Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Demo reel, Oct 2011

New demo reel posted in the Reel section!

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

Added the intermediate Thinking Particles DVD to the Tutorial DVD section

You can now get to both Thinking Particles DVDs in the Tutorial DVDs section. Enjoy!

New York destruction demo for ScreenScene VFX

I did this one when I was in ScreenScene in Dublin. TP and FFX based. Enjoy!

DVD released – ‘Comprehensive introduction to Thinking Particles part 2 – Intermediate’

Sorry for keeping you guys waiting for so long, but here it is!

http://eat3d.com/tp4_int 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:

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 🙂

FXPhD ‘Visual effects techniques with Max’ course starting!

As you could know, I’m teaching a course in FXPhD this semester – ‘Visual effects techniques with Max’. It’s goal is to get into the most awesome topic, and show how destruction effects are done in production – i.e. the fun stuff! 🙂 You can check it out over at FXPhD, and there’s the plan:

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!

Return top