A big congrats to my good friend Jentzen Mooney for the debut broadcast of his weekly radio show Electro-Bytes. I dig the show, check it out! But beware, the archive only lasts a short while, so listen now!

A quick divergence from things CGI, as an Otaku and owner of 4 Great Pyrenees dogs I have noticed just how often big white dogs appear in anime and manga. Are there many great pyrs in Japan? I can’t imagine trying to own one in a crowded metro…

The visual effects department is new, having risen from a small group of artists who performed miscellaneous visual effects as needed to enhance or fill out the stereo process, and my job as I see it is to lay a foundation for growth given the large demand for services we’re encountering. The effects vary from show to show, from environmental and supportive effects (snow, rain, smoke, fog etc) to more unusual effects, some of which are only possible in the realm of stereo.

Challenging, and a lot of fun. When I first arrived at StereoD I was staggered by the number of shows they are running concurrently, below are just a few, in no particular order. If you’re an experienced visual effects artist and are looking for a place that is growing and evolving and has work on some of the largest and most advanced films being created, StereoD should definitely be on your radar. And most amazing of all? Unlike some places (cough) the VFX dept at StereoD is already showing profit and has more requests for work than we can accommodate…. ;)

Maybe I can get a bunch of stuff online as a Christmas gift to the community – I’ll be “heads down” in November but might have time after that…

Topics include:

• Fury 2 – this point renderer by Exocortex is starting to come into it’s own, with cast and self-shadowing, particle replication at rendertime, a standalone and maya version, etc.
• ICE terrain compounds – a long term project which I’ve detailed here, I’d like to add in some adaptive meshing (most of it was built prior to ICE modeling) and a better fluvial erosion compound, and release the compounds to the community.
• Electrical and lightning effects – I have a very nice “toolkit” of ICE tools for creating electrical effects which I want to clean up and release to the community.
• A slew of “utility” ICE compounds and one-offs for doing all kinds of fun stuff… from converting temperature to color according to a blackbody and color cycling compounds to branching strand systems and procedural snow deposition, etc. All compounds which come from production needs which I’ve been squirreling away with the intent of eventually sharing them.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Funny. Sad. True.

Producer and crew, c. 14th century

Maya Community?

I have to admit, I’ve got a love/hate thing going on with Maya. It’s an industry standard. It changed the world. It broke new ground. And it… well, kinda sucks.

Look, before you get out the pitchforks and torches, Maya fans hear me out. You have gotten used to coping with things you shouldn’t have to worry about. Every dedicated maya user I know has a cornucopia of tricks, scripts, workarounds and fixes just to get the basics done. Want to constrain an object on a curve? Sure, you can. Kinda. If you know the trick, and are willing to think about it, or have a script handy. How about editing the animation curves on an animated texture? Visually? Make particles flow on a deforming surface? The answer is always the same – yes you can. But it’s not going to be straightforward….

Folks, that’s not good. It’s the legacy of an old architecture which has had additions and patches layered on it year after year.  Sure, to be fair all 3D apps are complicated and have their caveats aplenty. XSI sure does, and it’s also taken it a long time to get to the point it’s at now.

But I have to tell you… XSI’s newer architecture and more consistent methodology make a difference.

It’s new and scary and confusing for longtime Maya users to learn XSI. It was the same for me when I learned Maya. But you know what? When I learned my way around Maya I was rather staggered by how many tasks are unnecessarily  convoluted.  After a few months of production in Maya my suspicions solidified… from the perspective I come from, this app kinda sucks. I mean come on, I know people are used to it but exactly how is it ok that to get a decent rig built you have to route shit through the hypershade?

Burn the witch!

Whoa don’t throw those torches. This is just my opinion…. One I’m sure I will take plenty of heat over. But if you haven’t used XSI in a production that knows what it’s doing (psyop anyone?) you honestly don’t know what you’re missing out on. Particularly now that XSI users have ICE.

So I’m glad to see that XSI is doing well and progressing ahead nicely under Autodesk’s banner – not because I’m a mindless fanboy (don’t say it!)… but because I have used XSI and Maya extensively. And having done so I can’t wait for the industry as a whole to get to a point where the capabilities I’m used to having in XSI. I want to see some of this next-gen workflow end up in the hands of the brilliant artists who have been turning out amazing work in Maya, despite it’s creaky rusty workflows and endless workarounds. XSI isn’t the enemy guys. It’s actually pretty effing cool. And more and more artists and TDs are beginning to exploit what it can do – give it a honest effort and you’ll see what I mean.

Just try it!

Some maya rant links to reward you for reading this far….

http://www.ireallyhatemaya.com/

http://www.xsibase.com/forum/index.php?board=2;action=display;threadid=17620

Click here to view the embedded video.