Far Cry 2 ! Looks like Ubisoft is outdoing Crytek.

Watch these vdos to see where PC games are heading to. It seems too good to be true !




This one shows all the dynamicism in the environment. Everything in the world, I mean EVERYTHING, is affected by factors like, player movement , wind, rain, fire, etc.!

STEP INTO MY WORLD – INDEPENDENCE ROCK XXII !

Monday, 10 Sept 2007

As I settled in the local train in the morning to reach office late again, I heard a “Pakiza” song playing on someone’s mobile. The musical notes floating in the air, I closed my eyes to not stare into the eyes of the guy standing in front of me and suddenly I saw Parikrama screaming,” Can’t somebody hear me , I am screaming from so far away!”. I opened my eyes and Pakiza was crooning again. I preferred Parikrama. I closed my eyes again, ready to lose myself in a world which had lasted for just two days after a wait of a full one year! Close your eyes, guys…….and Step into my World…..

DAY 1, 08 Sept 2007

The crowd was screaming when we entered the venue on Saturday.It was I-ROCK XXII and some band had just finished their rendition of “ Killing in the name of!”. We had missed it and Akshat scolded me in sanskrit for having lingered outside for too long. Oh! Yes, we were three guys, Me , Akshat and Verma, my college friends! They had come from Pune for the fest, like many others who came from as far as Bangalore and Delhi. Ok, lets cut it short, we found a spot a stand somewhere, and the band performing was called “Caesar’s Palace” and in my humble opinion it had one of the best Lead singer I have heard in an Indian Band. His voice was smooth, loud and steady. I don’t remember which songs they performed , though.(You will see throughout this post that there are a lot of things I don’t remember :P)All I remember is that their original song was nice, but we were not there for all those bands competing that night, of which I think Scribe won. We were there for PARIKRAMA ! I waited with baited breath as they set up their gig on stage. I wanted to scream and sing ”But it rained” with them, that is why I paid the bugger sitting at the gate for. It turned out that they had much more in store than just the one song I knew!

The performance started with an Iron Maiden cover, and soon turned to originals, which is where, I believe, their real talent is. They performed “But it rained”, of course, with the whole crowd singing along. That, my friend, takes u to another world, the place in my head I was talking about, when the whole crowd sings along, arms swaying like black fire on a background of pink, purple , blue and red fog. One guy on stage commanding us all, introducing us to our own feelings, taking us to new places inside us, places we have never been to, doors get unlocked, every guy, every face reaching inside, touching the bliss inside him. For those five minutes…..you become yourself!



All this in just one song!

Then there was this song they had composed for Sam and Frodo(LOTR 1) called “ Am I Dreaming”, and boy did I fall in love with it! I don’t know about Akshat and Verma, but I got lost in the words halfway through the song. I will try to find out if they have released the track. The real show stealer was their rendition of “Open Sky” instrumental, in which their Violin player, Imran Khan, changed everything! Just now, this whole unruly crowd was in a moshpit, banging their heads to Scribe, and now this beast of unruly headbangers had been tamed by a Violin and a Tabla. Watch the video attached and get mesmerised!



Then we all had to go home, coz it was 10 pm and our mighty government thinks that its bad to listen to music after 10. “C’mon babies, tuck yourselves in your pinky beds!" "And you Hairy guys with guitars, Go back to wherever u came from!”. I wonder why don’t they close down offices after 10pm, why don’t they come with cops when we work day and night waiting for I Rock to happen! “Nothing wrong in working, just don’t rock your heads after 10”

Anyways, I slept , trying to pass the time until it was 5:30pm the next day. One call from my comrades, and I was in a train, chugging towards the venue again!

DAY 2 : The Dinosaurs of Rock

This day was what I had really been waiting for,the day when all the oldies of Indian Rock, or as they call themselves, The Dinosaurs of Rock were to perform, but ,alas , it didn’t turn out to be as glorious as it was in I-ROCK XX(twenty).

There were awesome performances of classics, but what was getting on my nerves was the unruly crowd. The bottle throwers were taking the glory away. Some of them were still suffering from the aftermath of Pin Drop Violence’s performance (read "Big Violent Moshpits"), and all the people who were waiting for the Classics were suffering because of them. I tried to block them out of my head and was awarded with an awesome rendition of “Another Brick in the Wall”. There’s something about these Dinosaurs which most of the current Indian bands just don’t have. These guys play with such energy and passion as if, at that moment, they are living every word that is sung, every note that is played. Every moment of the performance makes u jump out of your slumber and shake your head at every pull at the guitar strings, every beat of the drums. The song rocked! , and everyone who had ever loved rock, sang each word with the Dinosaur on stage!(by the way, I don’t remember his name . Watch the Video and see his bald head shine with sweat as hundreds of hands sway in front of him!)


Pink Floyd Rules!

What suddenly surprised me was when Farhad Wadia (see, I remember his name!) began to sing “Time” (Pink Floyd). It hit me like a bolt! I mean, this song was one of my favourites during college time, but I had not heard it for quite some time now, and they didn’t play the initial music, for we would have guessed the song then, He just banged in with ”Ticking Away the Moments that make up a Dull Day…” ! It hit my head like a hammer, my whole college life just yanked at me so hard that I jumped up and screamed to Akshat,” AWESOME SONG MAN ! AWESOME !” and screamed every word of the song at the highest decibel I could cough out! It was a pink floyd song, a mellow one at that, but I screamed......! Sometimes one just lets it out, and this was one of those times.

Then, there was the star of the evening –“Gary lawyer” ‘s turn to sing us some “The Doors” songs. The crowd jumped up and down with “the MOjo rising”, ”keeps on rising”
And as soon as I started shouting for more Jim Morrison’s songs, we were suddenly and politely reminded of the cops waiting outside to escort us out( as if we are sort of criminals or something). It is 10pm already and a bunch of harmless guys who want to listen to a few classics is suddenly perceived as a bunch of criminals who must be put to their beds RIGHT NOW! If it was a damned Sonu Nigam concert they would have allowed a few more minutes of ”Bijuria Bijuria”!The cops might even have danced with it, but this was ROCK, and that’s not allowed. Sometimes people are just afraid of something coz they don’t understand it……but we had to leave.Afterthought: The organisers (Farhad Wadia) should have given Gary Lawyer more time, could have cut the others down.


Finally, I opened my eyes.My train had reached Mahalakshmi station, that’s where I get off, and I had to open my eyes and come back to this mundane reality again. Somethings never change (Akshat would know why I said this),
It was great while it lasted, a few disappointments did occur which I didn’t mention here because no one forgets the bad times, it’s the good times that need to be reminded! :) but I didn't want to leave that world-in-my-head thing behind, so I decided that I will put it on my blog, so that these memories may live on till next year, when we’ll come back to I-ROCK...... to meet ourselves again !























edit: We did get to chant"Now you do what they told ya...! on the second day! so, we didn't miss "Killing in the name of", so, I guess, no more snaskrit from Akshat! :)
Also he provided all the videos and images for this post, so thank him and head over to his profile for more I Rock vdos!
http://www.youtube.com/user/Akshat
and if the camera is too shaky to comprehend anything at all, then Curse him ;)

We Men ;P

KILLZONE 2:It speaks for itself!

This, my friends is pinnacle of gaming! or should we say the preview of the pinacle of gaming, as this game is not out yet.What I am posting here is a link of the gameplay footage of KILLZONE 2 from the Sony press conference at this years E3. It's been out there since July 12th, since the sony presentation got over at E3, but since I was so stunned by it I never got to posting it here, so I am posting it now!

Check this out!

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/21490.html

There's an HD version of that too there. Download it and keep watching it till u can make something like that!
and mind you, it's all realtime this time, journalists were allowed to play for themselves and they came out Starry eyed!

There are more gameplay videos on Youtube which u can look. They actually show more of the level and the gameplay.This video cuts that out, but the youtube ones have the level played by different people!

You can talk to the developers directly here:

http://boardsus.playstation.com/play...2&thread.id=32

There are lots of other threads there too. Check them out!
There's more info on Gamespot :

http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/action/k...ml?sid=6174096

and if u want to see what they are actually upto check out Beyond3d :

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=41998

and here's a thread where u can actually follow 41 pages of what people were speculating and debating and what they saw finally:

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=42640

There are hundreds of other threads about KILLZONE 2, but I guess the worthy ones have been listed within these threads, the rest are just fanboy fights we don't need to see.

Watch it and tell me how you felt! Njoy!

PS: BTW, I watch it everyday!

HINDER Smashes into my life!

My worst nightmares were coming true! I was losing my mind...I was losing interest in music!.....

Along came HINDER and crashed my head against a wall and woke me up from my slumber. Life rushes thru my viens again!!!"Whoa! I'm still ALIVE !" YEaH!!

Listen to it Here:
http://www.myspace.com/hindermusic

REJUVENATE URSELF!

Finally! The interview I told U about is Here!

http://cgtantra.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=60&Itemid=33


Yup! He is the guy who worked on COD,Medal Of Honour and the likes. He worked in Dreamworks studios as Team Lead and then in EA.Read the Interview for more info.Also, the questionnaire was dumbed down completely by Tantra on Sunil's request coz no mention of COD was allowed and my whole questionnaire was on COD! and I did so much research on it!
:( Waaaa!!!

T.E.D.D.Y Converts 2d stroke to 3D model !

I think its phenomenal! such a simple interface and you can create stuff in 3d.All in Java.

CLASSIC ROCK rocked on World Music Day!!

CHAPTER ONE:

SHADOWS OF WHAT'S ABOUT TO COME

I messaged everybody in the morning to "ROCK ON!!" on world Music Day, after learning about it on the ever chattering FM channels, and the day, suddenly, turned bright! Soon I was replying to a lot of people about whether it was true, or what we are going to do in the office to celebrate it. We pondered over playing Rock all day in the office(that's a studio by the way!)! Soon, we were overcome with the frenzy and we decided to drown Himesh Reshammiya's( Chhamiya! would be better;P) voice with the booming sound of James Hetfield's vocal chords!
and my colleague Dirgha wanted Pink Floyd to play all day long, so she could get comfortably numb and write!(scriptwriter she is..). Soon, I was discussing with friends whether we'll have Independence Rock this year round or not( God do I wish they start it again!)!
On reaching office I realised that not many people were excited or moved or shaken out of their slumber by the fact that it was the world Music Day. It was just the three of us who were actually excited about it! Well, just three guys( sorry, two guys and a girl) doesn't make a big party, so I thought of spending the day drowning myself in the din of the likes of Metallica, Limp Bizkit, Alter Bridge and others and not to brood about the fact that there was no headbangers ball happening in my office. Had it been my earlier office(UTV), I would have created a ruckus and nobody would mind! but then, it's a new place where people work very silently.

Lo and Behold! out of the blue came this idea in Chand's brain,"Let's to go Hard Rock Cafe tonight!!" and there I was jumping aroud the whole place, I mean immediately checking whether there were any special events tonight, or did we require reservations?(Chand is our Tech. Director, by the way)

I called up the Cafe,
Me: "Are guys doing something special tonight?It's world Music Day!"
Cafe guy: "What?"

The guy called "Me" up there was completely devastated. They didn't know!!!

Me(mustering up courage): "Uh...ummm...What are you guys playing tonight?"
Cafe Guy:" Oh! Gary Lawyer Live Band is performing tonight."
Me(Smile as big as a laughing Buddha!): " Wow! Do we require reservations?"
Cafe Guy:" No, just come over."

And there we were! (of course, not immediately. It was about two mundane hours later, but who wants to know about that!) A place full of people wearing mundane "daily life" faces, which would break off very soon as music would make us come out of the false halo we carry around ourselves all day long!

CHAPTER TWO:

STRAPPING UP FOR THE FINAL SHOWDOWN

We couldn't get a place to sit immediately,damn the "Cafe Guy" saying "just come over."! The night started with mingling around with the crowd for some time, looking around to see if we could spot someone we know. I found someone actually!Me, Dube and Dirgha had once gone to a workshop arranged by the Bimal Roy Memorial Film society, and the woman sitting in front of me right now was the anchor and host of that workshop.Alas! I didn't remember her name!, so we decided not to bother her (and get embarrassed for not knowing her name). Meanwhile, Pink floyd was playing in the background and my body had already starting swaying with the beat!

To be Continued.....

Another Supinfocom Short! Humor....

Love the Panda Clicking the pic!

SHEEP: Another short that touches!

Shows how deeply our basic emotions can be explored...and that there's nothing beyond theses little joys!

Mathew Jeffrey: EA Talent Development Head

We caught up with Mathew Jeffrey, EA Talent Development Head, during his visit to India.Here's an overview of the chat we had with him. Some very intersting parts are missing...maybe I'll update that later!

://cgtantra.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=57&Itemid=33

Very soon I'll be posting the interview of the Technical Director of COD, so, watch out!!

Some Fresh art to open up our MINDS!

Here are some Unique concepts! and some very unique character designs near the end!

http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=84095

Parallax Mapping

I was looking out for Parallax and Steep Parallax Mapping on net and found out these pdfs and links.

Check this image to see what it looks like in CRYSIS! Also, there is tech demo vdo of Crytek displaying the realtime occlusion and self-shadowing with parallax mapping.

Parallax mapping has been used in Oblivion too, but it does not cast self shadows(occlusion).
http://graphics.cs.brown.edu/games/SteepParallax/index.html
http://ati.amd.com/developer/SIGGRAPH05/Tatarchuk-ParallaxOcclusionMapping-Sketch-print.pdf
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/academic/class/15462/web.06s/asst/project3/parallax_mapping.pdf

Also, parallax mapping is disabled in the Source engine, but if used, does not support HDRI, as explained here:
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Creating_Parallax_Maps

and, yes, you can get mods for DOOM3 which will enable parallax mapping in DOOM3 engine here:
http://doom3.filefront.com/file/Parallax_Mapping_Mod_v10;29475

Right now, what I am trying to do is to find out, if this technique can also be used in rendered videos, as against just realtime footage. If anyone wants to add - Most Welcome!

Amazing Short Film by supinfocom students

Most beautiful thing I have seen in years! made me feel like a child again......also reminded of pink floyd.....I'm sure u guys will get hundreds of awards for this!

Hello

Hello