Siggraph Highlights for Mac Users – Part 5

Pantomat and FaceShop for Mac

Also at Siggraph was a company we have never covered before called Pantomat, of Budapest, Hungary. The 3D software company makes several applications. FaceShop 3.5 is their signature app which is Mac Universal (PowerPC and Intel) and is used to extract face imagery from a photograph and convert that data into a useable 3D texture to be applied to 3D models in program such as DAZ Studio or Poser.

Pantomat makes some innovative software based on proprietary patents. One such product is Wywien 3D plastic surgery. It also appears to resell and support TopCAD, a German-Swiss CAD product available for the Mac.

PipelineFX and Qube

Qube 5.4 is the latest release by PipelineFX for next-generation render farm management software. Qube supports Mac, Windows and Linux and the latest Qube 5.4 release documentation is filled with Mac screenshots of the application.

Qube 5.4 is render farm management software for film, post-production, game development and digital media education around the world. There are over 60 new features in version 5.4, including the continual development of a feature-rich easy-to-use GUI (graphical user interface).

Qube 5.4’s render farm support application list specifically for Mac OS X includes:

• Adobe AfterEffects
• Cinema4D (this app is only supported on Mac)
• Maya
• RenderMan
• RealFlow (not sure if both Mac and Windows)
• Apple Shake (Mac only)
• and Vue

Qube is very scalable and customizable. It can support up to 2000 worker machines. The Supervisor machine orchestrates the rendering queue. Qube can run in multi-platform environments, limited only by the application’s platform support. Interestingly, Worker software can be installed on artists workstation machines enabling these machines to become apart of the render farm cpu pool during late hours and weekends.

Qube 5.4 render farm software cost 600.USD for the Supervisor (you only need one machine and one license for this) and 300.USD per Worker machine (the machines doing the rendering processing). Client machines are machines that submit render jobs to the Supervisor. There is an online demo available and you can rent the software.

Wacom at Siggraph

Wacom, which has a gorgeous new website and brand image, was at Siggraph as usual. Wacom’s tablet technology, which is at the heart of the Mac world’s only tablet Mac, the Axiotron Modbook, is used primarily for graphics input via its line of outstanding tablets. Wacomalso makes pen-touch tablet display in its CintiQ LDC line. From the Bamboo and Graphire, (see Architosh review) Intuos and CintiQ line, all of Wacom’s products work with all Mac and PC applications that take pen input. There are over 100 applications designed to specifically be used with a Wacom tablet.