We've just released an update to the db&w tools that fixes two issues. It is available now in our downloads section.

Changes:

Version 1.1b:

• fixes a bug that made the Material Blender unuseable for ... materials *sigh*
• fixes a bug that caused the 32bit version of the Notifier to crash on Vista x64

Version 1.1a:

• fixes a bug that only affects the Material Blender for OSX-CFM, the other plugins have not changed.

Cheers,
Mike

We're proud to announce the 7th free update of infiniMap.

Version 1.5 is a milestone release. Amongst the major additions is full support for tiled OpenEXR images, a OSX UB port as well as a new batch converter.

We're also releasing infiniMap Exr, a lower cost edition of infiniMap that only supports tiled OpenEXR images. If you need to use JPEG 2000 or ECW images as textures, infiniMap Pro will fill your needs.

Here is a list of the major changes in Version 1.5:

• Supports tiled OpenEXR images as native files
• infiniMap Exr is available on OSX as a Universal Binary
• Completely re-written converter:
  
  • Multi-threaded
  • Writes JPEG 2000/ECW images of raw image files up to 500MB in size
  • Writes unlimited size OpenEXR images
  • Batch conversion
  • "Convert-on-Load" allows the loading of any supported image file into infiniMap, converting to a native image format as needed
  • Uses LightWave 3D image i/o plugins natively to read images for the conversion
  • Low-memory footprint - the converter processes on a scanline basis
• Multi-Channel texturing node for layered OpenEXR images.
• Various performance and usability improvements.

This update is available now in our downloads section. We hope you will enjoy working with infiniMap V1.5

Cheers,
Dagmar & Mike

nice work.
Best,
Zareh

we need more innovators in Computer Science like him.
Best Regards,
Zareh

Wow... the creator of ELIZA.     I remember seeing versions of that at the beginning of my experience with computers in the very late 70's and early 80's.

85 years old.    That's a pretty good run at life.    A life worth celebrating.

Jo Weizenbaum died yesterday in Berlin.

We had the pleasure to meet him in person and he influenced our thinking about technology like no one else. He taught us about humanitarianism and that it will ever be a person, that solves a problem never technology.

Thank you Jo, we will miss you.

Dagmar and Mike

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Weizenbaum

We want to thank Mary Reardon, the director of Marketing and Publicityat CafeFX for her work on the copyright issues. Thanks to her the interview is online again.

So enjoy the read!

Cheers,
Dagmar

Due to some obstacles with the copyrights we had to take down the interview, but the team from cafefx and us are working on the stuff to get it online again.

Cheers,
Dagmar

We've just released our second version of db&w Tools, a free set of plugins:

Version 1.1 includes:

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Material Blender
This node allows you to split up materials into shading components, merge shaders into materials or blend different materials together.

On thing worth noting is the fact that the shading input always overrides the respective material, so if you connect a material to the "fg Material" input, the "fg Specular" will override the specular component of the material.

Kudos to Mike Stetson for coming up with the initial idea.

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Simple Colour Corrector

A node that offers the same colour correction options as the image panel, including gamma correction.

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Command Statistics
This Master plugin records all commands fired by Layout and sorts them by how many times they are accessed.
The idea is to record all actions, allowing you to decide which commands are used more often to streamline your configs and keyboard shorcuts. You can let it run while you work and after a few sessions it should become clear which parts of Layout you use more.
This plugin is a Layout Master, which means that it is launched with LightWave 3D.
The list of commands is stored between layout sessions.
You can export the list of commands to a text file (tab delimited) or clear it.

---

Growl OSX, UB only.
This master handler plugin sends notifications to Growl (http://growl.info/) on OSX.
Supported events are:

• Starting Frame Render
• Frame Rendered
• Starting Render
• Render Done
• Scene Loaded
• Scene Saved

You can use the Growl preferences to customize these.

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Render Audio Notifier Windows only.
This master handler plugin allows you to assign sounds to specific events.
Supported events are:

• Starting Frame Render
• Frame Rendered
• Starting Render
• Render Done
• Scene Loaded
• Scene Saved

You can use "Control Panel/Sounds and Audio Devices" in Windows to assign sounds to these events.

---

The plugins are available now in our downloads section.

If you find any issues, don't hesitate to contact us.

We hope you enjoy working with the plugins.

Cheers
Your db&w team...

We've just released a maintenance update of exrTrader.

Changes:

• This release updates exrTrader with OpenEXR V1.6.1
• The default render mode for exrTrader now is "VIPER and save Buffers"
• exrTrader now supports image file names with 5 and 6 digits.
• Fixed an issue with path names on OSX

We hope you enjoy working with exrTrader.

If you have any issues, please feel free to mail us at info@db-w.com or use our support forum.

Best Regards,
Your db&w team.