Tuesday, January 27, 2004

Rendering without digital input


While I am waiting to get some work/updates completed on the rendering stations I have been working with Airbrushing and paintbrushes to get a better feel for how these non-digital techniques work. Airbrushing is going to take some more time... I knew I liked digital for a reason. :)

More tutorials, cadding, modeling and photography updates on the way soon.

Make sure you have your firewall and anti-virus software updated....

Monday, January 19, 2004

Down South


I have been in Tampa for the past few days for work and the more time I spend in this town the more I enjoy it. My favorite spot over the past few trips has been YBOR City. I always end up in this area during each trip, plenty of good food, entertainment and more.

Special thanks to Patrick for helping to make each trip a joy.

Tomorrow it's back to freezing temperatures....

happy rendering...

Wednesday, January 14, 2004

Reading is fundamental


I love books and reading, I admit that they are my downfall. Our house has many bookshelves, even my fishtank stands were designed to double as bookshelves. :)

My most recent purchase is The Complete Animation course by Chris Patmore. This book is more of a highlight of the many different practices for animation that are out there. It is a very simple read and has spurred a few ideas for me to try and think about to better my stills and animations.

One thing I am trying to work into my next animation project is the use of an oversized background, similar to how Disney (and others) used to do it with cel animation. This makes for a cool combination because you get a full "scene" that you can move your camera around in but with no worries of polygon face counts. I just need the right project looking for this style of work.

I was having a conversation with Miker the Biker about setting up a storyline in Architectural animations. I see it far too often that people just consider the software output to be good enough and give little to no thought about the camera angle, speed and what they are trying to show. I am not saying that you need to do full storyboards but you do need to consider why you are doing this animation. Is it being done to fill time and make it look like you have done more than you really have? Often times less is more.

Take for example the recent Mars trip, the animations that were done for this were top notch (check out MER entry). Good camera angles and often times the main character (the rocket ship) was in and out of the shot. That is my point of pushing the architectural stale look of animations further.

Sunday, January 11, 2004

CAD and Customization


After a distressed e-mail from an old friend who needed to make many changes to a set of drawings I whipped up a small visual lisp routine for him to use and he remarked how many hours this has saved him just in these couple of drawings. This led into a good discussion of the many different ways to customize CAD to save you time.

One of my favorite things about AutoCAD is that you can customize it, other times my least favorite thing about AutoCAD is that you can customize it. :) Some of the many ways you can customize it are button macros, script files, lisp, visual lisp, VB, VBA and more. If you work with AutoCAD daily you should really look into learning ways to save you time. What the future holds for programming languages and AutoCAD is anyone's guess at this point, but I expect to see more .net. This would be good for you to know as this can then interface with many other programs to share and exchange information.

My wishlist for customization? I have been learning MAXScripting for VIZ/MAX and love the recorder. I have used this type of feature in other programs that basically give you the code for what you just did. Real programmers would never use this you say? For me I am not a daily programmer so this would give me the code start I need so I can focus on tweaking this into exactly what I need. Many times my coding is used to save time by doing repetitive tasks, other times it is done to create a command or tool that does not exist. That is what I love about this, many ways to do any task and many possible solutions when you add programming to your bag of tricks.

happy coding...

Tadah....


Back from behind the disappearing curtain. Where have I been and why no updates? Sick, working and diving into MAXScripting and MAX 6.

Just finished up a new tutorial on MAXScripting that will be available at the VIZDepot in the next few hours. In my spare time I have offered my time to Steven to help make this great resource even better. If you get the chance stop by and visit the site.

happy rendering...

Saturday, January 03, 2004

VIZ Resource


With the New Year bringing many changes the same goes for the VIZDepot which has a new look, content and more. Be sure to visit. Keep up the great work Steve!

Happy Rendering...
 

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