Monday, October 29, 2012

Vote Zomney!

This is brilliant


Monday, October 22, 2012

practical FX



Today I found this great youTube channel. This guy is shooting a lot of practical FX very well.
I don't think his videos are good to use for game or movie assets but the images he offers are just so beautiful.
Even if I'm a sucker for any cool CG, nature and good filming will still win my heart.

Friday, October 12, 2012

xnview

For game FX artist out there and for you, the cg person trying painfully to convert a bunch of images, or trying to create a script/action in PS to convert your sequence of images into DDS.
I have a secret for you: XNVIEW!
This little piece of software saves me hours of work. I've tried ImageMagick and other command base software to try to do this... call me stupid or whatever you want but these guys conveniently made a little GUI and even a right mouse click menu in explorer to convert images to different format and/or resolution.

And Yes it is free!

Work is a little crazy and I'm still struggling with the perfect flame cycle...
Sorry Peter, your cycle technique is awesome but still require more than 60 frame to be usable.
I need something that is less than 30.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

audio driving simulation

I was recently working on some project involved with audio driven simulation. Using Houdini you have a few control and easy ways to bring audio (pitch, bass, beats..etc) as animation curves, so it's quiet easy to control and influence a particle system or shader for that matter.
Increasing incandescence, opacity or moving thru hues. Unfortunately it isn't as easy in maya. During my research I found the following Vimeo channel. Flight404. Very cool stuff. Basically the author or creator if you like is using audio to drive simulation as but at a higher level. If I understood well, he isn't using any off the shelf tool, but writing his own programs using  Processing (processing.org). (which is a programming language), he also seems to use physics algorithm for his simulations. more specifically magnetic and fluid fields equation. But most importantly, and this is why I like his work so much, it is gorgeous! his choice of color, shape, audio and timing is very inspiring.
I'm trying some stuff in houdini that I'll post soon. (hopefully.... :))