Portal Shot Film

Ok so not so much Fx related. Well, the portals are pretty neat, but yeah, check this video out. It's amazing.

Tutorial Intro

Ok, I will get around to the good stuff. But I figure I should write it out clearly before I just start posting willy, nilly here. So, instead I'm going to give the outline for how I want to talk about this topic. I guess at the end I'll gather it all up and make a nice PDF or a video tutorial if I can get my hands on some nice recording software. For this tutorial I am going to make the following assumption. I assume that you can read. And since I can safely assume that, the I can also assume you can read maya's extensive documentation. If I talk about something that you don't understand, it will be most likely because you didn't read Maya's documentation on said topic. If you ask me about something that can be easily answered by pressing "F1", I will most likely ignore you. What I'd like to focus on are little tips or methods that I use with Maya's tools. We're going to write quite a few expressions, but nothing overly complex. You don't have to know mel to follow this tutorial but again a little RTFM doesn't hurt.

I want to cover basic particle emission, fields, PP attributes, and PSI shading. Finally, I want to be able to output a high quality render worthy of a demo reel. So we'll see how this goes.

Missile Trail Beginnings

Hey this will be the start of the missile trail tutorial. So now a disclaimer, I'm not an expert, at least not in the all knowing sense. I've worked on this type of effect but have not mastered it. I will be dispensing my knowledge here. I guess the thought is that in teaching I will learn more than soaking up knowledge from others. That said doing is important.

So where to start on the missile trail. Well for one, close Maya. We'll get to that part later. When starting a project you need to know where you are going before you start making a ton of particles. I know it sounds straight forward but it is really critical and most artists skip this step. So the first step is to look at reference. Now that we have google and youtube there really is no excuse for not doing this.

Here's what I found in less than 5 minutes.

So yeah, this is a good starting point. Things to take note of are the length of the trails, the speed of dissipation, the colors of the smoke, turbulence in the trail, length of the fire, shadows and lighting. What will make the missile trail most believable is making it move correctly and shade it correctly. It is important to pay attention to how light interacts with the smoke trails.

I hope this gives you a good idea where to start. Technical stuff later.

-Calibrix

Tutorial Ideas

So I think I've settled on something to talk about. Particles. Particles are probably the most technical Fx. Technically most Fx work is just making something that looks cool. I once made an effect entirely out of blend shaped geometry, no dynamics required. It just requires you to think outside the box and explore some of the weird things in maya.

But yes particles. I remember one of the things that got me started was an old tutorial on missile trails. That was back in Maya 5 or something. Anyway, I thought it could use an update, so over the next few weeks I'll be talking about particles, and more than that, we'll be creating a missile trail while not using any of the built in ramps. It will be all expressions. Kill two birds with one stone I guess.

Blogs?

Ok wow, I was totally going to post shit here, and be, you know helpful. Wow, 6 months later and I think I have two posts? I give those guys that take time to do this real Kudos man. After working with 3D software for 8-9 hours a day and then coming home only to work with it again to write up some tutorial... Yeah... or I'm unmotivated and lazy. That could be it too.

So lets see... what to say. I'm learning python/pyMel. That's a start. I guess, I'm suppose to be learning pythonQt, whatever that is. But I think just learning anything is important right now. Picking up Maya 2012, for no explicable reason. I mean there's a lot of new features, but it's not that new. I need to start cracking on Houdini again. I wonder if it will run on my new MacBook Air? Probably not. I need a new mouse for my desktop, the middle click is mushy and is annoying. Also, it's apparent that I need a different video card for 3D apps. My ATI 6800  doesn't cut it. So Quadro 4000 it is. Now, I know where my money is going...

Anyway, useful tips... That's what this was all about. Actually, I need to write up a tutorial on flamethowers. Maybe I'll do that this weekend, or I'll be in Vegas.