In a new press release from Entity FX, they briefly discuss some of the tools and challenges of the new Final Destination movie, the first one in the series in stereoscopic 3D.
Entity FX was hired to complete the climactic end sequence of the movie, creating a number of completely synthetic shots with fully CG characters linked up in stereo space (left eye and right eye) with real actors seen earlier in the sequence.
Entity FX used a variety of tools to complete the project, including Autodesk Maya for 3D modeling and animation and The Foundry NUKE for compositing and image effects.
via ….. >> VFXWorld / News << …...
Graphics 3d, entity fx, maya, movie, nuke, stereoscopic, vfx
Anto Juričić (grapix) has created this great digital portrait of U.S. President Barack Obama using a wide variety of tools and techniques, and has written up the entire process in a new Making Of over at 3dm3.
With all my personal project I try to learn as much as I can so I often change pipeline and workflow as well. Don’t be afraid to try some new techniques and apps since technology is growing every day giving us opportunity to work more efficiently. In this project I will be switching between Maya, ZBrush, Silo, Uv layout and Photoshop.
First thing I did was building simple base mesh in Silo using smoothed cube primitive and extruding few faces from bottom to make neck volume and shoulders. You can see Silo base mesh in figure below
via Making of Mr.Obama Digital Portrait – Community for CG Artists.
Graphics makingof, maya, photoshop, silo, zbrush
You wouldn’t think a movie like “Julie & Julia” would be very VFX heavy, but a new press release from Brainstorm Digital reveals their use of Nuke, Photoshop, and Maya to reconstruct the “Ground Zero” environment used in the film.
The painters worked in a 16-bit half-float linear workflow within Photoshop with help from Fnordware’s ProEXR which helped them merge seamlessly into Brainstorm’s internal linear color pipeline. This enabled them to output multi-layer OpenEXRs for the compositing team who then went straight into the 2.5D camera projection workflow inside Nuke rather than rendering out passes out of 3D. “The process saved both time and money by enabling us to have a smaller team perform much more efficiently,” said Ball.
Read the full press release after the break.
Read more…
Graphics brainstorm digital, maya, movie, nuke, photoshop, vfx
If you’re a VRay fanboy who’s always wanted to try Maya, but been held back by the lack of support, then now’s your chance to jump in! Chaos Group has just announced a fully supported version of VRay for Maya.
The comprehensive set of features provided by V-Ray for Maya includes true 3D Motion Blur, Sun & Sky procedural lighting system, Physical camera for matching life footage, Environment Fog, a set of Sub-Surface Scattering shaders and many others. V-Ray for Maya is supported on Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora operating systems in their 32-bit and 64-bit versions (other distributions also work). V-Ray runs with Autodesk Maya 2008, 2009 and 2010 versions.
It sells for $999 ( €719) per license, and there are volume discounts for farms.
via CGDigg: Your daily fresh CG news – VRay for Maya released!.
Graphics chaos group, maya, renderer, software, vray
If you’re an Autodesk User and want to try the new 2010 versions, now’s your chance. Autodesk has released 30-day trial versions of some of the new apps for you to download and try out!
The trials are 30-days online, require a short registration, and seem to be fully featured. They offer versions for XP, Vista, and Mac OSX. Go get em !
Graphics autodesk, free, maya, motionbuilder, mudbox, software, trial
Over at 3dm3, Vaibhav Shah has a great making-of for an image called “Say Cheese”, built with Maya, zbrush, mental-ray, and Photoshop.
I was so inspired with water tanks in childhood. Whenever I’ve visit fisheries and aquariums, I always found some attraction towards one tank which was dirtier and poor a fish try to accommodate in that. I’ve always spend time to observe water movement and its whirl effects. So I approached to make cool dirty flooded water bathroom, and fish tries to survive there in between of leaked water pipes. Even leaked pipe blows air into water which makes sweetie bubbles. The idea clicked me once and started scribbles for making ahead.
Not only does he show the process used to conceptualize and create the image, but some interesting charts showing how long the various stages took.
via Making of Say Cheese – Community for CG Artists.
Graphics makingof, maya, photoshop, vfx, zbrush
Recently, automobile websites have been buzzing over a short camera-phone video that shows an experimental Porsche wagon-design (known as a “Shooting brake”), clad in black-primer, parked on the sidewalk in Germany. Enthusiasts have been polarized as to whether they love it or hate it, but it’s now been discovered that the entire thing was a hoax from the departing TopGear.com America editorial team.
According to Devin Johnson, a BBC spokesman, TopGear.com has migrated to BBCAmerica.com, and the company “is continuing to explore opportunities for a U.S. version.” The viral scheme was overseen by the site’s former editor, Jared Holstein, and was executed by summer interns.
The model was created by Matt DuVall, a student at Savannah College of Art and Design, using Maya and then composited with FinalCut Pro and Photoshop. New York Times has all the details.
Porsche Shooting Brake Is a Fake – Wheels Blog – NYTimes.com.
Graphics automotive, hoax, maya, vfx
At SIGGRAPH this last week, SPHERON-VR was there showing off its new High Dynamic Range Capture Device technology. This new version offers a touchscreen interface for automatic creation of HDR & EXR files, and 3d measurement technology that connects directly with Autodesk Maya.
SPHERON VR : Details.
Hardware camera, maya, spheronvr
CGSociety has announced a pair of new workshops available for enrollment. First is “Matte Painting” form David Luong:
Matte Painter, compositor and VFX guru David Luong is back with his updated Matte Painting workshop. This is an intermediate to advanced level matte painting class using Adobe Photoshop as well as using AfterEffects and/or Nuke to composite your design into your final project using Maya. Beginners are welcome as topics covered and class discussions are personal and open to different levels of knowledge. Though it has some beginner’s topics, it will quickly get into more advanced areas.
The second is Maya Scripting, with both MELScript and Python.
Lead Creature Technical Director and Maya guru Todd Widup is back to l take you under the hood of Scripting in Maya with MELScript and Python. Todd will take you into the top layer of the programming guts and scripts in both MELScript as well as the newly introduced Python script within Maya. By opening artists to the power of scripting, they can enhance their workflow with new automated tools, create macros to do repeated functions, as well as create interfaces and learn to interact with the operating system.
Both classes start on September 7th, and run for 8 weeks. Hit CGSociety for full details.
CGWorkshops.
Graphics education, maya, painting, training, workshop
Autodesk has released several press releases today, just in time for SIGGRAPH, and the StudioDaily blog has a great rundown of the main thrust: Autodesk is reducing cost and releasing new versions.
The first big step was to unify Maya Complete and Maya Unlimited into a single product: Maya 2010. Included in Maya 2010 are Maya Composite, which is based on the compositing software in Toxik, Matchmover, the 3D tracking system, five mental ray Batch render nodes and Autodesk Backburner render manager. Maya 2010 cost $3,495.
With the new “Maya Composite”, it also signals the deal of “Toxik” as we know it. Hopefully we can get some more information from Autodesk tomorrow.
via Studio Daily Blog » Autodesk Unifies Maya, Releases New Versions and Lowers Costs.
Graphics autodesk, maya, siggraph, toxik
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