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http://dl.dropbox.com/u/731462/naiad-max_scenes_max2012.rar 

And, if you need to register at Dropbox, use this link – both of us get more space:

http://db.tt/LA1vOplE

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1. With Igor Zanic and Naiad in Belgrade! Naiad/Max workflow.
2. Naiad/Max 06: Getting normals from meshes in Naiad, and a little NEL
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http://www.fxphd.com/news/​apr12-owe

My part in this will be MAX203 – 3DS Max Destruction Techniques: a breaking-ground shot, earthquake type – something you’d find in an apocalyptic scenario movie! More info after the break.

This course will introduce you to the rich intricacies of creating a feature film level effects shot, in the challenging scenario of earthquake style ground collapse. We’ll go all the way from planning and sharing experience through detailed multi level rigid body sims, volumetrics, debris secondaries, and to assembling and rendering everything that would make for happy. We’ll employ 3DS Max, Thinking Particles, Rayfire and FumeFX in a process shaped by experience and efficiency.

1. Overview and planning – We start with an overview of the project, the goals of the course and the ideas behind it. Then we get to planning it – analyzing the project, laying out all the steps towards the end result and the thought process behind them.
2. Main cut and animation – The second lesson deals with the primary cut of the big earth pieces and building a system to animate them in Thinking Particles. Good fragmentation practices, setting up useful animation controls and versioning the animation get covered.
3. Secondary cut and animation – In lesson 3 we use the main animation we have prepared, and cut the pieces once more, to get detail on the edges. Then we look at implementing the second level simulation on top of the first level one, retaining the underlying motions and adding detail.
4. Adding procedural fragmentation – Lesson 4 will deal with the third level simulation, where fragments are small enough so we can use procedural fragmentation with VolumeBreaker. We set up some useful rules on fragmentation and activation, introducing one more level of detail.
5. High-res sim enhancement – With the base simulation done, in lesson 5 we’ll cover replacing the big pieces with separate sims – cutting and simulating each independently, to increase the detail and get a sense of scale.
6. Dust clouds – At this point we shift from rigid bodies to volumetrics, starting up with dust clouds in lesson 6. We’ll use the prepared rigid body sim at the appropriate level and generate particle sources to feed into a FumeFX simulation of dust clouds rising up.
7. Dust trails – Continuing with dust, lesson 7 shows how to add two types of dust trails on the falling rigid bodies. The strategical questions of arranging volumetrics are taken care of.
8. Debris splashes – Lesson 8 goes into augmenting the rigid body simulation with simple particle debris. Again, we produce several elements, starting with splashes, and we’re compositing them so they play nicely with the rigid bodies and the volumetrics.
9. Debris trails and postcache operations – A second type of debris element – a trail – is looked at in Lesson 9. After that, some special attention is directed towards the options offered by postcache operations.
10. Assembly and rendering – The last lesson brings all the elements we’ve produced together for inspection and rendering. We’ll build up the necessary scene assemblies, and then set up the necessary render passes to be sent to compositing.

Related posts:

1. FXPhD ‘Visual effects techniques with Max’ course starting!
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3. Announced as a speaker at EUE 2010

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1. FXPhD ‘Visual effects techniques with Max’ course starting!

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And we’re off to a good start – my  ’MAX202 – Visual effects techniques with Max’ course is rerunning on FXPhD this term. For everybody who wanted to enroll but missed it – there you go

You can  check it out at http://www.fxphd.com/courses#MAX202 , and you can read the synopsis below.

Class 1: Modeling for dynamics – We’ll go through the needs and pecularities of modeling for effects – which the FX artist needs to either do or supervise, to get the necessary assets.
Class 2: Previz and layout – The power and importance of composing effects scenes in the previs and layout stage is one of the big lessons in FX. We’ll get into how rough sketches, simple animation and particle effects are used to plan a shot, laying its foundations and setting it on the right course.
Class 3: Fragmentation – We’ll go over the techniques used to fragment and prepare the assets for dynamics. The treatment of different types of materials like wood, concrete, glass, etc. Fitting the level of detail into the plan of the shot.
Class 4: Rigid body dynamics and procedural fragmentation – Goes into setting up a solid and extensible structure for ridid body dynamics (RBD) in Thinking Particles. Then we take a look at procedural activation and fragmentation, how and when to use them.
Class 5: Structures – Going further into what can be done with rigid bodies, we’ll look at different ways to create and destroy interconnected structures of rigid bodies.
Class 6: Additional animation – Adding art-directed secondary animation to enrich the RBD simulations, and adding effects that are otherwise less practical to achieve.
Class 7: Secondaries – Adding layers of secondary dynamics like chunks, debris, splinters, shrapnel and funny accidentals.
Class 8: Interactions – Making the existing RBD simulation interact with the environment, producing some more elements like sparks, dust, mounds of earth and secondary destruction.
Class 9: Fluids – Fire and smoke are essential in almost every shot. We’ll look at working both ways – from the solids to the fluids, and from the fluid to the solids, setting up and controlling FumeFX simulations.
Class 10: Management – Looks at the key points of managing the FX process, start to finish. A way to set up a good base for any FX element in the start, and assembling all the pieces of the puzzle together for rendering. 

Cheers!

Related posts:

1. FXPhD ‘Visual effects techniques with Max’ course starting!
2. Max203 – Earthquakey breaking ground course on FXPhD announced!
3. Happy New Year! Photos from the Stara Planina mountains

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP7NaWeprxE

Now, the way this goes – it starts with the Naiad sim. It took only 42 min with, 7.5 mln particles through a reasonably dense cell size (the grid resolution in Naiad). On top of that, a secondary sim was done for splashes, this one taking 45 min for 20 mln particles. The machine was a recent i7 quadcore, nothing spectacular.

After that, the native Naiad EMP cache was converted to PRT, and sent to Max and Krakatoa. The first element was the mesh, with Frost and VRay. That went very smoothly, being able to quickly relax a high res sim to get a smooth but detailed result was of great help. The VRay setup was very straightforward – reflective transparent 1.4 IOR shader, with some of the VRayMaterial fog for depth and a good environment map, oldschool lighting. Render times at 1280×720 did not exceed 8min per frame, and you can see the detail is astounding.

On top of that, four Krakatoa passes were rendered. An interesting thing I noted is how much shading these liquids depends on the scenario. We did another test before this one, with much calmer water, and it ended up using different type of elements, and with different weights. Fortunately Krakatoa, with its KCMs, provides great flexibility in treating the material coming from Naiad, and you can devise different schemes of shading it.

Setting up these passes was fun and a breeze. On the main one I used a normalized velocity for a texture lookup, assigning a material with a blue to white gradient in the diffuse. This makes the faster particles whiter, which looks great. For the calmer areas, putting a threshold on the velocity, setting the selection channel and deleting the slow particles looks great, to clear them up in the clear areas. Of course, you could do a red-green pass and do all that in comp. Adding a velocity driven curve to the density makes the structures more visible, very good for bringing out the detail.

Then it was the Vorticity pass. We used a custom vorticity channel we exported from Naiad, and it’s a very simple expression, Naiad is very friendly towards exporting custom channels. Again, a texture lookup and delete thresholds were enough to make this one look interesting.

The splash sim was also rendered in Krakatoa. This one looks pretty great out of the box, but again the velocity-density curve looked great in bringing up the detail. Lighting is quite important too – getting these darker deeper parts is very cool and easy with a simple 4 point light setup.

Last one was a depth pass. Loading a fraction of the original particles, and shading with the Voxel mode in Krakatoa, you can get a very useful pass that you can dial the light extinction and coloring in depth with.

Now, it’s interesting to see how much freedom there is in compositing all that. A very broad range of looks can be derived, that my very limited comp skills obviously do not showcase You can see a breakdown and another option for comping it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTWJLAN653w

Finally, huge thanks to Igor and Tamara for the hospitality! Looking forward to meeting you again!

Cheers!

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1. Naiad/Max workflow and techniques video series
2. Naiad/Max 06: Getting normals from meshes in Naiad, and a little NEL
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKAkMrhx3pk

Many thanks to all the dedicated people in Pixomondo and Screen Scene who made this possible. Hats off to you, boys and girls!

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2. Reel opener, FumeFX pass
3. FX Reel – Sept. 2008

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjvLGVDgfPI

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