Battle for Terra?

This looks to be fairly independent, does anyone know more about this project?

http://www.animationmagazine.net/article/9509

Grayscale to 3D Mesh PS CS4

Not the best demonstration, but you get the idea. Apparently PS CS4 will generate a 3D mesh from a gray scale image. In combination with camera mapping this could be a powerful 2d approach to composing a shot. Rough out the geometry in gray scale then add paint to give it light and color.

http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/MeshFromGrayCanyon_SM.mov

3d matte painting breakdown

Found on Georgios Cherouvim's online portfolio, here is a nice 3D matte painting shot with breakdown.

kickoff

(I'm splitting the Animating Fast thread off my regular blog and moving it here so as to add collaborators from this semester's course)

The briefly stated goal of the Animating Fast course is to research, develop, and execute tools and techniques that permit a 10x speedup in producing high-quality 3D animation.

This blog will be a place we can discuss our ongoing discoveries, and invite others to participate in the conversation as well.