Animago Conference Masterclass

On October 29:th and 30:th is the Animago Conference including the Animago Awards. This occurs in Babelsberg (which is the Berlin version of Hollywood).

On Friday October 30:th, at 9AM, I will be holding a mental ray Masterclass there. See the page above for more details, and stuff.

Welcome if you are in the neighborhood!

Update:

I will try to send out some updates to twitter, Phazeb00k and QiK as the event unfolds, feel free to follow:





/Z

MasterClass now in 9 languages

The link is still the same, click here.

But if you didn't understand what I was rambling about before, you can now not understand what I ramble about, subtitled :)

Enjoy.

/Z

My appearance on the FXGuide Linear Workflow Podcast

FXGuide Linear Workflow Podcast

Mike Seymour of FXGuide/FXPhd lost in China

I was recently interviewed by my good friend Mike Seymour over at FXGuide.com about linear workflow and linear compositing in a visual effects context.

You can listen to us ramble on the topic for nearly an hour by right here, or you can read a bit about it and comment here where you can also subscribe to the podcast for more glorious FX geekiness.

In the podcast, I mention Stu Machwitz about 1024 times. You can find Stu's blog over at ProLost.com (He doesn't consider it profound - get it?), and Stu even wrote a very lovely note on his blog in response, very heartwarming, thank you Stu! *wipes tear from eye*

Errata

Of course, as is when I ramble several run-on sentences for almost an hour, som errors creep in. After listening to it, I realize I misspaketh on a couple of places (disregarding some grammar snafu's, after all, I'm Swedish, darnit!)

• I incorrectly attribute the creation of the EXR format to Pixar, I of course meant ILM. Apologies to both parties.
  
• When describing the math of the "screen" composit operation, I say "sum" where it should be "product", i.e. the correct sentence should be "one minues the product of one minus each of the components". Duh. I.e. (1 - ((1 - A) * (1 - B)))
  

FXGuide and FXPhd

If you guys don't know about FXGuide, and their companion training site FXPhd, I suggest you check them out. These guys are very passionate people with a great knowledge of visual effects techniques, and they do some very nice stuff.

LinearWorkflow.com

Going to LinearWorkflow.com today isn't terribly interesting, but some stuff is coming up in a not too distant future. I just have other higher-priority work happening right now... stay tuned... :)

And, BTW, don't buy that stupid T-shirt, it's CafePress and it actually came out not-so-pretty.

/Z

mental ray tutorials by Jeff Patton

If you follow this little link you will end up on a place where you can purchase (cheaply!) tutorials by my good friend and mental ray guru Jeff Patton.

They cover all sorts of topics from stuff all the way over to things ;)

Check them out!

/Z

Digital Tutors mental ray training

My friend Sylvain Berger (who also runs a rendering blog over at http://kobayashystips.blogspot.com/) alerted me to availability of mental ray training over at Digital Tutors.

You can sign up for an account and access a subset of the trainings free of charge as samples. One of these free samples, which Sylvain points out, happens to be a really nice training on using the production shaders in Softimage, which I can recommend.

For those Softimage users who took my masterclass (below) and were annoyed by all the UI happening inside 3ds Max, and wanted to find those equivalent buttons and shaders in Softimage, this training is for you.


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The SIGGRAPH 09 masterclass is LIVE

Clickety here for the masterclass "GIANT ROBOTS: Using mental ray shaders for introducing CG elements into real shots".



You need to register 1st, but it's free!

Enjoy me rambling for 1.5 hours ;)

UPDATE: Link is now back online - but it seems to require Flash 10. I had Flash 9 in Firefox, and it did not work, but never gave any error message.

/Z

SIGGRAPH Masterclass: GIANT ROBOTS (Using mental ray shaders to integrate CG elements into real scenes)

Hello Everybody!

Sorry for being incommunicado for a while. I've been busy, and I've been on Vacation.

On Monday, SIGGRAPH kicks off, and for the first time in many years I will actually not be going there... however, I will be there "in spirit". As usual, I have an Autodesk MasterClass running, only, this year the MasterClasses will be ONLINE, and not live in-person things.

My class is called "Giant Robots: Using mental ray shaders to integrate CG objects into real scenes", and it will be available from August 3rd 2009 somewhere on www.the-area.com

Here's a teaser:



I'll let y'all know when the actual class is on, and give a direct link to it.

Enjoy... and for those actually going to SIGGRAPH in New Orleans... have a beaker for me ;)

/Z