Patrick's VFX Blog

One of my colleagues ran into a problem with the Maya particles' initial state. He was unable to remove/delete/reset the initial state after setting it, and there seem to be no command to do that. I remember watching a Gnomon particle dynamics video and hearing it mentioned. The trainer (was Alex Alvarez I think) said to download a script from highend3d.com (that was before it became CreativeCrash.com ). I found some suggestions for fixing this problem at this creativecrash.com forum: http://www.creativecrash.com/forums/dynamics-amp-effects/topics/initial-state One of the more straightforward suggestions from the forum was to:  - set the emitter rate to zero,  - set a very short constant lifespan (for the existing particles at the initial state) -rewind and play till the initial state particles die - then set a new initial state when there are no more particles alive in the scene - This will have gotten rid of the initial state, and we can now go and ap...

I just realised this blog has received 999 page views! (And yes, I've turned off the counter for my own page-loads for this). :) A big Thanks to all you guys who have visited this blog!  Hope to have more people comment or correct me if any of my posts are inaccurate in any way.  Now, I need to get just ONE more person to load this page.... Hahaha :) 

Last night I uploaded showreels from 5 more movies I worked on. I received them shortly after I came back from London. In chronological order, latest to the earliest: Captain America: The First Avenger - matchmove co-lead, body track, lighting, modeling, lookDev Paul - matchmove, proxy construction from plates The Sorcerer's apprentice - matchmove lead, object track, proxy prop rigging, scripting Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time - matchmove Sherlock Holmes - matchmove

I was given time off from work today to attend a software demonstration on Maya and XSI workflow. Initially I thought I would not be able to spare the time to go, because of my commitment to the schedule at work. At the last minute I asked Darryl my producer who told me to go for it. At lunch time I left work with William, Nizhen, and Mengdi. After having lunch at Bak Kut Teh across Clarke Quay Central, we went to ACA Pacific's office just across the road. The demonstration was held in one of their training rooms. My former classmate from CG Protege, Edward, was the demo artist who did the Maya 2012 part of the demonstration. He showed HIK (Human IK), camera sequencer and Softimage XSI's interoperability with Maya and Max. Some parts of the Maya 2012 demonstrations in points: Human IK - Human IK provides an automatic rig that is very close to look and functionality of Motion Builder. - Easy and familiar for animators using Motion Builder. - Once character is...

The title of this post is the same as the title from the article I just read ( http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/business/should-working-in-games-be-more-fun-r866 ) from gamedev.net . It is written by Francois Dominic Laramee. Francois seems to be a very experienced developer who has worked in small start-ups and huge international company, in private sectors and government sectors to educational sectors, and, inside and outside of games industry. What he writes is the reality and the state of the industry. This should be what a games developer should expect when entering the industry. It seems that there is a lot of hype by the media and general public about games developing. They make it sound fun, and makes people wanna come in and be part of the team that develops games, and have some fun doing the job. Francois does mention about the film industry having the same kinds of demand on the labour and hours involved to achieve the quality that can go on sc...

I recently come across this website  http://lesterbanks.com/  that does a lot of useful and amazing tutorials for loads of major 3D packages and compositing software.  They even have an online store where you can order hilarious CG and geeky software related taglines that only fellow geeks can understand.  I really wish I had the time to go through all the tutorials. I am just browsing and I am already seeing very useful tutorials that I would like to watch NOW! But... my wife is in London for holiday and I'm loaded with things to prepare for my return trip back home to Singapore.

What a big surprise! I opened up my email and I saw a receipt from Image-Line software, makers of FL Studio.  I went into the contest forum thread , and I found that I won the 2nd prize! First prize by AndrAKondrA had 167 votes, winning 25% of all the votes: This image is from the forum where there was a button to click to vote ;) 2nd prize was my entry, scoring a 148 votes, winning 22% if all votes: This image is from the forum where there was a button to click to vote ;) The entry by gamecat666. It won 3rd prize with 111 votes, bagging 17% of all votes: Winning the 2nd prize in this contest means I would receive 300 IL Virtual Cash. 1st prize wins 500 IL Virtual Cash and 3rd prize wins 100 IL Virtual Cash. There were comments on the voting page that 3D renders are more eye catching on computer displays and more likely to attract voter's attention. However the concept and layout/composition may not be the best in the context of a t-shirt desi...