carrier composite

recently had to composite this aircraft carrier into a show. Bought the model on Turbosquid.

I'm most proud of the water. Not rocket science but the reflection was a fractal stretched horizontally and animated to give the impression of slight water ripples.

http://vimeo.com/33626057

Master Zap moves to Autodesk!!!!

Master Zap is being hired by autodesk to help with mental ray integration. This is a real boon to all us who've been frustrated by autodesk's poor implementation of MR (still have to manually activate production shaders, no iray support in Maya). Looks like my life may be getting easier soon.

Nat Geo's Super Launch special airs soon.

Haven't posted in a while but I've got some cool fire stuff coming up. Finally getting the hang of Maya's air/fuel ratio setting which eliminates the need to fake tanslucency in the opacity ramp. It requires a very different approach than other methods and I've found it best to sepreate out the smoke/density component from the temperature incandesence. Anywho, the link below give info on a show I worked on for Nat Geo. The titles and lower thirds are mine but they aren't much to marvel at. What I think I did do well was a graphic explaining the difference between a convential electronic motor and and the navy's new EMALS launch system.

Super Launch

Pretty sure the old system worked fine but apparently the Navy felt like spending more money on some cool new stuff.

Fake news graphics!

New fake graphics package for season 5 of GOT.

http://vimeo.com/31270442

RAM issue and ASUS motherboards

I RMAed my faulty ASUS motherboard and it still threw a ram error. I pluged the ram in to slots B1 and B2 and it worked. I could send it back and get a different board with four functioning slots but forget it. I'll deal. This is the final straw with ASUS however. 3 boards with faulty slots and the first bad board popped up over 1.5 years ago. They clearly have some serious manufacturing problems that they refuse to address. Shame.

experiments in Image based lighting

Just completed my first experiment with Image Based Lighing.

In retrospect it would have been better to shoot on somethign better than a z1u. It made matchmoving a nightmare.

http://vimeo.com/30703971

RAM and motherboard QVL

Putting together the render farm her and keep getting ram errors with a "qualified" RAM on my ASUS mobo. I'm going to swap it with the ram Kingston recommends for this board. Guess the lesson is don't rely on the QVL from the motherboard manufacturer.