Welcome back everyone! I hope you all had a cracking weekend. Right now we are going to pick up where we left off on Friday with FG Maps.
Sculpting Smoke for a ‘Dry Ice’ Effect with Maya Fluids
Many of you have been eagerly anticipating May’s free tutorial, and I’m delighted to announce to you all that it’s now live. So check it out here.
Studio Workshop - Final Gather Maps
Ladies and gents, welcome to another Studios Assistant blog. Today's topic: Final Gather Maps.
A Decisive Moment
“The decisive moment. It is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression” Henri Cartier-Bresson
All The Best Things Are Made From SCRATCH...Cannes 2012
We would like to be one of the first to congratulate Assimilate for their success at the Cannes Festival 2012. Although the winning films are yet to be announced, several films on the competition's roster have been created using SCRATCH, Assimilate’s digital workflow and post-production tools. SCRATCH has been used on recent screen successes like The Artist, Thor and Underworld: Awakening as well as the films nominated at Cannes 2012.
Built by Self-Confessed Industry Nerds
With the divide between 2D and 3D becoming increasingly indistinguishable, I thought I'd share some information about an interesting alternative to Nuke’s default scanline render node and indeed much of Nuke’s current 3D shading tool set.
Head of Maya Development at The Mill
This year, Escape Studios is ten years old, and it’s a pretty big deal for us. It’s also a big deal for all of the students who we’ve trained over the years and are now dotted throughout the world of VFX. So, from now on, every week, we’re going to be launching a story from our escapee Wall of Fame which will showcase all of the escapees who have gone on to work on the biggest and boldest films, TV shows, commercials and games over the years. It’s a chance for them to step up and take a bow, albeit a virtual one.
Under the hood
As a follow-up to my post on learning resources for coding, I'd like to share our recent efforts to open source some of our in-house code.
Real-Time Path Tracing Bunny
Want to see a demo of how computer games will look in the not too distant future? You are in luck. Here is a big breakdancing bunny courtesy of Samuel Lapere. Forgive us, the quality isn't great but it's still pretty phenomenal.
Highway to the Danger Zone - ZBrush Webinar
We had the pleasure of working with the ever so entertaining Paul Gaboury, 3D Application Engineer at Pixologic, for a special webinar to showcase the newly added features in ZBrush 4R3.
Looking for new Worlds using the "Minority Report" Interface
NASA's Kepler Mission has been running since 2009 and is currently searching our region of the Milky Way for habitable planets. So far, it has spotted about 2,300 and confirmed 61 planets. Data artist Jer Thorp and John Underkoffler, the designer who created the interfaces in Minority Report, have produced a user interface that lets us find out how these new planets look.
Coming Soon!! mocha Pro Event...
Last June Imagineer Systems and Escape Studios hosted a mocha Pro demonstration event in London to celebrate the success of this tracking software. Due to the success of that event we are pleased to announce that we will be hosting another one this year on May 30th 2012.
The Studio Workshop: Exporting Camera From Maya to NUKE
So it’s almost bank holiday weekend and your old pal Ash is gonna give you another one of his awesome tips before you spend the next three days drinking your body weight in alcohol and watching The Avengers… seriously, how awesome is that film?!
A Successful NAB for The Foundry
The Foundry returned triumphant from this year’s NAB show in Las Vegas. For them, this was by far their biggest and most successful NAB, as they exhibited their most advanced portfolio yet. Showcasing the latest versions of NUKE, NUKEX, HIERO, KATANA and MARI they had crowds gathering throughout the event to check out live demos of all these products, as well as the incredible line-up of speakers invited to share their experiences using each of the products above.
Upgrade to Autodesk 2013 Promo!
As of last month Autodesk released the 2013 update of their 3D software, and with that you’ll find a variety of enhancements and new features that make these versions pretty special. In our competitive industry, having the latest and greatest tools to complete the job is always a bonus, and the 2013 versions may well set you on your way to creating work that stands out from the crowd. Of course for many of you, the cost can make upgrading a tricky business and that’s why we want to make sure you’re all aware of a promotion that could help stretch the pennies a little further.
SiC: Softimage User Group Launch Event
For Softimage fans out there, you may be glad to hear that the loyal community of Softimage users are regrouping. Under the new name Softimage Creatives (SiC), this is an independent user group based here in London. Following a user group meeting held last November, a discussion began to revive the community among Softimage users. Six industry professionals expressed their interest in helping make this a reality, and with the support of Escape Studios SiC London was born.
The Studio Workshop: Camera Scale
Happy Tuesday, loyal readers. Here's a quick one relating to a problem that popped up a few times for the students last week. This is for anyone taking who has tracked footage into Maya and finds their tracking markers don't line up, because they've forgotten one simple step.
Trimble Invests in Google SketchUp
Back in 2006 Google acquired SketchUp, the 3D modeling program commonly used by architectural, civil and mechanical engineers. Google SketchUp was released as a free downloadable version that excluded some of the functionality of SketchUp Pro, but included tools for uploading content to Google Earth. Since that time Google SketchUp has been deemed very popular worldwide and can boast 30 million activations over 2011 alone.
ZBrush Interview & Webinar
In an interview with BioWare, the company responsible for the art in Mass Effect, Pixologic find out how ZBrush was used in the making of Mass Effect 3. The ambitious game series has exhibited some pretty impressive artwork during its time, and the work in ME3 is no exception. Read the exclusive interview here.
The Studio Workshop: ID passes - Part Two
It's important to only isolate three separate elements per ID pass, or the technique becomes redundant. For example, if I had made both the windows and door red in the image for Part One of this blog, then any colour correction I applied to the red channel in NUKE would affect them both. You've already seen a broad example, but there's no reason you can’t use ID passes to focus on more specific areas of your render. The image above shows an example of an ID pass refined to specialise in the windows only. This kind of pass would be useful if the texture I added to the window transoms (red bits) had rendered far too dark, but everything else rendered correctly, as I would be able to adjust them without damaging the rest of my render.
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