Amazing physics engine for XSI created by Thiago Costa. Very cool stuff.
This entry was written by , posted on July 20, 2010 at 3:09 pm, filed under news. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Its about time this matter reaches the main stage via Time Mag. Read it and get angry. I think any working stiff in the commercial mograph/vfx industry can relate at some level.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1990803,00.html#ixzz0oZvFZmXZ
This entry was written by , posted on May 23, 2010 at 2:09 pm, filed under news and tagged sweatshops, time magazine, vfx. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Ken Pimentel talks a bit about the re-structuring of 3DS Max in his latest blog post. “We decided that for 3ds Max to remain relevant for the next 20 years, we’d have to restructure a substantial portion of it.”
I’ve heard rumors and whispers about this “re-structuring”. From what I’ve been told, it sounds very exciting. I’m hoping that Autodesk releases more info soon…for now, read Ken’s post here.
This entry was written by , posted on December 6, 2009 at 9:40 pm, filed under news. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
There is a question that I’ve had to answer more than I’d like to in my professional life. A silly question that has hounded me for years. This subject seems to always come up when I meet new people. I say, “I’m a 3D Creative Lead”. They quickly reply, “So you must use Maya then?” I reply, “no, actually I use 3ds Max”. This is usually followed by a look of puzzlement, then followed up with a cautious, “Why?”
What better place to finally answer that question than in the sanctuary of my own cozy blog. Perhaps you too have used Maya and fallen out of love. Maybe I’m not alone. I bet there are quite a few artists out there who feel slightly embarrassed by chosing NOT to use Maya. This one is for you.
My affair with Maya started WAY back at 1.0. I was beta testing it while working in Alias Power Animator. Power Animator was the very first 3D software I used professionally. I loved it. It had everything I thought I would need. That is, until I met Maya for the first time.
Maya had me with those cool marking menus and those fancy dynamics. I remember thinking that all those cowboy demos looked lame as hell, but what are you gonna do? No software company has good looking demos. Quickly Maya took over the entertainment market with it’s open architecture and the introduction of mel. This led to endless movies being made with it. Which in turn, led every eager student to demand his school use the same software that made Jurassic Park. The kool-aid was pored and everyone drank. Including me. I thought Maya was the ONLY tool for 3d professionals. I also thought crashing renders, blotchy shadows, and buggy display issues, were just part of the game.
I cant tell you how many times I would kick off an important render on Friday, only to come in Monday to a failed render. Or a popping shadow or anti-aliasing artifacts. I spent more time troubleshooting (and losing hair) than actually animating. All the while, I thought this was normal.
Five or six versions of Maya later (and me much grayer), my buddy Adam Holmes took a job with Discreet (not Autodesk yet). He was an demo artist for 3DS Max and really wanted me to give it a shot. I was a bit snobby at first, afraid of what others would think, but decided to accept his free demo. I installed it and immediately thought, “man, this UI sucks.” No marking menus? My clicking finger got sore from hunting around for every little button and modifier. But damn if the scanline renderer wasn’t blazing fast. I decided to give it a shot on a 3D title for a Footlocker spot I was working on. A simple piece of 3d type that was all chromed out and supposed to fly around our actor in a super slo-mo cornball way. This sort of thing would have been easy enough to do in Maya, but I bet I would have run into at least a couple of issues trying to deform the type around the actor.
By my estimations, I finished that Footlocker title using 3DS Max in about half the time it would have taken me in Maya. But what made me a believer wasnt how fast I turned it around, it was how fast I was able to turn around client changes. The client decided to change a few things at the last minute that would have meant almost starting over in Maya, but Max simply meant tweaking my modifier stack. And right then I saw the power of a non-linear approach. I never drank that kool-aid again.
Later I discovered the power of rendering to elements and passes (something very foriegn to Maya users at the time). The quality of my work escalated because I now understood how to use this funcitonality and how to make my stuff look even better through comping. I could never go back to Maya’s linear approach now. It is only recently that Maya has understood the power of 3d comping, something I was doing with Max 5 years ago. Later, when I discovered Brazil and V-ray, my relationship with Max was set in stone. This app makes amazing looking pictures.
I’m a sucker for bullet point lists, so here is a breakdown of why I dont use Maya…anymore. This list is not in any particular order and only includes the reasons that popped into my mind at the time of writing.
1. Too permanent - Manipulating history sucks. I like to work in a program that allows easy changes (I work in advertising after all). Maya makes that very difficult. I like being able to work a volume select with a falloff into some deformer to do something cool and new. It’s called creativity. Or some call it the modifier stack.
2. The deformers don’t cut it - There are not enough deformers and they are difficult to manipulate and turn on thier ear for artistic means. Ever try to extrude a ribbon along a path for some mo-graphy element? It’s a pain in the ass! Lattice based spline deformers? Pah-leeze!
3. Redundant menus - Ever look around Maya and wonder, “what the hell is with all these menu tabs that I never touch? And why are so many of them called the same cryptic thing?” I’ve spent many a minute traversing these rabbit holes.
4. Sorry MEL, I’m not a programmer - I have no interest in spending weeks writing tools to make up for Maya’s deficiencys. I also don’t have a budget for a fulltime TD. If I hop over to Highend3d and flounder through thier search engine, I usually find some out of date script that was made for Maya 2.0.
6. The Maya community is selfish - Don’t get all crazy defensive on me here. I’ve posted to both Maya and Max forums. In my experience, I’ve found that I get double the responses from the Max community than the Mayans. ScriptSpot.com blows away Highend3d in terms of sheer amount of free scripts/plugins. Actually if it weren’t for scriptspot.com, I’m not sure how I would finish half the jobs I’ve done.
7. Not enough plugins - I’m sorry but just because Maya has built in fluids, doesn’t mean they are good. I love what Duncan does for the world of 3D but his numerous examples never seem to apply to the jobs I work on. Max has far more third party developers which means more choices for the artist. Plus, Max has easier ways for artists to do technically difficult things faster.
8. No V-Ray.
9. Particles pain - I know Maya’s particles have been called “powerful”, but if your not a scripting genius they are extremely limiting. I have yet to see a student reel using them to any effectiveness. I myself never fully understood how to utilize particles until using Pflow in Max. Now, we solve problems with Pflow on almost every job.
10. No noise - I still can’t believe there is no noise deformer or noise animation tool. I use noise all the time in both modeling and animation. Sure you could write a cryptic noise expression in Maya but that is both cumbersome and limiting if your not a math wiz.
I could go on (no free Mental Ray render-node licenses), but ten is a good number to end on. I don’t want you all to think I’m some kind of software snob. I’m not. I actually love where Maya has gone with it’s addition of framebuffered elements. I also think it’s render pass system is now one of the best. I even used it recently in a creative fashion. So from time to time I check in on my old friend Maya to see how she’s doing and whether or not I could come back to her. If/When they ever decide to move to a more non-linear workflow (ICE or Modifier Stack), I probably would go back. If for nothing else than to be able to answer that annoying question with a simple, YES.
This entry was written by , posted on March 23, 2009 at 2:57 pm, filed under Uncategorized, news. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Just found out that the nodejoe plugin for 3dsmax which enables users to edit materials in a node based workflow, has just been accepted into the ACAP program. This legitimizes the plugin and makes it a bit more attractive to bigger shops that need to be careful about tools they add to the pipeline.
I hope that nodejoe is a huge success. Perhaps then, Autodesk will see how much of a need there is for this tool and they can either buy it outright or develop one of their own. It seems ridiculous to me that Max is still without this feature.
press release here
This entry was written by , posted on March 18, 2009 at 2:51 pm, filed under Uncategorized, news. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Welcome to //cgpov.com! The concept is simple, I’m Chad Ashley, a professional 3d artist and self proclaimed software addict. This site will be a place where I can share what I’ve found that works and blab about the stuff that doesnt. Those of you who know me, know that I’m never in short supply of opinion. Please subscribe (this site aint that pretty for a reason). I’ve become quite fond of google reader so if you haven’t found a reader that you like, give it a shot. I plan on doing reviews, mini-rants, and who knows, maybe I’ll even give some stuff away for free!
//coming up…
I’ll review HDRI Light Studio Pro and be giving away a few HDR’s of my own design!
This entry was written by , posted on March 16, 2009 at 1:28 am, filed under news. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.