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.

Light Manipulator for internal fluid light

At long last I've finished my MEL script that adds a directional light as a controler for a fluids internal light.

You must first select the fluid and then run the script.

This version creates a directional light and locator that whose translation is locked and whose visibility is off. At some point I might update it to exclude the creation of these two nodes.

Here's the code. I'll provide a link to download the file shortly.

string $fluidSelected[0] = `ls -sl `;
string $lightManipulator = "lightManipulator";
string $fluidAndLightMainipulator = $fluidSelected[0] + "_" + $lightManipulator;  //gets name of fluid and add "lightManipulater"

loadPlugin "C:/Program Files/Autodesk/Maya2012/bin/plug-ins/decomposeMatrix";
createNode decomposeMatrix -n decomposeM;

pickWalk -d down; //selects shape node of fluid conatiner
vector $fluidShapeLightVector = `getAttr ($fluidSelected[0] +".directionalLight")`; //retrieves vector value of fluids internal light

directionalLight -n $fluidAndLightMainipulator;// creates light that will be the manipulator

string $fluidAndLightMainipulatorProxy = $fluidAndLightMainipulator + "Proxy";

directionalLight -n $fluidAndLightMainipulatorProxy; // creates light that will be moved by manipulator
connectAttr -f ($fluidAndLightMainipulator + ".rotate") ($fluidAndLightMainipulatorProxy + ".rotate");
setAttr -lock true ($fluidAndLightMainipulatorProxy + ".t");
setAttr ($fluidAndLightMainipulatorProxy + "Shape" + ".overrideEnabled") 1;
setAttr ($fluidAndLightMainipulatorProxy + "Shape" + ".overrideVisibility") 0;

spaceLocator -n lightLocation;
setAttr lightLocation.translate ($fluidShapeLightVector.x) ($fluidShapeLightVector.y) ($fluidShapeLightVector.z);
connectAttr -f lightLocationShape.worldMatrix[0] decomposeM.inputMatrix;
setAttr lightLocationShape.overrideEnabled 1;
setAttr lightLocationShape.overrideVisibility 0;

string $fluidSelectedShapeArry[0] = `listRelatives -s $fluidSelected`;
string $fluidSelectedShape = $fluidSelectedShapeArry[0];
print $fluidSelectedShape;
connectAttr -f decomposeM.outputTranslate ($fluidSelectedShape + ".directionalLight");

vector $indtialLocatorTranslate = `getAttr lightLocation.translate`;
float $initialRotation[] = `angleBetween -euler -v1 0 0 1 -v2 ($indtialLocatorTranslate.x) ($indtialLocatorTranslate.y) ($indtialLocatorTranslate.z)`;
setAttr ($fluidAndLightMainipulator + ".rotate") $initialRotation[0] $initialRotation[1] $initialRotation[2];

select -r lightLocation;
select -add ($fluidAndLightMainipulatorProxy);
parent;

select -r fluid1_lightManipulator ;
select -add ($fluidSelected[0]) ;
parent;

Air/Fuel Ratio explained by Duncan Brinsmead

So the principal scientist at Autodesk, the man who invented Maya's Dynamics toolset. Personally answered my question on the Air/Fuel Ratio setting! Geeeeek out!

Here's the link.

Air/Fuel explanation

The downside to this event is that he explained something I've been doing wrong and now I'll feel like I have to update my reel...again.

Lessons learned

I'm going to post this in the interest of lessons learned.

The Treasure Island shoot was a total disaster. I was given a call time of 12 noon and my shot did roll 'till 6pm so I sat around doing nothing all day but watch the crew. By the time we rolled tape I was in a foul mood and to top it all off they didn't block the scene out like i had requested and the camera work was so shaky (to cover the lack of real action) that it will be impossible to pull a good matchmove from the footage.

The lesson is: to VFX supervise you need to INSIST on planning and be an asshole on set sometimes.

Oh well.

good day tomorrow

VFX supervising tomorrow out at Treasure Island. I'll be creating a light probe, match moving and turning a warehouse exterior into a restaurant. Should be fun. I'll update with cool images.

Also, I've finally figured out all the peices for my fluid directionalLight manipulator. Took about two weeks longer than expected but learned a lot along the way.

I'll make the script available as soon as I cobble it all together.

Remote desktop access!

The cranky IT guy just got a lot of slack from me. I was able to remote access the graphics station. This is potentially huge. I can set up a fluid sim to cache and then set it off to render from home before going to sleep. Also - if working from home I can set up the render to take place at work so no more sending large QT files over Yousendit. Nice.

It was recently pointed out to me that all this can be done with a .bat file as well using render description files but I'll need to research this one a bit more.

Next up is the custom built render farm. Two pc (core i7) home builds connected to my main workstation. Managed by Autodesks backburner and started from home over the weekend. Much less stress on deadline.

When I get the .bat system worked out I'll produce a tutorial.

No fire on set so here you go

After messing around with Maya and fluid effects I decided to go with a 2d solution and busted out the After Effects and Particular (Peder Norby is Sweden's answer to Thomas Knoll...funny on so many levels.)

I think this works perfectly. I overthought this and spent a lot of time in 3d when AE was the obvious solution

matchmove results from GOT shoot

Here's some matchmoved results from the I (Almost) Got Away With It shoot.



I was on vacation and couldn't supervise but the crew (and director did great). Much easier than prior shows.

Setting locator color part 1: matchmover to maya workflow

My fluid directional light contorler is taking longer than expected.

In the mean time I'm addressing a problem with Match Mover to Maya workflow. Meaning the ability to visually distinguish which locators are associated with specific objects. ie. locators that represent a chair in the scene versus those that represent the floor or wall etc.

Eventually I hope to build this into a script that automatically sets locator colors based on key words. We'll see.

For now I've discovered the use of the "for in" loop to assign or change attributes in an array. In this instance it will be used to enable color override and to set a color value.

Here is a group of locators at the default color interface value of dark green (imagine they represent a group of locators aligned to the ground plane of a backplate.

Now after selected all the locators I run the following MEL

string $selectedlist[] = `ls -sl`;

string $currentLocator;

for ($currentLocator in $selectedlist)

{

setAttr($currentLocator + ".overrideEnabled", 1);

setAttr($currentLocator + ".overrideColor", 13);

}

This has the following effect on the locators.

As you can see the display color is now changed on all objects to red.

Ideally this functionality could be built on to set the colors for all locators upon opening a scene created by Match Mover but that's for another day.

I'll try and explain how the MEL works later (or not if I can't find the time).

new blog

alright. Starting a blog geared towards useful things I discover in Maya, After Effects and other areas of CG/VFX creation. It's going to be technical but I'll try and put some of the eye popping end product up when available.

I know you're all so EXCITED! Well I am too.

Next post will be a MEL script to create and link a directional light to the internal light of a Maya fluid container. Should be exciting!