Fresh tutorial on the web.  I just thought i’d stop by cgbootcamp after remembering that i’d bookmarked a Maya realtime shader tutorial on their Vimeo a while back.  I was surprised to see that they had just put up a brand new tutorial finishing up their series on writing a cgfx shader.

This site is great stuff indeed!  The shaders and videos are there free for the learning!  This inspires me to do spread knowledge of what i’m learning around all the more.  It’s fun to share and why not when you can make a little extra money in the process off of ads and donations.

I will be keeping an eye on these guys in the weeks to come and possibly doing my part to make sure they keep it up.  They make shader writing look sexy!  I’m gonna have to try this in my free time.

 

Modular Character System – Feature Demo from Jan Berger on Vimeo.

This blows me away.  It’s got a lot of things riggers love plus what animators need.  I believe at first look it’s a strong tool, but may be a little unintuitive for animators to figure out at first.  When it comes to posing, scaling, squash and stretch, matching, foot control, IK, and FK animation, it looks like a breeze.  The rig seems so easy to set up with kinematics built in and readily customizable along any stage of the animation process given its modularity.

 

Vidiots Annex – Film Studies - Anime Mythology

Instructor: Crispin Freeman

Adolescenece of Utena

Synopsis from Vidiots Website:

These are elaborate and humorous Power Point-style presentations with slides and video that explore the differences in animated and video game storytelling in Japanese and American cultures.

My Perspective

I really had a great experience at a smaller gathering of anime enthusiasts at Vidiots Annex this Tuesday.  Watch this video to get a sense of what happens during Crispin’s energetic and informative presentations.  It’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what one of these presentations actually consist of.  Highly metaphysical and based on Jungian theories of archetypal figures and Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey, Crispin delves into the cultural aspects and differentiations of anime and western animation with clarity and style.

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userSetup.mel Tutorial Part 1: Theory and Practical Use

Difficulty: Novice

Do you not want your tools to be on your work computer?  Do you need multiple users to use your tools without a lot of setup?  This is the simplest and most reliable solution.  You can keep your Maya installation directory clean and organized by storing your scripts, icons, shelves, plug-ins, tutorial example files, and the like in one accessible location on your hard drive or an external hard drive.  Most of mine are on my thumb drive I bring with me everywhere and a backup lives on a portable hard drive.  If you’re like me, you can’t live without your tools!

UPDATE: If you wanna know more advanced techniques, read Part 2.

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Autodesk Maya 2011 Hotfix 3 – 1.5 GB

319246 Mac: All error messages do not appear via Python
339016 All windows redraw on hotbox and marking menu use
350611 Sequencer XML Export not compatible with Autodesk Smoke
351769 Remove environment variable for enabling active stereo on Windows Vista and Windows 7
353250 64 bit Mac vector render plugin not built for 64bit Mac
353529 Sequencer : wrong duration for movie files in XML files exported from Maya

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Big 15'5 C2 Gun surfboard by Cooperfish

I could resist posting this after I saw the result of a labor of love from one of the greatest surfboard shapers out there.  This is my hobby when i’m not doing rigging work, that is, surfing not shaping.  Although, one day I may just have the time and space to start learning to shape.

I’ve been surfing since I got to California almost and i’ve grown to love it so much.  It just makes me appreciate it even more when I see a work of art like this.  I really have respect for what these guys are doing and other people that are carrying on the tradition for the love of the craft.

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Looks like Zbrush has added new materials and viewport rendering upgrades.

This is a cool looking example of the new capabilities of Zbrush 4.0 just released the other day.  I’m very interested to see what the comparison of Zbrush to Mudbox will be.  Quite a few people I know have disowned Zbrush for it’s lack of usability and bug riddled programming.  Hopefully it is more stable now with upgrades to the usability, but I also wish I didn’t have to upgrade the plugins everytime I update Zbrush.  It’s okay for personal use, but is that really good for production pipelines that depend on the plugins for their work?  What are your thoughts on Zbrush, or Zbrush vs. Mudbox?

In the coming weeks, I hope to tear into it and give a synopsis and possibly a breakdown comparison between Zbrush and Mudbox.

 

I finally am getting around to updating my blog, my home on the web besides Facebook crap.  After a long time using blogspot I started using WordPress and I can’t think of why I ever was using uh, what was that again, oh yes blogger!  This is going to make it easier I can just tell already.  It seems as though blogger hadn’t updated anything in a long time,  it was tough to edit posts, and it was a jostling experience all around.  The themes are important to me since I work in a visual industry which WordPress seems to clearly excel in.  In short, this is another beginning in a long succession of beginnings.  Maybe now I can get serious about updating about my work and inspirations!