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What's more is you can sign up and pay $20 once, pull the source code and editor, and then cancel your sub and you can just use it for forever. You have to resub to get any updates, but still. Theoretically, you could just resub every 6 months or as needed or whatever and pull down the latest version giving you official, full access to the engine for next to nothing. Crazy.
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Mar 19, 2014 18:57
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Are you sure? That seems like a huge loophole unless they did it on purpose. Even with a regular subscription though, that's a crazy deal.
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Mar 19, 2014 20:29
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Rubber Slug posted:Are you sure? That seems like a huge loophole unless they did it on purpose. Even with a regular subscription though, that's a crazy deal. quote:•Do I have to worry about a billing contract or penalties for cancelling my subscription?
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Mar 19, 2014 20:37
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No idea if we talked about this yet but Quixel SUITE got announced too and  It comes with updated versions of NDO/DDO/3DO/Megascans, and seems stunning. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkLFWFskgxE&hd=1
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Mar 20, 2014 00:12
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It's mentioned on the last page, but it's still pretty crazy awesome, so whatever. 
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Mar 20, 2014 00:17
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So Autodesk announced their 2015 Maya has Bifrost and showed off an awesome water simulation. Like all things Autodesk, I don't expect it to actually integrate well until the 2016 or 2017 edition, but it's pretty cool what it can do. Also there's some fancy new skinning method involving voxels. So that's interesting. Still nothing about preventing gimbal lock once and for all.
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Mar 21, 2014 00:43
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Ccs posted:So Autodesk announced their 2015 Maya has Bifrost and showed off an awesome water simulation. Like all things Autodesk, I don't expect it to actually integrate well until the 2016 or 2017 edition, but it's pretty cool what it can do. I don't know much more than the basics, but isn't the fix for gimbal lock just to use quaternions? What's the holdup exactly?
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Mar 21, 2014 01:08
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Jewel posted:I don't know much more than the basics, but isn't the fix for gimbal lock just to use quaternions? What's the holdup exactly? That Maya ages ago, decided that calculating quarternions for orient constraints was too processor heavy and despite the great increase in CPU power since then, still hasn't added them in. I'm 99% certain that the custom built maya version we had at Weta in 2003/4 used quarternions in the orient constraints and it caused me no end of trouble when I went to a different company afterwards. (And support refused to acknowledge that there was anything wrong with baked rotations flipping). Since then, we've just added a euler filter process to every post-animation release task. It's been a few years since I had to deal with this, so it may all have changed...
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Mar 21, 2014 02:22
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Ccs posted:So Autodesk announced their 2015 Maya has Bifrost and showed off an awesome water simulation. Like all things Autodesk, I don't expect it to actually integrate well until the 2016 or 2017 edition, but it's pretty cool what it can do. I'm quite excited to start playing with Bifrost. I use Houdini, which I enjoy a lot, for fluid sims, but having a usable fluid system inside Maya is still compelling since that's where I do most of my modeling and rendering.
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Mar 21, 2014 02:51
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Bifrost runs outside of Maya (invisible to user) and shares data with Maya behind the scenes. It is pretty barebones right now but will be pretty awesome when the stuff we have seen on the beta forums will become reality. Really loving Maya 2015. Too bad I won't have it at work 
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Mar 21, 2014 03:29
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So SONY filed a WARN act notice to the CA Government with Imageworks and SPA addresses being part of staffing layoffs of 200 or so people this summer. End of an Era, if you told me a few years ago that LA VFX was going to completely collapse with DD and R+H going Bankrupt and Sony going all "Move to Canada or you are fired" I would have said you were smoking crack. I guess that just leaves Method and a bunch of medium sized studios as all its left for now as the future of the restructured DD/R+H is still in doubt. I never thought folks in BC/Quebec would be ok with their governments giving out about a billion dollars in cash rebates to buy work from the US Studios. It was one reason why I left Toronto over a decade ago because the early BC DAVE "rebates" were dicking over all non-BC bids in Canada. Never saw the industry for below the line workers in such a hosed up date.
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Mar 21, 2014 16:48
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Jewel posted:I don't know much more than the basics, but isn't the fix for gimbal lock just to use quaternions? What's the holdup exactly? Have you ever looked at quaternions in an fcurve editor? It isn't something that translates to human interaction at all. For all non-human interaction items, most processes will already be using quaternions to solve rotations.
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Mar 21, 2014 18:32
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Big K of Justice posted:So SONY filed a WARN act notice to the CA Government with Imageworks and SPA addresses being part of staffing layoffs of 200 or so people this summer. I live in montreal. Whenever I would talk about subsidies with coworkers it always ended with them saying they didn't care as they have a job. FYGM galore. Are you moving back to Canada?
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Mar 21, 2014 21:00
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Yeah, they'll have a job until something changes and the subsidies go away and Hollywood just turns even more to overseas production. Unsustainable is the industry that relies entirely on handouts.
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Mar 21, 2014 22:29
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mutata posted:Yeah, they'll have a job until something changes and the subsidies go away and Hollywood just turns even more to overseas production. Unsustainable is the industry that relies entirely on handouts. It's worked well for Vancouver, though. I moved here before it was really a *thing* and I was seriously expecting to end up doing TV work, but instead ended up doing the same quality of work as I was doing in London. The talent and infrastructure has exploded and there's a lot more Canadians now working in the industry, whereas when I first moved here, it was only the token one or two per department. It's taken a good 5 years to get to that level and we're still struggling to find good enough people, so it's all well and good for Quebec to offer better incentives, but if they can't get the people to do the work, then it's a non-starter. If the rumours are right, that was also one of the reasons that Prime Focus moved most of the Hercules work to London: They simply couldnt hire enough (quality) people in Vancouver. Having said that, I do expect to move once or twice more before 'retiring', but then that's how the industry has always been for me and frankly, I don't have much sympathy for the people in LA refusing to move. In the end, it's still a well-paid job and more and more of the companies are offering decent benefits, something that was non-existant 10 years ago (at least outside California).
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Mar 21, 2014 22:55
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tuna posted:Have you ever looked at quaternions in an fcurve editor? It isn't something that translates to human interaction at all. For all non-human interaction items, most processes will already be using quaternions to solve rotations. Well the program would do the quaternions in the background, but still show the euler curves in the graph editor. I think that's how it works in Motion Builder. It's really annoying because to avoid gimbal lock I actually have to add extra controls and animate the y rotation of the main torso on one control, and the x and z on the other. This is also what the Norman rig has. But constantly having to switch between controls can eat up time. quote:I never thought folks in BC/Quebec would be ok with their governments giving out about a billion dollars in cash rebates to buy work from the US Studios. It was one reason why I left Toronto over a decade ago because the early BC DAVE "rebates" were dicking over all non-BC bids in Canada. Never saw the industry for below the line workers in such a hosed up date. This is part of why I'm doing an animation program in Canada now. I want the work visa, and after that apply for permanent residence status. It seems to be where the work is going for CG. Also I like your guys universal health care thing.
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Mar 22, 2014 00:43
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FWIW, there's no shortage of animators (in Vancouver).
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Mar 22, 2014 00:46
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I'm in Toronto, but yeah I'm aware animation is the thing everybody goes in for, so it's more saturated than the other parts of CG. I also know how to rig, texture, and model, so I'm hoping to find work as a generalist if I cant find an animation job right away. If in 2 years I realize the animation thing just isn't panning out I'll start focusing a lot more on TD aspects. Gonna try learning Python this summer.
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Mar 22, 2014 00:59
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Ccs posted:I'm in Toronto, but yeah I'm aware animation is the thing everybody goes in for, so it's more saturated than the other parts of CG. I also know how to rig, texture, and model, so I'm hoping to find work as a generalist if I cant find an animation job right away. If in 2 years I realize the animation thing just isn't panning out I'll start focusing a lot more on TD aspects. Gonna try learning Python this summer. Seneca's VFX program goes into a tonne of TD-centric stuff, Python included, fwiw.
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Mar 22, 2014 01:34
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Seneca is a loving beast.
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Mar 22, 2014 03:10
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Yeah, I've seen Seneca's stuff, some of it's really good. I'm at Sheridan right now, which I'm liking. In the next two years they're transitioning their programs over to more TD centric stuff, with more creature animation, mocap retargeting, compositing with live action, and using Houdini for muscles, etc. but right now it's still mainly an animation and CG generalist course.
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Mar 22, 2014 04:12
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ImplicitAssembler posted:FWIW, there's no shortage of animators (in Vancouver). There's no shortage of animators anywhere really. I am glad I switched out of animation to other things.
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Mar 22, 2014 04:30
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While we are on the subject of python. What are good resources for learning python for vfx?
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Mar 22, 2014 07:57
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Odddzy posted:While we are on the subject of python. What are good resources for learning python for vfx? There's no real special 'vfx python' aside from the package specific commands/modules. Most of the work is going to be sorting data and to lesser extent, building UIs.
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Mar 22, 2014 09:03
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So I've got a bit of a problem in c4d - I need to create a huge pile of spheres that then collapse away into nothingness. Up till now I've been able to fake the piles by making shells and cloning a bunch of rigid body spheres to them, which I then cache a couple of frames for to ensure they're not intersecting. This has worked fine, but it's been decided there needs to be a shot of a pile of 200,000+ spheres that get smaller and disappear until the pile is gone. I can't think of a decent way to do it, is thinking particles a thing I should look into? dynamics for that many objects just doesn't seem to be viable. E: managed to cheese it a bit by having a large non-dynamic pile that just falls away with a couple thousand spheres around the edges to give a better sense of movement. Doesn't look amazing but it'll do! OtherCubed fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Mar 22, 2014 |
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Mar 22, 2014 11:55
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Ccs posted:Yeah, I've seen Seneca's stuff, some of it's really good. I'm at Sheridan right now, which I'm liking. In the next two years they're transitioning their programs over to more TD centric stuff, with more creature animation, mocap retargeting, compositing with live action, and using Houdini for muscles, etc. but right now it's still mainly an animation and CG generalist course. That's great about the next batch of students but you could benefit a lot earlier by switching to Seneca. This is all second hand, but Sheridan switched from a College to a Technical School a few years ago. Now they can charge more for tuition but they also had to fire the staff that built Seridan's reputation because thy didn't have degrees, just useless practical experience. I hope it's not true but that's what friends have told me about the changes there.
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Mar 22, 2014 19:39
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No, they're still a college. They'll be a University in a few years, once the paperwork goes through with the Ontario government. Anyway my program is a one year intensive thing, and it's almost over. We've got some great teachers, a couple ex-Pixar guys, a guy who ran a studio in Toronto for 20 years, etc. They'll probably be hiring more for when the creature animation program starts.
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Mar 22, 2014 21:42
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Ccs posted:No, they're still a college. They'll be a University in a few years, once the paperwork goes through with the Ontario government.
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Mar 22, 2014 22:23
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It's good, all about animation exercises, learning more about rigging, and putting together a short film. It can be a 2 year program, with the first year being Computer Animation where they try to learn everything (and people stay in the lab 16 hours a day every day sometimes to do so) and then after that there's the optional Digital Character or Visual Effects courses. I went straight to Digital Character since I learned Maya from tutorials last year and it's been pretty good, though the first year students definitely work more because they've never used CG before. Many of my classmates already have work experience from studios in India or China so that's cool. I've heard some funny stories about how the first season of How to Train Your Dragon was made. It involved the Chinese studio's TD department falling apart due to inexperience and they needed to hire a bunch of new animators to hand key every piece of cloth movement using clusters. Insanity. Also their rigs were totally bonkers. The digital character course will become the creature animation and TD course in 2015. I'm sort of tempted to come back and take it but it wouldn't extend my work permit and it's too expensive. From now on I think any additional CG education I get will be from online workshops. But if you're a Canadian citizen it's a pretty good deal.
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Mar 22, 2014 22:39
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If anyone is looking for a photoshop replacement, check Krita out. It is free and I am really impressed with it so far. Going to have it installed at my work computer Monday. http://krita.org/
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Mar 23, 2014 03:15
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What's the easiest way to get some decent looking textures on a model? Anything I make in the 3DS Max material editor looks like crap (even following a few tutorials) and I really don't think I wana mess with lighting and environments at this point. I just want to get get rid of the random placeholder colors so it feels 'done'.
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Mar 23, 2014 03:34
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The Royal Scrub posted:What's the easiest way to get some decent looking textures on a model? Anything I make in the 3DS Max material editor looks like crap (even following a few tutorials) and I really don't think I wana mess with lighting and environments at this point. I just want to get get rid of the random placeholder colors so it feels 'done'. Post an example and we could give some ideas on it.
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Mar 23, 2014 04:06
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Ccs posted:No, they're still a college. They'll be a University in a few years, once the paperwork goes through with the Ontario government. I went to Sheridan and Seneca in the 1990's including Senecas first digital animation course (Maya v1.0  ). Yeah there was a bit of a shake up at Sheridan after I left when most of the staff left [and wound up at the newer program at Seneca]. I was the last year there at the normal price when Sheridan was $1200-1400 a semester. The year after me it doubled. Now its like $9000 a year.. crazy.Not as bad as the students in the US paying $100,000+ for a certificate in a for-profit "game/animation" program.
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Mar 23, 2014 05:37
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Yeah, even paying international tuition it's still cheaper to go here than a school in the states. But it is a luxury, being able to attend a brick and mortar school when there are so many cheaper online opportunities. I'm lucky to not be in debt.
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Mar 23, 2014 05:52
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Odddzy posted:I live in montreal. Whenever I would talk about subsidies with coworkers it always ended with them saying they didn't care as they have a job. FYGM galore. The whole industry is like that. No I'm not moving back, gently caress that I'm not paying those taxes again  2 more months until my green card. FYGM is fine until the cash rebates stop once governments figure out they aren't building a industry and tax payers get sick of 200m-400m handouts to 6 US companies in exchange for a few thousand jobs for a few months out of the year. Louisiana is doing a similar program and it's full of corruption since its a transferable rebate so you got middle men acting as intermediates and flipping the rebates for a profit ImplicitAssembler posted:Prime Focus A lot of eyes are on PF to see if they can finish Sin City 2 on their own or not. ImplicitAssembler posted:I don't have much sympathy for the people in LA refusing to move. Was going to do a long response to this but...  Big K of Justice fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Mar 23, 2014 |
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Mar 23, 2014 05:56
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I'm personally really frustrated with my Game Art course I'm on right now and their refusal to teach anything other than 3DSMax. I'm much better with Maya. For some reason I just can't get my head around Max. I know people swear by it and that it is a powerful program but I keep trying, and keep getting stuck on stuff I know how to do in Maya, and being angry at myself and the program. I don't know why. I just don't like it and after forcing myself all through this year to try and use it, the only work I've managed to get done has been when I threw my hands up and did it in Maya to avoid missing deadlines. As a result the quality of my work has suffered and I feel like a stupid dick who can't learn anything on top of that. It's also doubly frustrating to be paying money for a university course that I don't feel is teaching me what I want to learn. I want to learn Maya and Zbrush in a professional tutor environment as there's only so much I'm getting from watching Youtube or buying tutorials (which I am doing.) Does anyone know of good places that teach Zbrush online? Digitaltutors is unfortunately too expensive for me given I'm already in university, for what I'm afraid will be more of the same, (Watching tutorials without feedback) but I might be able to rustle up a few hundred dollars for a course.
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Mar 23, 2014 19:03
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I think a Gnomon subscription costs $500 for a year, you get access to streaming of all their dvds and videos between now and the past like 10 years. There's also 3dmotive and eat3d, if you haven't checked those out I recommend them. To be honest I spend 90% of my time in ZBrush now, and only use Maya/Max to finalize my low poly and set normals and such. If you want to be a game artist I highly recommend buying some video tutorials from my former lead character artist (and all-around badass artist) Hai Phan, over here: http://www.cgcircuit.com/instructor/Hai.Phan His tutorials cover a LOT of stuff and it's nicely paced, it's a great series and perfect for any aspiring character artist. It's also dirt cheap too, $7 or something for each chapter if I remember correctly. And he uses Maya + ZBrush. Don't worry about what program you're using at school, if you're comfortable in Maya then keep using that. It helps to know both packages at least a little bit because you never know what package the studio that picks you up will be using to get their assets in-engine. If you're in school, focus on making quality art outside of classes. You probably won't get a job with your class work as much as you'll get a job with your personal work that you dump a good amount of time into. ceebee fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Mar 23, 2014 |
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Mar 23, 2014 23:49
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uglynoodles posted:I'm personally really frustrated with my Game Art course I'm on right now and their refusal to teach anything other than 3DSMax. So, what will you do when you finish and get a job in a place that uses Max?
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Mar 24, 2014 02:56
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keyframe posted:If anyone is looking for a photoshop replacement, check Krita out. It is free and I am really impressed with it so far. Going to have it installed at my work computer Monday. This looks really useful, thanks for the link! I've always seen this mentioned in free and opensource communities but never checked it out. I'd say that it looks more like an Autodesk Sketchbook replacement, but then again I have yet to use it.
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Mar 24, 2014 06:54
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ImplicitAssembler posted:So, what will you do when you finish and get a job in a place that uses Max? I don't know, and I'm really, really worried about that. Like I said I've spent the majority of this year trying to brute force myself into using and liking the program and it just isn't clicking. I've heard from a few people that Maya is more common than Max out there, but I won't know until I'm actually there if that's true. @ceebee: Thank you for those links, I will look at them. Hai Phan's work is lovely!
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Mar 24, 2014 12:17
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