2009-08-03

The SIGGRAPH 09 masterclass is LIVE

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

Giant Robots 2009 SIGGRAPH Masterclass

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

25 comments:

Tay A. Othman said...

Blowsome....I'll Watch it ... Keep rocking Sir.

Unknown said...

Thanks for the video - very useful. Loving the Production Shaders too, I've just started using them in Maya. I made this little film with them :)

Master Zap said...

@Dave BWAHAHA, That was funny as heck :D

Love especially how the lighting turned to "outdoors". Perhaps the smoke was dissapating a bit too "evenly" (like fading out particles) but thats nitpicking, and doesnt affect the humor of the piece really.... LOL

/Z

Glacierise (a.k.a. Hristo Velev) said...

Hey Zap, great recap of all the developments during the last couple years! I really enjoyed that, cleared all the remaining unknowns for me and learned few cool tricks! Also, I hope you're cooking great new stuff for the next max :)

Strob said...

Can't wait to be able to watch this!!! Since an hour The Area seems to have problems to broadcast video. The screen just stays black. I can't download the working files neaither.

Unknown said...

Area site has problems about this video..can u upload it to your blog ?

Strob said...

We can read this on the Siggraph 2009 page of the Area:
"Downloads to resume next week
There will be a short interruption in our ability to deliver this content to you. The six free MasterClasses that were available throughout SIGGRAPH will be re-posted next week. Not only will your access to the data improve, but so will your ease-of-use."
This post was not dated so "next week" should be august 9 or august 16 2009... For now it is still not available.

FOTONICA digital studio + 3D architectural animation said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
FOTONICA digital studio + 3D architectural animation said...

hi Zap..
great master classes..
one question.. instead skylight we can use system daylight but,,
exposure value change the final results..
i try increasing rgb level but no solution..

Unknown said...

Thanks for the class zap.Tongue in cheek and intelligent at the same time.
I'd like to interview you for our magazine "Animation Reporter"
It's a little hard getting your attention via mail so if you'd be so kind please do let me know.
behrampattt at yahoo.com


b

maxwells said...

Hello.
Before furthrer more, congratulations for this fantastic blog, that allows people, like me, who lives in peripheral places of the globe to access to knowledge.
I’m having some trouble finding this specific video in the area website.
Wen i get to area website, i found many siggraph videos, but no videos from Master Zap or mental ray :(
Can someone help me?
Do I have to pay to watch? Where should I address?
thanks
Miguel
(sorry the bad english)

Payola05 said...

The link is down in the area! PLEASE how can I see this masterclass?

CurtJ said...

Thanks for making this so available! Very informative, and on several levels. Thanks.

Also - Dave - been a big fan of yours for ages mate - your work just gets better and better! Thanks!

Unknown said...

Hi, I watched your presentation, but I was curious if you had a similar class that used Maya instead of Max?

maxwells said...

lovely!!

seq said...

Hi Zap,

great tutorail, especially the matteshadow material is very interessting.

It would be so great if you can give us some tips + tricks for using it in Maya.

thanx

Master Zap said...

Hi Guys

I do not have a particular class doing this for Maya. The workflow is the same, in principle, with some parts being different. For example:

- you don't need to use any "Skylight" in Maya to get environment lighting, that's a 3ds Max peculiarity.

- "physical scale" is strictly a 3ds max peculiarity

- Maya has no proper gamma correction tools built in, you need to do it with shaders :(

- Maya color swatches are RGB, inputting a black RGB and black alpha color is a bit tricky, but can be done with a shader.

There is a production shader post on this blog from a year or so back which has maya sample files you can dissect.

/Z

seq said...

Hi Master Zap,

thanx for the reply. I manage to get all the stuff to work in Maya 2010 reading your post from 2008 and the PDF from MR.

Except one thing is missing: The illuminators. This feature doesn't seems to work in Maya, or?

In the MR PDF there is the following note:

... and the illuminators array contains any additional lights introduced by a CG element, for
example the headlights of a CG car.

I can declare the Lights, but not the Illuminators. In Maya there is only a Mode input. But I have nowhere found what is does?

Can you please shine some light on this?

Thanx a lot.

Strob said...

Hi! I'm finnaly watching those tut! That's GREAT thanks a lot.

There is something I can't reproduce in the second video. When I try to use the Matte/Shadow reflection material, the plane is slightly darker in my render... I checked all settings and they are the same as yours but still the result is obviously different. What's even more bizarre is that in your video I can see the same effect of the darker image in your material browser (the matte/shadow is darker than the background switcher preview.) I have that too but I also get it in the render whichi you don't.

Strob said...

Oups I just found by myself why it was doing that. I had exposure control on and process bg and env map was off!!! Sorry!

Dan Thompson said...

Hi Zap,

Thankyou for your awesome siggraph videos!

Do you know if it is possible to do the "Render Surface Map" technique in your video but in maya?

Or is this a 3dsmax feature only?

Strob said...

I finally had time to watch everything. Thanks a lot for sharing all that info! I have a question about arch: env blur I tried to use it with a camera and moving object and when I tried to render in hi rez (1080p) I got a lot of blinking. Like if the highlights are getting blurred over the top randomly. It is really random cause I rerender the same frma several time and it got different result every time.

Prolly_Chris said...

This is one the best tutorials I've ever seen. I really appreciate your help.
Thank You!

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