Tip of the Week: Maya RAM Booster

There are times where you need every ounce of RAM that you can squeeze from your computer.

If you're not using certain Maya features, you can turn them off and save overhead.

Open Window>Settings/Preferences>Preferences, and go to the modules category. Here you can turn Dynamics and Paint Effects on and off. If you don't need them, keep them off, as they take up RAM in the background.





And now for the inverse tip: If you ever run into a problem where Paint Effects or Dynamics are mysteriously not working, make sure to check settings and preferences to make sure the modules are turned on.

Another Animation by Blu

Last year, I posted a cool animation by a really creative artist named Blu. Here's another one of his movies that someone sent me recently. Same concept with some new twists. I hope it gets your creativity brewing:

COMBO: http://vimeo.com/6555161

Uncanny Monkeys

I came across an interesting article today about a new study from Princeton University.

Robert Zemeckis wannabes beware -- apparently monkeys are susceptible to the Uncanny Valley effect. Researchers in Princeton's Department of Psychology subjected macaque monkeys to images of monkeys that ranged from cartoony to photo realistic. Like humans, the monkeys can look at photo images and cartoony images just fine - but there was a range in between that creeped them out.

According to the researchers, this is the first time that the uncanny valley effect has been observed in animals. They hope that it will shed light on a variety of disciplines from human cognition, to animal behavior, to 3D character animation.

Tip of the Week: Copy Tab

From time to time, it's necessary to compare the attributes of two different nodes. You could always select the two objects in question and open up Maya's attribute spreadsheet, but that's not always the fastest or easiest way to find what you're looking for.

One useful method is to use the Copy Tab button at the bottom of the attribute editor. Normally, the attribute editor displays information for one node at a time, and automatically changes every time you select a new object in the outliner or viewport.

When you copy a tab, the copied instance continues to display the information of the node that was displayed when you made the copy. This allows you to select a new node and compare their attributes side by side.





This is useful if you have precise attributes on one node that you want to enter on another node. I find it comes in handy most often for shading, animating, and dynamics - occasions when you might want to make sure that two nodes have the same settings.

It's also a good method of troubleshooting; comparing two nodes side by side can be a thorough way of looking for discrepancies that may be causing a problem.

The 11th Annual Animation Show of Shows

The Animation Show of Shows is an annual screening of animated short films compiled from animation festivals from around the world. It is presented across the country for industry professionals, animation students, agencies, and the press. The idea is to let everyone in the animation industry get a look at the most technically and aesthetically cutting edge new animations each year in order to inspire everyone to continue to push the envelope and to experiment with style and technique.

The show is open free of charge to all students, faculty, and animation professionals.

Here are the venues where you can just show up without sending an RSVP. Seating is first come first serve:

Date	Time	City	Venue
Oct 24th	Noon	Portland, OR	Cinema 21
Oct 25th	5:00 PM	Seattle, WA	Northwest Film Forum
Oct 26th	7:00 PM	Vancouver, BC	Pacific Cinémathèque
Nov 4th	7:00 PM	Philadelphia, PA	University of the Arts, Caplan Theater
Nov 6th	10:30 AM	Boston, MA	Boston Museum of Fine Arts
Nov 7th	8:00 PM	Providence, RI	Rhode Island School of Design Auditorium
Nov 9th	8:00 PM	Savannah, GA	Savannah College of Art and Design, Lucas Theater
Dec 5th	5:00 PM	Montreal, Quebec	Cinémathèque Québécoise
TBA	TBA	San Jose, CA	San Jose State University

The following screenings are open to the animation community but require an RSVP due to limited seating. If you are interested in attending, send an email to RSVP@acmefilmworks.com, enter "11th ASOS and (the location)" in the subject header, and indicate that you would like to attend. Be sure to include your full name in the email. You must receive an affirmative confirmation via email to attend. Membership in ASIFA chapters is encouraged but not required for ASIFA-sponsored screenings:

Oct 21st	7:00 PM	San Francisco, CA	ASIFA San Francisco(location to TBA upon rsvp confirmation)
Nov 3rd	7:00 PM	New York City, NY	ASIFA East, NYU, SVA, Parsons, Pratt(location to TBA upon rsvp confirmation)
Nov 5th	TBA	Rochester, NY	Rochester Institute of Technology
Nov 6th	TBA	Boston, MA	Harvard University

The Animation Show of Shows will also be playing at several studios (Disney, ILM, Sony, etc) throughout October and into November/December. These are not open to the public. If you work at a studio, check with whomever at your company is responsible for event planning or artistic enrichment.

I've attended the Providence screening the past couple of years, and I highly recommend it for anyone involved in animation. They show a wide variety of films in all different styles. As an animator, it's very inspiring, and you'll have the opportunity to see a lot of interesting films that you might not see elsewhere.

Mudboxing the Pumpkins

This past week, I brought the pumpkins into Mudbox to paint some hi-res maps. I'm very pleased with the results.

Here's the low poly base mesh. Keeping things low poly has made modeling blendshapes and other rigging tasks much easier. It also makes for a super-fast animation environment.


Here's the model with a basic Maya polySmooth. It'll stay turned off while I'm animating, and I'll set the subdivision levels differently for different render layers. Level 1 should suffice for shadow casting. Level 3 for the character layer, etc.


Here it is with the normal map:


For the fine detail, I ended up layering a bump map on top of the normal map. I generated the base texture procedurally in Maya, baked out a file texture, and touched it up in Mudbox.


And here it is fully rendered with the color and specular maps, a combo of Mudbox and Photoshop work.


I think it's cool to see the progression from base mesh to rendered pumpkin.

I'm really happy with how the character turned out, and I'm psyched to start churning out some rough renders of some of the shots.

It was great to finally get a chance to dive into the Mudbox workflow - getting the models and maps in and out of Maya and Photoshop. I'm looking forward to using it more. Hopefully I'll have some Mudbox related Tips of the Week in the near future.

Tip of the Week: Transparency and Reflectivity

A rule of thumb for shading - the sum of a surface's reflectivity and transparency should never exceed one. In fact, unless you're trying to recreate the cleanest, most flawless piece of glass that ever existed, the combined value should be less than one - usually quite a bit less. A hallmark of bad 3D is surfaces that are too perfectly reflective or transparent.

For materials such as glass, you'll often use falloff ramps for transparency and reflectivity. The same guideline applies - make sure that at any given point on the ramps, the value adds up to less than one: