Animator Anonymous

Effects guru Stan Winston dies of cancer at 62

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State of Animation

— Darren Lutz @ 11:00 am

Visual effects artist won Oscar for work in ‘Aliens,’ ‘Jurassic Park’

LOS ANGELES - Stan Winston, the Oscar-winning special-effects maestro responsible for bringing the dinosaurs of “Jurassic Park” and other iconic movie creatures to life, has died. He was 62.

Winston died at his home in Malibu surrounded by family on Sunday evening after a seven-year struggle with multiple myeloma, according to a representative from Stan Winston Studio.

Working with such directors as Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and Tim Burton in a career spanning four decades, Winston created some of the most memorable visual effects in cinematic history. He helped bring the dinosaurs from “Jurassic Park,” the extraterrestrials from “Aliens, the robots from “Terminator” and even “Edward Scissorhands” to the big screen, and was a pioneer in merging real-world effects with computer imaging. MORE>

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Point Oven, FBX and Polytrans

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State of Animation

— Darren Lutz @ 10:31 am

In the world of ever changing software, pipeline and work-flows, theres a few people out there making our life just a bit easier. Need to go from Lightwave to Maya? Maya to Cinema? Max to XSI? Then these are the tools you need to be using.!

Point Oven
Point Oven is a commercial suite of plugins designed to bake vertex and fcurve data to streamline pipelines, and to transfer data between different applications. Point Oven can be used to simplify your existing scenes by baking complex deformations, or to share data with other users who have Point Oven but may use a different 3D application. Point Oven currently supports XSI, Maya, 3DS Max, Lightwave and Messiah. LINK>

Point Oven 1.5 is in constant development and here is where you will find the latest builds and documentation. This version is a free upgrade to all existing Point Oven owners. LINK>

FBX.
Looking to switch 3D packages while continuing to use legacy content? Expand your pipeline to include multiple 3D applications? Universal, 3D-asset-exchange via the FBX® file format removes data compatibility barriers, giving you the freedom to build the most efficient pipeline for your projects. The FBX open-standard, platform-independent 3D file format – the most widely used and supported 3D file format on the market today LINK>

Polytrans
Okino has long been a primary innovator and provider of 3D data translation software, pioneering the concept of universal, bidirectional and robust conversion of 3D asset data between all the main CAD, DCC and VisSim file formats and programs. Okino’s PolyTrans was the first to provide bidirectional animation conversion amongst all 3D animation programs & related file formats (3ds Max, Maya, Softimage|3D, Softimage|XSI, Lightwave, DirectX, U3D, Collada, FBX, BVH, VRML2/X3D, XAML-3D and more), the first to bring cost effective and fully robust CAD converters to the masses, the first to provide dedicated & native 3D converter systems for 3ds Max & Maya (well before they became popular), the first to provide complete scene content conversions with ‘Load & Render’ capabilities, the first to provide accurate, working & guaranteed skinning + skeleton conversions (now amongst 3ds Max, Maya, XSI, Lightwave, DirectX, FBX, U3D, Collada, etc), the first to provide support for all major 3D file formats in their native forms, and the list goes on. LINK>

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Facial Expressions Books

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SHOUTOUT !

— Darren Lutz @ 9:34 am

Photo reference books for all artists. Models of all ages and nationalities. Photos from all angles. Reference you can’t get in a mirror.

As an owner of a character animation studio, I would have to say that there are two really important assets you need in your studio. Guinness to get you through the long nights, and Facial Expressions references! Honestly, you CAN’T get this from looking in the mirror. I’ve tried, my animators tried, and what you get in the end is YOU… looking into the mirror :>)

That works for one character one time, but what if you actually have more work than that…? You need to have a library of different people, with different facial structures. The bonus’s come from what type of life they led also. What I mean by this is… what if you have an old crotchety turtle of vulture that has some nasty flabby skin. You could hire an 80 year old actor and have them hang out in your studio for the next couple of weeks so you can reference them at will….. OR, you can get Mark Simons, Facial Expressions Books. A Killer series of books that take care of everything I just said, Sans the Guinness. I have a call into Mark for that one!

Honestly, We have been using them since they have come out and they are an invaluable source of inspiration for every project we work on!

LINK>

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Mind Your Business: Does Congress Care About Your Creations?

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— Darren Lutz @ 7:28 am

In this month’s column, Mark Simon keeps trying to chip away at the Orphan Works Act.

Mark is out there busting his ass to make sure our rights are protected. Now! Get off yours, contact your congressman and or representative and give then an earful!

Here’s a link to all, find yours and get writing!

- Mark
When I found out about the Orphan Works Act, I was astounded that anyone in Congress would consider legislation that could so obviously be used against artists and their original creations.

I started helping the Illustrators’ Partnership in getting artists to write letters to Congress asking senators and representatives to oppose the bill. (You have written a few yourself, right? Every voice counts!) So far artists have sent over 99,000 letters opposing the bill through the system the Illustrators’ Partnership set up (http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/home/). That doesn’t even count all the letters sent and calls made to representatives and senators directly. READ MORE>

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Orphan Works Legislation

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— Darren Lutz @ 5:13 pm

from my good friend Mark Simon. This is VERY VERY IMPORTANT, please read!

April 10, 2008
By Mark Simon

As you know, I usually handle the subjects in my articles with a sense of humor. That is not the case this month. I find nothing funny about the new Orphan Works legislation that is before Congress.

In fact, it PISSES ME OFF!

crazybump

Filed under:

General

— Darren Lutz @ 10:43 am

A free (for now) product I have been using for the last year or so. Now at beta 8.6, CrazyBump makes 3D materials from images, using shape recognition. It generates normal, displacement, occlusion, specularity, and diffuse textures. Very cool and original. If your a gamer its a no brainer. I am putting it through a film pipeline and it seems to working just fine.

LINK

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LightWave 9.5

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Lightwave

— Darren Lutz @ 5:52 pm

Oh.. could it be sooo???

LightWave v9.5 Update Includes:

Character Animation Enhancements

New Hair and Fur System

Enhanced IK and Animation Systems

* New Collada, FBX and OBJ I/O
* New IK Calculation Options for Faster Performance
* New Bone Type - Joints
* New Objective Options for IK
* IK/FK blending
* Multi-threaded Mesh Deformation Evaluation

Modeler

* UV Unwrap/UV Relax
* Symmetry Tolerance

Lighting, Rendering and Surfacing Enhancements
All New Lighting System

* New Light API
* IES Lights
* New Spherical Light
* Area and Linear Lights Enhanced

Renderer

* Faster Sampling System for GI
* Improved GI Quality
* New GI Controls to Customize the Render
* Disk-Based GI Cache

Node Editor Enhancements

* Interpolated Soft Reflections/Refractions
* Support for New Light API Functions
* Oren-Nayar Shading Option for Many Materials
* Optimizations for Materials and Shaders

SDK and LScript Improvements

* New Light Plug-in Class for third Party Lights and Light Plug-ins
* SDK Support for New GI Functions and Disk Cache
* SDK Support for New IK and Animation Capabilities
* Set Surface Properties Through the Surface Global

UI and Workflow Enhancements

* Enhanced Scene Limits
* Updated Scene File Format
* EXIF Metadata Support
* OpenGL GLSL Enhanced for New Lighting System
* Image Viewer Consolidation

LINK

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Lightwave Tutorials

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— Darren Lutz @ 8:40 am

from William “Proton” Vaughn a fantastic set of LightWave tutorials.
LINK

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Lightwave Tutorials

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— Darren Lutz @ 3:44 pm

Some great tutorials from Joe Letrtola:

DISPLACEMENT WITHOUT DISTORTION
MODELING A HEART
MODELING A BRAIN
UV MAPPING A COMPLEX OBJECT
USING BONES AS A MODELING TOOL: ITS KNOT HARD

Link to tutorials

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MULE 1.5

Filed under:

General

— Darren Lutz @ 3:12 pm

epicsoft Announces the Release of MULE 1.5!
The premiere tool for LightWave network rendering and asset management is now compatible with LightWave 9.3

Green Bay, WI — September 20, 2007 — A pleasant bit of news for all you LightWavers! epicsoft has updated MULE — the premiere tool for LightWave network rendering and asset management — and has streamlined the licensing cost to boot.

epicsoft’s MULE 1.5 Enterprise, Unlimited-seat Edition, is now on the loose and ready to haul! With added support for multiple camera types, ray trace occlusion, and more, MULE 1.5 is compatible with LightWave 9.3 and Windows Vista.

Additionally, what used to be a multi-tiered array of MULE package choices, now is optimized into a single, “gotta-have-it!” package for a single, “whoa-I’ll-take-two-of-’em!” price of $125 for the unlimited render-node MULE 1.5 Enterprise Edition.

But hold on! For existing owners of MULE, your update to the MULE 1.5 Enterprise Edition is ready-and-waiting for you at an unbeatably low price of $ABSOLUTELY FREE! Simply download your copy and follow the installation instructions defined in the bundled .PDF file.

If you’re a user of NewTek’s LightWave 3D product, and you don’t already enjoy the benefits of having a MULE on your render farm, there’s no better time to improve the quality of life than right now. Download your fully-functional MULE 30-day Learner’s Edition and discover the pixel-hauling power you’ve been missing.

Happy Hauling, everybody!

For more information about the MULE 1.5 Enterprise Edition, visit: http://www.epicsoft.net/products/mule/enterprise/

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Creating Surface Thickness

Filed under:

General

— Darren Lutz @ 8:00 am

A great tut (LW8) that helps in creating surface thickness in a LightWave scene. You can easily translate this tut into LW 9 +

LINK

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Lightwave Color Pickers

Filed under:

Lightwave

— Darren Lutz @ 6:56 pm

Picky
Picky is an attempt to bring a decent color picker to Lightwave. it has a few useful features like the ‘color tree’ which allows users to file colors away for later use, and an image color picker that allows for picking colors out of images. it also has a few other niceties including wheel mouse support and floating point color support. LINK

Gradient Creator
The Gradient Creator is a window based stand alone program capable of creating gradients that can be exported to Paintshop, Photoshop and Lightwave. The gradients may also be used directly in Darktree. LINK

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Animator Anonymous

6/17/2008

Effects guru Stan Winston dies of cancer at 62

6/13/2008

Point Oven, FBX and Polytrans

Facial Expressions Books

Mind Your Business: Does Congress Care About Your Creations?

4/11/2008

Orphan Works Legislation

2/29/2008

crazybump

2/21/2008

LightWave 9.5

12/5/2007

Lightwave Tutorials

11/15/2007

Lightwave Tutorials

10/22/2007

MULE 1.5

Creating Surface Thickness

10/20/2007

Lightwave Color Pickers