The crayon in question is Crayon Physics Deluxe, —– a cool little program written back in 07 by Petri Purho, that uses artificial physics and virtual crayons to complete levels of an interesting  little game.

I downloaded the original version of the game (pre deluxe) for my four year old daughter back-in-the-day thinking it would be a fun learning tool….but it didn’t take.  I guess four year olds are less interested in physics than I thought……..even if it did involve crayons. Whodathunk?

Maybe it had something to do with the old-school Pink Floydesque soundtrack. One can never be sure….

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 Donated Design Software Helps Engineer on Inspirational Reality TV Show “Breakthrough with Tony Robbins” Start Transforming His Life

SAN RAFAEL, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Engineer Frank Alioto is using 3D design software from Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK) to steadily recover following an accident that left him with limited mobility. Autodesk donated the software in partnership with the NBC reality TV series “Breakthrough with Tony Robbins” produced by Reveille. In “Breakthrough with Tony Robbins,” Tony Robbins helps people to make new starts and transform their lives. Together, Autodesk and “Breakthrough with Tony Robbins” are helping Alioto help overcome obstacles, change his life and redesign his future.

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SAN RAFAEL, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK) has acquired Illuminate Labs, a privately held maker of lighting technology for game development. Illuminate Labs’ Beast middleware solution and Turtle plug-in for Autodesk Maya software enable faster iteration on a game’s creative intent, and more realistic in-game lighting. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

“We welcome Illuminate Labs customers and employees to Autodesk”

“We welcome Illuminate Labs customers and employees to Autodesk,” said Marc Stevens, VP Games, Autodesk Media & Entertainment. “Technological progress is a mainstay of the games industry. Autodesk is committed to helping game developers be more competitive with modern pipelines. We want our customers to spend less time building workflows and solving redundant problems, and more time realizing their creative vision for the game.”

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SAN RAFAEL, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Autodesk Inc. has announced that a modified version of PixelActive’s CityScape 1.8 will be shipped with Autodesk 3ds Max 2011 and Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011 software, to provide users with rapid urban development capabilities within a more intuitive user interface.

“This version of PixelActive’s CityScape adds support for common GIS imagery and elevation formats, together with faster tools for modeling road networks and terrain, that will help enhance the existing capabilities of 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design software,” said Ken Pimentel, director of visual communication at Autodesk. “With CityScape, 3ds Max Design users can more quickly grab elevation data and satellite imagery from existing government sources and construct a more accurate context for a proposed building site. The combination of 3ds Max Design and CityScape will help customers save time and money.”

CityScape’s export to the Autodesk FBX 2010 data interchange format allows a more tightly coupled, off the shelf workflow between applications. Users can create richer urban environments in CityScape and then export them as FBX files for further development in 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design. Read the rest of this entry →

Since my post on this error last week, a fix has been made for the extremely annoying MakeNurbsDataSurface Error. It turns out that there are so few people getting the error, that it was hard to track down, but at last, the problem is solved Read the rest of this entry →