| As a lot of you know I’m putting a bit of time in now to focusing on some of the basic fundamentals of pflow/maya/real flow etc. I do have plans for a lot of advanced material coming up, but for the time being I’m putting together a few core tutorials on Real Flow, the first is literally just a introductory to how it works. Initially jumping into creating a quick fluid simulation and discussing a bit about the interface. I plan for a few more hands on exercises in the near future. |
Posts from ‘November, 2009’
November 25th, 2009
Real Flow Basics – Introduction
November 25th, 2009
Pflow 2010 FX Elements + Pflow Presets
| Are you overlooking Particle Flow Presets? |
| Surely you’ve forgotten that Particle Flow in Max 2010 has a preset function, that allows for you to save and load particle presets. This feature has been around since Box Set 1, however it seems most people really overlook it.
This is in fact a really powerful feature, which of course is great for saving and loading preset systems, but also for saving pflow scripts, and constantly used set ups, even just some to make “rotation, spin, position, random_scale” on the fly. Here we just quickly jump in and point out the potential and usefulness of this great feature in 3D Studio Max 2010. |
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| 3D Studio Max 2010 Particle Flow FX Elements |
| With the release of 3DSMax 2010 – Autodesk has added in a lot (over 100+ to be exact) particle flow setups, ranging from fire, smoke, earth, water, and in addition – Logos. These contain lots of different set ups, and also conceptual files demonstrating how to create various effects.
I was brought on board to create these earlier this year (2009) for the release. Although with certain limitations such as not utilizing any plugins and not making the scenes too slow in the viewport and copyright on textures or stock footage, it meant they needed to be more sample files to demonstrate how to create a flow for the set up, rather than a full blown production ready sample, at least in some cases. However I believe that pretty much all of these scene files that ship with max are very informative and useful in day to day production. A lot of the key concepts here are the core elements of what I use in building a lot of my more complex effects and flows. Check out this video just discussing how to use them and make the most of your Particle Flow En devours! |
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| Hungry for more knowledge? |
| Check out a good buddy of mine Carlos Anguiano’s website, loads of great information in there. Carlos is currently a Creature TD at Industrial Light and Magic, freaking talented guy and his website has a lot of great information I’m sure anyone reading this website is going to find useful! |
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| HAPPY THANKSGIVING! |
November 25th, 2009
Max 2010 FX Elements
| 3D Studio Max 2010 Particle Flow FX Elements |
| With the release of 3DSMax 2010 – Autodesk has added in a lot (over 100+ to be exact) particle flow setups, ranging from fire, smoke, earth, water, and in addition – Logos. These contain lots of different set ups, and also conceptual files demonstrating how to create various effects.
I was brought on board to create these earlier this year (2009) for the release. Although with certain limitations such as not utilizing any plugins and not making the scenes too slow in the viewport and copyright on textures or stock footage, it meant they needed to be more sample files to demonstrate how to create a flow for the set up, rather than a full blown production ready sample, at least in some cases. However I believe that pretty much all of these scene files that ship with max are very informative and useful in day to day production. A lot of the key concepts here are the core elements of what I use in building a lot of my more complex effects and flows. Check out this video just discussing how to use them and make the most of your Particle Flow En devours! |
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November 25th, 2009
Particle Flow Presets
| Are you overlooking Particle Flow Presets? |
| Surely you’ve forgotten that Particle Flow in Max 2010 has a preset function, that allows for you to save and load particle presets. This feature has been around since Box Set 1, however it seems most people really overlook it.
This is in fact a really powerful feature, which of course is great for saving and loading preset systems, but also for saving pflow scripts, and constantly used set ups, even just some to make “rotation, spin, position, random_scale” on the fly. Here we just quickly jump in and point out the potential and usefulness of this great feature in 3D Studio Max 2010. |
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November 15th, 2009
Website Update + Afterburn 4.0 Tutorials
| News update |
| Hopefully none of you really notice this, but this site’s been completely rebuilt (again). Pretty much same design, just completely different content management system, so things like visits and other stuff have been reset. One key feature is comments now work, so feel free to supply comments on posts that are relative, it would be good to get other industry people and enthusiasts posting comments or adding ideas to posts on tutorials or showing some of their end results etc !
Hopefully all newsletter subscribers still stay in tact, however feel free to resubscribe to the newsletter just in case! |
| Afterburn 4.0 – Utilizing Explosion Daemon |
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| Still covering more basic subjects just to add some more introductory content. Here we go through one of many methods for creating explosions in 3D Studio Max. This one is designed to really show how to use the Explode Daemon in Afterburn 4 as well as create an explosion without any key frames or lights necessary, purely all based off the particle age. |
| Afterburn 4.0 – Triggering Canned FX |
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| Following on from the previous tutorial, we then take our explosion and link it up to another system. In this case, its killer teapots! (Yes I was too lazy to make any actual planes flying around). The concept is very similar to the airstrike CG Academy DVD I created some years ago, however updated for Afterburn 4.0. This is a demonstration of creating canned FX and then being able to hook them up to other effects to control the entire thing through some basic controls you set up, rather than manually having to do all of this by hand. |
| That’s it for now, there are a few announcements happening over the coming weeks, as well as a lot of advanced content coming. As I’ve previously mentioned I’m trying to put a bit of my spare time into producing some beginner to intermediate subjects for real flow, max, maya, scripting etc. for people who are wanting to get into FX and don’t know where to start. However I have a lot of more advanced content that will be coming soon. As always, if you have any cool ideas or requests, feel free to shoot me an email (go to the contact page) and I’ll keep them in mind!
Allan McKay San Francisco, USA |
November 11th, 2009
Website Update
| A little overdue, but finally a new website up and running! I’ve been running this webpage for 13 years, 6 of which have been as allanmckay.com, however averaging over 1,000 hits a day the bandwidth has not been able to keep up in the past!
I’ve switched over to a lightning fast server, and unlimited bandwidth, all of the previous tutorials are online, and loads more are going to be popping up very soon, as well as other content, maxscripts, Real Flow, Maya and various other material too. Bare with us over the next coming weeks as this website comes online, however I now have other people running and contributing to this website so it will become a lot easier for myself and others to keep it up to date and make more frequent updates. I will be putting up a newsletter soon, so people who are interested in participating in CGWorkshops or other events that sell out quick can get a heads up before they are announced, ensuring their place in the workshops ahead of everyone else, as well as gaining access to exclusive content and other cool material that noone else has access to. I’m excited and looking forward to getting this website online both to put together a focal point for solid visual effects content as well as various other areas I’m tied to such as travel, writing and film production. Any ideas or things you would like to see covered, or anything else feel free to contact me! amckay@allanmckay.com
Allan McKay Gold Coast, Australia |
November 11th, 2009
Maxscript for beginners #1
Brand new tutorial in a series of Maxscript for beginners – here we introduce basic terminology and generating objects and managing them through basic mat and scripting lingo.
This series is designed to move artists into more technical subjects easily and apply them to appropriate subjects for real production.
