3DS Max Tutorials Category

January 24th, 2011

New York City – End User Event Video

Written by amckay

Topics: 3DS Max Tutorials, News, Training, Uncategorized

Visual Effects discussion in New York End User Group 2010

I was asked a little over a month ago to speak at the Autodesk End User Group event in New York. It was pretty last minute so I didn’t have time to prepare anything too thorough, however the event was a lot of fun and it was the biggest turn out they have ever had in the history of the event which has been going for 15 years. Thanks everyone who attended, it was great meeting all of you!

This visual effects video covers briefly training bits and pieces on Rayfire, Krakatoa, Fume FX, Particle Flow, Thinking Particles, but more importantly a lot of workflow tips and other useful information, plus a Q&A at the end.

You can download High Resolution video here (700mb)

Go ahead and click ‘like’ in Vimeo if you dig the video, I will find it interesting to see whether people find this sort of videos interesting. Thanks guys

Emails

Since the second half of the overtime vs productivity article was released I’ve gotten a lot of email that I haven’t been able to respond to yet. So if you emailed me and haven’t received a response, I’m working on it! If it’s urgent please feel free to email me again and I will do my best to reply.

Attending VES AWARDS?

I will be attending the VES Awards in Hollywood next week, so anyone attending please let me know perhaps we can organize for drinks afterwards. Best of luck for everyone who has work submitted. I pushed my votes through over the weekend.

- Los Angeles, CA

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December 22nd, 2010

New Video and Other Bonus Content

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Written by amckay

Topics: 3DS Max Tutorials, News

Get On My Mailing List And Get More Free Stuff HERE

Click on the link below and enter your name and email address. I’ll add you to my private mailing list and send you exclusive content not publicly available, including several hours of private training videos, videos filmed at master classes and events and other exclusive and exciting content!

This video below was put together as an added bonus for my students who attended the Fume FX Pyrotechnics workshop this year. One of the many videos that are sent out privately over the mailing list. Click the image below to play the video! (Please be patient while the video loads, as it’s quite big!)

Click here to join the mailing list

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October 10th, 2010

NYC Event/TP Tutorial/Overtime article

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Written by amckay

Topics: 3DS Max Tutorials, News

Currently in NYC for a new project I’m working on, also just approached the other day so nothing official but I may be speaking at the next Max user event in NYC end of this month, so keep an eye out for that if you’re in New York.

I’m wrapping up Advanced VFX 3 DVD which will be out soon.

New article on Overtime vs Productivity feedback more than welcome! Click here to read it

Pyro workshop is now announced, you can sign up for it by clicking on the link here:

I have released a Thinking Particles Volume Breaker tutorial you can watch over here – I have kept this one pretty simple and straight to the point. I’m purely doing this to see whether there is in fact interest in more Thinking Particles Tutorials, if so I will post plenty more advanced ones on this subject. In the meantime I will be releasing some advanced Krakatoa tutorials very soon. Click here to watch it

More to come!
-Allan McKay
New York F*cking City

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August 30th, 2010

FX Workshop + Fume FX 2 Auto Sim Script

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Written by amckay

Topics: 3DS Max Tutorials, Favorites, News, Training, Uncategorized

Fume FX 2.0 Auto Script v1.0

So this is more a 5 minute thing I wrote for my own uses, however I posted this on a few forums and a lot of people have gone crazy for it. So I’m releasing it publically for anyone who needs it. It’s written ‘as is’ but I find it useful for production.

Basically set up your container with all the correct settings you need (I have had one or two people run the script right after making their grid expecting it to do something magical for them, so keep in mind you SET UP YOUR CONTAINER and then once you have everything how you want it, ie. simulation, wavelet, retiming and rendering all set up. You can run the script, and it will initially simulate your container, and then run the wavelet and retiming sims and then render it. Which means rather than hitting sim several times at each phase, you can run the script and it will simulate each phase for you and then render it once it’s done. Which means you can go get that beer at the pub that you’ve been craving all day. (or focus on other shots without needing to baby sit this one).

Download AutoScript v1.0 here

Get Hollywood Live Action Workshop

So in the past two months both CG Society and I both have had a LOT of traffic requesting the Hollywood Live Action Workshop which I designed last year run at least another time.

So for those of you who don’t know, this workshop focuses over 8 weeks hands on with me, on simulating a real production environment, conceptualizing your effects, building all your hold out geometry and matching your camera. Building the effects and projecting footage etc. and compositing elements to make your final shot. Essentially replicating what you do in the real world day to day. This is one of my favorite workshops as I think this is real world knowledge that really does train you for working on high end films, and so far we’ve had a great amount of people both experts in the field and some more budding artists all attending, and some of the bigger names too such as Mir Vadim (creator of Rayfire) and various other guys from Ubisoft and other studios all doing the workshop.

The workshop focuses on Fume FX, Afterburn, Fracturing, Scripting tools, Compositing, painting concept art, camera matching, dynamics, rayfire and a heck of a lot more

So we’ve just announced the workshop today -a lot of spots are already taken because of the general interest leading up to it. But if you want to attend the workshop go over to CG Society and sign up! This will be a really exciting workshop and I gaurauntee all of you will take a lot away from this!

Hollywood Live Action FX Workshop

Now serving Los Angeles

After almost a year of living in San Francisco while I was working on The Last Airbender, and Priest at ILM and Spypost. I will now be officially relocating and setting up permently in Los Angeles. This has been a long term plan that is finally coming together, with plans for later this year to move Catastrophic FX and a lot of my resources over to LA as well.

This to me is a very exciting time, as I will be shifting all of my resources together and setting up a small studio to collectively build a team of solid FX artist and compositors to push through high level production work and work as a support system for other visual effects facilities throughout their productions.

There will be a formal announcement coming in the later months, but I did want to share this news, as now I will be based in LA and I will be looking to pull together 3D resources and also help with other vfx studios if there need be any VFX or supervisional work!

For the remainder of the year I while setting everything up, I will be focusing solely on freelance work, so anyone needing FX drop me an email

Any questions or need for vfx services feel free to contact me at amckay@allanmckay.com

Teaser Trailer for Priest!

So one of the recent films I completed, Priest – has now got a teaser trailer available. This film, I think by far is my best work yet! Obviously once the film’s out I’ll be excited to cover more indepth the work I created for this, however in the meantime check out the new teaser trailer located here!

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August 24th, 2010

Want some Fume FX 2.0 lovin?

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Written by amckay

Topics: 3DS Max Tutorials, Favorites, News

Fume FX 2.0 Fluids Feature Overview video

Below is a link to a 30 minute video I put together just discussing some of Fume FX 2.0’s new features, as well as walking through how some of them work. feel free to click on ‘like’ if you like it!

Also on a separate note, I will soon be updating this website with high resolution downloadable versions of all of my tutorials, as well as ipod versions if you want to watch them while you’re on your way to work each morning! So keep an eye out for this!

Fume FX 2.0 – Fluids Feature Overview from Allan McKay on Vimeo.

Join Facebook Public Page so you can share knowledge, win prizes and find other VFX artists!

I now have a public page you can join, the idea is to build a great community of visual effects enthusiasts

With so many talented and creative people visiting this page, I wanted to find a way to pull everyone together in a way that we can all share information and knowledge, as well as post information related to visual effects and the film industry. It will be the most up to date way to find out about new tutorials and information, as well as contests being held to win prizes such as personal tutoring and training DVD’s amongst other great stuff! So when you get a chance, join my facebook page!

Allan McKay to judge VFX Wars!

So not major news, however I thought it would be worthwhile mentioning I am going to judge this coming VFX Wars challenge.This should be fun! Read more on VFX Wars here…

Want to win Advanced Visual FX 3 DVD?

Although this is jumping the gun a bit, I thought it would be a great way to announce the new Visual FX DVD I have been working on the past 6 months! More information will be coming on it soon, but if you’re interested in winning a free copy to download, I thought it might be fun to put up a thread on my Facebook page, just discussing some of your favorite all time FX movie sequences. Already there are dozens of posts about this, and it’s been great to interact with so many people and see their insights into what makes a great FX movie! I will be randomly picking one of the contributors on September 15 to receive a free downloadable DVD of Advanced Visual FX 3! Check it out here!!

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July 22nd, 2010

SIGGRAPH + ILM Fluids Talk + Updates

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Written by amckay

Topics: 3DS Max Tutorials, News, Training, Uncategorized

Update + SIGGRAPH 2010 – Los Angeles, CA

So recently I have wrapped on a new film project ‘Priest’ which is out next year. Also M Night Shyamalan’s new film The Last Airbender is out, so take a look at all the amazing work Industrial Light + Magic did on this, I was initially working on the wave sequence a the end of the film as well as a couple of water shots.

I will be in LA attending SIGGRAPH this year Monday through to Friday, anyone with interest in meeting up to discuss possible work or training, consultation etc. while you’re in town please let me know, my schedule is fairly full however it is a great time of year to meet with people while everyone is all town.

My email address is amckay@allanmckay.com if you need to get a hold of me.

I will also be attending the Autodesk drinks Monday night.

Allan McKay – Industrial Light + Magic – Fume FX Class

This talk is a little old but I thought I might release it, it’s based on a class I held at Industrial Light + Magic earlier this year, it’s more a quick overview of Fume FX and it’s capabilities. I pretty much put the talk together the night before but never the less it’s a pretty interesting talk and covers a lot of useful information on fire and also an insight into cross platforming max with other packages etc.

CG Society Artist Profile : Allan McKay

So recently I did an interview with CG Society on a lot of my background and the work I’ve done, insights into the industry etc. You can view the article here

Digital Pyrotechnics Workshop soon to be announced

So what have I been up to the last 2 months? Most of my time has been spent on developing a new workshop for CG Society for Fume FX 2.0 that is soley focused on creating the most realistic fire possible, and explosions and all things pyrotechnic. I hope this will be the holy grail of workshops, and over 8 weeks I will privately train and mentor the students on creating realistic explosions and other visual effects. This is going to be a really exciting workshop and should be announced in the coming weeks!

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April 21st, 2010

Tutorials! Fracturing! Afterburn! New Workshop! Box 2!

11 comments

Written by amckay

Topics: 3DS Max Tutorials, News, Uncategorized

Hollywood Live Action Workshop announced!

: Hollywood live action workshop

Just announced last week, the Hollywood Live Action workshop is currently accepting enrollments! This workshop has been a huge success in the past, primarily focusing on getting people up to speed quickly with all current FX tools such as rayfire, Afterburn, Fume FX, Digital Fusion, Scripting etc. as well as being the only CG Society workshop that focuses on creating visual effects for live action shots, so we cover a lot on matching cameras to shots and creating the visual effects and destruction, rendering passes out and compositing these shots, simulating a real life production environment. Enroll now before it sells out!

ENROLL NOW AT CG SOCIETY

Fracture Tutorial

A new tutorial today just on quickly discussing fracturing geometry but more importantly getting your fractured geometry into Particle Flow. This is pretty general knowledge I’ve covered before but at least not directly on the topic of fracturing, so I thought it would be well worth while putting something up.

New Tutorials!

Keep your eye out for later this week there will be two new tutorials one on Box Set 2 and one on Afterburn. In addition, later in the month expect loads of material on Rayfire and Krakatoa and other cool announcements!