| Daybreakers wins best Visual Effects at AFI awards
This week Daybreakers won Best VFX at the AFI awards! Something I’m extremely proud of due to the fact that we created all of the VFX for this film back in 2007! The film was just released this year, so having it stand up still almost 3 years later against all of the current VFX films out there has been very rewarding! For those who aren’t aware, I created all of the digital fire for the film for vampire ashing sequences, as well as being sequence supervisor for the major car crash sequence midway through the film. We created the project as a mix of Houdini and 3D Studio Max using Fume FX for all of the fire. Our VFX team was 7 people, 2 were seniors, 2 juniors and 1 animator, as well as 2 compositors in under 3 months! |
| 2010 – OVER!
Officially wrapping for the year this week, some of the more bigger projects I’ve been tied to have been The Last Airbender and Daybreakers which both came out this year, Priest which comes out in February, working with all of the talented crew at Industrial Light + Magic, and all of the ex Orphanage team now over at Spypost. Also being tied to a lot of game cinematics and more recently in New York Grimbergon french beer commercial which comes out very soon, which involved creating over 100+ flame effects for a 30′ tall Phoenix bird on fire. I also just now completed a large piece for the Asia Games opening Ceremony for next year. More information to come! |
| 2011 – What’s next?
There will be major updates coming very soon, I will soon be announcing Industry Drinks event in Los Angeles for February, this event will be huge and I plan to get backing from a lot of major companies, hopefully to help flip the drinking bill! Real Flow 5 Workshops to be announced in January! And loads of free Thinking Particles, Krakatoa and Rayfire coming! Catastrophic FX will be officially launching in Los Angeles in March. We already have multiple feature films lined up and a lot of exciting news to announced about this! Custom tools for water creation and advanced visual effects! Kick Ass! VFX Bootcamp – The name says it all! |
| Phoneix FD reviewed in 3D World Magazine + exerpt on Chaos Groups website!
Recently I wrote a review of the new fire plugin Phoneix FD for 3D Studio Max. It has been very widely received and gained a lot of interest, so check it out when you have time! Phoenix article also hosted on Chaos Group’s website & Direct Link to article here For anyone not subscribed to 3D World Magazine, here is a link to the article on Chaos Group’s Phoenix FD website
Also – keep an eye out! Advanced VFX 3 DVD also plugged in the latest 3D World Magazine issue!
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| VFX Wars Completed!
Recently I was asked to be a judge in the VFX wars contest, the results are up at their website NYC Presentation a success! Recently I did a quick talk at the Pratt Center for the 3D Studio Max End User Group, it was a massive turn out, apparently the biggest in the 14 year history of the meetings. I did a 1 hour talk about various subjects, the video will be online next week, so stay tuned! |
News Category
2010 – 2011! Various updates
Advanced VFX 3 is out! + NYC Presentation
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I will be speaking at the 3D studio Max User Group alongside Joe Gunn Wednesday the 28th between 7-9pm at the Pratt Center in New York. There should be around 40-50 people attending, and afterward it would be great to meet everyone to talk over a few beers! I look forward to seeing all of you there! Pratt Center for Continuing Studies 144 W 14th St, NY, NY 2nd Floor Room 213 Wed. Oct 27, 2010 from 7-9:pm |
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I will soon be organizing an industry drinks event in Los Angeles for early January. I hope to have a bar tab organized for this (please feel free to contact me if you work for any large companies who wish to sponsor this event!) I have hosted a lot of these in the past in other cities and it should be a great way to get a lot of film, tv and game studios as well as students and other industry people together for drinks and socializing. I’ve found these events to turn out great and get a chance for all industries to come together, so I am looking forward to this event! More information to come on this soon. Any inquiries please contact me at amckay@allanmckay.com |
Advanced Visual FX 3 Announced
| Advanced Visual Effects Volume 3 – To be released Friday |
| Advanced Visual Effects – Vol 3 Trailer from Allan McKay on Vimeo. |
| Advanced VFX 3 Training DVD will be released Friday, over 11 hours of training content covering features such as Krakatoa, Rayfire, Pflow Tools Box 2, Fume FX and dozens of other features |
NYC Event/TP Tutorial/Overtime article
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
FX Workshop + Fume FX 2 Auto Sim Script
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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Want some Fume FX 2.0 lovin?
Fume FX 2.0 Fluids Feature Overview video
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| 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! |
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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!! |
SIGGRAPH + ILM Fluids Talk + Updates
| Update + SIGGRAPH 2010 – Los Angeles, CA |
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| 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 |
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| 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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