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. Happy New Year! Photos from the Stara Planina mountains
3. With Igor Zanic and Naiad in Belgrade! Naiad/Max workflow.

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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!

Related posts:

1. FXPhD ‘Visual effects techniques with Max’ course starting!
2. Happy new year! And, my ‘Visual effects techniques with Max’ course is rerunning on FXPhD this term!
3. EUE 2011 – great people, great place, great times!

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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!

Related posts:

1. Demo reel, July 2010
2. Reel opener, FumeFX pass
3. FX Reel – Sept. 2008

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Related posts:

1. DVD released – ‘Comprehensive introduction to Thinking Particles part 2 – Intermediate’
2. Thinking Particles tutorial DVD currently in production
3. 3rd DVD announcement, detailed plan for DVD 2

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

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1. Demo reel, Oct 2011
2. Electric arc in Thinking Particles video tutorial
3. Creeping cracks effect

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 From eat3d: ‘In this DVD Hristo Velev takes up from Part 1 in this series, to go deeper into the intermediate concepts of Thinking Particles. Everything from Raycasting, Referencing, Motion Inheritance, Generation, Driving Scene Objects, Shape Collision, Fragmentation, Caching, Joints, PhysX Dynamics, Deformation, Displacement, Map-Based Interaction, Particle Interaction, Custom Data Streams, FumeFX Interaction, and more are fully explored in this DVD.

This DVD is perfect for those who want to learn more about Thinking Particles and why many studios are using it in production today.’

You can get it from Eat3D, from $49.95

A rendering of the project at the end:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OihfJ4u5FA

Any questions you have – ready to answer here, in the CGTalk thread or anywhere else I appear

Thanks guys, and special thanks to Geri for keeping up with me all the evenings and weekends

Related posts:

1. Thinking Particles 4, and my 1st of 2 ‘Comprehensive introduction’ DVDs released
2. Thinking Particles tutorial DVD currently in production
3. Added the intermediate Thinking Particles DVD to the Tutorial DVD section

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Modeling for dynamics
We’ll go through the needs and peculiarities of modeling for effects – which the FX artist needs to either do or supervise, to get the necessary assets.

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.

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.

Rigid body dynamics and procedural fragmentation
Goes into setting up a solid and extensible structure for rigid body dynamics (RBD) in Thinking Particles. Then we take a look at procedural activation and fragmentation, how and when to use them.

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.

Additional animation
Adding art-directed secondary animation to enrich the RBD simulations, and adding effects that are otherwise less practical to achieve.

Secondaries
Adding layers of secondary dynamics like chunks, debris, splinters, shrapnel and funny accidentals.

Interactions
Making the existing RBD simulation interact with the environment, producing some more elements like sparks, dust, mounds of earth and secondary destruction.

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.

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.

Will be some exciting times, I can promise See you there!

Related posts:

1. Happy new year! And, my ‘Visual effects techniques with Max’ course is rerunning on FXPhD this term!
2. With Igor Zanic and Naiad in Belgrade! Naiad/Max workflow.
3. 3rd DVD announcement, detailed plan for DVD 2

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

Related posts:

1. More about EUE 2011
2. EUE 2011 talks brief
3. Speaking at the EUE 2011, 30 Jun – 01 Jul in Utrecht, Netherlands

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6TYrkZHJg4

See ya guys there!

Related posts:

1. More about EUE 2011
2. Speaking at the EUE 2011, 30 Jun – 01 Jul in Utrecht, Netherlands
3. EUE program posted

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1. Fire in the hole!
2. Split amount with Thinking Particles – elaboration
3. Now available for consult work via zintro.com

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