The David Li work.

This author of adultswim.com choir uses a neural network I trained on choral pieces to generate the harmonization for your melody.
Today I will show you a good painting tool idea created by the same author: David Li.
The twitter account can be found at david li twitter. You can follow the source code on GITHUB account of this author:

Shadertoy: Shader objects with raymarching technique.

Another article about shader raymarching technique for today.
It's like the previous article created from the official video channel named The Art of Code.
The source code show how to create the basics objects like: capsule, torus, cube and cylinder.
The result of the source code of raymarching objects can be found on my account of ShaderToy website named catafest.

Shadertoy: About raymarching technique with source code.

The raymarching technique is a fairly new technique used to render realtime scenes and it is entirely computed in a screen-space shader.
The raymarching is similar to traditional raytracing (in that a ray is cast into the scene for each pixel) but is not the same technique.
How this works:
We have in a fragment shader is the position of the point we are rendering in world 3D coordinates and the view direction from the camera.
For each ray is extended by step in the view direction, until it hits something and creates a point.
This is the simple raymarching used a constant step.
The next step is the optimization calls for the use of signed distance fields.
A distance field is a function that takes in a point as input and returns the shortest distance from that point to the surface any object in the scene similar with a sphere around the hit point.
Distance fields allow us to limit how often we need to sample when marching along the ray, this is the reason of the named raymarching.
You can follow this technique on the official video channel named The Art of Code.
The result of the source code of raymarching example from this video tutorial can be found on my account of ShaderToy website.

Shadertoy: Flame 2D by catafest.

I create another shader using the shadertoy online tool.
This online tool helps users to understand the shaders theory.
All of the shaders theory is based on the math of graphics.
My example uses the basic shader for a 2D flame with minimal parameters to understand easier the math of this shader.
Let's see the source code:

// define iTime like Shader Inputs
#define time iTime
void mainImage( out vec4 fragColor, in vec2 fragCoord )
{
    // Normalized pixel coordinates (from 0 to 1)
    // vec2 uv = fragCoord/iResolution.xy;
 // create center of position of flame by xy and sized
 vec2 pos = ( fragCoord.xy / iResolution.xy )*2.0-vec2(1.,1.);
    // create flame variation 
    if(pos.y>-3.0){
  // variation by time and set up to -3.0
        // the 0.1 and 30 parameters create the variation of flame 
        // with ths sin and fract functions
        pos.y += 0.1*fract(sin(30.0*time));
 }
    // select background to black
 vec3 color = vec3(0.0,0.0,0.0);
 // set scale of flame 
 float p =.001;
    // create shape of flame (output y)
 float y = pow(abs(pos.x),3.0)/(1.0*p)*1.0;
 // create the hight of flame 
 float flame_out = length(pos+vec2(pos.x,y))*sin(0.9);
 // fix colors flame by RGB 
 if(flame_out < 0.9){
        // color for RG (red green)
  color.rg += smoothstep(0.0,0.3,0.6-flame_out);
        // fix color of flame by G (green)
  color.g /=2.4;
 }
 color += pow(color.r,1.0);
 // output color
    fragColor = vec4(color,1.0);

}

The result can be found here.

Game media from opengameart.

Do you hear about the OpenGameArt?
If not, then it is a good area to get the media for your game or to create your own art.

VIKINGS: WAR OF CLANS from Plarium.

I'm not a fan of Vikings, but this game is awesome.
It comes with many effects, many development options, simplicity, and good game management.
I started playing while working on my computer and I was not bored with the game's tasks.
The game starts with a tutorial that guides you and then you will make your own decisions.
Tasks are multiple, starting with the development of the village with materials, human and other complementary resources.
You can create and customize your own hero.

The game can be found here.
This is one of the videos from official youtube channel:

News: Re-release of 0 A.D. Alpha 23 Ken Wood.

The development team of 0 A.D.game, tells us:
Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, is happy to announce the re-release of 0 A.D. Alpha 23 “Ken Wood”, the twenty-third alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source real-time strategy game of ancient warfare. 

This version is a maintenance release. Blocking bugs were fixed and security and legal issues were addressed. The gameplay remained untouched, and both versions of Alpha 23 are multiplayer-compatible; however we advise you to upgrade to benefit from the following fixes. 

The team wishes to apologize for the delay in re-releasing. We have addressed other issues whenever we couldn’t make more progresses on the game itself, so the re-release has not been a completely negative procedure.
You can read this from the official website.

Create textures with Materialize.

The development team comes with this great tool named Materialize:
Materialize is a stand alone tool for creating materials for use in games from images. You can create an entire material from a single image or import the textures you have and generate the textures you need.
You can use this tool for:
What can this tool do?

• Diffuse -> Height 
• Diffuse -> Metallic
• Diffuse -> Smoothness
• Height -> Normal
• Height + Diffuse -> Normal 
• Normal -> Edge 
• Normal -> Occlusion 
• Normal + Height -> Occlusion 
• Normal -> Height 
• Seamlessly tile your textures. 
• Save and load in a variety of formats. 
• Automate many processes with clipboard commands in XML format.

You can find video tutorials created by Michael Voeller:

News: Anisotropic Material Demo: Christmas Baubles.

The new feature maned Anisotropic Material comes on sketchfab website.
The website comes with this demo: Christmas Baubles.
This demo can be found here.
The model information is a blend file this means is created with Blender 3D software created by an original model by Nehon.

The development team tells us:

A new 3D feature: introducing Anisotropy
We’re proud to introduce yet another rendering option for all Sketchfab community members today: Anisotropy (pronounce as: an-eye-sott-row-pee). A new material option that allows you to create directional reflections. Useful for rendering hair and metal materials.

The best online font creator - calligraphr.

This website named calligraphr is an online tool for creating fonts.
The development team comes with these features:

• Create your templates with much more comfort and options.
• You don't need a scanner anymore. Just take a pic of your template with your mobile phone.
• Draw different variants of each character, which are then used randomly to give your font a more authentic look.
• Create your ligatures and add them to your font.
• No need to start over again if you don't like a character.
• Just edit it with our included tools.
• Take all the time you need to work on your fonts.
• They are stored on your browser and can be edited in more than one session.

You can use many templates (from default templates to any languages).
Use these steps:

1. Create a template;
2. Fill it out with your font;
3. Use the result and upload it into fonts page;

The template can be download into PDF or archive of PNG files.
This is a default language font to create a template, see screenshot:

MAVO : Create webpages with HTML and CSS .

A start intro into MAVO can be found here.
The MAVO is a simple way to create good design and graphics for your website.
The development team tells us: What if I told you, that you can do these things (and more!), just with HTML and CSS? No programming code to write, no servers to manage.
A demo page shows us how good is this system, see here.

Brackets - another editor for development.

This is a modern, open source text editor with a great design that understands web design and is named Brackets.
Is created with JavaScript and you can contribute and create your extensions.
The team development comes with this intro:
Brackets is a lightweight, yet powerful, modern text editor. We blend visual tools into the editor so you get the right amount of help when you want it without getting in the way of your creative process. You'll enjoy writing code in Brackets.
This editor can be found at the official webpage.
See this screenshot with this editor:

News : The new Blender 3D.

The new Blender 3D software is a good way to design and create media content.
Now is better and come with a lot of features and options.
This software can be found on the official website .

You can read all info and documentation about how to use this 3D software.
Anyway, you can also take a look at youtube for tutorials.
I can recommend this tutorial by Blender Guru :

And step by step development by the Blender Developers channels :
In my opinion is more complex that Blender 2.7 version.

YouTube - Premiere feature.

It's an older feature that YouTube has been releasing two months ago.
The YouTube comes with a new feature named: Premiere.
The goal for YouTube users is to be able to organize and distribute video content on a specific date and on a specific target.
What's interesting about it?
Once a premiere is scheduled, a shareable and public watch page is created. This page shows the video metadata, including title, description, and thumbnail. In addition, the video will eventually premiere on this watch page URL. Viewers can start interacting through Comments and Live Chat before and during the premiere.
A very good part for the target is raising money for the Premiere feature.
You can read more about this feature here.

The NOX emulator player release version 6.2.6.0

On December 3, 2018 a new release of the NOX player is available for Android users.
The Nox App Player is the latest Android emulator released recently.
An android emulator or app player is the software that allows users to install android app and game on PC or Laptop.
NoxPlayer 6.2.6.0 Release Note: 
What’s New: 
1. Optimized the keyboard control, add long-press continuous click mode; 
2. Optimized synchronization function of multi-instance, virtual location can be synchronized now; 
3. Optimized interaction and visual design of toolbar for easier operation; 
4. Optimized the start response and restart time; 
5. Optimized the Theme Center in NoxPlayer; 
6. Fixed the macro button configuration failure in the keyboard control; 
7. Fixed the minimization problem of multi-instance manager; 
8. Fixed the crash problem caused by keyboard configuration and some graphics card models.
More about this on the official webpage.

Star Trek Online Age of Discovery by Arc Games.

This is the best free online play of an MMORPG game.
If you play the old games like Freelancer or Librelancer then this game is more advanced and with many goals.

The development team comes with this intro:
  Explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, and boldly go in this expanding vast universe.

What I liked is the gradual ship-to-staff development system.
The story is beautiful, but sometimes it can happen to get the story back.
However, these small impediments do not take them out of the beauty of the game.
It is a game with many video scenes and nicely arranged spaces that will surprise you.
I was amazed at how much information I was able to put into this game, making it huge and non-monotonous.
I try to find a good video for this article but I don't find it on the official youtube channel.
Anyway, I select this to have a simple into:

News : Cesium World Terrain update the United States Terrain up to 0.5m .

Fresh high-resolution terrain across the United States was added to Cesium World Terrain. 

New 3m terrain now covers large sections of the United States, including major cities such as San Francisco, Washington DC, Portland, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Philadelphia, Raleigh, and New Orleans, to name just a few.

The quarry near San Francisco shown below highlights how the new high-resolution terrain (left) brings the hills, roads, and steps into focus. Try the slider to see how the new terrain also better matches the high-resolution imagery. 

New 0.5m terrain now covers the entire West Coast of the US, from the Mexico border all the way up to the Canada border. 

This coastal shot shows the old terrain (right); the rugged nature of the coast becomes clear with new high resolution terrain (left).

Read more at official blog.

News : Blender 3D the beta version.

In this video, Pablo Vazquez presents the 5 major updates in Blender 2.8 Beta.
As you already know, the Blender 3D is free and you can support core Blender development here.

Use offline Slate editor.

Named Slate this software is a simple editor.
This editor can be easily used to create drawings and simple art like pixelart.
The good part of this editor is simple to use and can be used offline.
This is a screenshot of this software:

More about this editor can be found at GitHub website page.

Make online sprite with pixilart.

This is a simple drawing tool with simple features like an editor with some basic features.
This tool comes with a community art online.
This online tool comes with an application on google play.
Create pixel art on the go. Pixilart is a community of passionate art enthusiasts who enjoy pixels. Easily make pixel art, and then share your art and even follow others who have created their own pixel art creations.
You can test your 2D drawing skills here.

Unity 3D : Unity 2D Challenge.

Here's an unexpected opportunity for Unity 3D game developers to develop 2D games.
About this challenge the Unity team come with this info:
The prizes:
1st - $2000
2nd - $1000
3rd - $500
Special Mention - $500
Join the Unity 2D Challenge to become part of an exciting community journey exploring the possibilities of our new 2D tools.
How to participate 
Create a small piece of content using Unity’s 2D tools. It can be anything from pixel-perfect retro-style art to a snippet of hand-drawn platforming gameplay or a thin vertical slice of a 2D competitive brawler. Anything goes, as long as it’s 2D. See the FAQ at the bottom for more info.
See this video intro:

Online Fishing Planet game .

If you are a fishing enthusiast, this game is a pleasant and relaxing realism.
It is a manager where you will spend your money on fishing gear and you will find world-class competitions.
The development team comes with this intro:

  Fishing Planet is a FREE to play unique and highly realistic online first-person multiplayer fishing simulator developed for anglers to bring you the full thrill of actual fishing! Choose your lures, make your trophy catches, discover new possibilities and sharpen your real angling skills anywhere, anytime 

Features:
72+ species of fish, each with its unique behavior and AI.
12 scenic waterways with multiple locations, various climatic conditions, bottom terrains and vegetation.
Thousands of tackle combinations with unique physical and hydrodynamic properties.
Superb dynamic water graphics with ripples and surface that changes depending on wind, current and depth.

You can play this game on Windows od Linux (Ubuntu) with this system requirements:

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
OS: OS Version - Windows 7, 8, 10 x64
Processor: Dual-Core 2.4 Ghz
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: Graphics Card Intel HD4600 or higher DirectX: Version 11
Network: Broadband Internet connection Storage: 12 GB available space
Additional Notes: External mouse or compatible Xbox controller required 
Read here.

The cubebrush website accepts bitcoin.

As you know already the Cubebrush website is the first and largest marketplace for digital art resources.
Now the Cubebrush website team accepts cryptocurrency as a payment method.
Read about the new option here.
We're extremely excited to inform you that as of today, we now accept Bitcoin (plus Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum & Litecoin) as a payment method. 

Bitcoin is a decentralized P2P currency that enables instant payments. You will now be able to use cryptocurrency to purchase curated CG tutorials, 3D/2D assets and much more on Cubebrush.

OpenProcessing website.

You can create an account on this website to test your skills with processing programming language.
About OpenProcessing then this programming language uses some awesome Licensed and Open Source components.
You can see my working sketches here.

Castle Clash: Heroes of the Empire US.

The IGG team comes with this info about this game:
...Castle Clash is a game of epic kingdom wars! Hire powerful Heroes and equip them with legendary weapons to lead your mighty army of mythical creatures. Fight your way to become the world's greatest castle warlord. Put your strategies to the test in dungeons, raids, wars, arenas, and missions!...

Elvenar - the online game.

The team comes with this intro for this online game:
Welcome to Elvenar! Elvenar is a free-to-play browser-based game, where you will build a flourishing city and discover a magical world full of mysteries. Build up the most beautiful city and establish the most efficient economic system that you can! In Elvenar you can upgrade almost every building, improving the productivity and the look of your city. Explore the vast World Map to acquire the knowledge of your wise ancestors and discover new technologies. Trade or fight over powerful Relics to boost your production. You can either become a skilled and well-known trader, refine your producing art or lead your troops to victory in 3D-animated battles, the decision is up to you.
You can see a video intro from the official youtube channel:

News : NVIDIA VMware Test Drive.

The NVIDIA VMware Test Drive gives you instant access to hours of accelerated, virtualized graphics—for free.
You can start with:

• FREE 90-DAY EVAL 
• PURCHASE NVIDIA VIRTUAL GPUs:  just for these countries: Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Latin, Poland, Russia, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom.

Read more about this feature here.

Free textures from texturehaven .

The team from the texturehaven website come with this info:

100% Free 
All textures are licensed as CC0 and can be downloaded instantly, giving you complete freedom. 
No paywalls, email forms or account systems.

You can help this website:

With Patreon, you can contribute to help us pay the server cost and develop new texture scans.
When a goal is achieved, something new will come.
Think unlocking 8k textures, PNG files, increasing uploads and more.
Not only can you contribute financially, but you can get directly involved in the process, helping decide what textures we shoot, and ultimately the direction this site is going. 
Spendings of donation each month is verified by public finance reports.

Mythology : Contest created by HUION .

The contest is created by the HUION graphic tablet company.
The theme of the contest is Mythology.
Awards are in HUION products.
Subscription deadline: 15 November 2018.
See more detail here.

The Magicavoxel tool for your game development.

The development team tells us:
"A free lightweight 8-bit voxel editor and interactive path tracing renderer, made with love by @ephtracy. Available for PC and MAC. This is where it all begins.

This tiny light-weighted software is the core of voxelart, since it is capable of many things : just edit, paint and move your voxels in a cubic grid, then animated them and render them with the powerful integrated renderer.

License : feel free to use it for any project, no commercial licences required, credits are appreciated"
Let's see this video tutorial from youtube channel:

Smart tool - the online unknown tool.

I found this online tool for developing games.
The tool can:

• Load and Save image files;
• Change settings for a normal map texture;

I don't find the provider of this tool...
They say:
Error 404 - Not found 
Die angegebene Seite konnte nicht gefunden werden.
See the screenshot with this tool:

Thunkable : Create online mobile applications for iOS and Android.

Thunkable is the platform where anyone can build their own mobile applications for iOS and Android.
This online tool is free to use with a google account.
The Thunkable platform charges a maintenance fee for the use of certain components such as Ads by AdMob and Payment by Stripe.
You can start build your on an app is as simple as dragging and dropping your favorite components and connecting them together with blocks.
Learn how to make your first app from this video from official youtube channel:

Unity 3D : FBX Exporter asset.

Today I will show you how to use an asset in Unity Store named FBX Exporter.
A short video tutorial was presented at Siggraph 2018 de Liz Mercuri (Technical Evangelist, Unity Technologies), see this video tutorial:

Let's see how to use this asset.
First, you need to download and import it from Unity Store.
Search using the name of this asset FBX Exporter from Unity.

Use import option to use this asset.
To start this asset use from menu: Edit - Project Settings - Fbx Export.

This will open this asset into Inspector area:

You can use just Maya and 3D studio Max 3D software to work with this asset.

Noisli : an inspired editor.

This publisher is recommended to writers and those who need inspiration.
I found him present in the community for those who want to write.
It's a simple online editor with dynamic graphics and sound effects.
Practically you can hear different sounds combined and you can let and choose color combinations to inspire you.
The editor can save in text format  and export to your dropbox account or Google Drive.
Here's a screenshot of this editor:

The Figma App Design Workflow - online tool.

The development team come with this intro:
Figma is the first interface design tool based in the browser, making it easier for teams to create software.
The Figma pricing start with:

• Basic - free for individuals 
• Professional - $12*
• Organization - $45*

You can start with your your email or google account, see first page:
The interface is simple and colors are great.
The official youtube channel come with many videos about this online tool.
You can find any references and tutorials on web.
The CharliMarieTV channel come with this title about Figma : Sketch vs Figma - Why I switched!

Clay Viewer : editor and export 3D files.

You can use this editor tool online.
Another option is to download the application on Windows and macOS with FBX/DAE/OBj import and glTF2.0/GLB export from here.
This tool comes with ClayGL library to provide a python tool for converting FBX to glTF 2.0.
The ClayGL is a WebGL graphics library for building scalable Web3D applications.
You can read more about this A.P.I. library here.
The source code can be found on GitHub webpage.
This is a screenshot with default clay-viewer tool:

New codepen example - modal window.

In user interface design for computer applications, a modal window is a graphical control element subordinate to an application's main window. It creates a mode that disables the main window, but keeps it visible with the modal window as a child window in front of it.
This is my example with a modal window created on codepen website.
The example is very simple.
The html5 source code is created with classes and id's.
The css file make all style for this tags.
The javascript use all of this to open the modal window, use click to close the window.
The Cancel and Add buttons not work with the java script.

Meshroom 3D Reconstruction Software

The development team come with this infos about Meshroom 3D Reconstruction Software:
Meshroom is a free, open-source 3D Reconstruction Software based on the AliceVision framework.
The official website can be found here.

You can see a tutorial with Blender 3D - open-source software created by CG Geek:

VPaint software.

The development team of VPaint software come with this info:
VPaint was an experimental vector graphics editor based on the Vector Animation Complex (VAC), a technology developed by a collaboration of researchers at Inria and the University of British Columbia, featured at SIGGRAPH 2015.
You can use it with the following operating systems: Windows Vista, 7, 10, Max OS X and Linux.
I tested and is a good software with some important gaps for the user:

• you cannot copy frames;
• export is just for PNG and SVG file format;
• too few tools; 

The software can be improved and you can contribute here.

GIMP: extract still background and mask frames.

The issue is about BgMask: extract still background from video frames / mask frames against background , see Thread-extract-from-gif-with-BgMask-script.
The GIF file come from giphy.
I tested with the .scm script and working well with extract background and mask.
I have noticed that the differences are significantly positive when the background is static and the animation does not exceed the display area of ​​the GIF file, see the output result:
.

Online effects in a single image .

This website allows you to draw more effects in one image:

Krita 4.1.1 : Comics Manager tool.

This tool can be activated from the menu: Settings - Dockers - Comics Manager.
This start into the docker a GUI that allow you to use this tool.

Select a empty folder and give the info for your project:
It's a tool helps you create and export comics in a defined format.
Select all you need and use wizard to the end.
This will make all folders and config files.
You can open the project with same Comics Manager and the JSON file from your project folder.
The wizard will let now to use the buttons that until now were inactive: Project Settings, Add Page, Export Comic and Copy Location.

Shadertoy: New shader example : Old watch (IBL) .

This is a great example at shadertoy website.
The example come with this link to this article into first comment.
The example is simple but impressive.
What is interesting to see how some objects are created.

float sdPlane( const vec3 p ) {
 return p.y;
}

float sdTorus( const vec3 p, const vec2 t ) {
  vec2 q = vec2(length(p.xz)-t.x,p.y);
  return length(q)-t.y;
}

float sdTorusYZ( const vec3 p, const vec2 t ) {
  vec2 q = vec2(length(p.yz)-t.x,p.x);
  return length(q)-t.y;
}

float sdTorusYX( const vec3 p, const vec2 t ) {
  vec2 q = vec2(length(p.yx)-t.x,p.z);
  return length(q)-t.y;
}
...