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
 

Interface Awards was held on 13th Nov ’10, presented by Arena Chowringhee.

This year 2010 was the most extravagance year for showcasing the best performance by the students of Arena Animation Chowringhee at Vidya mandir on 13 november in the presence of students, their family and team members of Arena chowringhee.

This year we had our centre director Mr.H.S. Azad on the stage speaking about the establishment of this institution . How by every brick to brick construction had been made this arena chowringhee the best voted animation centre in the eastern zone for the last 12 years . He spoke about the hard work involved behind this whole scenario for upbringing of this institution and the whole trade also included the priceless effort of Mr. A.D. Singh who has given his life’s 12 years to make it stand.

Mr A.D. Singh , our centre head of chowringee also spoke a few words that how his enthusiasm grows with success of every student. He really cherished the moment when Mr. Rizwanur Rahman used to be the part of this institution, but even now the whole team of chowringhee and the devoted students do keep him alive in their thoughts.

The evening’s atmosphere lighted up with the performance of the students dance on classical numbers and heart throbbing melodious songs of Rabindranath Tagore and enthusiastically it was enjoyed by the over all audience.

This year we had several awards to bring up the gusto of our students and again they proved themselves to be the best by bagging all the awards in almost all categories. This year we had best 2D illustration , best 3D illustration with character design of the epics of Mahabharata. Then it was followed by the award for the best Comics where the students gave in there passion for work to bring out the real effect of hardwork with a little spice of their creativity. This year also the most awaited award was our Mr. and Ms. Arena 2010, where all the students where pounding on their heart to know the results of achiever and which finally came out with a thrill.
The show continued to very whelming with dance performers who gave it a new twist. This time Arena Chowringhee presented a mixer of the western mode and eastern earnest of the dance performances , where all the students have given their months of efforts to make it a big success. Eventually the evening came in with more surprises comprising of a drama which made the audience laugh their heart out.
Then it was the time for our eminent faculties to come up on the stage for their hard work in upbringing the institute. It was rather followed by our administration department and the coworkers on the floor.



The magical night comes to an end with a earnest thanks giving to our chief guest, Ms Rupanjana Mitra and the parents who drastically proved to be the real people to be privileged for this immemorable smaching night. We also imparted our special thanks to our jury and co sponsors - Keventer Agro, Frooti, Metro Diary, Animation Express, Official Radio Partner Power 107.8 F.M, Platinum Sponsor Glaamour, LG, GD Group, Printdesk, Millenium constructions, Chabria, Hi Tech engineers. We warm heartedly imparted our special token of thanks to Mr. H.S. Azad and Mr. A.D. Singh to put up the beautiful night with the excellent shows. This thing again showed the efficiency of the students and team members regarding the togetherness and jeal to prove this arena chowringhee to be the best voted centre of the Eastern India. The night mop up with a sublime eagerness and promise to be back again with a blast to create a new bench mark.