Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/786150
4 cgw j a n u a r y . f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 7 S P O T L I G H T C M Y CM MY CY CMY K AMD INTRODUCES VEGA ARCHITECTURE AMD recently unveiled preliminary details of its forthcoming GPU architecture, Vega. The brand-new high-performance GPU archi- tecture enables new possibilities in PC gaming, professional design, and machine intelligence that traditional GPU architectures have not been able to address effectively. The Vega architecture's memory subsystem enables GPUs to address very large datasets spread across a mix of memory types. The high-bandwidth cache controller in Vega-based GPUs can access on-package cache and off-package memories in a flexible, programmable fashion using fine-grained data movement. At the core of the Vega architecture is a new, next-generation compute engine built on flexible compute units that can natively process 8-, 16-, 32-, or 64-bit operations in each clock cycle. These compute units are optimized to attain significantly higher frequen- cies than previous generations. Also, the new Vega pixel engine employs a Draw Stream Binning Rasterizer, designed to improve performance and power efficiency. GPU products based on the Vega architecture are expected to ship in the first half of the year. IKINEMA ROLLS OUT LIVEACTION 3.0 Real-time IK vendor IKinema has announced the third edition of LiveAction, its virtual reality and virtual production animation tech- nology, used by 3D animation teams and directors for live perfor- mances to mass audiences. IKinema LiveAction enables users to live-stream and clean mo- tion-capture data taken during an actor's performance while wear- ing a motion-capture suit. With the technology, there is no latency between the actor performing the motion and instant retargeting and viewing on the virtual avatar within Unreal Engine 4. Features new to LiveAction 3.0 include automatic bone mapping, a template editor with custom name matching, skeleton matching on the target rig, improved workflow within the animation cleaning pipeline, support for custom mocap systems through the Mocap Streaming Protocol, and faster setup. IKinema LiveAction 3.0 is available for the Windows platform; node-locked or floating licenses start at £2500 (nearly $3,100). UNITY UPDATED TO VERSION 5.5 Unity has released Version 5.5 of its tool set, which includes new platforms and new opportunities with support for Microso Holographic (HoloLens) that is no longer in preview mode. There are also major improvements to the Particle System and Line Renderer components. The animation window has workflow improvements and improved performance for faster, more reliable iteration. Additionally, many of the new features aim to improve performance for delivering the best experience to users on all platforms. For example, Unity has added GPU instancing for Android and iOS and a new CPU Usage Profiler timeline view, as well as updated its physics engine to PhysX 3.3.3. REALLUSION RELEASES CRAZYTALK ANIMATOR 3 Reallusion is offering CrazyTalk Animator 3 (CTA3), an update to its all-in-one solution that provides character design, scene building, and character motion tools for the creation of studio-level 2D ani- mation on a PC or Mac. The soware includes character templates, motion libraries, a 2D bone rig editor, face puppeteering, and audio lip-syncing tools that give users a high level of control when ani- mating 2D talking characters for videos, the Web, games, apps, and presentations. Version 3 includes improved 2D character templates, offering a variety of character creation styles and options. CTA3 costs $69 for the Standard version, $179 for the Pro release, and $299 for the Pipeline solution.