Patrick's VFX Blog

http://www.exoticmatter.com/overview/ I've recently been made aware of this new product called Naiad. It is for the most part a solver for dynamic bodies such as fluids and gas. It is also an open source software package that is part of a standard which other software can also be written to conform and process data from the Naiad Graph. This is a full GUI front-end for the artist to interact with the solver. Although it is relatively new to the scene, it has already been used for solving gas and fluids in quite a few feature films, including Avatar, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, Pirates of the Carribean 4, Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader, X-men: First Class, The A Team, Final Destination 5, etc. Although Naiad is now only available on the Linux platform, versions for Windows 7 and Mac OS X will be announced later in the year. Go to the movies page to see examples of the solver in use.

I just got to know about this website: http://shadermonger.com/ Its an open community of people developing shaders and sharing them. There's even a plug-in for Maya that can directly browse, access and for you to publish your own contribution to the shader community! It is an excellent idea to set up something that would benefit the whole community of CG artists. Well done guys!

http://www.steambotstudios.com/steampainting/3ch/ Here's a website that was recommended to me by Sean Teo who owns the blog: Personal Art Dump .  This website will generate random ideas when brainstorming concepts or just for an idea for a quick sketch or speed painting. I should start picking up sketching!

http://3d-coat.com/what-is-3dcoat/ 3D-coat is an application that works on the principle of voxel-sculpting. It can take your model from the first bit of digital clay up to the textured, sculpted state that is ready for production. In other words you can create your model, sculpt, displace, and re-topo, create UVs, texture and even render your model, all in the one single application. It is interoperable with Adobe Photoshop, preserving layer information on textures and transparency. It runs on all popular OS platforms (Linux, Windows and MacOs). It allows you to reorganise the topography of your sculpts, and even supports Disney's Ptex system. It also supports rendering with multiple lights (including area lights / ambient occlusion) right in the application. There are professional node-locked and floating licences available, Non-commercial licenses, educational licenses as well as non-professional (hobbyists, elderly, unemployed) licenses. There is also a friendly commun...

Someone posted this chart in my Google+ stream. So here it is :) Any thoughts? ;)

http://www.procedural.com I've just been introduced to this cool piece of software, that generates procedural cities. This is a standalone software that can use sateline photos, data from openStreetMap.org, or using custom maps for a custom designed city, to generate geometry and textures for use. It can import export standard geometry formats like DXF, OBJ and VUE files. It can even export textures and multiple UV sets, including the generation of RIB files for Renderman compliant renderers. After the city is generated, the user can go and interactively change the individual buildings or add roads and features to further refine the look. Slopes and curved roads are supported. Building parameters include height, width, number of storeys, number of windows, the age (constructed in which year), and many more! Check out the example videos here! http://www.procedural.com/showcases/showcase.html

On Friday, 2 days ago, in a surprising announcement, we were told that there was to be a cast and crew screening of Captain America at the Empire Theatre at Leicester Square. So we got ourselves tickets for 5 of us from Singapore.  The actual film will be released on 29th July 2011, but we get a cast and crew screening 5 days ahead of time. How awesome is that?? :) The screening will start at 10am, but they will start letting people in from 8.30am. They said there would be security screening for people who enter the theatre. YC, Francis and I arrived at Leicester Square at 8.15am. Mengdi left the house later than us. There were a few familiar faces hanging out in front of the Empire. Still too early to admit people, so we went to grab breakfast, at Macdonald's Leicester Square. My breakfast: Sausage egg mcMuffin meal The queue I've gone to cast and crew screenings before, on Hellboy and 10,000 BC. So it wasn't new to me, but I still felt the same excitem...