This is part two of an ongoing series dedicated to my favorite tools/workflows. This time I cover Max2AE by Boomerlabs, an amazing plugin for 3DS Max that allows you to bring cameras, lights, planes, and even particles from Max to After Effects. It rules. Go here to get your copy of Max2AE.
This entry was written by , posted on October 26, 2009 at 3:40 pm, filed under review and tagged 3ds max, after effects, cgi, cgpov, max2ae. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
HDRLightStudio V1 is a standalone app that generates studio light hdr’s that the user designs. It’s extremely useful for those of us doing the occasional cg product and cant find a suitable pre-fab studio HDR. You simply drag and drop studio light boxes around your viewport and adjust their color and intensity. Once you’ve got something you like, you render it out at a preset resolution of your choice in either exr or hdr format. We recently used it at dk when our on set hdr’s weren’t cutting it. We thought we may be able to reconstruct the on-set lighting using this product. It worked fairly well but I have some ideas on how they could improve it.
The Good:
1. Simple interface, easy to understand.
2. The ability to preview different exposures, very handy.
3. You can adjust both wattage and falloff of all lights.
4. Exr support.
The Bad:
1. no cntrl+z undo
2. Can’t load hdr’s into background. This would rock if you were trying to match an on-set hdr.
3. All light boxes seem too perfect. I wish there were slight wrinkles or a slight fabric feel to the light boxes. When viewed up close, it is apparent that they are just gradients.
4. No mouse over light box selection. You must select your light in the light lister before you can edit it. I kept trying to select the light with my mouse over it’s pivot point and it kept moving my current selection around. Very frustrating.
5. No F1 help.
Summary:
For a 1.0 release, this app is pretty strong. I think it has tons of potential while being very useful in it’s current state. I fully recommend it to people looking to create custom studio hdr’s. My hope is that they build off of it and make it a bit more robust in features and realism. Click the image below to download a zip file that contains a .hdr and .exr I made to give away.
This entry was written by , posted on March 17, 2009 at 6:28 pm, filed under review. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.