Looks like we will not have to wait for the 23rd of September (or the 24th of September if you are on this side of the world) to see Adobe’s CS4 Event because all the information on the new Crative Suite is now available on Adobe’s website! CS4 has new version of Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Fireworks, After Effects, InDesign, and other members of the Creative Suite. New features of the suite include 3D painting in Photoshop and Bones and Inverse Kinematics in Flash. The demos of the applications are still not available nor are the actual release dates but they are expected to ship next month. The Suite is available in the same Design, Web, and Production bundles (Premium and Standard) that were introduced in the last release. Check out all the details on Adobe’s website.

Softimage announced the release of its 3D character facial animation technology, SOFTIMAGE Face Robot 1.9. Face Robot lets 3D artists create realistic human facial animations without the need for complex rigging steps. This edition of Face Robot introduces exporter for Autodesk Maya to facilitate moving completed facial rigs and animation data from Face Robot into Maya. You can learn more about Face Robot from here.

InstantStorm is a Windows freeware tool for creating Flash based screensavers with many advanced features. Unlike many other flash screensavers conversion tools, InstantStorm allows you to fully customize your screensaver’s about box, installer and uninstaller including all texts. InstantStorm is really easy to use. If you’re a beginner, the New Project Wizard will help you make a professional screensaver in simple steps. Learn more about InstantStrom’s features here. You can also get your hands on a free copy of this application from its offcial site’s download section here.

[Via Downloadsquad]

Reuters is reporting that Bruce Chizen, CEO of Adobe, said in a Q&A session during the Web 2.0 Summit in San Fransisco that Adobe sees a full shift of its applications from the desktop to the web within a period of ten years.

More and more applications are being made for the web so that they are accessed directly through a web browser without the need to install the application itself on the computer of the user. Such applications include Google Docs (for word processing, spreedsheets, and presentations) and Picnik (for simple image editing). These applications make it possible to save work data on the servers of the application provider so that the user can continue working from any machine without the need to install the applications or carry his data along with him. An additional feature of web applications worth noting is the possibility to share files and collaborate to work on the same file simultaneously.

Adobe announced several months ago its intention to release a lite version of Photoshop as a web application to be called Photoshop Express. Adobe said that this will not be a replacement of the desktop Photoshop, but it will be a much simpler version to target casual Internet users and not professionals. This recent report of Adobe’s CEO reflects Adobe serious consideration of migrating of applications from the desktop to the web, though a significant number of people think that while web applications do provide new opportunities and benefits over desktop, they will never be a total replacement due to the dependence of web applications on an active Internet connection to work, for which reliability will always be an issue.

We have ten years to see if Adobe could pull this off, while waiting for those ten years to pass, you can test drive and read about Aviary’s web creation project, an online suite created in Flex for creating all sorts of content that includes an image editor, a 3d modeling application, a vector drawing application, an audio editing application, and many others all available as web application or AIR applications. Check out their website for more info.

[via Download Squad]

Autodesk released today the 30-day trial of its latest update to its 3D modeling, texturing, and animation tool 3DS Max. The new version is features accelerated performance as noted by the users of CGTalk, a new integrated MAXScript Pro editor, and a new ‘Review’ toolset for providing instant feedback on certain render settings. Ryan Lesser has written a detailed review of the new MAX over at VFXWord where he came to the conclusion that Max 2008 falls short of being a major milestone, but “as a productivity booster and overall enjoyable experience, this rev of Max delivers“.

You can download the trial version of 3DS Max from here to judge it yourself.

[via CGIndia]

Electric Rain (ERain) recently released Swift 3D version 5 for Windows. Swift3D v5 for Mac is coming out this year and it is going to be a big hit. Swift3D is the only 3D program that can be directly integrated with Adobe Flash and provides fast high quality vector rendering.

“When it comes to creating 3D vector animations, Swift3D doesn’t have any competition. For its ease-of-use and rapid development of 3D Flash, it really can’t be beat.” says MacReview.

Of course, you don’t have to export 3D animations as vector, you can also export as video which gives you all the capabilities of motion graphic design.

For more information, go to the Swift 3D page.

Toon Boom animation Inc. recently released the latest version of Toon Boom Studio, their 2d animation software for the Windows and Mac platforms. Toon Boom Studio 4 new features include an increase ease of us for animating bitmap images, extended styles and calligraphy, feather edges for creating blurred vectors and glow effects, improved motion effects, advanced web publishing options and other features as well. You can learn more about Toon Boom Studio by visiting their official website here.

Microsoft released yesterday Silverlight, its plug-in for delivering rich interactive multimedia over the web. The Silverlight environment directly competes with Adobe’s Flash for deploying video and Rich Internet Applications (RIA) for consumption across various browsers and platforms. The first edition of Silverlight will not serve any interactive content and will be mainly used for the delivery of high definition video for which it has partnered with several major websites to the exclusively deliver their videos through it.

It is also interesting to note that Electric Rain has also announced the support of Silverlight in its most recent release of Swift3D, the acclaimed 3D solution for producing web friendly 3d models and animations widely used by Flash developers. Swift3D will now come with built-in support for authoring Silverlight content which users could use to show their created content using the Silverlight plug-in over the Internet.

The race between Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight has now officially started. Adobe already has a head start with its domination of the web as the standard for delivering video, but it has already responded to the Silverlight threat by announcing a new update for the Flash Player to support high-definition video in hope to remain the primary format for the delivery of online video.

Silverlight is available for download for the Windows and Mac platforms for Internet Explorer and Firefox. Linux support will soon follow through the Moonlight project carried in cooperation with Novell. Visit Silverlight’s official website to learn more about it.

Softimage recently announced at SIGGRAPH the next update to its 3D animation tool SOFTIMAGE|XSI 6.5. The new application will come again in two editions, Essentials and Advance. Both applications will come with more than 30 new features and enhancements that include a new tool for High Dynamic Range, rendermap support, new SDK API, UV editing enhancements, and audio support enhancements.

The Essential edition will also feature Hair & Fur XSI tool and Syflex Cloth simulation - an engine that it supposed to be incredibly fast for creating cloth and flesh effects. The Advance edition will be packed with all the features of Essential and some additional tools such as a new framework for simulating crowd behaviour and five extra licenses for batch rendering. Both editions are expected to be released this autumn. Visit Softimage’s official website for more details.