Linear workflow (LWF) is a concept that I try to explain to others when dealing with realistic lighting and rendering. LWF has to do with how we are perceiving the light intensity of our images calculated by our rendering application and it being applied to our screens. (more…)

I had a PC decide to not boot, and while it wasn’t a major component to the farm it was used by others and while I asked people to backup to an external drive, they weren’t. PC crashed and someone lost a lot of files.

Enter solution. I have no desire to resurrect this machine but it was a good idea to retrieve the data. So, using PenDriveLinux I built a bootable USB stick and voila, boot mount drive and copy to the external USB drive.

Check it out, PenDriveLinux, nothing easier. Download installer, get a USB stick, download Ubunto (or some .iso of your Linux distro of choice). Run installer, follow directions.. done.

For those of you who don’t own Mudbox or 3DCoat but would like to, at the very least preview your model in a smooth shaded view. This quick tip will not only help you achieve that goal but will also give you a little insight to a button known as ‘Quick’.

Unfortunately you will not be able to sculpt with this feature disabled with relative ease, but nevertheless you will still have the opportunity to preview what you model will look like in low resolutions in your current 3d package.

Zbrush Smooth Poly Preview from Andrew on Vimeo.

This video was made in association with cgPipeline.

Hope this helps.

-andrew

Arstechnica has a great article that concisely breaks down doing video post-production “at home”. The article covers aspects of codecs, compressions (4:4:4, 4:4:2, etc.), editing and audio.

A definite worthwhile read.

I’m a big fan of the class of ‘unbiased’ render engines, the look of them is just something cool. The caveat as we know is the render times can be huge but the concept is the setup time is where you’ve saved and won. Meindbender has done a bunch of work for Cartoon Network and while their pieces are witty on their own the use of Maxwell to simulate plasticine models is extraordinary. Very cool stuff and story.

There seems to be a lot of dodgy operations out there and as a freelancer, what are you to do to protect yourself. There are many answers to a myriad of circumstances and it can range from doing things yourself or involving lawyers. However, perhaps there are things you can do proactively to help yourself and as this writer has evidenced is it can work in your favour. I present the story of Epilogue Eight, how the artist protected himself.

Please, give it a read.

Big kudos to 3D World magazine for releasing the Tim Clapham mograph video. Asset files and tutorial are available.

Download link.

3D World from Tim Clapham on Vimeo.

A great post at AE Tuts, presents 42 VFX breakdowns. Head on over and have a look!

Linear workflow is a way of handling digital imagery at the proper linear math level where there is no gamma correction due to the fact that our digital image displays are non-linear devices.

FXPhd has a podcast that demystifies this thing called linear workflow. Browse to the page and click the link for “Compositing in Linear”

http://www.fxguide.com/fxpodcast.html

Ray tracing gets faster, yet still today it’s an ‘offline’ process, meaning you still click a render button and wait. Some applications like fprime for Lightwave and  modo’s interactive renderer have made strides to use sampling tricks and clever programming to simulate interactive ray tracing, the concept isn’t quite there.

Enter Caustic Graphics who think they have a solution combining hardware and software. With 16 patents and probably more on the way, we may see some fruition to the concept of ‘real-time’ ray tracing but I am sure for now that would still be reserved for the largely elite producers.