Hasta La Motion!

April is here – as we prepare to release a new set of courses, we’d like to let you know of new developments at our school. As you might have noticed, we’re increasing the TDC presence on CG related websites, spreading news about our school to the community. More and more people are signing up for our newsletter, and our free online Maya videos and TechBytes are receiving a lot of visitors. We have also recruited a number of new mentors, who will be introduced later on in this email.

We have also being doing a lot of new software development for our online learning system and are very excited to announce that these features make their debut with the courses starting April 19.

It seems that our idea of providing the best TD training available is beginning to catch on, and our students agree. Here are some quotes from some of our recent students:

"The whole TD-College experience has been absolutely amazing for me so far, even more than I imagined! I’ve learned a lot, done a lot and having a blast the whole time and I can’t wait to take on more courses. Even if my company wasn’t ready to pay for TDC, I would get a loan this instant and mortgage my right kidney if need be.
Congratulations on the amazingly done job to you and all your colleagues at TDC and I wish you all the best in the future. You are destined for success with this kind of selfless sharing of invaluable information and an inspiration for all those who seek knowledge." – Tarik Sabanovic.

"My TD college experience has been phenomenal. From the very first week I was learning to make scripts that were useful at my job. I am blown away by how much I was able to achieve in just six weeks. I feel that I have the tools now to make any MEL script I could possibly need. The level of instruction was fantastic. Kevin went above and beyond in answering my questions and making sure that I was grasping the concepts needed. He also provided a lot of insight into the production process that was invaluable." – Travis Barber.

"I had already read some books on python but TD-College’s python class really got me up and going. In the middle of the class I already began to use python at work for tools and inside Maya. Also having a look at how python is used Houdini was great as I would had never discovered it that fast on my own. Very motivating lectures straight
from production. Can’t wait for more classes on new topics." – Katrin Schmid.

NEW MENTORS:

We’re always scouting for talented professionals working for the top studios throughout the world. Over recent months, we’ve been able to welcome to our team a vast number of mentors who offer an incredible wealth of knowledge and experience. TD-College collects all of that experience and places it at your fingertips. Here is a list of the latest additions to our team of professional mentors:

Mark Story
Educator/Engineer/Artist – Digital Cinema Arts
General and Effects Mentor
Credits:
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Tropic Thunder, Beowulf, Surf’s Up, Spiderman 3, The Ant Bully.

Kevin MacPhail
Pipeline Technical Director – Reel FX
General Mentor
Credits:
The Wild, Everyone’s Hero, Open Season 2.

Pablo Gimenez
FX Technical Director – Double Negative
FX Mentor
Credits:
GI JOSE: Rise of the Cobra

Rob O’Neill
Founder, Animation, Research & Development – Kickstand
Character Mentor
Credits:
Madagascar, Shrek 2, One Rat Short.

Stewart Jones
Character Technical Director – Animal Logic
Character Mentor
Credits:
Knowing, The Roboteers.


Tom Kluyskens
FX Lead – Imageworks
Effects Mentor
Credits:
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Ice Age Columbus: Who Were the First Americans, Valiant, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Surf’s Up,Beowulf, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

UPCOMING COURSES:

In these tough economic times, it’s more important than ever to invest in a new beginning – an education that will provide you with the newest, long-term and advanced technical skills sought after by employers today in the CG, games and visual effects industries. TD-College provides you with those skills by offering the most advanced courses available today and by pairing you up with VFX veterans. Our production oriented courses, developed by active professionals with at least 5 years of feature film experience, will definitely allow you to gain that added edge that employers drool over. Slotted to start April 19th, these are the newest releases in a growing library of interactive courses: .

Here is a list of upcoming courses:

Python Programming
Mentor: Matt Schnittker
Start Date: April 19th 2009
Cost: US $1200
Spots Open: 4

Procedural Effects with Houdini
Mentor: Mark Story
Start Date: April 19th 2009
Cost: US $1200
Spots Open: 6

MEL Programming
Mentor: Kevin Mannens
Start Date: April 19th 2009
Cost: US $1200
Spots Open: 6

To enroll in any of the courses mentioned above, students must first be admitted into the school by filling out the registration form.

We have several other courses in production, such as "Math For Technical Directors", "C++ Programming", "Introduction to RenderMan", "Introduction To RenderMan Shader Programming" and "Writing Character Deformer Plugins in Maya". We’ll let you know more about these courses as we get closer to their release dates.

Sincerely

The TDC Team

I am trying to import a track from Boujou 4 into 3Ds Max. The track works well enough in Boujou but as soon as I import the camera solve into Max nothing sticks that well. I originally thought it was a lens distortion effect but the problem seems more pronounced than that. I’m fairly sure the camera is correctly calibrated in both programs (It was shot on a Sony Z1, 4.8mm x 3.6mm film back, 1440 x 1080, pixel aspect 1.333, 4.4mm fixed lens). What is going wrong? Why does it work fine in Boujou and not in Max?

hi. I’m Ping.
This clip make from MAYA Particle Instancer and Expression (MEL Script).

http://www.vimeo.com/3813050

Ping.

Attached Thumbnails

 

Just throwin’ this question out there. Its not too important, more of a convenience than anything else…

I’m just curious if Nuke has an option to color a mask or matte with a specific color, so you can tell different mattes apart when you turn off your overlays.

Or should I just stop being lazy and just combine a constant color into a matte?

Oh, and I just thought of this while typing…

If I want to recreate a breakdown from a shot, and I wanted to do a quick pass to show the alpha channel of a greenscreen comp, how can I get a shot of just the black and white matte? I’ve tried selecting alpha, and rendering out in alpha, but instead i’ll get a red coloring, or other weird colors. How do you guys usually do breakdowns like this using nuke?

I’m working on my final demo reel and I have a car that’s driving fast. I need to add motion blur to the wheels. I thought that just rendering motion blur on the beauty pass for the wheel would be it but it didn’t work. What would be the best and fastest way to do this?

This is in Maya 2008.

Thanks for help in advance!