Tuesday 21 October 2008

Max to Houdini

Yup thats right guys while learning Houdini I'm going to try to make it easier for you to do it too. So the plan is to do stuff in Max & try to make the same FX in Houdini then explain it in REALLY simple terms since everything I see out there feels/looks like it's written in code!

So keep checking back for updates hopefully I'll have something up soon.


Stevie

Tuesday 14 October 2008

San Francisco!!!!

Ok its been a while I know but the Bug shots took up all my time & then straight after that I was offered a job in San Francisco doing Particle FX for a TV show so how could I resist!

Anyway I'm in San Francisco until the 24th Nov & in between being a tourist & working my arse off, I'll be leaning Houdini. No not the magician tricks, a 3d Program used in the UK a lot by Framestore & the Mill etc. Its a tough program to learn but work in the UK is slow for Max users & I would love to have at least one of the companies under my belt if not just for the experience of working for the Pixar's of the UK.

If you want to see our (mine & my fiancee's) travels in San Francisco check out the Blog......
http://www.offexploring.com/mandyandsteve/home

Stay tuned for the bug shots (prob after the 24th Nov).

Steve

Wednesday 20 August 2008

Update

I've been a bit bogged down lately (maybe I should say Bugged down) by doing crowd simulations for a friends film called PIXEL
http://web.mac.com/trissirt/Doctor_Versluis/Pixel.html
The film required crowds of 3d bugs in certain shots so it was my job to put them there. Stay tuned for more updates & pics of the shots I may also make a video tutorial on how to create bug simulation & crowds.

Tuesday 29 July 2008

Helicopter Landing

After finishing the FX courses I started to think about how to show off complex FX animations. So what this project was about was to show a Helicopter landing where 3 orange/red smoke flares were with some landing dust & small debris. So the ground has no colour/texture neither does the Helicopter this is why the dust is a blue is could to match the ground.

Hope you like it, I changed the final look on my show reel to give it an old Vietnam look to make it look a little more believable.

Tuesday 3 June 2008

End Of Week 08

Wow what a week, again this is one of the tutorials I joined the course for & I think it turned out great. I already knew most of what were taught but it was nice to pick up some good tips & I even worked out some very good processes for creating fire without FumeFX!


Steve








Wednesday 21 May 2008

End Of Week 07

This weeks tutorial was a storm system using PFlow & Afterburn. This was interesting since its not all about Particles creating other particles something I found out before while working on 'Kid Samurai'. When a raindrop falls if Max has to calculate every particle reaction for a splash things start to get heavy so you use a few Particle systems to create the overall effect. I used Cebas's FinalDOF for this which caused a few problems since it wouldn't export(or I couldn't find a way to) the DOF to effect every layer rendered out by 'Render Elements' in Max, it works great on single framed shots but on animations you can't apply it to all the layers in post. I also used Cebas's PSDManager which is a great idea but again so many different layers have so many tweaks to Alpha channels or DOF it was easier to render separate layers out. I do wish it would have worked with the FinalDof plugin, you would think that Cebas since they make both plugins would have sorted it out.
In AfterFX I added the drops on the camera lens to add more depth.

Steve





End Of Week 06

This week was a bit frustrating since we were doing crowd simulation using a demo of a plugin called 'Box tools #1'. This tutorial was one of the ones I signed up for the course in the first place. Overall the tutorial was good & easy as usual but when we started to use the plugin everything went wrong & I spent the whole week talking to people in America at 3am. I finally sorted the problem out by actually buying the plugin luckily with the course you get a discount so it ended up being about £35 instead of $200!!!!!

I'll post some pics when I actually do something with the tutorial since I'm working on a friends film making bugs using a crowd system!!!!

Steve

Saturday 10 May 2008

End Of Week 05

This week was all about Bullets & Grenades. We did 3 tutorials one on a gun firing with muzzle flash & smoke using PFlow & Afterburn. The other was on Bullet Ricochet, after a bullet hits a wall sprinkles of debris are produced & smoke. I took this 1 step further & made a system which spurts blood from some surfaces & debris from another. I'm hoping to take this further later with blowing up a car using FumeFX too. The last tutorial was about a Grenade explosion.

THE NEW WEBSITE IS NOW UP & WORKING!!!!! Check it out.
www.steviemac.co.uk

Steve

Saturday 3 May 2008

End Of Week 04

This week we did a hand smashing up through the ground I think the motion came out really well & the background didn't take too long but got the right mood for the scene. Since this week didn't take me too long to get a decent result I was able to sort out my new website so its nearly finished now just a few tweaks are needed.

Steve





Friday 25 April 2008

End Of Week 03

Hi guys,
This week we had to do a Twister I think the end result turned out pretty good! I used an old model & fragmented it using Thinking Particles. I then used Particle Flow to control, when the fragments fly off into the Twister. The twister itself is done using Particle Flow & Afterburn it took quite a long time to render the actual twister but i think it was worth it.

Steve

Monday 21 April 2008

End Of Week 02

This week we went straight into explosions using a missile with a particle smoke trail to blow up a bunker. I ran out of time this week due to rendering but I'm hoping to use Thinking Particles, FumeFX & PFlow to blow up a Police car in the same way we did this tutorial.

Steve




Thursday 10 April 2008

End Of Week 01

Ok its the end of the first week of my course. This week was a few general tuts to get into PFlow & Afterburn creating Clouds, Cigarette Smoke & Steam. This was pretty tough for a first week but very interesting for week one.















I've also been learning Thinking Particles a very powerful program for creating particle FX. It's a bit complicated in some respects but in others it makes work flow a lot easier.

Sunday 6 April 2008

Update

Today I start my course in PFlow (Particle Flow) FX in 3DS Max. I'm really looking forward to this I've already done a course in FumeFX & that went pretty well.

The website is going well but i still need to sort a load of work to put on it. I'm tempted to just put it up & add to it as i get it done.

Steve

Tuesday 1 April 2008

Testing Testing 1 2 3

Hopefully my new website will be up by the end of the week.