Cinema 4D R21 New Details Pricing and Subscriptions
At SIGGRAPH 2019, Maxon announced details of the upcoming R21 release of their Cinema4D 3D DCC application. The release isn’t actually coming until September of 2019 we have details of the upcoming new features.
In addition to new features, there were two major announcements, a change to a single version and a change in pricing. First details on the new single SKU approach:
Only one version of Cinema 4D:
No more Prime / Visualize / Broadcast / Studio / BodyPaint editions.
All functionality is in the one version, no separate editions anymore.
Demo and Educational versions are no longer separate downloads.
Demo and Educational can be upgraded to a commercial version.
With a single SKU, there is now also a single price tag, however there are now several subscription options, detailed here.
Essentially you can now pay for Cinema4D via subscription which are cheaper when paid on an annual basis. Additionally you can continue to purchase Cinema4D with a perpetual licence, but unfortunately it is 3x more money that the most affordable version available currently. Learn more in the video below.
Jiří Kosina, the Czech Linux kernel developer in charge of the floppy drive driver, said he no longer had working hardware. “Actual working physical floppy hardware is getting hard to find, and while Willy was able to test this, I think the driver can be considered pretty much dead from an actual hardware standpoint. The hardware that is still sold seems to be mainly USB-based, which doesn’t use this legacy driver at all,” wrote Linus Torvalds on a discussion thread. (Source: ZDNet)
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How AI is changing arts and culture
If you were to ask people how AI could change their lives, they may immediately think of self-driving cars and chatbots. In a business context, increased efficiencies and advanced data analytics would be among the likely responses.
ButAI is also changingthe arts, enriching people’s daily experiences, preservingculture and making artmore accessible to those unable to visit a gallery or historic site for themselves.
In July 2019, Microsoft announced a new and fourth pillar to its AI for Good portfolio, the$125 million, five-year commitment to use artificial intelligence to tackle some of society’s biggest challenges. This new pillar will focus on AI for Cultural Heritage, and use AI to work with non–profits, universities, and governments to help preserve the languages we speak, the places we live, the artifacts we treasure and celebrate the people who have made an impact.
The program will build upon previous efforts including those in New York, withThe Metropolitan Museum of Art and MIT; in Paris withtheMusée des Plans-Reliefs; and in southwestern Mexico, where Microsoft is engaged as part of ongoing efforts to preserve languages.
AI is also a creative force able to compose music, write novels and paint pictures. Here are seven examples of how AI is enriching our cultural lives.
Virtual visits
The great buildings and historical sites of the world may attract millions of tourists a year, but many more people have only seen pictures. That is beginning to change.
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Microsoft AIis being used to help preserve records of historic sitesand bring people closer to some of the wonders of the world. Teams from the French company Iconem have used cameras and drones to create 3-D digital models of landmarks from Cambodia to Syria.
In Paris at the Musée des Plans-Reliefs, Microsoft partnered with Iconem and HoloForgeInteractive to create an immersiveexperienceusing mixed reality and AI that pays homage to the French cultural icon Mont-Saint-Michel, off the coast of Normandy.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art launched its Open Access initiative in 2017, making all images and data relating to public-domain artworks in its vast collection available to everyone online.The Met recently collaborated with Microsoft and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to help take this initiative to the next level, using artificial intelligence to explore new ways for global audiences to discover, learn and create with one of the world’s foremost art collections.
Language Preservation
There are more than 7,000 languages in the world, a third of which have fewer than 1,000 people who continue to speak them. In southwestern Mexico, Microsoft is engaged as one of the community partners in efforts to preserve languages spoken in the region, specifically Yucatec Maya and Queretaro Otomi. By using AI, Microsoft has helped to protect endangered languages.
Enigmatic expressions like those worn by the “Mona Lisa” or seen on the faces of countless statues of Buddha, invite the viewer to speculate on what the subjects was thinking or feeling.
Traditionally, Buddhist statues would have shown faces devoid of emotion. But in their creation, the Kofukuji statues’ faces may have been influenced by their sculptors’ moods and may carry traces of detectable emotion, which the project sought to investigate. The aim of the project was “to provide people with a means for reaffirming the beauty of Buddhism,” according to Professor Syun’ichiSekine.
Beyond Microsoft’s efforts, these are just some of the ways AI is already changing the arts:
Robot writers
In 2019,OpenAI announced that it had created a language algorithm that could write text that was indistinguishable from that written by a human. The GPT-2 program has not been released as a fully trained version, as its makers claim they are concerned about the potential “malicious applications of the technology.”
Whether that concern is justified, AI is already writing both news and fiction. In 2014,the Los Angeles Times reported on an earthquake that had just hit the city, with an article automatically generated by its Quakebot algorithm. And Guardian Australia has run an experimentin publishing an article written by a program called ReporterMate. Such developments are intended to produce straightforward news items with as little humanintervention as possible, leaving editorial staff and reporters free to focus their efforts on more complex or nuanced activities, such as investigations or opinion pieces.
AI has also been credited with writing its first novel,“1 the Road,” an account of a road trip written by a computer hooked up to a GPS, microphone and camera.
Painting by numbers
In October 2018, the sale of the painting “Portrait of Edmond de Belamy”for $432,500 surprised the art world. The “artist” was an algorithm used by the Paris-based collective Obvious. Members of the collective fed thousands of images into a computer, which then used what it had learned to create an original image.
YouTube Video
The sale sparked debates about what constituted art and whether human artists would eventually be replaced by machines. But the people behind Obvious are far from the only ones using AI to create works of art. The HG Contemporary Gallery in New York has hosted an exhibition called “Faceless Portraits Transcending Time,” featuring prints produced by an AI program named AICAN.
Composing melodies and lyrics
AI has been used in music for decades. In 1956, Lejaren Hiller used a computer to help compose the “Illiac Suite for String Quartet.” And theinfluential producer Brian Enohelp pioneer a genre called generative music.
Today, AI is being used to write so-called functional music for commercial clients like the video game industry, with tempo and mood configured to keep up with changes in ongoing gameplay.
Another impact AI is having on music is in the use of algorithms that create playlists on streaming services. Not only are they choosing what millions of subscribers listen to, but they are also beginning to introduce AI-written musicinto those playlists.
Take to the battlefield with Wargroove, a strategy game for up to 4 players. Choose your Commander and wage turn-based war on battling factions. Design and share maps, cut-scenes and campaigns with easy-to-use editors and in-depth customization tools.
A heart-warming journey of discovery, as orphaned chick ?Birb? sets off to find his true origins. Follow this cheerful little bouncing bird who revels in singing, and guide him through this magical journey of stunning pixel art and gorgeous animation that shapes itself to your musical interactions.
Prepare to embark on a perilous journey filled with deadly pirates, aliens, asteroid fields and the emptiness of space. The definitive version of the fast-paced, dodge ?em up, now with more levels, more story and more ways to die.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses Guide - What Do Amiibo Do?
If you're playing Fire Emblem: Three Houses, you might have noticed that in the middle of Garreg Mach Monastery, there is something called an "Amiibo Gazeebo", which is frankly, a fantastic name. There, you can scan Amiibo, and even if you scan even just one, then the area surrounding the gazeebo will populate with a selection random items--mostly tea, food, and fish--every time you come back to visit on a free day.
If you have an Amiibo of a Fire Emblem character, scanning it will give you new music tracks from the character's respective game. You can listen to these during the game's optional auxiliary battles by choosing them in the "General" tab of the options menu.
Here is a list of the tracks each Fire Emblem amiibo will give you:
For a behind-the-scenes look at the game, read our interview with the directors of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, where they talk about the series' increasing popularity in the West, the dramatic changes they made to the combat system, and the refreshing new character designs.
In our Fire Emblem: Three Houses review, Kallie Plagge concluded: "When all was said and done, all I could think about was starting another playthrough… whether you're managing inventories or battlefields, it's the kind of game that's hard to put down, even when it's over."
Here Are The Top Ten Best-Selling Nintendo Switch Games As Of June 2019
As part of Nintendo’s latest financial report, which revealed that Super Mario Maker 2 sold a whopping 2.42 million copies in just three days, the company has released an updated list of its best-selling games for the hybrid console.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is still sitting right at the very top of the list – a place it has comfortably held for a good while now. The game has now hoovered up an impressive 17.89 million sales, meaning that it has now doubled the number achieved by Mario Kart 8 on Wii U. Blimey.
You can see the full top ten below (bear in mind that the data only references Nintendo-published titles).
Top Ten Best-Selling Nintendo Switch Games (as of 30th June 2019):
Nintendo’s Digital Sales See A Whopping Year-On-Year Jump
Sorry physical fans – the relentless march of the ephemeral non-physical future continues according to Nintendo’s freshly released financial results for the April-June period. The first quarter of the financial year sees the company’s digital sales business in rude health with digital sales on Switch for the period totalling 30.6 billion yen (over $280 million / £230 million), a significant 65.3% increase from the same period in 2018.
This figure includes not only download versions and download-only games, but also add-on content and sales of Nintendo Switch Online, so while that sizeable jump is still indicative of the ongoing trend towards digital purchases, the addition of Nintendo’s online subscription service is also partly responsible for growth in this area.
Overall, digital sales made up 38.3% of total video game sales for the company, compared to 24.2% for the same quarter last year. Elsewhere, the company’s mobile concerns also saw a nice little year-on-year increase of 10% bringing in a cool 10 billion yen (approximately $92 million / £75 million) from the various Nintendo IP available on smartphone storefronts.
While Nintendo Switch Online may not have been the resounding success the company might have hoped, these results show that things are moving in the right direction from the perspective of the bottom line. And as much as we love physical media here at Nintendo Life, there seems to be no denying that the future is all digital.
Are you partly responsible for this increase in digital sales? Those eShop sales are too tempting, no? Let us know how your digital library is coming along with a comment in the appropriate place below.
