Friday, December 31, 2004

Messiah:Studio Notes for LW users

Messiah notes/tutes, "quickstart" for LW users

Thursday, December 30, 2004

UV Grid Generator

Direct link to Kvaalen's UV grid generator from his resource page.

Kvaalen's resource page

- Pure DFX+ Explosion/Shockwave
- UV grid generator
- Hypervoxel presets
Includes: magic particles, electric ball, explosion, fire and bubbles.
- Muzzle flashes - using HVs
- Wood and Metal procedural surfaces

Liughting discussion - LOR chimes in

Saturday, December 25, 2004

MK12 "Need for Speed" spots - article

With links to awesome quicktime clips for Need for Speed 2
and also links at bottom of article to the collaborator's sites, with more wicked demos well worth a look

Interview: MuscleTK and the Making of Leon

Also CGtalk thread for any questions - one of the guys in the thread worked on it.

CGtoolkit site for more info

Blender 2.36 is out

Taken from DLF email:

"version 2.36 blender is now out, its a free modeling/animation package,
and also open souce. this release was mainly a bug fix, trying to get
rid of all now bugs, even managed to fix one that has been there sence
version 1.48 :D a few new things have been included as well, such as
proper normal maps, now using 3 axis to calculate the normal map rather
thne just the hight map that it used to use.

the installer/zips can be downloaded here
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Blender.31.0.html for the following platforms:
Windows Installer 98/ME/2000/XP
Windows Zipfile 98/ME/2000/XP
Mac OS X 10.2
Mac OS X 10.3
Linux i386 2.2.5
Linux i386 static 2.2.5
Solaris 2.8 sparc
Irix 6.5 mips3
FreeBSD 5.3
and full release log can be found here
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Blender_2_36.384.0.html

also 2.2.0 of the gimp is out now too, i havent had a chance to use it
much, but apparently you can now use the pressure for your tablet in it."

Ultra Violet lights

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Moho

Cheap but rad 2D animation app.
Draw character once at start of process, then animnate with bones etc.

Monday, December 20, 2004

Saturday, December 18, 2004

SR_Mirror (& SR_Savetransformed)

"SR_Mirror:
SR_Mirror is a mirror tools that mirrors the position/rotation of the selected objects. It handles hierarchies including bones.

it uses Euler rotation to mirror rotation so is might not alwasy be in accurate. When I master matrixes I’ll rebuild this. But it’s better than nothing.

Ps: Fi copyselected works well for cloning multi selections and handles bones as well.

AND

SR_Savetransformed:
SR_Savetransformed is a multi select version of savetransformed that allows you to save to a folder, and add prefix and suffix to the names.

Use it with "object collapser" in modeler to convert the folder to one object. So you can now convert a whole scene to one object much easier. It can be converted to just save the model without transformations. I might add that option later.
"

Friday, December 17, 2004

Surpasses

Newtek thread
CGTalk thread

LW to Shockwave tute - part 1

Part 1 is here

HERE is CGTalk thread

Morph Brush and Preview Render - video tutes

More shorties but goodies from Proton

LW8 dynamics kurv videos - video demos

..and discussion on this newtek thread

Smartskin sans weightmaps

HRGiger pointed me to this Newtek forum thread, simply because he is a legend.

"... If you want some more helpful advice on smartskinning, look at this thread here where I show how to setup a smartskin that doesn't require you to setup your weight maps like Joel dryer had in the video. In fact, it doesn't matter if you have weight maps or not. Applying them with the expressions (or jointmorph) is still the same. ..."

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Modo tips

Allegorithmic's (FREE) PhotoShop Plugin

FXLinker and MD Scan in action

The Newtek forum thread for Proton's tute - some interesting relevant discussion and ideas, and one guys had problems which might shed more ideas and insight ... or, not

MGthicken

ANOTHER thickener

Steel Ronin

Rigging tools etc, noice

HL2 exporter scripts - the flay page

Messiah tutes for LW users

Update bones by skelegons

"Well here's another one. This will modify an existing skeleton of an object in Layout with the positions of skelegons within that object. So if you've converted your skelegons to bones, added your setup stuff like IK etc and then found your knees aren't quite in the right place, but don't want to use the bone tools in layout, you can modify the skelegons in modeler and then run this Generic Layout plugin with your object selected and it will (hopefully!) move the bones to the new positions.

It will:
MAKE A BACK UP scene in your LW content directory just in case! (this will be overwritten each time you run this plugin so as not to fill your harddrive!)
Match old bones BY NAME(this is the only way to do it) !!! to the skelegons, and use these to layout the skeleton.
Add new bones to the skeleton.
Delete old obsolete bones (if the user requires)
Parent any orphan bones to higher up the chain.
Record pivot rotations if desired (apart from on targeted bones as these seem to get screwed up with RPR)
Keep any reparenting you did in layout (say if you had isolated bones which you parented to the main group)

It doesn't delete the old bones (unless you want them to!) just moves them around, so they will keep their old settings. These of course may need adjusting (rotation limits for example if you make the bones a little more bent) because of distortion of the skeleton.

This is a complex plugin, so I make no warranty (it's free!) but as it makes a backup, there shouldn't be any undoable mishaps."

Also discussed HERE

Rim Lighting

Saturday, December 11, 2004

T4D tools updated

LW - Zbrush - LW

Some workflow advice

LW - HL2 scripts

This mod forum has the updates on these scripts.
The author will continue to post updates here to make things easier.
(Not on newtek forums anymore, so look here.)

Friday, December 10, 2004

Low poly models - cars people etc

Check this Newtek thread out - discussing buying low poly models for backgrounds (background vehicles etc) etc
- some places listed, some have free models

Zbrush 2 review

VFX world

Tuesday, December 07, 2004

Monday, December 06, 2004

Digital Ninja - Awesome Illustration

(Found it in this THREAD from CGtalk, Game Character design challenge)

Texture Refresh

Assign to a hotkey for refreshing textures once you've updated them in an Image Editor App

Gyre - plugin

Interactive rotation about an arbitray axis

Will allow rotations in Modeler around an arbitrary axis dependent on a two point selection.

Gyre is an interactive rotation tool that allows you to snap the axis to points or edges. It also now has a mimic mode, in which modifications to one polygon are mimiced by the others.

Sunday, December 05, 2004

Shave and Haircut discussion

In this old Newtek forum thread

Lighting Article

(From front page at CGtalk forums)

Itchy Animation

Saturday, December 04, 2004

Breathtaking Xavier Marquis work

Low poly Maya -> Zbrush -> Max & Brazil

His Site with Gallery

ZBrush 1.55b Manual

Rope Editor

And Rope WIP thread

Eyes setup

Amazing Modo & Sas work



Spinquad thread

LW to HL2 Scripts

"Hey all thought i would just drop these here for now there not 100% complete as i still need to add the vertex aniamtion support for the output files

but they are working to export static props and animations


these are beta

there are 3 scripts 2 for modler and one for layout
simple to use
on everymodel before exporter you need to run hl2 prep
then you can export from modeler or lkayout if it is a model that has animation

also one small bug i forgot if you use skelegons in layout there will be a bone surface name just put any uv map and texture on this it wont accually get exported but teh scripts looks for uv data and texture data on every surface.

please send all bugs to e_fortress@hotmail.com
also i am releaseing these as compiled scripts once i get the rest of the vertex animations done ill let lose the source scripts have fun


also note that you can export physics models with this there is a tab for it in layout but i did not finsish that part yet ill add layer support for that soon"