of Saturday Showdown. Stay tuned to our blog for more cool stuffs. 

Friday Blockbuster : Sneak Peak on Z-Brush 4R3 FiberMesh

So now it's time for the Friday Blockbuster. This time we are going to show you a sneak peak of the new FiberMesh option in Z-Brush 4 with R3 update. Although the FiberMesh was introduced with the R2b release only on January 2012, R3 continued the same option with not many changes to look into. 

Here's a demo video of how the FiberMesh will work in Z-Brush 4 R2b. 

With ZBrush 4R3 your models will benefit from having real sculpted geometry, and exportable hair and fur! With this amazing new feature, you can even grow plants, weeds, shrubs and other amazing environment details. Simply mask an area to define where the fibers will grow. Use the various FiberMesh features to quickly define your look. Best of all, you can even use Polypaint information to generate a wide range of colored fibers.

The amazing power of FiberMesh comes from the ability to see what changes you are generating in real time as you work. From the earliest stages of your projects development, you will interactively see and modify the size, thickness, flare, and gravity associated with your fibers.

With the all new ZBrush 4R3, developing fur and hair geometry is easier than ever before. The days of relying on guides as used in other applications are a thing of the past! Generating fur, fibers and hair inside ZBrush 4R3 is as intuitive as laying down a brush stroke. Rendering and re-rendering are a thing of the past too. You can watch in real time as your creative energy is transferred to the ZBrush canvas. 

The functionality of the new FiberMesh is extended by a set of advanced controls designed to help you generate exactly what you imagine. The masking controls, brush settings, PolyPaint and curves, all contribute to the speed and efficiency of your designs.

The greatest benefit of all comes in the form of exportable geometry derived from your FiberMesh designs. This means you can export these complex design elements in the form of real geometry for use in other 3D packages. Or use BPR (Best Preview Render) within ZBrush and see how your hair of fibers come to life all within ZBrush.  

So enjoy this Friday Blockbuster of this week.

Adobe Photoshop CS6 : Enhanced 3D Options

Since Photoshop CS3, Adobe has done numerous changes for their 3D option. But in CS6, they just revamped the whole tool with more options to create precise 3D effects. Here is the quick demo of Adobe Photoshop CS6 3D Demo by IceFlowStudios.

Enjoy the video.

Adobe introduces Creative Suite 6

Though there have been plenty of previews of Adobe Creative Suite 6 before today’s big product announcement (not the least of which was the public beta of Photoshop CS6), Adobe has now unveiled not only all 14 updated applications, but also its new and much-debated Creative Cloud subscription service. The $75 per month Creative Cloud offering (or $50 per month with an annual membership), serves up all the CS6 applications as well as Adobe Muse and Edge Preview, two new HTML5 products. Originally introduced last fall in conjunction with the original Adobe Touch tablet-based apps, the subscription service not only lets you download and install the Adobe desktop applications to your PC, but it also includes connectivity to Adobe Touch apps and provides 20GB of cloud-based storage so you can access your files from any web browser, and view, synchronize, and share your files across multiple computing devices (e.g., tablet and desktop PCs). Existing users of CS3, CS4, CS5, and CS5.5 are being offered a discounted introductory price of $30 per month and there’s also a free membership with only 2GB of storage space that lets you synchronize and share files across devices, and includes 30-day free trials of all the desktop applications included in the paid membership.

For the folks who balk at the idea of a monthly subscription, of course, you can still buy the CS6 apps on their own the traditional way: by coughing up a lot of cash up front.  As usual, there are a number of different bundles available-the four this time around comprise CS6 Design & Web Premium ($1,899), Design Standard ($1,299), Production Premium ($1,899), and Master Collection ($2,599). Upgrade pricing is $299 for Design Standard, $399 for the two Premium editions and $549 for Master Collection.

Key application updates include:

Adobe Photoshop CS6: Photoshop (and Photoshop Extended) has been revamped significantly, most noticeably with its darker (though customizable) and more modern interface and major performance increases enabled by hardware acceleration. New features abound as well (see related post), with even more tools that take advantage of content-aware technology. Also significantly, video features that were previously available only in Photoshop Extended have been moved to the standard version, though 3D tools remain in the Extended version.

Adobe Illustrator CS6: Like Photoshop, Illustrator has been updated with a more modern look (dark gray by default, but customizable) and performance boosts via GPU acceleration.  Key features include a new image tracing engine, a new pattern creation tool, and the ability to apply gradients to strokes. The new version also includes 64-bit support for both Windows and Mac (as Photoshop has since CS5).

Adobe InDesign CS6: Key features in the updated version of Adobe’s page-layout application include new Adaptive Design Tools, including Alternate Layout (lets you easily create multiple layouts of the same document for different devices or prints), Liquid Layout (lets you apply page rules that automatically adapt content as you change layout size, orientation, etc.) , Content Collector Tools (lets you grab multiple pieces of content from an existing layout and repurpose them the same document or different documents), and Linked Content (lets you link content from document to document, or layout to layout within the same document, so changes are applied across the linked text or objects).

Adobe Premiere Pro CS6: As with Photoshop and Illustrator, Adobe’s video editing application sports a new interface and big hardware acceleration performance boosts. The streamlined interface includes a new Project Panel with large (and resizable) 16×9 thumbnails that allow you to preview clips by what Adobe calls Hover Scrub (i.e., hovering and sliding your mouse across the thumbnail to scrub through the video) and even click inside the clip to set  in and out points. New advanced trimming tools allow you to trim clips directly in the timeline using keyboard shortcuts or dynamically inside the Program Monitor. New adjustment layers let you apply effects across multiple clips (similar to layers in Photoshop) and create masks to make changes to a selected area of a shot.

Arena Animation Chowringhee No.1 in West Bengal

The day 12th May 2012 is memorable for us because Arena Animation Chowringhee was awarded India Education Excellence Award 2012 for the 'Best Animation & VFX Institute in West Bengal' by Time Research Media. The prestigious award was received by Centre Director Mr. A.D. Singh from the famous author Mr. Chetan Bhagat at Crown Plaza Hotel, New Delhi. We are extremely proud of this achievement. Now we are the No.1 Animation & VFX institute in Bengal.

Arena Chowringhee’s Annual Fest Interface Awards 2011 held on 10th Dec’11

With the objective of recognizing creative excellence in graphics and animation, the 14^th Annual Awards ceremony by the students of Arena Animation, Chowringhee was held on the 10^th of December 2011 at Vidya Mandir, Kolkata.

The Director of the Chowringhee centre, Mr. A.D.Singh said that this Annual Fest is an interface – a platform in order to recognize talent and promote it.. The students will be showcasing their works in different categories like Promotional Ad Campaign, Cartooning, Flash Animation, 3D Game Character design, Comics, Live Action, Photography and Web Template besides Short Film category called Chalochhobi.

The contests started from the month of Apr’11 culminate with its grand finale Awards show.During the show, the final nominations were showcased and the winners will be announced for each category. Along with this the students chipped in by performances in skits, fashion show, dance, songs.

The show was anchored by Roy, RJ of Fever channel. Red FM was the online radio partner for the same. More than 165 students have participated in the contests which have been judged by respected professionals in the industry. All of these judges are very respected in the industry consisting of names like Arthur Cardozo, Santosh Sawant, Pankaj Maloo, Shambhu Jaiswal etc.

The chief guest for the show was the table percussionist Tanmoy Bose who was all praises for the student’s work. The complete details are available on the website www.arenainterface.com

Mr. Singh has said that he would like to go a step forward in the coming year and open the contest to all professionals in the industry so that students can compete at par with others in the industry.

Winners of Interface Awards 2011

Logo Animation
 1st  - Jayanta Das
2nd - Rajat Bhowmick
3rd - Shalini Pandey
4th - Roopam Bagish, Vivekananda Basuli & Sudipta Karak
5th -Manash Parh, Tanmoy Das, Arindam Bhunia

Graphics Advertisement
1st - Sauban Ahmed
2nd - Avinoba Koley
3rd - Kishaloy Panja
4th - Jyoti Sinha
5th - Pallabi Lahiri

 2D Illustration
1st - Donald Welly Syngkren
2nd - Shreya Choudhuri
3rd - Sudeshna Dutta
4th - Ahana Sen
5th - Rupsa Sengupta

Comics
1st - Shemontini Guha
2nd - Donald Welly Syngkren, Shyamasree Banerjee & Shereen Darity Ranee
3rd - Sayantan Majumdar & Anshu Agarwal
4th - Shalini Pandey
5th - Toufique Qureshi

Web Template Design
1st - Satyajit Chatterjee
2nd - Tuhin Mukherjee
3rd - Avinoba Koley
4th - Asit Midya
5th - Ayan Chakraborty
6th - Subhanu Majumdar

3D Game Character
1st - Kishan Bhowmick
2nd - Namonita Koley
3rd - Rajdip Sarangi
4th - Tamal Bhowmick
5th - Karamjit Singh

Photography
1st - Vivekananda Basuli

Live Action
1st - Shyamasree Banerjee, Rupsa Sengupta & Jyoti Singh (Sesh Chithi)

Best Batch
TTS 5-7, Faculty - Amit Gupta (8 students)
Abhijit Halder
Ankush Chatterjee
Anindya Sundar Mondal
Arup Kr. Singha
Dipayan Dutta
Mahendra Prasad
Surojit Chatterjee
Juhi Sharma

Mr. Arena
Kishan Bhowmick
Miss Arena
Namonita Koley