The Mill have posted a fantastic “Making Of” showing the huge amount of work that went in to making “A Revolution in Tea” for Lipton, from the initial practical FX RnD, to the rotomation, sims and seamless compositing. Full descriptions and explanations can be found here: http://www.themill.com/millchannel/617/behind-the-scenes-of-lipton-‘the-revolution-in-tea’ Here’s the “Making Of” Behind the Scenes: Lipton
Having begun the switch to Houdini, I’ve been learning how to implement my Python knowledge into Houdini. My first tool is an incremental saver (something I find hugely important), which accounts for files that already exist and warns if a naming convention is not adhered to. This .zip contains the .py script, the code for
This was my first job working with Houdini, creating smoke and dust for this commercial for Lipton. Using setups from my Leads we used Houdini’s smoke solvers and advected particles to create the powdery, inky effects seen in the red and yellow shots. Here’s a “Making Of..” from Lipton, too.
My Lead on this job, Alex, has been interviewed by Solid Angle about our use of their Arnold renderer on this ad. Find it here: https://www.solidangle.com/news/sse-maya/
We won! Three! SSE: Maya has won three awards at the VES awards. Outstanding Animated Character in a Commercial or Broadcast Program Outstanding Visual Effects in a Commercial Outstanding Compositing in a Photoreal/Live Action Commercial. http://www.themill.com/news/2015/february/5/sse-maya-wins-3-ves-awards.aspx http://deadline.com/2015/02/ves-awards-winners-2015-visual-effects-society-award-winner-list-1201366460/ Congratulations to all the people that worked on this job. I am very proud to have been a
I’ve just had the misfortune of trying to export a very basic model with Arnold Shaders from Maya as a .ma file. Upon trying this I get the fateful error. A solution I’ve very quickly found is this python script from Fred Lewis (http://www.movingmedia.com/python-scripts-maya/) # Unlock unknown types and delete them import maya.cmds as mc
In Softimage I use this a lot! Hotkeyed to my NmPad3 key, I have the Isolate Selection tool. Which is great for temporarily hiding all the other stuff in your scene whilst you focus one one thing specifically. In Maya – I’ve learned, there are some scripts available out there. In a quick attempt to
One thing I rely on heavily when using Sofitmage is the ability to use multiple explorers to navigate the scene. Inherently in Maya this functionality does not exist. However, as many of us are rapidly learning – it can be scripted. This tiny snippet will do the trick. I’ve added this to the hotkey 8
In the advent of Softimage’s demise I am, like many, having to try and migrate to other software. I’m currently, slowly, dabbling with Houdini and Maya. In an attempt to document my experiences I shall start posting some “interesting” things I find along my travels. First off I’ve sat down and watched a couple of
We’ve just finished up on this campaign for Currys / PC World. I worked as part of the pre-vis team, closely with the director, Chris Cairns, creating the choreography for the various motion-controlled, stop-motion and CGI appliances in order for the team on-set to understand the timings of the practical rigs and eventual composition. The
