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I've been looking into visas and potentially moving around a bit in about 2 years, and i'm a little bit confused as to how it'd work. The only one I can find which I could apply for also requires a degree in my 'chosen field'. I dont get how this works for CG though, because 5 years ago there were no degrees for it and unless I move down south all the ones up here are at a seriously basic level, with the work being put out like what you'd pick up in 6 months by yourself. I've seen a few job postings recently and they all say US visa holders only, even for huge places. How hard is it to get reoacted for a job? I'm not seeing any way it could work from websites, dont know if it becomes more lenient when you get interviewed or what. Has anyone else had experience with this/been through the process? I'd really rather not have to go to uni to learn poo poo I already know, or have to move down south for 2 years for it to be relevant. I quite like getting paid now. edit: failing that is there an online degree I could do, where i just whip up a scene and write a dissertation about GI/maths? haha.
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May 2, 2010 13:11
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I just got laid off so I'm going to be spending lots of time in this thread as I work on my portfolio! The lay off really blind sided me. I have some stuff from work, but I'm not really happy with it so I have a lot of work ahead of me.
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May 2, 2010 17:46
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Alterian posted:I just got laid off so I'm going to be spending lots of time in this thread as I work on my portfolio! Welcome to the industry, enjoy your stay  Please exit the building.
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May 2, 2010 22:31
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cubicle gangster posted:I've been looking into visas and potentially moving around a bit in about 2 years, and i'm a little bit confused as to how it'd work. A friend of mine has been offered FX work in the the states but he is in a similar situation to you. He really knows his stuff but he doesn't have a degree. A studio had their lawyer look into the possibility of getting him special consideration or something but the consensus was that he needed like 5 years in the industry or something to make up for not having the degree. He applied to a lovely college that was offering degrees and got recognition of prior learning from industry experience and only has to do one year to get it. This is going from Australia to the US by the way.
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May 3, 2010 00:08
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cubicle gangster posted:I've been looking into visas and potentially moving around a bit in about 2 years, and i'm a little bit confused as to how it'd work. Which country are you coming from? That makes a difference. Canadians get the TN-1 visa which is easy and quick to process [you literally get it at the airport before your flight]. Other options are H1B's and O1's. O1's is the catch-all visa, which is used when you want someone special but they're in a field where they may not have a traditional degree [eg. actor, musician, athlete, etc]. As for not having a degree when they didn't exist a few years ago... Congratulations! , you are a Graphic Designer. If you boil it down, that's what basically we are, and it makes it easy for immigration to lump you in a category. As for requirements, it will depend on a visa. Ie. H1B usually needs a degree, TN1 needs a degree, or a certificate college program + work experience. O-1 requires recognized work experience as well as documented achievements and published works to back your career. Magazine covers/articles count. Siggraph papers count, even screen shots from film credits count [recently!] as documentation. It boils down to having a good immigration attorney. If you apply to a place and get a job offer, let them worry about that. When I got a job offer from a US studio, the company's lawyer asked me to fax them a form and a bunch of photocopies of my personal documents. They sent me back a big immigration package, it contained all the US Customs forms already pre-filled out for the customs official, plus copies of all my data included in the file, including diploma, transcripts, work experience history, contact info, passport data, birth certificate, etc. Basically they did all the work for the customs guy and it makes their job easier, all they have to do is flip through the data, get my biometrics and let their computer chew on my info for a bit. Took me 15 minutes to get my first visa, then I paid a small fee for it and waited for my flight. Now if they can get through that massive green card backlog I'd be set. 
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May 3, 2010 11:08
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Does anyone know if newer ATI Radeons still have all the weird glitches with Maya? I'm planning out a new workstation build and I'm wondering which chipset manufacturer'd be better.
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May 3, 2010 21:26
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GFBeach posted:Does anyone know if newer ATI Radeons still have all the weird glitches with Maya? I'm planning out a new workstation build and I'm wondering which chipset manufacturer'd be better. The 4800 series work great with Maya with the latest drivers. although multiple screens were a problem a year ago. ATI are starting to get there act together with the drivers in resent years. Name a few glitches and I'll see if I can replicate them.
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May 3, 2010 21:36
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The last Radeon I used was an X1950 Pro. That was a few years ago, but I recall a glitch where if I turned on High Quality Preview in a viewport I'd get transparency artifacts even if the surfaces didn't have any transparency enabled. I think a similar glitch happened when I used Maya's hardware renderer, but I don't use that very often; I'm more concerned about High Quality Preview. That particular video card burned out when I was playing through Mass Effect 1, and the glitches went away when I switched to a Geforce 9600GT.
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May 3, 2010 22:18
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GFBeach posted:The last Radeon I used was an X1950 Pro. That was a few years ago, but I recall a glitch where if I turned on High Quality Preview in a viewport I'd get transparency artifacts even if the surfaces didn't have any transparency enabled. I was using a Radeon X1600 and it seemed to have an issue depth sorting properly. Similar to when you have two surfaces occupying the same space and it gets a weird banded texture and the geometry keeps popping? The 1600 did that with everything that was within a grid unit of something else. Is that similar or did you have completely separate issues?
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May 4, 2010 00:57
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robotindisguise posted:I was using a Radeon X1600 and it seemed to have an issue depth sorting properly. Similar to when you have two surfaces occupying the same space and it gets a weird banded texture and the geometry keeps popping? The 1600 did that with everything that was within a grid unit of something else. Is that similar or did you have completely separate issues? I never thought to look for something like that. The HQ Preview/Transparency clash was the main thing that bugged me. v  v
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May 4, 2010 01:23
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Don't go ATI, I'm using a 4780 and I have all sorts of graphical glitches with Maya and Photoshop, no matter what date drivers I use. Like the insert edgeloop tool, how it's supposed to be interactive, as I move it along the edge ring it makes a bunch of repeated yellow lines and it's impossible to tell where the loving edge is going to be inserted.
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May 4, 2010 01:33
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ceebee posted:Don't go ATI, I'm using a 4780 and I have all sorts of graphical glitches with Maya and Photoshop, no matter what date drivers I use. Like the insert edgeloop tool, how it's supposed to be interactive, as I move it along the edge ring it makes a bunch of repeated yellow lines and it's impossible to tell where the loving edge is going to be inserted. I remember getting pretty adept at never over-shooting where I wanted the edgeloop to go and moving slow enough to where you would get a solid color representing one portion of where the loop was going to end up. In the end I think my art suffered for it.
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May 4, 2010 01:49
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EoinCannon posted:A studio had their lawyer look into the possibility of getting him special consideration or something but the consensus was that he needed like 5 years in the industry or something to make up for not having the degree. This is pretty promising news - i've already got 5 years experience and i'll probably have 7 by the time I leave. Big K - i'm coming from the UK, sorry. Huge thanks for the low down, feel much more confident about diving in now and it's good to know I probably dont need to go to uni. O-1 sounds like it's going to be my bag, i've got some photos of when my renders were used on site and i've been in one of the cgsociety books. edit: this also raises the question - you make it sound pretty easy for the company to sort out but i've seen some pretty big places with 'US ONLY' on their job postings. Thats what threw me off in the first place. cubicle gangster fucked around with this message at 10:24 on May 4, 2010 |
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May 4, 2010 10:16
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Heh, part of the reason I chose to work somewhere other than the US was the visa thing. I even had to leave to do the internship in Canada instead of the US (I was studying there), as stopping study would void the visa. Ironically, because my first language was English, I couldn't enroll in an English course- so speaking English made it harder to stay in the US. I tried taking a token CG course at Santa Monica Community College but they figured out I was just visa scamming, so off to Toronto I went. Also Ironic is that I'm in the UK not on the Australian passport but a Finnish one. Even though Australians have the same queen and are under the commonwealth, it was easier for me to move there because I have Finnish citizenship. Navigating the Visa Seas is a total mindfuck.
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May 4, 2010 14:58
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My friend came from the UK, but he had an aerospace degree which was loosely connected to his work via CAD work and such. Published work with ISBN numbers helps big time. Here's a tip, if you see places with odd restrictions [ie. US only] apply anyways. Right now the California job market is flooded more than usual with a major studio shutting down, but always apply. Basically, it's like I tell US students, you don't really a degree to get a job if you are good enough and have experience, unless you are coming from another country or want to work in another country. In which case a generic graphic design or photography program at a community college will be enough to get you a work visa. Any time of tangentially related degree program will work. That being said O-1's can be hard to get if it's your first visa, in our industry, I see O-1's being assigned usually after someone already had H1B's Or TN's or whatever already and they ran out of renewals for those. On the other hand I've seen people completely screw up. They get a job offer from a lovely company that won't pay for an immigration lawyer, leaving the paperwork to the applicant which always, always results in a rejection. The Customs officer will sit there and see 2 applicants. One with a immigration package with duplicates of paperwork filled out in type, with duplicates of supporting documentation, all sorted into folders and dividers vs some random college art students chicken scratch on outdated forms. On the other hand, I had a friend get rejected, he had a job offer from ILM, but the immigration guy figured out that the guy only took a 1 year art school program and had only 1 year of work experience, so technically he didn't qualify for TN-1 status, so he got rejected at the airport right before the flight. On the upshot, at least you are in the UK, that's where work is booming now. Ever since the tax credit for production costs was made permanent in the uk, there was a huge sucking sound in California as many VFX heavy shows most of their work to London. Big K of Justice fucked around with this message at 18:33 on May 4, 2010 |
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May 4, 2010 18:27
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I made a bucket! I'm pretty pleased with it. I kept fussing with it and had to just tell myself to call it done. Click here for the full 1024x800 image.
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May 4, 2010 19:44
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Alterian posted:I made a bucket! I'm pretty pleased with it. I kept fussing with it and had to just tell myself to call it done. Nice bucket! How did you get the rope pattern on the normal map? Was that sculpted? Also, did you used to work at Icarus? I heard they cut their staff pretty heavily just this past week. I talked with the art director at TGC and was trying to get a job there, but it looks like there's no chance of that happening now.
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May 4, 2010 21:09
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BigKOfJustice posted:On the upshot, at least you are in the UK, that's where work is booming now. Ever since the tax credit for production costs was made permanent in the uk, there was a huge sucking sound in California as many VFX heavy shows most of their work to London. Yeah London is great in terms of the quantity of work, but the weak pound and a conspiracy of sorts between the major production companies RE working conditions/contracts means that I could make more at KFC in Sydney right now than here (well, not far off anyway). So I'm really beginning to question why I'm here instead of some other city; I guess the answer would be the lifestyle as it's an awesome place to live.
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May 4, 2010 21:43
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BigKOfJustice posted:On the upshot, at least you are in the UK, that's where work is booming now. Ever since the tax credit for production costs was made permanent in the uk, there was a huge sucking sound in California as many VFX heavy shows most of their work to London. See, thats a problem if anything. I want to use this as an excuse to leave the country for a while... I might end up shifting somewhere else in the country for a couple of years though, i'm getting a bit sick of it here. We used to get huge bonuses quite regularly but we dont anymore. And we dont get paid overtime either, while being expected to work up to 70 hours on an average wage for 40. Normally this would be expected, but we're doing better than anyone else and a month ago the boss spent £90k on a brand new aston martin. Theres only 10 of us in the office, so it's not a major drop to throw something our way. ...Bit of a rant there, sorry. I'm still in the office. 14h and counting. cubicle gangster fucked around with this message at 21:54 on May 4, 2010 |
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May 4, 2010 21:52
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GFBeach posted:Nice bucket! How did you get the rope pattern on the normal map? Was that sculpted? Do you mean the twisty part in the normal map or the texture in the diffuse map? Yes. Icarus Who was it you talked to? Was it Devo?
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May 4, 2010 22:11
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Alterian posted:Do you mean the twisty part in the normal map or the texture in the diffuse map? The twisty part on the normal map. The guy I talked to was Chris. I gave him my demo reel and he said he'd forward it to their head animation guy, but I guess it's a moot point now.
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May 4, 2010 23:26
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GFBeach posted:The twisty part on the normal map. The twisty part I modeled high poly and did a render to texture in max. It was actually pretty easy. I had 4 cylinders next to each other, put a twist modifier on it to twist them together, used a bend modifier to get it in a loop and an FFD to fit it into shape better. Chris is a great guy and very knowledgeable. Our whole animation department is gone so don't expect to be contacted back any time soon. Sorry. 
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May 4, 2010 23:49
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Thanks for the comments on my earlier intestinal worm piece. Here is the final piece. (The green is bile that *edit- rests* on the floor of the intestine)  Click here for the full 1280x720 image. polarbear_terrorist fucked around with this message at 00:24 on May 5, 2010 |
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May 5, 2010 00:18
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Looks neat. a few things bug me though. The worms inside the eggs, should they be folded like that? The heads are also showing a lot of pinching. The bile looks more like gas.
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May 5, 2010 00:53
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SynthOrange posted:Looks neat. a few things bug me though. The worms inside the eggs, should they be folded like that? The heads are also showing a lot of pinching. The bile looks more like gas. Oh wow! The file didn't save right. I'll have to go back in to school to fix that. It's definitely neon-pukey green misty swirls. Any suggestions about the pinching on baby worms? I tried a mesh smooth but that crashed the program. Maybe I could just try that again. I'll fix the folding issue. They're supposed to be contorted in the eggs but I can push it to make it more organic.
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May 5, 2010 01:09
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Alterian posted:I made a bucket! I'm pretty pleased with it. I kept fussing with it and had to just tell myself to call it done. Your normal map is making the metal rim wavy because you pushed your project cage too far out. Your rivets on the metal rim are ovals and squishy, probably a projection issue again? I'm not seeing the normal map affecting much of anything - what is your lighting setup looking like? I can see the normal on the rope and I can faintly see some of the normal map details in the finished asset if I look for them (the X scratch on one of the rivets, the wooden wave is visible towards the bottoms of the planks but the tops are very hard-edged and lacking the look that the normal map should be giving them. It feels like your diffuse is fighting a lot of the normal map detail as well, none of the coloration or staining or anything matches the sculpted appearance. You've also got a lot of value variation in the metal's diffuse which is ultimately killing your lighting on it, I think, metal has very little value or color variation in the diffuse, most of the color and value comes from the spec and the specular response. This value variation is giving the illusion of lighting (even if it isn't strictly lighting) which is fighting the scene's light rig and the normal information and making your metal look weak. How come there is a rivet/hole on the inside of the bucket but none on the outside where the rope attaches? Your unwrap is fairly wasteful - I'd straighten out the ropes, the metal/wooden arcs, etc, and better maximize that space. I'm guilty of doing this kind of stuff too but it doesn't show well. What is up with that weird patch of UVs in the middle of the metal rim? It looks like a near-white block. Your UVs are kind of hard to read, I think overlaying them more faintly and letting us see the texture more clearly would help make more visual sense of what is going on. To be honest I'm not a huge fan of showing the unwrap mesh itself since it makes it harder to read the textural work. Overall I'm not digging the vertical hash texture presentation. I think if you're going to do it like that the diagonal approach is more attractive and reads better. I'd rather see the full texture sheets though because its hard to tell what some of that stuff even is, I'm still not sure what the black thin thing on the right is, I'd assume rope but I see the rope on the bottom? Unless you have 3 separate rope bits on your unwrap (why, when you're splitting your bucket, where there is much more flat surface where unique detail would be more noticeable?) Also with your bucket construction if you aren't doing it you could probably do a rotational symmetry rather than a mirrored symmetry, but I think you're doing this already) Why greyscale spec? This is 2010, use some colored spec to get your coppery rivets reading as something coppery, you're not being hamstrung by whatever technical limits your old project had any more  Overall its a lot of little things that I think would be excusable (although not something to brag about) in a production environment but to be honest they add up to something that does not show that well for a portfolio piece. I highly doubt that this is the best you can do since the sculpted bucket appears to have a lot more care and thought put into it than the final asset seems to - I almost get the feeling that you got pissed at it halfway and just ran it out to completion half-heartedly (rather than just abandoning it halfway through). I've done the same plenty of times so I can understand but right now is your chance to really push yourself and show what you're capable of when not bound by some deadline or level designer or whatnot. Also, I obviously get that you need to churn out some portfolio assets and whatnot quickly since you're suddenly on the job hunt, but for someone who was an environment lead I'd hope for something more engaging and interesting than a bucket. If I were personally in your situation I'd devote some more time to making a single finished piece more in line with a project like The Unearthly Challenge type stuff - http://www.unearthlychallenge.com/2009/en_index.php with a few individual pieces you could call out in greater detail, and then lump whatever old stuff you have into a "past projects" portfolio category or something. I fear I sound like kind of a twat here and obviously you know your situation better than I do but I really do want to see you guys land on your feet and I would rather give some harsh crit and piss you off a little than give some faint praise and see you posting about being jobless 6 months from now
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May 5, 2010 01:31
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I hope you'll give me those kind of sweet crits when I show you some of my junk. Super helpful mang.
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May 5, 2010 02:18
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My situation is pretty....manic right now. I won't go into details here, but I have to get a portfolio as best as I can done by the end of the week. The bucket was a warm up since I haven't worked on anything high poly at work in a long time. All the experience I've had with it recently is stuff I've been messing with at home, but nothing really solid. My team primarily worked on 3d iphone games and cut scenes. I am definitely qualified to be a lead artist on a mobile or handheld game. I can get some great looking art out of very little and have it be super efficient. I'm not going for a lead art on any of the higher end stuff. I'm trying to move into the higher end stuff, but if I have to get another job doing iphone or DS type games then I'll take it. My art team was really bizarre. The poo poo we had to work on and what was asked of me was really weird. I'll talk about it on AIM, but I don't want to derail this thread. Here's a piece from my old job that I put together. It has an actual diffuse and spec started on it, but I never got to finish it. The silhouette is pretty dull and it could be a little more dynamic, but it was suppose to fit in a certain area and it would have been good for what it was suppose to be. Oh well. I hope to finish the texturing this week. I might try to reproject the normal map as well.  Click here for the full 800x1024 image.
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May 5, 2010 03:07
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ceebee posted:I hope you'll give me those kind of sweet crits when I show you some of my junk. Super helpful mang. you junk doesn't fill the very small wrap you've got for it effectively, the normal map is too strong and makes it always look wrinkly, has an unnecessary bend modifier on it and I'm not sure those sores really show well. Alt the tech pillar looks pretty dope in the high poly but your projection is having some issues with distortion. I'm not sure how much time you spend on the projection cage normally but manually going in and adjusting the cage verts around corners and such is pretty useful, especially around those interior corners like you have 1/3rd up the thing - the way the middle is inset into the base like that makes your cage normals go wonky and so you'll have to manually adjust both the bottom and the top points of that piece - if I'm not being clear I can photoshop it. I've been working on high poly guns and robots and poo poo for a couple of years, I don't do much environment stuff but there is definitely some overlap skillset-wise and I've gotten/given a lot of pointers in regards to it. If you have any questions that I might be able to answer feel free to IM me at SigmaX01 I like pretending I know what I'm talking about. Are you working in Max or Maya? If you do take another crack at that column I would strongly recommend coloring the different elements on the high poly so you can bake out a diffuse mask to make it easier to paint. I usually color my elements pure red/green/blue so I can use each channel as an 8bit alpha to get nice anti-aliased selections, but some folks use any number of colors and just render it out at a higher resolution, make their selection masks, and then scale those back down. I haven't actually watched Racer445's AK tutorial but its a full-process high->low tutorial and it gets rave reviews: http://racer445.com/ Best of luck with the quick portfolio
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May 5, 2010 03:52
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Does anybody have any comments on the latest release of Mudbox? I just can't get into Zbrush but right now the vendor I'd use only has 2010, I'm wondering if it would be worth waiting for 2011.
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May 5, 2010 06:08
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cubicle gangster posted:See, thats a problem if anything. I want to use this as an excuse to leave the country for a while... I heard that, I was offered a job in London after my supervisor left and wanted me to go with him, I passed after crunching a few numbers, I'd make about the same amount of money, but the cost of living was double Los Angeles and the whole changing jobs for the sake of it and moving halfway across the world on a whim kind of dampened the idea. The thing I'm hearing is that some US labor brought to the UK is on a different payscale than local workers, which blows. I was in that boat in Canada where I was the "local" talent and the US guys made about double vs any Canadian there. The one upshot was the US guys were project hires and the Canadian guys were staff with job security but for the most part you are better off jumping studio to studio working on high profile stuff vs sitting at one place for too long.
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May 5, 2010 08:16
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I'd rather make double and loose my job security than just 'get by' with enough to pay rent... I'm far too comfortable with job security, and I know it'll take a loving massive amount of effort to leave. If I was forced to i'd embrace the oppertunity eaily though, haha. cubicle gangster fucked around with this message at 09:21 on May 5, 2010 |
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May 5, 2010 09:19
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cubicle gangster posted:I'd rather make double and loose my job security than just 'get by' with enough to pay rent... Amen bro  
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May 5, 2010 18:20
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Listerine posted:Does anybody have any comments on the latest release of Mudbox? I just can't get into Zbrush but right now the vendor I'd use only has 2010, I'm wondering if it would be worth waiting for 2011. Why can't you get into ZBrush right now? Mudbox only has a few things over ZBrush, but ZBrush has a ton of poo poo that Mudbox doesn't. Are you afraid of the interface or something?
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May 5, 2010 22:02
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Just started getting into Zbrush. It's pretty awesome. Took a little while to get used to the UI, but I got the basics down. Should probably mock up a base mesh in 3dsmax to start with instead of a polysphere. 
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May 6, 2010 00:17
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ceebee posted:Why can't you get into ZBrush right now? Mudbox only has a few things over ZBrush, but ZBrush has a ton of poo poo that Mudbox doesn't. It's pretty much the interface. This is a hobby for me, and I don't need the tons of extra stuff that Zbrush has; I do own a copy though so I can always go back if I get more time later to do stuff. I really do like Zbrush, but when I go through periods of 3-4 months in between playing with stuff, having to relearn parts of a very unintuitive interface gets to be a waste of time. Mudbox is easier for me to use to do the relatively few things I want to do, I'm just wondering if 2011 has improvements to painting and displacement map extraction that are worth waiting for.
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May 6, 2010 00:35
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The only thing I like about the new Mudbox is it's vector displacement stencils. Allows for geometry stencils that are able to throw poo poo down in 3 directions instead of two, it's pretty loving dope. Cheggit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPezIU0c4zc Otherwise, ZBrush is the way to go. lecaptain: Not a bad first head, the new polysphere is a lot better than the old one (no poles, made of all quads) so making a bust or head out of one isn't such a bad idea. I was wondering does anybody know of a way I'd be able to charge a little bit of money for some basic ZBrush e-classes via screencast or something? Going to school right now and I could use a little bit of monies in return for some good beginner/intermediate ZBrush lessons.
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May 6, 2010 03:30
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ceebee posted:The only thing I like about the new Mudbox is it's vector displacement stencils. Allows for geometry stencils that are able to throw poo poo down in 3 directions instead of two, it's pretty loving dope.  when does this come out? I need to get this.
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May 6, 2010 03:48
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FERN GULLY FAN posted:
Mudbox 2011 is out I think, not sure how easy it is to create the vector displacement stencils. Or if it's even built into it for the final product.
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May 6, 2010 03:57
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ceebee posted:The only thing I like about the new Mudbox is it's vector displacement stencils. Allows for geometry stencils that are able to throw poo poo down in 3 directions instead of two, it's pretty loving dope. That's a pretty cool feature. I'd love to stick with Zbrush but when I have to relearn how to do things every 3 or 4 months, it's not very efficient.
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