Early Hints at FireSystem a RayFire-Like Destruction Tool For Maya

Came across some screen shots from lukesun and a little hint that FireSystem for Maya is in development and may be available soon. FireSystem is a RayFire Like destruction tool for Maya. RayFire is a popular tool for 3ds MAX which allows you to fragment, destroy, demolish, or wreck objects effectively, and hopefully FireSystem will bring some of that great functionality to Maya with FireSystem.

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Faceware Posts Facial Rigging Techniques with Josh Burton

Image Metrics has posted their last Webinar featuring CGMonk’s Josh Burton showing facial rigging techniques he uses and some tips as well for creating facial rigs in Maya while using some of the CGMonks tools for Maya in the demonstration.

Setting up a face is a very complex part of the character rigging process and requires a lot of practice and experience to do it well. Watch as animator and story-teller, Josh Burton, takes us through some of his tips, tricks, and experiences with rigging faces.

Josh studied at Savannah College of Art and Design and received his degree in Animation. After graduating in 2005, he began his journey into computer animation with Midway Games. Here he worked on multiple titles as a facial rigger and animator including – Mortal Kombat vs. DC, Stranglehold, Wheelman and Blacksite.

Now, Josh has become an established freelance animator and rigger, as well as co-founder to CG Monks (cgmonks.com), a group of knowledgeable artists out to answer the tough questions in the computer graphics industry. He is also creator of the Morpheus rig, which you can download at joshburton.com/projects/morpheus.asp

For more webinars from Faceware Technologies, please visit facewaretech.com or check out our video channel!

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Review & Walkthrough of iPi Soft Motion Capture for MS Kinect

Joe Herman has created a pretty good overview and review of using the iPiSoft Motion Capture system using two Microsoft Kinects, showing what is needed, how to set it all up and finally how to actually use it.

iPi Desktop Motion Capture is a markerless motion capture technology that literally puts motion capture at animator’s desktop. You can record a video right at your workplace using 1 or 2 MS Kinects, webcams or inexpensive digital cameras and have it converted to 3D animation on your PC. The technology is accurate, easy to use and affordable.

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How To Stop Collapsing Vertices in Maya Post Normalization

Chris Lesage takes a look at the issue that may occur when painting weights in Maya using Post Normalization. Chris provides some background information on what exactly Post Normalization skinning is, what is actually happening when the vertices appear to collapse, and some solutions.
Check out the post for How To Stop Collapsing Vertices in Maya Post Normalization here.

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Use Projected Plates To Clean Up Your Shot in After Effects

Alexander Lehnert shows how to use 3D projected images to create a clean plate by using the Foundry’s Camera Tracker Plugin for After Effects and building a “projector rig”.

check out the tutorial for Use Projected Plates To Clean Up Your Shot in After Effects here.

Alexander Lehnert writes:In this tutorial we´re going to adopt a fairly common technique used in 3d compositing tools such as Nuke. We will start off by tracking the shot using the After Effects CameraTracker plug-in by The Foundry to get our 3d Camera properly solved. With this data we extend this shot and create a clean plate, which we´ll use to project onto our “proxy geometry” to clean up the shot. We´ll build a fairly simple “projector rig” with some expressions to make life easier.

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Melting a Soda Bottle in Cinema 4D

Charles Rowland (@RagingClaw) has created a tutorial for his technique for melting objects in Cinema 4D by keying an FFD deformer in Cinema 4D.

Charles is the creator of Buffer Booster for Cinema 4D which is designed to save time by creating Object Buffers in Cinema 4D for all objects in a scene and inserts them into the multipass. Buffer Booster for Cinema 4D is available for the nominal cost of $10.00 on the newly designed & launched C4DTools.net here.

Charles Rowland writes: Well, enough people have finally threatened my life that i decided that it was time… time to get back in there… time to get the word out that I am a force to be reckoned with! Then i realized i wasnt in a movie and turned on my laptop and opened up Cinema 4D.
This is the **short** version. I made no prep at all and what literally takes 5 minutes ended up being 30 minutes… i could not bare it… the pain.. it was terrible. Image if you will, being killed… that is what it was like… I decided, after being reanimated by the Witch Doctor i will soon become when i get Diablo 3 tomorrow (May 15, 2012), that i would spare you of this pain… that i would simply give you… the goods.
This video has no modeling, no lighting, no texturing… seriously… this technique has been covered by other people in the past year soooooo yeah… i model the bottle and table in the long version.. seriously.. its hilarious.. make sure to get a bag of popcorn before you watch it. Ill upload the long version later so you can watch me fumble around like a retard and call myself names and stuff. it’ll be FUN!

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