Hasta La Motion!

Jan 21

looking for an editor

Posted in: The Job Lot

to edit music videos regularly, mostly unsigned and indie artists but a few majors and thats increasing

hit me with some samples of your work and pricing info in this thread or message me

Jan 20

Learning Dynamics in Houdini?

Posted in: Beginners Talk

I’ve been teaching myself dynamics in Maya for a little while now, and was hoping to start going into houdini.

I haven’t used houdini before so i was going to start with tutorials on the application basics to learn my way around it. After that I’m not sure where to go to start getting the dynamics down. I know their website has a list of some the tutorials they recognize, but they don’t seem to go too far in the way of dynamics and of the ones that are there I’m not sure which are the best.

I’d really love to hear some opinions on the best direction to take in expanding knowledge in this area.

Jan 20

Jah – please read

Posted in: The Pad

I wasnt here for a while even though I guess im considered one of those

"The only problem we had was that a bunch of so called ‘professionals’ who were really player haters were seeding the forums with racist intentions by slagging people off who didnt meet their standards. " quote Jah

I have been supporting this forum for years. Its sad to see that somebody who has no real interest in this forum anyway (you said yourself your not a regular) suddenly becomes active and uses the red button a lot.

Banning people from one site on the internet is stupid as twitter/facebook/blogs/linkedin etc exist and it will just backlash at you. Sure your free to do what you want here, but as you stated yourself this site was meant for artist to ask questions. for the people so to speak, NOT for the owner to play admit/God/Root.

Im not gonna rehash all the shit that has been going on. Enough postings can be found but I seriously consider leaving this site as well. Im the vfxtalk group manager on linkedin.com Im a "vip" and by now I feel terrible ashamed of what this great forum has become. We used to be about vfx and maybe 10% gosspi, now its 90% gossip and 10% new tech posts. Seems very empty here and somebody wrote many are just here to see Jah’s latest freakout.

I want to talk to you directly Jah, Im german as well, born, raised passport. Woher kommst du? Als deutscher solltest du wissen das der ganze rassimus scheiss echt nicht gut rueber kommt und auch das gegenteil was du betreibt mit indi/china propaganda dennoch leute ankotzt. beruhig dich wieder hoer auf leute zu bannen!

sorry guys needed to talk some sense into him. I dont think anybody reallys wnats to build a new forum, we have all this wealth of information right here. but I cant say I feel very valued by Jah as he constantly bashes us "professionals" as if were so expandable. there is a reason why companys have seniors and juniors because if you cant learn from somebody whats the point of this site? Or maybe it backfires and all the freshers actually start reading the manuals before they ask further questions. Then I guess many of us would consider the ban of the accounts a good sacrifice. Anyway I hope we find a way back to old glory. Unban the accounts and see if we cant all get along chldren 😉

Andreas Jablonka

Jan 20

Compositing/3D Reel

Posted in: Demo Reels!

Here is my 2011 reel. I am graduating soon from the Art Institute of Seattle towards the end of this year.
C&C!! Thanks!

Demo Reel 2011 – Billy Restey from Billy Restey on Vimeo.

http://vimeo.com/18073041
http://billyrestey.blogspot.com/

I am considering FXPHD–looks great, if anyone was a student and has any insight–I would much appreciate it.

Attached Thumbnails

Jan 20

edge detection shader

Posted in: Maya

I assume sampler info would play a role here, but not sure how to do it since I need object instead of facing ratio because it can’t change when the cam moves.

Basically I have some beveled objects and I want to roughen up the edges without having to manually paint mattes in Zbrush since there are going to be many objects. Hence I need to dynamically generate mattes to use for displacement and textures.

Anyone know how to use sampler info or other utility nodes to detect the edges of objects and pass that to other shaders as grayscale values? I assume this would be based on curvature or how quickly an angle changes, etc.

Thanks

Jan 20

your point of view interest me

Posted in: NUKE from The Foundry

Hi everybody,
I need your advice and your POV for a coming work.

The effect that we will produce is kind of a fast back dolly from an extreme CU to a wide shot.
The idea is to start close on the hero finger and in a few frame or maybe a second go backward and discover 60 kids aligned (like in a china choreography, (shaoling gymnastic)) doing the same movement (completely sync). All the camera mouvement and the environement will be done in 3D and composite in Nuke. We will use an export of the camera from maya and place the kids in nuke.

For the effect we will shoot on green screen with RED @ 4K – 16:9
the finish shoot will be in HD
We have 6 kids that we need to duplicate.

My approach is to shoot for the hero (and maybe for his 2 other side kids ) 3 pass with the same choreography. One extreme Close Up, a second medium shot, and the wide shot. For the other kids, a wide shoot will be enough.

In nuke i will assemble the passes and use the 4k resolution of each pass. I will make some time warp and warping to align theme perfectly. Then make a transition between the passes.

After i would like to use the 3D capabilities of nuke to place my 3 kids and the other 57 in a 3D environement. Using a card workfow.

Where i ‘m blocked is that i don’t understand how to keep the 4k resolution and quality of my footage when i will zoom in (or out).

1- Need i make a plate of 4k*3 (12k pixel) and put on a card and zoom with the camera or with a transformGeo?

2- Need i import each pass on a card, align and group them in the 3D space? after zoom with the camera.

So here i am.

If you have any advice, idea, or trick to complete the shot.

Thanks

Jan 20

Maya EXR handling poll within Photoshop

Posted in: Maya

Sorry – this is a crosspost from CGSociety. I am looking to get a better idea of people’s opinions on Photoshop’s EXR file handling and it’s fair to say that Maya users are probably the most frequent users of the EXR image format. So I’m asking users here to tell Adobe how you want EXR transparency handled by default. Do you want the alpha data for renders set as layer transparency or as a separate alpha channel? The current default handling is to embed the alpha in the transparency (apparently, this is closer to the actual specification of the format) and there is the other behaviour (as an alpha) is optional with a plug-in:

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/883/cpsid_88310.html

Any comments are helpful. thx

Jan 20

Rhythm & Hues Studio – Visual Effects Production Assistant

Posted in: The Job Lot

Two time Academy Award winner for Achievement in Visual Effects and three time recipient of the Scientific and Technical Achievement award, Rhythm & Hues is uniquely poised for the demands of the highly competitive visual effects and character animation industry.

At the heart of Rhythm & Hues’ success is its more than 20 year commitment to creating quality entertainment in a quality work environment.

A few current and upcoming feature projects include amongst others, "Hop", "X-Men: First Class" and "Life of Pi".

POSITION: Visual Effects Production Assistant
DEPARTMENT: Features

POSITION SUMMARY
The Visual Effects Production Assistant position plays an integral role in the successful organization of our feature film productions.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Attend dailies and take review notes.
Communicate with multiple departments within VFX pipeline.
Liaison with craft services to oversee client meetings and food preparations.
Overseeing show schedule and coordinating multiple meetings.
Production runs and deliveries to multiple locations as requested.
Other general office duties as needed.

REQUIRED SKILLS / EXPERIENCE

Must be detail oriented, highly motivated and able to work in a fast-paced environment with challenging deadlines.
Must be experienced in Filemaker Pro and Excel.
Technical knowledge and aptitude preferred
Interest in a career path in Visual Effects strongly desired.
Ability to work overtime as needed.
At least 6 months experience specifically in Visual Effects Production mandatory.

Qualified candidate please submit a copy of your resume and cover letter to recruitment@rhythm.com with "re: Production Assistant" in the subject line

Jan 20

programming, distribution

Posted in: Maya

not sure if this goes here but it’s maya related. a friend of mine is a programmer, does a lot of renderman stuff, so we’re thinking or teaming up to create shaders and tools for renderman and maya and mental ray in the future.

I am not a programmer and he has never creating anything for sale so we are not sure how licensing will work as far as protecting the software, i.e. serial numbers/node locking and making sure it will work with renderman and maya.

If anyone can point us in the right direction or knows how to do this, we would appreciate any info.

Thanks

Jan 20