Shares of Country Garden Holdings Co. 2007,
-3.92%
fell Wednesday, after the property developer said it is planning to launch a second share placement in as many months to refinance its offshore debt.

Country Garden said it is seeking to place 1.78 billion shares at HK$2.70 each to raise 4.81 billion Hong Kong dollars (US$618.5 million). The pricing is around a 15% discount to Tuesday’s closing price.

The Hong Kong-listed shares of China’s largest developer by contracted sales slid to as low as HK$2.76 on Wednesday morning, down 13% for the day and 60% in the year to date. Country Garden’s shares were trading around HK$1 at the end of October–as developers throughout China weathered a sharp downturn in the real-estate market due in large part to a government crackdown as well as a resurgence of Covid-19 and related restrictions–but nearly tripled in price by the end of November after

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AXYZ design S.R.L. announces the launch of a new subscription service called anima ALL! offering a unique and innovative solution for the distribution and use of 3D human models.

For almost two decades, 3D artists and architects have been turning to various online stores to search for and purchase royalty-free 3D human models to suit their project needs. This reality not only implies a high initial cost for the purchase of models but also for the number of hours dedicated to the adaptation of materials, textures, and meshes, given the great heterogeneity of the sources. anima all offers a versatile and powerful product, specifically developed to populate both complex animations and static images, with photorealistic characters of the highest quality, with a unique rental solution at an extremely competitive price.

  • 1 anima® PRO Workstation floating licenses (3 devices),
  • Plugins for 3ds Max®, Cinema 4D®, Maya®, and Unreal Engine 4®,
  • All
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College basketball takes over Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night with a doubleheader as a part of the Jimmy V Classic. In the earlier game, No. 2 Texas is just a 2.5-point favorite over No. 17 Illinois. Once that game wraps up, No. 15 Duke is a 2.5-point favorite over Iowa. It’s a solid pair of games to get us through our Tuesday night.

Texas is the current betting favorite to win the Big 12. The Longhorns are ranked No. 2 in the country as they have yet to lose this season. KenPom validates that ranking, as they are No. 2 in their efficiency metrics as well. The Longhorns are led by guards Tyrese Hunter and Marcus Carr, who are both averaging over 15 points per game. Texas is coming off a hard-fought victory over Creighton last Thursday.

Illinois is ranked No. 17, and it’s already dropped two games this

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Chaos Czech released Corona Renderer 7 for 3ds Max last week, designed to enhance the realism of 3D scenes and boost render speeds across the board. Now that I have it installed and running let’s share more info about it!

New Features Video

The New Features video is below for the short guided tour of what’s new in this release…

  • 15-50% faster rendering across the board.
  • A new Physical Material to make hyper-realistic scenes in minutes. Includes 35 presets for metal, glass, and fabric; Clearcoat and Sheen parameters; thin glass controls and more.
  • An expanded Sky Model with altitude parameters

With 35 new presets for glass, metal and fabric, the new Physical Material makes it simple to set up hyper-realistic scenes in minutes. Though intuitive for beginners, the Physical Material also comes with multiple features for deeper control, including Sheen parameters for creating photoreal fabrics like velvet, and Clearcoat, which

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What Does SHGC Mean When Talking About Glass?

SHGC stands for Solar Heat Gain Coefficient. It measures how much of the sun’s heat will pass through a window.

SHGC can be thought of as a percentage.  For example, according to this NFRC Rating below, this window will only let in 32% of the sun’s heat.  So a window of a SHGC of 0.50 will let in 50% of the sun’s heat!

The TECHNICAL EXPLANATION

Glass absorbs and redirects heat inward in three different ways: conduction, convection, and radiation. Solar Heat Gain Coefficient (SHGC) is a standard used in the North America to estimate solar radiation that passes through glass relative to the amount of solar radiation hitting the glass. Solar radiation tends to be the primary method of energy transfer through fenestration products. Factors such as reflection, absorption, and transmittance will affect the SHGC. Expressed as a number between 0

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OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (KCTV) – A Johnson County restaurant manager sent a harsh message to employees about taking time off and was subsequently fired.

An Olive Garden media relations representative confirmed to KCTV5 a manager at the restaurant on 95th Street sent the below message to staffers:

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Today I’m proud and happy to announce the winners of the CONVERTED challenge, the 9th International Architectural Design & Visualization Challenge, in partnership with Substance by Adobe and ASUS as primary sponsors.

I’m highly impressed to see all the hard work, talent, and dedication the participants have put into this edition of the challenge.

This challenge was mainly sponsored by…

Substance is the complete suite for object texturing and material authoring for your 3D projects, and you’ll be using it to create your challenge entry. All winners will get a yearly license to Substance Suite and Adobe CC.

An ASUS ProArt StudioBook is waiting for each of the Grand Prize winners in Converted’s three entry categories – Still, Animation and Real-Time. A ProArt StudioBook is a mighty mobile powerhouse with extreme performance. It packs a professional-grade Quadro or GeForce graphics card, a wide-gamut display, and exceptional color accuracy makes it

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Do you garden in English or another language?

Associated Press writer Jessica Damiano spent 2022 writing about gardening. She wrote about how to prepare your plants and soil for the winter. She also gave advice on gardening in shady places, or areas without much direct sunlight. She gave guidance on issues as different as insect control and saving and storing seeds.

Most recently Damiano wrote about the language of gardening, providing meanings to some unusual words used in the field.

For example, do you know what scarification is? Sounds like what happens when you see a ghost. But there are no ghosts in our gardens! Gardeners scarify the seeds by making little cuts, or roughening, their hard outer covers. The act helps the seeds to germinate.

When a seed germinates it begins to grow.

Another technical gardening term that sounds mysterious, even to many native English speakers, is xeriscaping.

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The Animation GRAND PRIZE winning entry by Jamie Holmes for the CONVERTED Challenge. An exercise at complete world-building and storytelling to boot! Jamie Holmes is no stranger to such a challenge as we’ve seen him doing it previously during the CABINS challenge. Enjoy this one as he takes us for a spin in his process of making of Red Barn.

First, I just want to thank Ronen Bekerman for putting on another excellent competition. Thank you to all the sponsors that supported this competition for supporting the Arch Viz Industry!

Every day I sit in front of some sort of screen looking at plans, elevations, site photos, all someone else’s design. 20 years ago, I trained as an architect. Just when I was on the cusp of getting registered and diving into a career as an architect, my business partner and I started our architectural visualization business.

The “RED

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The annual BIG ArchViz BlackFriday to CyberMonday promotion is underway with 7 Partners early to start this time around. Many more to join in leading up to the official Black Friday date – November 26th. Expect up to 50% Discounts on software, content and training going on well into (3)December.

Visit the special landing page prepared this year to showcase all the great deals you can grab right away!

Check deals that already started by :

  • XfrogPlants – up to 50% off on all of their plants.
  • Enscape – 10% off on this amazing real-time design visualization software.
  • SOA (State of Art Academy) – Amazing 20% off discounts on the best training courses for ARCHVIZ!

 

Most of the deals run until Monday 29th 23:59 GMT, but some run well into December! I will highlight those after the Monday deadline is passed.

Visit the ArchViz BlackFriday to CyberMonday 2021 page now!

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